True, True, True #2

A review of Edward Green's book "Rethinking AIDS Prevention" on Zenit.org reveals the following interesting tidbit:

"...the African countries with the highest condom user rates and numbers of condoms available, Zimbabwe and Botswana, also rank at the top of the list for rates of HIV infection."

As Spock said, "Fascinating." Who would have thought that a disease spread mostly through easy sex is more abundant in regions that promote easy sex? The shallow logic that "condoms prevent AIDS" can't see that far into the moral equation.

Check out the whole review, and if possible, read the book... I plan on hunting it down.

This is an issue near and dear to my heart; I spent a lot of time promoting chastity and marital fidelity with my Challenge Team tours. We didn't promote condom use, or any other articifical method of preventing pregnancy or disease transmission.

Our message, derived in large part from the message of the Church, was simple: if you want the best guarantee to a safe & pleasant sexual experience, save it for marriage.

I recall an article on AIDS in Africa that I read in Scientific American a few years ago, in which the author used the word "condom" some 40 times, and mentioned the concept of chastity only twice.

The ultimate problem with AIDS transmission in Africa, and elsewhere, is that there is a culture of disrespect for sexuality in general, and for women in particular. What better way to stem that than to promote an alteration of lifestyle towards the absolute standard of Purity?

That idea is an overlooked element to most attempts at problem solving in today's world: find the absolute, evaluate where you are in relation to it, and change where you are. In the fight against AIDS, that means encouraging proper use of sexuality.

Kudos to Uganda for reducing the AIDS epidemic by encouraging chastity among its populace... something the amoral man can only understand as "partner reduction." But if I decided to eat only healthy food and somebody said that I had implemented "unhealthy food reduction," would you really think I had stopped eating unhealthy food? As Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truth #34 says: Words mean things.