One of our faithful commenters alerted me to this recent report on how the vaunted abstinence program in Uganda has failed to curtail the spread of AIDS. After reading that article and one at the BBC, I have figure out what is going on.
- Religious fundies changed the message from ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Use Condoms) to just AB.
They left out the condom bit. You can’t preach only abstinence to people who are lack vision and virtue and hope. People are people – sinful, given to moments of weakness. It is irresponsible to not tell them about contraception.However, it is equally foolish to not encourage them to use the best possible prevention method – virtue. Chastity. Faithfulness. People who only want to teach "C" are part of the ongoing problem – they want to treat the symptom, but not the root causes.
- Rapists, drug users, filanderers and prostitutes don’t often use condoms.
I think these problems, all present in Uganda, make both calls for abstinence OR condoms less effective. So just because AIDS is going up doesn’t mean that the ABC method won’t work. In fact, if we don’t preach morality, we can not hope to stem the tide and change these issues.
The fact is, when the true ABC message was being used, not losing either the "A" or the "C", they had tremendous success. It is too bad that the religious fundies preaching Abstinence only have f**ked this up with their extreme, unrealistic approach. They should be shot, alongside the liberal "condom only" preachers. But then again, I’m a moderate xian ;)