More Senseless Death, This Time Even More Senseless Than Usual

A BBC report shows that Uganda's amazing AIDS performance over the years has begun to decline, thanks largely to U.S. intervention. A trend of reducing the rate of AIDS cases in the country from 15% to 5% in recent years is beginning to reverse, because the Ugandan government now gives greater weight to the Abstinence component of its Abstinence, Be faithful and Condoms campaign.

Many blame the Bush administration for this. Advert.org puts it this way:

Uganda receives significant amounts of funding from America, and much of the PEPFAR money is being channelled through pro-abstinence and even anti-condom organisations which are faith-based, and which would like sexual abstinence to be a central pillar of the fight against HIV. This money is making a difference - some Ugandan teachers report being instructed by US contractors not to discuss condoms in schools because the new policy is "abstinence only".

Our President's religious faith is well known, as was obvious in his numerous allusions to religion in his New Orleans speech last night.

It is already unacceptable that America fails to donate more resources to fighting AIDS, an epidemic which may be the most threatening global health crisis of our era. That any American institution would actually help prevent a hugely successful anti-AIDS policy from taking hold is maddeningly wrong. To do this in the name of religious moral obligation is purely hypocritical.

What kind of person who does the following moral calculus: "I know that millions of people are dying and trapped in poverty as a result of a disease that can be prevented at miniscule cost if we provide people with condoms. However, this is outweighed by the fact that sex outside of marriage is a sin. A pro-abstinence, anti-condom message must be broadcast around the world, no matter how many bodies pile up as a result."

It's unbelievable.

Addendum: Harper's published an article recently on America's brand of Christian faith and how it sizes up against Biblical scholarship and the beliefs of the rest of Christendom.