FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
American Interlopers Should Stay Home and Mind Their Own Business, Says TWO
Burlington, Vt. – Truth Wins Out blamed American Evangelical Christian organizations today for a spike in AIDS cases in Uganda, a nation that was once lauded as a success story in fighting this disease. Fundamentalist Christians, from politicians affiliated with The Fellowship, to preachers such as Lou Engle (pictured) and Rick Warren, have made frequent pilgrimages to Uganda to promote their faith and sell abstinence as the key to stopping the spread of H.I.V. The result of their misguided adventures is a devastating increase in AIDS.
“Uganda was the laboratory for evangelical polices on sex education and their risky experiment has blown up in their faces. What American ideologues have foisted on the Ugandan people is unforgivable and has caused an enormous amount of pain and suffering,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “By replacing sound science with their version of scripture, the American interlopers badly exacerbated the problem. They ought to feel deeply ashamed and stop interfering in a country where they have already done a staggering amount of damage.”
A new American-financed survey shows that Uganda is one of only two African countries, along with Chad, where AIDS rates are on the rise. The surv
ey points out that H.I.V. infection rates in Uganda have increased to 7.3 percent today from 6.4 percent in 2005. Over approximately the same time period, the United States, through Pepfar, its AIDS prevention strategy, or the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, spent $1.7 billion in Uganda to fight AIDS.
According to The New York Times, the strategy may have merely succeeded in driving certain behaviors further underground in this socially conservative country with close ties to American evangelicals…Uganda’s hard-line approach toward homosexuality, which is outlawed here, also fuels the spread of AIDS, experts say. One report indicated that one-third of the male respondents who had sex with other men said they had previously been married to women and fathered children. Fewer than half use condoms.
“We have messages confusing what is right with what is safe,” Canon Gideon Byamugisha, a religious leader and AIDS activist in Uganda, told the New York Times. “If you have an environment that stigmatizes them, then don’t expect people to use condoms.”
“The American-fueled war against gay people in Uganda has been a disaster for efforts to limit the spread of H.I.V.,” said TWO’s Besen, who organized the American Prayer Hour in 2010 to draw attention to the fact that the leaders of the National Prayer Breakfast were partially responsible for introducing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. “We hope these alarming numbers will wake people up to the mischief caused by American zealots wasting taxpayer’s money to promote their ineffective policies in Uganda.”
Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
These evangelical guys who went over to Uganda are nothing short of evil. First, they were instrumental in the anti-gay legislation that in the beginning included the DEATH PENALTY for being gay. With their fear based tactics saying gays were out to turn their children gay, death threats and murders against gay Uganda men and women increased. Now, this. As far as I’m concerned, if there is a hell, there’s a special place in hell for these men.
Scott, that anti-gay legislation still contains the death penalty. Although the proponents have frequently promised to remove it and most media have reported that it has been removed, it remains in the bill to this day.
[...] The state has the highest rate of teen births in the nation. (Yet, there is one abortion clinic in Mississippi, and Gov. Phil Bryant, a former deputy sheriff, is working hard to render it inoperable. Until this year, schools taught abstinence. See Uganda’s results.) [...]
I suppose they were to be credited with the dramatic drop as well??
Lou Engle is as responsible for the AIDS infection rate in Uganda as he is for the number of toothaches in China.
Uganda is a place with real leaders, real minds, real institutions and real problems. This is 2012–not 1930.
Melinda… Clearly you never realized many poor African communities bend over backwards to appease their Christian overlords hoping that when they drop off the monthly supply of bibles they may have something to eat.
The African continent is by and large Christian.
The African continent is visited regularly by Christian missionaries who tell them AIDs is a curse from god.
The same missionaries also won’t provide condoms to stem the flow of diseases and further proclaim that you shouldn’t use condoms.
No the dramatic drop if I recall was because of a move by the government to push condoms as something that smart people use. Yes the dramatic increases are all in regions with Christians telling them to not use condoms…
Melinda:
Condoms save lives. Those who preach against them are the problem, not the solution.
P.S. if you have any links linking Louie to toothaches I’d like to see them so we can write another press release.
The evangelical religionistas are scum who are obsessed with sex. Control of sex and sexuality are the aims of any good fascist authoritarian, which is what all religionistas are…fascist authoritarians. Their obsession with who is screwing whom and the genders of those involved, plus the workings of reproduction in general, are always high on the list of things that must be controlled. It is all about spreading power and dominance through control of deepest human urges. They hide behind mythological fairy tale religions because most people are too uneducated to see through them. I suppose it is too much to expect the vast majority of the human population to study science and critical thinking skills, the only way to fight back the waves of authoritarianism.
[...] Read more FacebookTwitterPrintEmail This entry was posted in Health/Mental Care, International News and tagged Evangelical Christians, HIV/AIDS, Uganda by Victoria. Bookmark the permalink. [...]
Abstinence saves lives anyone campaigning against it are the problem.
Frank, studies have shown that places that teach abstinence only have higher rates of STDs and teen pregnancy. Uganda dramatically decreased STDs with programs emphasizing safe sex and condom usage. After religious groups got in there and replaced such programs with the teaching of abstinence only the rate of STD infections went up. It is inevitable that people are going to have sex. People are often willing to use condoms but telling them to go without sex altogether isn’t going to fly for a lot of people.
Frank, no one campaigns against abstinence. Just as no one campaigns against hetero marriage.
Abstinence is one solution, but promoting abstinence as the only solution has failed miserably.
Well calls of failure are premature.
“Based on calculations by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, it appears that the increase in abstinence among women was responsible for the approximate one-quarter drop in the US teen pregnancy rate between 1995-1998. (Darroch, J.E. Sing, S. Why is Teen Pregnancy Declining? The Roles of Abstinence, Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use. Occassional Report No. 1, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1999)
During the 1990’s there was an 11% drop in the number of teens having sexual intercourse. This drop in activity lead to a drop in the US’s teen birth rate in every state, for every race. This study showed that this drop was a result of teens leaning towards a trend of sexual abstinence. (The Declines in Adolscent Pregnancy, Abortion and Birth Rtaes in the 1990’s).”
And the reason abstinence fails is because of our difficulty in controlling our desires and our culture which glorifies sex without love and marriage.
Frank, look at what happened after that:
“The Bush administration continues to push for abstinence only sex education even while their own studies show that it’s not only not reducing teen sexual activity, it’s making that sexual activity less safe and more likely to result in pregnancy and disease. The Washington Post reports:
The nation’s campaign to get more teenagers to delay sex and to use condoms is faltering, threatening to undermine the highly successful effort to reduce teen pregnancy and protect young people from sexually transmitted diseases, federal officials reported yesterday.
New data from a large government survey show that by every measure, a decade-long decline in sexual activity among high school students leveled off between 2001 and 2007, and that the rise in condom use by teens flattened out in 2003.
And the obvious reason why:
“Since we’ve started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity,” said John Santelli, chairman of the department of population and family health at Columbia University. “The other piece of it is: Abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it’s not surprising, if that’s the message young people are getting, that we’re seeing condom use start to decrease.”
Study after study of kids in abstinence only sex ed has shown that while those programs may help kids delay having sex for a short time, it doesn’t last long. Those studies also show that when those kids do start having sex, they’re a lot less likely to use condoms and that significantly increases the risk of pregnancy and disease transmission. It’s time to end this madness.”
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/06/more_evidence_on_failure_of_ab.php#more
“Services showed that abstinence-only education had no impact on the number of sexual partners and sexual activities among students who were in abstinence-only programs versus students in other types of sex-ed program. New research to be published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests that it may also fail from an STD-prevention standpoint as well.
Canadian researchers E. Sandra Byers, Joel Henderson and Kristina M. Hobson asked 298 heterosexual Canadian college students about how they defined “abstinence” and “having sex.” Students were pretty consistent about a few things: Nobody really thought having intercourse was “abstinence”, and most students didn’t include non-genital contact as “having sex.” But there areas where the distinction between “abstinence” and “having sex” weren’t so clear:
Students were quite mixed in whether activities involving unidirectional genital stimulation (e.g., oral sex, genital fondling) constituted abstinence, having sex, or neither abstinence nor having sex. However, they were more likely to see these behaviors as abstinent than as having sex. Students were more likely to rate a behavior as abstinence if orgasm did not occur… The results indicated that male participants who were more involved with their religion and sexually conservative, less sexually experienced, and who had not received sexual health education at home were more likely to define bidirectional genital stimulation and less likely to define no genital stimulation and unidirectional sexual stimulation as sexual abstinence.
In other words, many students believe they can engage in oral sex and still be “abstinent,” and religious students in this particular sample are more likely to believe so. Since STD’s can be transmitted through oral sex, this finding represents a significant potential failure in abstinence-only education.”
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/impactabstinence.pdf“>http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/impactabstinence.pdf
“The American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR) has issued a new report on abstinence-only sex education that reviews all of the studies so far and concludes that such programs are not only a waste of resources, they can actually diminish the sexual health of those who undergo such training.
A rigorous published review of 28 sexuality education programs in the United States and Canada aimed at reducing teen pregnancy and STIs (including HIV) found that none of the three abstinence-only programs that met the inclusion criteria for review demonstrated efficacy for delaying sexual debut. Furthermore, these three programs did not reduce the frequency of sex or the number of partners among those students who had ever had sex. This same review found that nine abstinence-plus programs showed efficacy in delaying sexual debut, as well as reducing the frequency of intercourse and increasing condom use once sex had been initiated
Abstinence-plus sex ed is comprehensive sex education that teaches that abstinence is the only surefire way to prevent pregnancy and STIs, but that if you are going to have sex you should take precautions to avoid both of those things. It works far better than abstinence-only sex ed.
A federally-supported, 10-year evaluation of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs found that these programs had no impact on youth remaining abstinent, age at first intercourse, number of sexual partners, or condom use. In fact, these programs appeared to have negative effects on knowledge: abstinence-only program participants were less likely to know that condoms can lower the risk of STIs, and more likely to report that condoms never protect against HIV
That has been the conclusion of every study I’ve seen on the matter. It’s time we started paying attention to the evidence and eliminate funding for this terrible idea.”
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/06/abstinence-only_sex_ed_still_a.php#more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48509-2005Mar18.html
The WaPo reported that those virginity pledges touted by head-in-the-sand organizations like True Love Waits and the Silver Ring Thing are doing nothing to stop STDs either Among the 20 percent of kids that took a virginity pledge, 61 percent of the consistent pledgers and 79 percent of the inconsistent pledgers reported having intercourse before marrying or prior to 2002 interviews. Almost 7 percent of the students who did not make a pledge were diagnosed with an STD, compared with 6.4 percent of the “inconsistent pledgers” and 4.6 percent of the “consistent pledgers.”
Those differences were not “statistically significant,”said lead author Peter S. Bearman, a professor at Columbia’s Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:1DW8GWwRqeQJ:www.tfn.org/files/fck/Texas%2520Children%2520in%
And look at the Lone Star State, bastion of abstinence-only education. It ranked among the 10 worst states in the nation on almost all factors related to teen pregnancy including:
· Teen birth rate 47th
· Percent change in teen birth rate 44th
· Birth rate for younger teens 48th
· Percent teen births that are repeat births 44th
· Teen births as a percent of all births 40th
· Percent of births to teens receiving late or no prenatal care 44th.
Interesting that the ONLY reference I could find to the study Frank mentioned is on the web site of a Maryland organization called “Campaign For Our Children”.
After more digging I found the study Frank referred to:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3201400.html
As one might expect, it doesn’t at all say what Frank claimed it does. Far from attributing the (then) drop in adolescent pregnancy rates in industrialized countries to abstinence only programs it says:
“Conclusions: The trend toward lower adolescent birthrates and pregnancy rates over the past 25 years is widespread and is occurring across the industrialized world, suggesting that the reasons for this general trend are broader than factors limited to any one country: increased importance of education, increased motivation of young people to achieve higher levels of education and training, and greater centrality of goals other than motherhood and family formation for young women.”
“And the reason abstinence fails is because of our difficulty in controlling our desires and our culture which glorifies sex without love and marriage.”
Isn’t it strange, Frank? Becuase that’s exactly what our culture does in regards to marriage equality. It tells gay people to have sex outside of marriage by denying marriage. It encourages promiscuity by denying marriage. It tells gay people to get hetero married, and you get the Ted Haggards and the Lonnie Lathams of the world as a result.
Ben I respect your right to choose who you wish to be intimate with and build a life with but I see marriage as a unique social construct of one man one women so I do not support SSM although I do support any civil unions granting legal rights to any couple as the government sees fit to do.
I knew that I probably will be labeled a hater and a bigot here, incorrectly I might add but such is life.
Frank, if it gives the same rights, than a different name serves no purpose, which means you are actually advocating for us to have less rights than you for the sake of your own sense of superiority, making us correct not just in calling you a hater and a bigot, but a child-murdering bigot due to the consequences of your hatred.
Rainbow your response is exactly why you will only delay or destroy whatever it is you seek to achieve.
Wrong Frank. Bigots like you are fooling less people with your sophistry each day. We are highly amused by your attempts to turn back the tide against your hatred.
I tried to reason with you to no avail. People generally get what they deserve and if you stay on this path you will not like what you eventually get.
Is there no real leadership in the gay community? It’s obvious it is desperately needed.
You have not tried to reason with anyone Frank. You just spouted your typical conservative lies and victim playing.
Everyone deserves equal protection under the law and people who try to prevent it deserve to be pushed to the fringes of society for their bigotry. That’s why both are happening.
I wonder what Martin Ssempa says the blame is… I know it’s semi-unrelated but anytime I see Uganda I think of that psycho