Bush Exploits AIDS to Finance Religious Groups
The Bush Administration is using the AIDS epidemic to funnel even more tax dollars into faith-based organizations.
President Bush’s $15 billion effort to fight AIDS has handed out nearly one-quarter of its grants to religious groups, and officials are aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize disease prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condom use.
Award recipients include a Christian relief organization famous for its televised appeals to feed hungry children, a well-known Catholic charity and a group run by the son of evangelist Billy Graham, according to the State Department.
The outreach to nontraditional AIDS players comes in the midst of a debate over how best to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The debate has activated groups on both ends of the political spectrum and created a vast competition for money.
Conservative Christian allies of the president are pressing the U.S. foreign aid agency to give fewer dollars to groups that distribute condoms or work with prostitutes. The Bush administration provided more than 560 million condoms abroad last year, compared with some 350 million in 2001.
Secular organizations in Africa are raising concerns that new money to groups without AIDS experience may dilute the impact of Bush’s historic three-year-old program.
“We clearly recognize that it is very important to work with faith-based organizations,” said Dan Mullins, deputy regional director for southern and western Africa for CARE, one of the best-known humanitarian organizations.
“But at the same time we don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming faith-based groups are good at everything,” Mullins said.
$15 billion over three years is $5 billion a year.
25% of that $15 billion is $3.75 and that is taxpayer money going to faith-based groups. Faith has done nothing to add to the body of knowledge about HIV/AIDS that has built up over the last 25 years.
At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, religious groups used HIV/AIDS to condemn homosexuals, calling it God’s punishment for homosexuality. There is no scientific basis for such a belief and all they did was hold up progress toward effective treatments and a cure.
AIDS has always been primarily a heterosexual disease. It is ironic that now the same religious fanatics that once claimed it was a gay disease and God’s punishment are now being given billions of dollars to fight the disease among heterosexuals.
Among those winning grants were:
_Samaritan’s Purse, which is run by Graham’s son, Franklin. It says its mission is “meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
_World Vision. The 56-year-old Christian organization is known for its TV appeals — some with celebrities such as game show host Alex Trebek — that asked people to support a Third World child.
_Catholic Relief Services. It was awarded $6.2 million to teach abstinence and fidelity in three countries; $335 million in a consortium providing anti-retroviral treatment; and $9 million to help orphans and children affected by HIV/AIDs. The group offers “complete and correct information about condoms” but will not promote, purchase or distribute them, said Carl Stecker, senior program director for HIV/AIDS.
_HOPE. The global relief organization founded by the International Churches of Christ recently brought comedian Chris Rock to South Africa for an AIDS prevention event. AIDS grants support HOPE in several countries.
_World Relief, founded by the National Association of Evangelicals. It won $9.7 million for abstinence work in four countries.
Most of the money in Bush’s initiative goes to treatment programs, earning the administration praise for delivering lifesaving drugs and care to millions of HIV-infected patients.
For prevention, Bush embraces the “ABC” strategy: abstinence before marriage, being faithful to one partner, and condoms targeted for high-risk activity. The Republican-led Congress mandated that one-third of prevention money be reserved for abstinence and fidelity.
Condom promotion to anyone must include abstinence and fidelity messages, U.S. guidelines say, but those preaching abstinence do not have to provide condom education.
But what if those who get preached to about abstinence don’t practice it?
From this policy one can only conclude that the Bush Administration’s view is that they deserve to get AIDS.
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January 31st, 2006 at 6:14 am
AIDS is not primarly a heterosexual disease. It is a disease of male homosexuals and IV drug users. If these people didn’t engage in their conduct, there would be hardly no AIDS.
Say what you want about religious conservatives, if queers followed their advice they wouldn’t get AIDS.
January 31st, 2006 at 11:45 am
The above comment is an excellent example of the profound ignorance and rejection of reality that characterizes the fundamentalist, faith-based mind.
From the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
Worldwide, more than 90 percent of all adolescent and adult HIV infections have resulted from heterosexual intercourse. Women are particularly vulnerable to heterosexual transmission of HIV due to substantial mucosal exposure to seminal fluids. This biological fact amplifies the risk of HIV transmission when coupled with the high prevalence of non-consensual sex, sex without condom use, and the unknown and/or high-risk behaviors of their partners.
As for his second point, if people never drove cars they would never be killed in car accidents. Does that mean we should not teach people to drive responsibly? Should they just practice abstinence from driving?
Just as every penny that Bush gives to a faith-based group could be better spent on groups devoted to curing the disease rather than preaching morality, every minute that I spend responding to dumb-ass comments from people who don’t give a fuck about reality and never bother to check their facts could be better spent on something else, like, for example, working toward a cure for AIDS.
My first reaction to the above comment was to delete it. It is, however, a perfect example of what I was talking about in the above post and so I’ve allowed it to post.
Any similarly stupid, bigoted, ill-informed comments will be deleted and not allowed to post because my time is better spent elsewhere.