A Tisket, A Tasket, A Condom or a Casket

A Tisket, A Tasket

A Condom or A CasketI remember this sing-song back from days waiting tables in Seattle. It was the mid-1980s, most of the men I worked with were gay, and HIV stalked us all. They were frightening times. Rumours flew of who had it, who didn't. And the person who came in for the most agita from the men I worked with was an insufferable new waiter who claimed to be straight, but who, according to those who were out, was definitely a closet case. It was he who they sang the ditty to. I didn't quite understand it at the time, but I get it now. It requires an acknowledgement of one's sexual persona to take precautions--contraceptives or condoms--and my friends had determined that a closeted gay man was dangerous to himself and others. Harsh. But perhaps true.

This all came back to me last night, while watching the second part of the PBS Frontline special, "The Age of AIDS."

Shame kills. And watching the four hours of excellent television, I was reminded of that fact over and over again. If only someone in the Bush administration was willing to learn that lesson.
As part of the series, Frontline interviewed Noerine Kaleeba, whose husband, a Ugandan, died of AIDS. Mobilized by his death, and by the disaster that AIDS was creating in Uganda, Kaleeba founded TASO, an organization that seeks to educate and bring hope to those afflicted.

Uganda created an "ABC" program: Abstain, Be faithful, or Wear a Condom. As Kaleeba explains:

The ABC: Now, speaking as a Ugandan, I know that what has brought Uganda as far as it is today has been A, B [and] C together, not one of them singly. But what I hear now is, "Oh, now it's just A and B" -- abstinence and being faithful. There is some kind of a campaign to be quiet about the condom discussion, which is a disaster. It's a real cocktail for disaster, and I think for a person like me, who has been personally robbed not only of her husband but of many of my siblings, many of my friends, this debate of condom or no condom really makes me angry, because I know for a fact my husband had HIV; I don't have HIV. If you ask me to put it on record what actually protected me from his infection, it was a condom. We were using condoms for birth control.

Contrast her statement with what is reported in today's Independent:

Abstinence is working for Isaac and Simon - and for tens of thousands of teens and twentysomethings proudly attending virginity rallies in Uganda. But Aids activists and development officials point to the 130,000 Ugandans infected with HIV last year alone - up from 70,000 in 2002 - and say the recent obsession with abstinence is handicapping the country's once-successful fight against the virus.

Health workers see the fingerprints of America's Christian right all over the chastity message and believe the Bush administration is using its financial might to bully them into accepting evangelical ideology at the expense of public health.

WHAT THE FUCK?????

Sometimes, it feels absolutely useless to even comment on Far Right fuckwaddery, but once again, their insistence on a moralistic message--their morals, mind you, not everyone's--kills.

"Because of the US, our government now says Abstain and Be faithful only," says Dr Katamba. "So people stop trusting our advice. They think we were lying about how condoms can stop Aids. Confusion is deadly."

And so it is proving to be: the number of infections is again rising, after years of decline. Questionable government figures say that 6.4 per cent of Ugandans have HIV/Aids. One in three civil war refugees in camps in the north has Aids, a local NGO says.

Uganda's evangelicals preach that abstinence is the only way to halt the spread of the virus. The trusted and influential first lady, Janet Museveni, is a born-again Christian. She has publicly equated condom use with theft and murder and said that Aids is God's way of punishing immoral behaviour. The first lady also offers scholarships to girls who can prove they are virgins.

But here's the kicker:

It is 30- to 35-year-old women and 35- to 45-year-old men in marriages, not sexually active teens and twentysomethings who are most likely to be infected.

That's right. Promoting condom use among married couples would prevent the spread of AIDS in Uganda, but the money that America gives to Uganda comes with the strings attached: You can't talk about condoms.

There's more, of course, that this administration is doing to prevent getting the word out about AIDS prevention. For one thing, we're not contributing our fair share.

Apparently, it's so important that people not fuck that this administration is willing to get in bed with "terrorists" to get out the "no condom" rule.

Criticism also came from an unlikely source: President Bush’s former AIDS policy director. Scott Everts was Bush’s lead negotiator at the global conference on AIDS five years ago. He told Reuters the Bush administration has reached out to militant Islamic governments, including some it classifies as terrorist states, to try to ensure the 2006 declaration backs abstinence and fidelity as crucial tools against AIDS.

The Independent reports that business is booming for one section of the Ugandan public:

Not everyone is sad about the escalating epidemic. In a roadside timber yard near Kampala's Mulago Hospital, coffin makers report that business has never been better. "Three years ago, I sell 15 coffins a week. Now it is 20 adult coffins and seven children's coffins," says Lawrence Kiwanuka, the jovial boss of an expanding workforce of 25 carpenters. "I think the Aids deaths are really more than the government says." So is he happy more people are dying from Aids? He laughs: "That is a very difficult question."

A casket: the ultimate body condom.