Today Michelle Goldberg has a great piece about the Bush administration's lethal decision to push abstinence as a solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa. She quotes Beatrice Were, the founder of Uganda's National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS:
Like many in attendance, Were contracted HIV from her husband, a common occurrence in a region where women make up the majority of new infections and marriage is a primary risk factor. For those like her, the White House's AIDS prevention mantra -- which prescribes abstinence and marital fidelity, with condoms only for "high risk" groups like prostitutes and truck drivers -- is a sick joke."We are now seeing a shift in recent years to abstinence only," she said. "We are expected to abstain when we are young girls and to be faithful when we are married to men who rape us, who are not necessarily faithful to us, who batter us." The women in the audience, several waiting to share their own stories of marital rape, applauded.
Goldberg goes on to debunk the notion, heralded by the likes of Bono, that the Bush administration has drastically increased AIDS funding. Nope-- they've just managed to not cut HIV/AIDS programs. In other words, they've ponied up the bare minimum. She also points out that, while defenders of the abstinence programs say that only 1/3 of prevention funding goes to "just say no" efforts, the reality is quite different:
But this figure is also deceptive, because the prevention budget includes things like fighting mother-to-child transmission. In fact, a full two-thirds of the money for the prevention of the sexual spread of HIV goes to abstinence. What's left is targeted to groups considered high-risk. HIV-activists have spent the last two decades trying to show that condoms aren't just for prostitutes and the promiscuous; Bush has undone much of their work.
This argument just might be starting to get through to Laura Bush. Her husband, not so much.
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Have the abstinence only people ever actually addressed marital rape as an issue? Because I feel like when it comes to the topic, they just stick their fingers in their ears and hum really loudly and they're basically sentencing women to death by doing so. And I don't understand why universal condom distribution wouldn't be the natural response to the kind of infection rate found in Africa. I mean, there's religious beliefs and then there's sticking your head in the goddamn sand. I don't know any God that would condone that kind of preventable death.
Yeah Genny, that's a good question. I'm fairly confident the answer is no, they haven't addressed the marital rape issue, because as you point out, abstinence-only folks generally aren't too concerned with reality.
Also, Genny, I'm at a complete loss as to why women have to die for Bush's religious beliefs.
wealhtheow, exactly. I'm all for religious freedom, and people can believe feverently in the damn flying spaghetti monster for all I care; but the moment your religious beliefs start negative affecting someone else's life, that's where it ends. You can be morally opposed to abortion, birth control, condoms, red meat, whatever, but that doesn't mean that you get to make those choices for other people, only for yourself.
I find it very telling that our position on African aid is not "We'll give you the aid, and people on the ground in the situation decide where it's most needed" but rather "we'll tell you how much we give you, where it goes, and what the 'right' way to spend it is". It's incredibly patronizing and the results are disasterous.
The Bible says sex is only permissable within marriage. The Bible also says that it is a wife's duty to allow her husband to "know" her as he sees fit. As a Christian "abstinence only" is the only position Bush can take and remain true to his faith; the affect that this position has on others is irrelevant. Being a good Christian is more important than being a decent human being.
Paul Zeitz, Executive Director of the Global AIDS Alliance, wrote a really good piece on this that the LA Times published on June 28 titled: Doubletalk won't pay the AIDS bills ( http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-zeitz28jun28,0,4853171.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail). He also explains how the Bush administration has tacked other funding into this so that not all of the money goes to AIDS alone. For instance, a portion goes to TB funding. Now, the TB funding is extremely important on its own (especially given that worldwide it is now the #1 killer of people living with HIV and AIDS), so by putting it in with PEPFAR money, not only does AIDS get shortchanged, but TB does as well. Nice, huh?
Abstinence only education isn't working here, why our government believes it would work elsewhere, I've no clue. W definitely isn't the sharpest crayon on the box. Seriously, who voted for him and why? Ugh.
"Being a good Christian is more important than being a decent human being"
funny how it seems you cant be both anymore.
This was a fantastic article. I have to admit I learned a few things I did not previously know about this issue. Thanks. :)
I saw so much of this sort of damage having come back from Malawi recently, where we did a project on HIV/AIDS and stigma against women with the disease. So many women there are disempowered anyway: there's no such thing as marital rape (it's completely legal), plus most women are ill-educated and economically dependent on their husbands. In fact, there's a truism there - the people who get HIV are rich men and poor women. Which is why it's so utterly disheartening that the nation with the most power in the world also chooses to disempower such women by denying them education and bodily autonomy (due to Global Gag, too).
If anyone's interested, the Guttmacher Institute just published a very interesting report on the lack of contraceptives for women who need them in developing countries.
Part of the problem may be that not all Christians believe there is such a thing as marital rape. Don't get me wrong; many do, and interpret the Biblical injunction as against withholding sex for manipulation purposes (which is an ugly thing to do). But the more fundamentalist they are, the more likely they are to believe the wedding constitutes perpetual consent for life, and after that the man can do whatever he wants with his wife, no matter how she feels or what medical problems she has or what a psycho he's proven to be.
"Have the abstinence only people ever actually addressed marital rape as an issue? Because I feel like when it comes to the topic, they just stick their fingers in their ears and hum really loudly and they're basically sentencing women to death by doing so."
It seems as though some people don't really think sex within marriage is sex. That might be the common origin of attitudes like
- sex is sinful, marital sex isn't sinful
- sex with someone against her will is rape, marital sex with someone against her will isn't rape
- sex with a first cousin is incest, marital sex with a first cousin isn't incest
- sex with a child is pedophilia, marital sex with a child isn't pedophilia
- sex for wealth is prostitution, marital sex for wealth isn't prostitution