Griper Blade: A Delusion-Based Global AIDS Policy

Not content with screwing up the United States, the religious right is reaching out to screw up the rest of the world. The Bush administration is probably more influenced by the christian right than any other presidency in history. A prime example is Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which provides federal funding to 'faith-based' (i.e., religious) groups to provide community services. This funding goes to only one religion -- Office director Jim Towey admitted in 2004 that no funding has gone to a non-Christian group.

You'd think that getting handed money directly from the federal government would be enough, but of course it's not -- nothing less than a 'christian' foreign policy is acceptable to them. The problem is that there's a huge difference between 'faith-based' and 'reality-based' and the philosophy of the religious right allows them to ignore realities they don't approve of. For them, if the problem isn't addressed, then the problem doesn't exist. Take this piece from The Boston Globe:

For six decades, CARE has been a vital ally to the US government. It supplied the famed CARE packages to Europe's starving masses after World War II, and its work with the poor has been celebrated by US presidents. So the group was thrilled when it received a major contract from the Bush administration to fight AIDS in Africa and Asia.

But this time, instead of accolades came attacks. Religious conservatives contended that the $50 million contract, under which CARE was to distribute money to both secular and faith-based groups, was being guided by an organization out of touch with religious values.

Senator Rick Santorum , a Pennsylvania Republican, charged last year that CARE was ``anti-American" and ``promoted a pro-prostitution agenda." Focus on the Family, the religious group headed by James Dobson , said the agency that delivered the contract, the US Agency for International Development, was a ``liberal cancer."

The complaining paid off. CARE's $50 million contract is being phased out this year; it has been replaced with a $200 million program of grants that is targeted at faith-based providers, and overseen by USAID itself.

Why is CARE 'pro-prostitution'? Because it realizes that prostitutes exist and have sex for a living. By providing health care and condoms to prostitutes, CARE slows the spread of STDs in the third world. Santorum and Dobson see this as 'supporting' prostitution -- as if the only reason women become sex workers is because they'll get free health care and condoms. And what is the reasoning here -- that if the don't get CARE packages, the prostitution business will fold? As I said before, if the problem isn't addressed, then -- for Dobson and Santorum, at least -- it doesn't exist.

An anti-STD campaign that ignores prostitution is as effective as no campaign at all. They say that the only way to guarantee a halt to STDs is abstinence before marriage and monogamy within it -- but how on Earth can any program deliver universal abstinence and monogamy?

Obviously, it can't. But that doesn't stop Dobson's Focus on the Family from lying to make it seem like it does...

Read More...

Tags: news politics Bush AIDS medicine health Focus on the Family James Dobson Rick Santorum prostitution Religious right