PAGE: Thank you, Senator Obama. Thank you for being here at Messiah College for the Compassion Forum. Southern Baptists have been very active for years in sub- Saharan Africa in the HIV/AIDS relief ministries. Sometimes orphan care, sometimes educational activities.
But we also are involved in a ministry called True Love Waits, which has been credited by the government of Uganda for lowering the AIDS infection rate there dramatically from 30 percent to 6 percent. But we also teach a part of that, that faith has a role in the issue of HIV/AIDS. Do you concur with that and would you elaborate on that, please.
BROWN: Can I just clarify, True Love Waits is an abstinence program.
PAGE: Abstinence based and faith based, yes.
The claim in this question, that True Love Waits had a significant impact on the dramatic decline of AIDS in Uganda is, quite simply, breathtaking. The decline in the rate of infection has largely been attributed to the fact that the majority of those who were infected died. New infections were minimized through an approach called ABC, which stands for Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms.
But even these tenets are near impossible for many women to follow in Uganda because they simply do not possess the social or economic power to make decisions regarding their own sexual health. Indeed, one of the fastest growing groups of those infected with HIV is married women.
In 2004, I was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uganda. While I was spending a few days at a fellow volunteer’s house, we heard the chilling screams of a child being beaten two doors down. By this time, we were both all too familiar with this sound. The boy’s mother had locked them up together in their small, 2-room dwelling and was screaming at him and hitting him, probably with a cane as was common in Uganda. This attack was among the most brutal either of us had witnessed. We banged on the door, threatened to call the police. My friend tried to get the other neighbors involved, but they were reluctant to meddle, believing that there was “nothing that could be done” or that it was none of their business. A neighbor boy filled us in on the abusive mother's plight. The father of her three children had left them for another woman, a second wife. The woman and her children were left destitute. No money, no job, no food, no recourse. She was, by all accounts, at the end of her rope and taking it out on her young son.
Where does true love and abstinence fit into that picture? Can we really believe that if her husband returned, she would abstain from having sex or even ask him to wear a condom to protect herself from HIV/AIDS? No, she would do what she needed to do to put food on her table and take care of her children in the short term.
The oppression of women puts them in very precarious financial situations. They are dependent on men for food, shelter, clothing and to care for their children. Each sexual act becomes a Faustian bargain pitting the choice of immediate financial security against the longer term prospect of good health. Abstinence and demanding safe sex become luxuries they cannot afford. HIV/AIDS tomorrow is not such a threat when no food today can lead to a more immediate death.
At another point during my service, I read a story about a remarkable 11-year old girl who, when asked to speak at a community gathering, did so and then proceeded to demand that her elders do something to stop the raping of young girls like herself. Raping by uncles and principals and other adult males of young girls and sometimes boys is all too common and she wanted to know when it was going to end.
Where does true love and abstinence fit into that picture?
I am not against abstinence. It has its place in comprehensive sex education and in HIV/AIDS prevention. What I am against is a one size fits all solution to complex situations, especially when the solutions are conceived from a uniquely western perspective. In many nations and cultures, just the idea of true love is a quaint ideal only westerners can enjoy.
We cannot afford another administration that embraces this parochial and ideological approach to HIV/AIDS policy. Not only do we limit our effectiveness in fighting HIV/AIDS, but we send a message to the world that we simply have no intention of seeing things from their point of view.
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