Each morning before school I check out the latest headlines on CNN. Why CNN specifically, well it’s because it’s the only English language news station on the dial. Besides I don’t feel like watching the remnants of Korean soft core porn still airing at 7am.
Beginning at 7am on CNN is The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. For the most part they talk about how good a job Obama is doing and toss in a few other headlines. A regular segment of the program is The Cafferty file with Jack Cafferty. In case you’re not familiar with him, he comes on for a two minute segment, mentions a headline, offers up his own brief opinion and then poses a poll question that people are encouraged to take part in on their website.
Today Mr. Cafferty mentioned the Pope’s recent comments on condom usage in Africa. He began his segment by stating that “it’s time for the Catholic Church to enter the 21st century; or at least try to drag itself out of the 13th.” I always find this sort of statement puzzling. I guess consistency is a problem in the modern world. Wouldn’t you want an organization that bills itself as being the representatives of God on earth to strive for consistency in its message, rather than simply going with the flow? I know I do, but then again I’m not Catholic. Should they come out and say that God is wrong, or perhaps one would prefer that they claim that they finally received divine instruction regarding condoms?
Mr. Cafferty went on to say “in his first public comments on condom use, the pope told reporters that AIDS “is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.” Huh?
I’m fairly confident that Mr. Cafferty disagrees with the Pope. The Vatican’s stance on the issue should come as no surprise to anyone; they “encourage[e] sexual abstinence as the way to stop the disease from spreading.” Well obviously that wouldn’t work or at the very least one thinks that it is impractical. I don’t think that anyone would seriously argue that sexual abstinence would not be a major force for stopping the spread of HIV, so it seems that Mr. Cafferty and perhaps billions of others feel that it is simply impractical.
Not an uncommon stance in our over sexed western culture, where sex is used to sell shoes to ten year old girls and video games to ten year old boys. Despite the wishes of the Vatican, western societies focus on education as the main force for combating HIV. It is argued that if people are educated on the subject and condoms are made available then the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (along with unwanted pregnancies) would be halted.
Well this doesn’t seem to work either. In the end people are rather stupid creatures despite our collective protestations to such a sentiment. As an example one can look at smoking. Despite intensive and somewhat intrusive educational campaigns concerning the dangers of smoking people continue to smoke and in fact everyday new people start smoking. The same appears to hold true for sexual safety.
Despite decades of sexual education in the classroom, and condoms being made available for free to people who need them, HIV infection rates have hit epidemic proportions in Washington D.C. “A new report shows three percent of Washington D.C.’s residents have HIV or AIDS. That translates to almost 3,000 people for every 100,000 population. That figure represents a “severe epidemic.” One health official says Washington’s rates are higher than parts of West Africa — and “on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.”
One would think that this is an impossibility given our modern cultural attitude towards education being the panacea to all that ails us. In fact it looks like the 3% figure being bandied about may not be the accurate number. “"When they've tested large groups of the District population it looks like the prevalence is actually about 5%, which is higher than the 3% but a lot of the people haven't been tested yet," said Dr Raymond Martins.” In fact there are infection rates higher than 5% amongst those aged 40 – 49 (7.2%) as well as amongst Black men (6.5%).
Many people look down on the Pope and his comments as being antiquated or perhaps even malicious, but in the end they ring with truth. Abstinence is the only thing that will halt the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV. Condom usage promotes an air of invincibility that even condom manufacturers won’t attest to, as condoms are not 100% effective. Yet a culture that focuses on sex, hedonism and the notion that it can have it all now can lead to a lifestyle of promiscuous sex (not for everyone obviously) which given basic human nature increases the odds of mistakes happening. Unfortunately in this ‘game’ the consequences of mistakes are death, but who wants to think about that when their feeling horny?
