AIDS and Condoms
Re: UN Official Hopes New Pope Will Ease Condom Stance

Of course, this will not happen.

And if it did, what would be the result? More cases of AIDS!

Let us look at two Southeast Asian nations. From Telling the Truth: AIDS Rates for Thailand and the Philippines:

The first AIDS case in Thailand was diagnosed in 1984, when a homosexual prostitute tested positive for the disease. Later it spread among the female and male prostitutes, and among intravenous drug users. The first AIDS case in the Philippines was also diagnosed in 1984.

By 1987, there were 112 cases of HIV/AIDS infection in Thailand and 135 cases in the Philippines.

In 1991 the World Health Organization (WHO) AIDS Program forecasted that by 1999 Thailand would have 60,000 to 80,000 cases, and that the Philippines would experience between 80,000 and 90,000 cases of HIV/AIDS.

During that same year the Minister of Health of Thailand, Mr. Viravedya, launched the heavy-handed, "100% Condom Use Program." All brothels were required to stock a large supply of condoms, and condom vending machines appeared in supermarkets, bars and other public places. This initiative was widely accepted by the people of Thailand. I was able to visit Bangkok in both 1994 and 1997 to see this first-hand.

A year after this program was set loose upon Thailand (1992), the infamous Secretary of Health (now a senator), Mr. Juan Flavier, tried to implement the program in my own country, the Philippines. This small, 4'11'' man tried every technique he could think of to get his country to accept the flood of condoms waiting to invade. He even went so far as to mock and deride Church leaders.

Flavier's efforts in the Philippines failed, however, and in 1999 the UNAIDS reported 755,000 total confirmed cases of HIV infection in Thailand-65,000 had died of the disease. That same year, in the Philippines, the total number of HIV cases was only 1,005. The disease had killed only 225 people.

The discrepancy in the infection rates between the two countries, Thailand with severe condom-oriented programs and the Philippines without, has continued and only grown wider. As of August 2003 there were 899,000 HIV/AIDS cases documented in Thailand and approximately 125,000 deaths attributed to the disease. These numbers are many times those projected by the WHO (60,000-80,000 cases) in 1991.

These numbers contrast sharply with those of the Philippines where, as of September 30, 2003, there were 1,946 AIDS cases resulting in 260 deaths. This is only a mere fraction of the number of cases (80,000-90,000) that the WHO projected would be reached by 2000.

And let us consider Africa. From Abstinence success in Uganda resisted by AIDS community:

As AIDS sweeps across Africa, Uganda remains a lone success story. Millions of Ugandans have embraced traditional sexual morality, including sexual abstinence outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage, in order to avoid infection. But the international AIDS community has been reluctant to promote this strategy elsewhere, continuing instead to place its faith in condoms.

Finally, words of wisdom from Mark Steyn in Why progressive Westerners never understood John Paul II:

In Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), the Pope wrote: "Sexuality too is depersonalised and exploited: it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated."

Had the Pope signed on to condom distribution in Africa, he would have done nothing to reduce the spread of Aids, but he would have done a lot to advance the further artificial separation of sex, in Africa and beyond. Indeed, if you look at the New York Times's list of complaints against the Pope - "Among liberal Catholics, he was criticised for his strong opposition to abortion, homosexuality and contraception" - they all boil down to what he called sex as self-assertion.

Thoughtful atheists ought to be able to recognise that, whatever one's tastes in these areas, the Pope was on to something - that abortion et al, in separating the "two meanings" of sex and leaving us free to indulge in one while ignoring the other, have severed us almost entirely and possibly irreparably from traditional impulses, such as societal survival. John Paul II championed the "splendour of truth" not because he was rigid and inflexible, but because he understood the alternative was a dead end in every sense.

The Sexual Revolution lead to unprecedented disease and cultural decline in the industrialized world.

What will it take to stop the rich sexual libertines at the UN and elsewhere from forcing their genocidal agenda on the poorer people of our world?

Veni, Domine Iesu!