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Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Fritzed!
tiggy’s back: welcome tiggy.
Is he making some kind of shadow puppet thing on the wall behind him to give us a clue about step 3?
I agree that it is an appalling policy, but where is the PROFIT? Is it the pharmaceutical companies? Or is it souls?
I read that Guardian piece carefully twice and I still can’t work out what his logic is. Or is that what your five question marks at Stage 3 are about?
However, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the the two Google ads immediately below the article, titled respectively The Nostradamus Code and I Passed My Kidney Stones, which seems to sum it up.
It is disgusting and I’m glad you X posted this Tigtog. It would be nice to think that this kind of dogmatic idiocy by the Church would serve to turn to undermine its authority (ie make ppl realise how full of hypocrisy it is) but I somehow doubt it.
Why does he continue to peddle this ignorance? Why is the CAtholic Church so weird about everything to do with sex and reproduction?
Like Bismarck…where’s the PROFIT thing come in…???
It’s canonical South Park, from an episode where the boys catch gnomes stealing their underwear.
I thought Benny might be okay compared to his predecessor. But some German friends of mine said, oh, no he’s not. First, insulting Muslims, then the Holocaust denying priest (is that all – after the papal visit I sorta lost interest in the old bugger) now this. And surely not using condoms will harm Africa. I’m sure the Guardian has a misprint.
That explains it. I’ve rarely watched South Park, so I didn’t realise it had a canon.
There is no profit motive
He is doin’ it for the lulz
@Fine:
It’s grown to be a wider internet meme. I’m sure I’ve seen it used by folks who have never watched South Park, but it’s so useful to describe a particular sort of bloodyminded cluelessness that it’s appealed to a broader audience.
@Michael S.:
Ha!. Maybe I should do a remix with
PROFITDOING IT FOR THE LULZ as the number 4. Two internet memes for the price of one!INVISIBLE CHINESE FINGER TRAP.
The senior ranks of the Catholic Church are really beyond parody…
When is the celibate hierarchy of the Catholic Church going to realise that sexuality, sexual health, and associated issues is probably not their ‘special subject’ of expertise?
REMIX:
I read that Guardian piece carefully twice and I still can’t work out what his logic is.
I don’t know either, PC. I presume there is logic behind “Condoms leads to AIDS”. I bet he could write a justifying encyclical on the drop of a penny – footnotes and citations included. All reasoning contained herein would have little relation to reality, of course. But then you don’t get that high up in the Church without vacuous sophistry.
Personally, I reckon if you kill people through logic chopping, it’s a mortal sin.
And that is exactly what Ratzy’s doing.
I don’t believe that “Condoms lead to AIDS” is official Catholic policy, though there are plenty of on the record statements by various bishops saying so.
Their justification seems to be the erroneous belief (or a preparedness to state something that they know to be false) that condoms are a very unreliable barrier to the AIDS virus, with massive molecular holes that let virus particles through.
It’s complete bollocks. Condoms are not an infallible barrier to HIV, but they are a hell of a lot less fallible than humans whom the church recommends remaining abstinent for the rest of their lives.
It’s not in the aryicle, but a few days ago I heard a “news” item where this “argument” was used.
1. If blokes use condoms, they’ll feel safer sleeping around
2. If blokes sleep around, they’re more likely to catch or spread diseases (when the condoms don’t act as a barrier or they don’t wear one) or
3. bring disease to their wife
General idea: fidelity minimises spread of disease.
It seems to be based on the idea that African men see OCCASIONAL condom use as a kind of magical protection. (Or perhaps the Pope believes condoms are a medically ineffective barrier to HIV transmission?)
BTW, I never expected to have to attempt to dive into this morass of strange logic.
I think the logic probably is that condoms will encourage people to have sex more often and sometimes condoms fail. So, the only answer is abstainence. tigtog, I’ll remember that meme.
STATEMENT OF THE BLEEDING OBVIOUS: “religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans”
No, it’s more to do with people getting their “just desserts” for apostasy. AIDS has always carried that supposed divine punishment stigma since it first appeared in the gay community.
I raise you tig
Slightly OT – the original was intended to be a parody of the “business plans” of
new economydot-con enterprises. It was (and may still be) a running meme on slashdot. But yes, it’s pointing and laughing at the clueless and dishonest.*abstinence* Where’s my brain today? Yes, I’m hungover.
Relax everyone.
The Pope has a direct line to God, so unless the Pope is making this shit up, he is telling us all, especially Africa, that God hates condoms and does not want anyone to use them.
God does not have to give logical reasons for anything. That’s the very definition of being God. Africa should just have faith, agree with whatever God/Pope says, and everything will be alright.
Or dead.
Well, all the people have to do is place their condoms in the church plate instead of their money, and the Pope will quickly have a new revelation form God.
David @ 25 (and anyone else who’s
notinterested), this meme predates South Park. Basically, if you’ve seen it referenced on TV, it’s already two years old.Catholic church slogans:
Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.
Rubbers are for roosers.
Guilt ‘r’ us.
Give us the boy and we’ll show you the man.
Or – give us (the Jesuits) the boy for his first seven years and you can have him for the rest of his life.
Which won’t be very long if he doesn’t practice safe sex in countries like Africa.
Abraham and Isaac. Again. When do we wise up and break the cycle?
Remember the old Mark Twain joke about the weather?
Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it.
So what can be done to stop this organization and its current leader from having such a negative influence on our world?
Apart from start threads like this I mean, for which tigtog deserves kudos.
I mean, its not just this issue of HIV/AIDS is it?
There are a whole stack of issues that this mob stick their noses into in a manner that is disrespectful of people and harmful to millions.
Yet we let them run schools and provide social services in buildings that have this bloke’s photo stuck on corridor walls as somebody to be emulated and obeyed and following the dogma he promulgates.
And give them millions of our dollars to do it.
Weird.
Mind you, to be fair to Il Papa – check out this map. Aside from the mid-Africa band of coutntries settled by Portuguese, French or Belgians – Catholics repesent fewer than 20% of Africans.
There’s a broader problem than the Vatican.
Use of the word ‘evil’ reminded me of last week’s Encounter on RN about THAT parish in South Brisbane. I loved archbishop Bathersby’s comment about St Mary’s: “You know, I’m delighted that people come there, but I would like to see a strong emphasis upon evil and upon the sin that we can commit”. Yes sir, that’s the Christian message alright.’
Also worth listening to on RN is the latest Big Ideas – a very entertaining Robyn Archer: “my faith was easily destroyed by its local ministry, just after Confirmation; I studied my catechism so hard on the promise of a gold edged prayer book prize – topped my Confirmation class and never got the prayer book because the minster was chucked out for knocking off one of the lady parishioners – could have been worse I suppose.”
More like ‘Abstinence makes the Church grow fondlers’.
Franger’s Pence. Some message, BilB!
“I would like to see a strong emphasis upon evil and upon the sin that we can commit”
Did he really say that? I’d go to that sort of chruch…
“Todays lesson is on the evil of adultery, and here to give us a practical demonstration are Mrs Jones and Mr Smith. … Your homework is to practice adultery at least once during the week and report back during confession next Sunday”.
Isn’t step 4 “consequent increase in the number of desperate people seeking comfort about an afterlife and turning to the Catholic Church for solace?”
Food for worms!
The pope said condoms haven’t and won’t solve the African AIDS disaster. He’s right. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply in denial.
And more food aid won’t stop people starving to death. So I guess we should just ban food aid.
The very least Aids-riddled Catholic Africans could do for Papa’s fi-fo would be to make the the sacrifice of giving up condoms for Lent.
Once again the tired old fallacy that the Catholic Church is responsible for the AIDS in Africa has been trotted out. I thought this blog was supposed to be for the intelligentsia (government and uni employees mainly?).
Some holes in your argument:
- A lot of sub Saharan Africa is not Catholic, so why would they listen to Church teachings?
- The Church’s teaching is that sex should only occur in a monogamous married relationship. Yes abstinence or a monogamous relationship are tough ideals but why would you expect the Church to compromise them? The church’s reasoning is that condoms promote sexual activity and therefore risk of HIV infection.
- Condoms are not perfect even WHO say it takes “consistent and correct” condom use to reduce the risk of HIV infection by 90% (not perfect)
So if you are a Catholic African who ignores the Church teaching on monogamy why are you going to listen when it says not to use condoms, that argument makes no sense.
I would suggest it is more likely cultural and economic factors that are responsible for the AIDS epidemic but the Church makes a nice big target for anti-Catholic bigots.
Which is more or less part of the church’s main goal: Protect and grow the church at all costs, God, Jesus and the bible be damned.
“I would suggest it is more likely cultural and economic factors that are responsible for the AIDS epidemic but the Church makes a nice big target for anti-Catholic bigots.”
Perhaps they should just lift the doctrinal ban on condom use. Then the criticisms would lose momentum.
Why don’t they, do you think?
C.L. wrote:
Not solve C.L.
Manage it, minimise it’s impact. Minimise the harm to innocents. Just because condoms aren’t a perfect solution doesn’t mean they aren’t extremely useful in lowering the rates of infection.
In this regard, the Pope might be technically correct in saying “won’t solve” but his solution is far, far worse. Epic fail type worse.
He also said condoms were making the problem worse CL. This is a giant, fricking enormous lie at worst or wiful ignorance of the facts at best.
As I’ve posted before the Church is putting it’s faulty contraception policy before the sanctity of human life. The Church knowingly instructs followers not to use condoms even within marriage when one partner is infected, almost guaranteeing a second life is shortened and the children are orphaned.
This policy will prove an everlasting stain on the Catholic Church.
Neither did B17 say that condoms may reduce the incidence of HIV transmission, which is the case in Thailand where they are widely distributed.
Pontiff logic: “brakes don’t prevent all accidents, so why build cars with brakes?”
It’ goes beyond that, Katz – putting brakes on a car encourages people to drive faster, because, you know, they can always hit the brake pedal if things get a bit hairy. Which makes the accidents, when they do happen, so much worse.
“Brakes don’t prevent all accidents. By only preventing some accidents they cause accidents by way of moral hazard. Don’t build cars with brakes.”
And more food aid won’t stop people starving to death. So I guess we should just ban food aid.
No, we should address the fundamental causes of poverty and starvation. Which is what progressives used to believe.
This is a giant, fricking enormous lie at worst or wiful ignorance of the facts at best…
The fricking enormous lie is that condoms will save Africans from the AIDS disaster. It hasn’t saved them from that disaster and it never will. Condom-obsessed obscurantism does worsen the problem because it is based on a fallacious smugness about the efficacy not only of condoms but the discipline with which they’re used by men.
This policy will prove an everlasting stain on the Catholic Church.
Oh I doubt it. The Catholic Church in Africa is in the midst of the greatest growth in history. Schools, hospitals, convents, missionaries – the world’s largest seminary (now in Nigeria) etc. The everlasting stain will be on so-called progressives and the UN who relied on fairy tales about magic condoms to ameliorate a health catastrophe for ideological reasons.
Tropsmurf – WFT? No-one said the Catholic Church is responsible for HIV-Aids in Africa. The HIV virus is responsible.. like durr.
It’s how Governments and health organisations and organised religions deal with pandemics that matter.
One of the best bits of non-partisan health policy ever in Oz…. NSW Premier Nick Greiner, Bob Hawke, Neal Blewett totally ignored the bleatings of our religious nutters/leaders and quickly instituted the best anti-AIDS regime in the world bar none in NSW (the epicentre of the virus in Australia) – including free condoms, free needle exchanges, education campaigns for sex workers and testing for sex workers and the IV community etc etc.
We consquently had either the lowest, or close to the lowest rates of transmission in the world as a result, quite unlike US under Ronnie/Bush1 who had the highest in the developed world by pandering to the religious right.
Good responses C.L., I’m with you all the way
FDB – lifting a doctrinal ban on condoms would certainly be the easy option for the Church but not the right one for the reasons I detailed.
Hey Luke, don’t know how you managed to link a blog about AIDS with paedophilia, you’re the sort of bigot I was talking about. With reports of teachers getting caught sleeping with students, I bet you don’t insult all teachers for the actions of a few.
C.L.
(bugger block quote stuff up)
“Magic condoms”…..are these like magic anti-retroviral drugs… and magic anti-biotics, CL.
Seriously, you aren’t suggesting that condoms do not protect a person from a range of sexually transmitted diseases?
“lifting a doctrinal ban on condoms would certainly be the easy option for the Church….”
I doubt that one. They are so stuck on this dangerous, callous, path that there is no turning back. Admitting it has been wrong is not a church specialty.
Anyways, I’ve gotta go – but for non-Catholic Church boosters, there are a ton of stats. on HIV-Aids in Africa and the efficacy of prevention programs:
Here is a good start:
http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/HIVData/GlobalReport/2008/
“I bet you don’t insult all teachers for the actions of a few”
You left the word ‘hundreds’ or ‘thousands’ off there.
Keep fighting the ‘good’ fight though – the worms will find you that much tastier (if you remove your head from the sand, that is).
From the outrageously anti-Catholic New England Journal of Medicine:
But of course Dr CL knows better.
So, CL and TropSmurf, what are your solutions? Seriously.
All the fancy-pants “logic” is just smoke. There is a scrap book of sayings and stories of some very ancient desert tribesmen who knew nothing at all about internal human biology. It has a story about a bloke wanking on the sand. The tribesmen thought this was bad magic; who knows why. They didn’t know men produce more sperm daily (and the old stuff goes off)? Waste of Precious Bodily Fluids in a water-scarce environment? Whatever their impenetrably primitive minds thought, “Every Sperm is Sacred” is a wholly accurate account of the reasons for this teaching.
CL, you say men simply can’t use condoms with any discipline. But they’ll give up fucking, eh? Goodness me, what soundness of argument, I withhold an ad hominem finishing flourish only by the self discipline of an obsessive wearer of heavy duty frangers.
Back for 5 mins.
Look CL, I’m not disputing the great work the Church has always done in respect of hospitals and palliative care and social justice issues and all sorts of other services – but when it comes to sex and reproduction – yikes, all compassion & sense goes out the window.
This is also not to say the the messages of abstinence and not sleeping around behind your partners’ back aren’t worthwhile messages esp. in the middle of a sexually transmitted epidemic, however extending that message to continue the ban on what are known to be protectors against HIV-Aids – even within marriage, and knowing that people are going to stray…become infected and infect others and die… doesn’t seem very Christian at all.
In the West, the overwhelmingly majority of Catholics use all sorts of contraception and totally ignore the Church on these matters. Being educated they have made their own choices to move beyond Church teachings in respect of reproduction etc, leaving Catholics in the developing world who are more than likely to be uneducated, and therefore more compliant, at the mercy of the Papacy.
But once people in the developing world get education/information ( and a decent feed !! ) the Catholic Church will finally change…30-50 years whatever. And then people will look back and go WTF?
Let’s return to the pope’s assertion: condoms won’t solve the AIDS disaster in Africa, he argues. That’s 100 percent right. They haven’t solved it hitherto and they never will solve it in the future. It is a disaster with a complex matrix of cross-cultural factors and idiosyncracies in play. All one hears from the critics of this pope (and his predecessor) is that the Magic Condom is the solution and if it wasn’t for the Church, it would already have worked its wonders. No, sorry, it hasn’t worked wonders and it never will. It’s a convenient piece of irrational bigotry, though, to recognise it hasn’t worked and to search around for a scapegoat: ‘oh yeah, the pope – it’s his fault.’
The UN has itself admitted that ten percent of condoms WILL fail. That’s “not good enough for a fatal disease” said Edward C. Green of the Harvard School of Public Health in 2003 when the UNAID study was released.
Something more is needed, something revolutionary and bold: that’s what the pope is talking about.
…the overwhelmingly majority of Catholics use all sorts of contraception and totally ignore the Church on these matters.
The overwhelming majority also totally ignore the Church’s teaching on justice and peace but the Holy Mother Church isn’t like Australian Idol. Truths aren’t left standing via popularity contest.
But they’ll give up fucking, eh? Goodness me, what soundness of argument.
If you say so. But I didn’t make that argument.
“Something more is needed, something revolutionary and bold: that’s what the pope is talking about.”
No he’s not. He’s talking about condoms making things worse. Can you point me to where he has suggested anything ‘revolutionary and bold” to combat AIDS?
Can you suggest anything?
No CL – he also said condoms were making it worse. It reported in the MSM – go look it up. This is a big fat lie.
Condoms have played a huge role in reducing the transmission of HIV-Aids further than what it was have spread. BTW, no-one have ever asserted that condoms alone bring down transmission rates compared to condoms combined with education programs etc – but what extensive evidence and reporting over the past decades however shows is that:
Why don’t you do yourself a favour CL and actually look at the global statistics on HIV-Aids. Transmission rates have decreased in many, many countries over the past two decades – some communities are still increasing and some in-between. The factors where transmission rates are falling is due entirely to Govt. education programs and the use of condoms.
As for crappily made condoms – the manufacturers should be fined if they have 10% fault rates etc. So a 10% failure rate of dud condoms reported in 2003, is the best you’ve got?
Any stats on the failure rate for doctrinaire advice on abstinence?
*sniggers*
CL – serious question -
If the Church came out and said that they have reconsidered their position on condoms in respect of married couples with one partner living with HIV-Aids – would you still disagree and believe that couples using condoms in this scenario are plain wrong… or would you follow the lead of the Pope/Church and change your opinion accordingly?
Or would you change the topic and say something sweeping about TEH LEFT?
The pope said condoms haven’t and won’t solve the African AIDS disaster. He’s right. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply in denial.
.
Filibustering across the blogosphere. The evidence shows that condoms are effective at preventing the spread of AIDS. The problem in Africa is that people aren’t using them.
.
Anyone else, that would be you, the Pope etc, who maintains otherwise is simply denying.
yoiks, sorry about all the typos – have dropped off & picked up from swimming squads, overseen homework, made dinner, put out a load of washing in betwixt comments…something had to give…
The second part of the broad overview from the unaids.org site:
Adrien is right – helping/educating people to use the condoms and providing them free reduces transmission by factors. Likewise moderation of sexual behaviour also reduces rates of transmission. It’s not either/or especially over a lifetime.
From the Guardian link:
Yeah, monogamy and fidelity pre-assumed. One could also use the same reasoning to eliminate road deaths. Don’t drive or be a passenger, and don’t be a pedestrian.
But to go further and say:
Exactly how does it aggravate??? CL?
An analogy is in order. Seat belts in cars have been statistically proven to significantly reduce deaths in motor vehicle accidents. Never “failsafe” but arguably approaching the 90% success rate of condom use to reduce the incidence of STDs.
So to CL and others like minded (who IMO want to defend the indefensible) my question is: If the catholic church opposed the use of seat belts in cars as a matter of “ex-cathedra”, not “ex-cathedra” (whatever); would you likewise defend that position?
(I await the rejoinder, “not the same blah blah”. Indeed, it’s about belief in porking for a skyfairy’s imaginary dictates ; every sperm is sacred; control and making more little catholics, whatever the cost in human misery.
(George Carlin, from “You Are All Diseased”.)
Fine – no magic wand from me, I wish I had a solution I really do. Increased education, use of antivirals, research are all important and all areas that the Church is involved in (google it) My comments are around the fact that the Catholic Church is the scapegoat for something that quite obviously isn’t their fault ie the spread of HIV. No one on this blog as yet addressed my initial comments except to make snide remarks about paedo priests.
The Church is not a perfect organisation it is filled with imperfect people but it does a lot of good work around the world. It sets high standards which can seem unrealistic given our baser human urges but it is primarily interested in the spiritual wellbeing of humanity over the long term not short term issues, as tragic as they are. (I hope that doesn’t sound too trite).
Jo – sorry I should have said “responsible for the spread of HIV in Africa”, you can’t WTF that one. Also can I point out a hole in your argument – the uneducated in the developing world aren’t listening to the Pope now (you know the whole monogamy and abstinence thing) so they are hardly at ‘the mercy of the Papacy’
Peter Kemp – answering your analogy, no I don’t blindly follow what the Church says I make my own decisions but they are a good guide. By the way the Church supports the use of seatbelts – do they get credit for that?
TropSmurf – increased education about what? We know that one way of greatly decreasing HIV/AIDS is through condom use. So, what’s the education you’re talking about? If it’s abstinence before marriage, as you know that will never work. And while we’re waiting for better anti-virals, what do we do right now for people? Again, ‘no sex’ won’t work. What’s the solution?
If the Catholic Church is saying not to use condoms and if at least some African people are listening to that message, then yes the Catholic Church is responsible, in part, for the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Thanks TigTog. I’ve lifted your picture and blogged it at What do you call 25 million dead Africans?. The other thing I noted is that the Pope just appealed to a consequentialist argument. For an such an absolute absolutist, that raises some serious problems. He’s clearly losing it.
Well if Pope Benny is going to recklessly irresponsible to say condoms aren’t the answer and even aggravate the problem then the Catholic Church is responsible for the spread of AIDS.
See Uganda. They had the ABC policy utilised messages of abstinence and if not, condoms. When they moved towards a US based policy of promoting abstinence at the expense of other measures, the incidence of AIDS increased.
I read this thread and oscillate my current head with amusing facial-based expressions. Truly Tellus is ripe for the plucking like a hairy bird.
You harvest the dark africa continent for physical empowered slaves of labour to build up your dominant resource allocating and consuming tribes.
And now you want to weaken the source by using strange telocannibalistic superstitions to claim an always absent space god ordered against coatings drawn from extract of 300 million year old squashed krill wrapped around your puny mon-coloured generative organs to prevent the transmission of productivity-sapping little viral gatecrashers.
It is almost as though like your Mr Majesty Pope CEO President Vicar of St Queen wants you to epic fail.
Boskone is not abiding. Boskone is drawing a *untranslatable* chair closer to sphere of communication screen and lightening up an Alskanite stogie to enjoin the show.
Go Benny! Sap and impurify those precious bodily fluids!
Much KKK-like anti-Catholicism above and not much time to respond but I’ll do my best. Incidentally, is this the same blog where Kim counselled that female genital mutilation not be condemned? Yeah, that’s right, it is. Disgusting! Anyway…
Can you point me to where he has suggested anything ‘revolutionary and bold’ to combat AIDS?
Sure, FDB. Notwithstanding that you’ve just declared your hatred for Catholicism over at Catallaxy, let’s pretend two things: 1) that someone as down-the-line bourgeois as you would recognise ‘revolutionary’ if it bit him on the bot; and 2) that you actually give a shit. The pope belives that condoms haven’t solved – and won’t solve – the African AIDS crisis. He’s right. No argument there, except to denialists. They haven’t. What he’s suggesting is that rather than continuing to impose the white man’s subjectivist notion of responsibility – guaranteed with condoms – that official policy should emphasis abstinence and monogamy as the strongest underpinning available for a culturally revolutionary AIDS policy.
No CL – he also said condoms were making it worse. It reported in the MSM – go look it up. This is a big fat lie.
No. The “lie” is that condoms will save Africa from the AIDS disaster – as if what is prophylactically true in individual cases (notwithstanding the presumably acceptable ten percent condom failure rate) is true for an entire continent in genere. This hasn’t worked hitherto, is not working now and will never work. The more it doesn’t work, the more the ideologically obsessed UN, Big Pharma and Western imperialists look for a scapegoat: the pope is their favourite. The pope said this:
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.
The distribution of condoms as panacea doesn’t solve the problem and may exacerbate it by simplifying the cultural and behavioural complexities of the continental crisis and by encouraging a false sense of security. That’s exactly right.
Adrien: hard to respond to you on any moral subject, dude, given your notorious defence of the Mumbai murderers last year. Happy to provide links too just in case you run your traditional “CL is lying” defence.
I await the rejoinder, “not the same blah blah”. Indeed, it’s about belief in porking for a skyfairy’s imaginary dictates; every sperm is sacred; control and making more little catholics, whatever the cost in human misery.
Peter: you’re on the turps, I presume. The church has no objection to seat belts. The correct analogy – contra the Magic Condom – is that you’re suggesting that seat belts will solve a prang epidemic caused by men intent on speeding and wreckless driving. They won’t.
Well at least that’s one gorne Shaun..Bush that is.
Last Post:
Tropsmurf – my OT point was that conservatives in the Catholic Church have for decades (and more recently the Anglicans) used their supporter bases in the developing world to shore up their positions against calls from followers and liberal clergy in the West to modernise, esp. in relation to contraception for Catholics.
Pell relies on every new plane load. But one day….nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
As for the HIV-Aids & Africa, the Catholic Church stands in line behind or beside many Governments, including Thabo Mbeki’s South African administration- who imo, were at the front of the queue. The SA Govt plays an important role in the entire region – the fact that South Africa leads sub-Saharan Africa in HIV-Aids cases is a tragedy and terrible legacy considering its relative wealth and infrastructure etc.
Lefty E @ 34, I meant to say that although < less than 20% across continent r catholic doesn’t sound like much….it means approx 135 million people, obviously located more in particular countries and regions but just a staggering amount of people nonetheless, which is why the Catholic Church’s anti-condom campaigns are so harmful, notwithstanding the good works the Church does undertake.
Again from the unaids.org site re:
There is also this awful and ironic misconception about condoms in Africa, no doubt spread by a combination of groups; incl. some African Church heirarchy, corrupt dictators like Mugabe etc .. and that is that condoms contain the HIV virus and have been infected by Western Govts or companies etc to kill Africans ….here is the head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique spreading this digusting lie:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7014335.stm
The Cee-El understands. Breed like taddypoles as dictated by the males of your species who take dictationship from your sky spirits. Generative organ hygiene practices are for losers in this life.
Telling the flock they will be barbecued forever unless unless they obey and pay is a good way to shear them.
This is not exactly Boskone trade secret. In fact Boskone much impressed by how the International Bank of Central Catholic Cominintern Intelligence Agency plc has articulated it as “When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
It is so true. A firm grip on the generative organs is the tollway of psychic terrorism.
We are not too proud to admit we can learn from future slaves. Like your colourful gregorianhiphopboogiechants native musics.
Woah. Things have really taken off in the last few hours. I reckon the cause is CL, who has plopped into this thread like a kilogramme of sodium into a bathtub of water. Take statements like this:
Top marks for wilfully and maliciously misunderstanding what everyone else is saying, including Ratzy Himself. No one is saying that condom availability will solve the problem by its lonesome. The difference between LP and His Holiness is that this crowd thinks condoms programs help fight HIV, while the Vatican thinks they will make things worse… in contradiction of empirical evidence from Africa and elsewhere.
Boskone is now intrigued by why Downtown Sargon has Mushy Diane as a gravatar.
Do tell.
My gravatar, Your Boskonesity? See this comment.
The pope said this:
“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.”
The distribution of condoms as a panacea doesn’t solve the problem and may exacerbate it by simplifying the cultural and behavioural complexities of the continental crisis and by encouraging a false sense of security.
That’s exactly right.
Thanks for that BBC link, Jo. The Archbishop of Mozambique should hook up with Jeremiah Wright. Rev. Wright argued, amongst other things, that the CIA spreads AIDS. His anti-white suspicions were defended by Barack Obama, who dutifully hung on his every word for two decades:
Over and over and over again CL…just repeating this outrageous porky pie, one that is totally refuted by all the research and reports gathered over decades by a Governments across the globe, the UN, health organisations…
I don’t envy you having to justify this policy.
I asked you a question before CL and I’m interestd in your answer – ie. do you personally believe a married couple with children should not use condoms if one partner is infected with HIV-Aids?
I’m sorry, but did a devout Catholic just accuse someone else of obscurantism? Breathtaking.
As for your question, jo, I’m not sure you’ve framed it from the Catholics’ perspective. Presumably the answer is that you’ve ignored the third option, abstinence. Using a condom is a sin, but abstinence observed by reason that HIV might be passed from one spouse to another is not (I wouldn’t think anyway).
BBB
One more time with feeling.
It seems that every time the Pope speaks, one need only count to three before one finds the twisted headlines and all the usual suspects at Catallaxy, Kalimna, Troppo, LP etc. shrieking in response.
The Pope’s comments – made during an inflight interview – were about the ineffectiveness of condom distribution as a way to combat the AIDS epidemic. He didn’t say for example, that condoms don’t work in preventing the transmission of the HIV virus. What is more, he said such programs risk making the problem worse.
[snip three long paragraphs quoted in full in Italian - just link to it (and preferably a translation as well, please ~ moderator (tt)]
The Pope is right. Again. And I can happily say that even though not a Catholic.
(He’s also right about how the epidemic should be approached in broad terms. But far be it for most of you here to even consider what the Pope actually said)
In any case, research backs up the Pope (and I am not going to waste my time digging up more given too many here are too lazy to even think for themselves). AIDS programs which rely on mass distribution of condoms – those funded by the U.N. for example – have been ineffective. Those like Uganda’s ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condoms) have been effective. Of course many of you here won’t want to hear about that because you are more concerned about “have orifice, stick a dick in it”, then you are about people suffering AIDS or even people full stop. Your naked self interest is on public display.
What is more, I doubt many if any of the resident arm chair critics here have ever set foot in any African country or have a clue about what health workers are up against. A taste of it, here and here- the latter from Gledhill who thinks a nun working in Africa (where the Catholic church is at the forefront of the battle against AIDS) is less enlightened than herself.
But some of us have come to expect that from ‘enlightened’ souls and Crikey pseudo-journalists.
I love the way my recent comments get posted and then disappear after a short time. That’s either a cute spam filter you’ve got there which retropsectively removes posted comments or else a cowardly moderator who doesn’t want to own their decision. Way to go LP. You can call the Pope disgusting and talk of his ‘evil plans’ but don’t let anyone return the favour.
Good morning, Saint. This is the first I’ve seen from you on this thread, although I haven’t been checking it all that closely. If it had been me deciding that your previous comments were unacceptable, they’d have been disemvowelled.
That said, LP’s comments policy states quite clearly that we don’t discuss moderation decisions on the blog. Send an email to ask about your disappearing comments. Any further comments from you (or anyone) that refer to moderation decisions will be deleted.
Edited to add (7:42am Sydney time): just fished your earlier comment out of the spaminator, Saint, where it went because it had lots of links. This is an automatic filter in operation, and the way that the software works is that you will see your comment immediately after you post it, but nobody else will, and when you refresh the page, you won’t see it anymore. No human intervention required.
@ CL:
Blair then and you now are utterly misrepresenting Kim’s argument against loud denunciations in the case of the grassroots North African tradition of FGC: that persuading people that it is wrong is the goal, and loudly denouncing it merely makes people not listen to the arguments. If you don’t know that you’re a fool, and if you do know it you’re a troll.
Loudly denouncing the Vatican hierarchy for their top-down anti-condom policies is an entirely different thing. We’re talking about a dogma which they could change with the wave of a papal encyclical, and which if they did change the vast majority of grassroots Roman Catholics would respond with “about time”.
Comparing opponents of Catholics to the KKK is rich (especially ironic as we’re talking about a wealthy, powerful white dude who is pushing policies which will result in more african people dying.) There should be an equivalent of the Godwin’s rule for that. And to make a snide reference to someone “refusing to condemn FGM”, presumably aimed at newer readers who don’t know that she said nothing of the sort, is a sign that you’ve recognised this is an argument you can never win – except with believers in your own particular sky-fairy – and you’re floundering about smearing faeces incontinently.
my final comment on this thread because from my perspective you people just can’t get simple concepts
If African Catholics were listening to the Church they would be abstaining from sex before marriage. The majority are obviously not doing this.
Therefore to argue that they don’t use condoms because the Church says not too is a ridiculous statement. Why would they ignore one statement and follow the other. Whilst they may be ‘uneducated’ Jo they aren’t idiots
Why would they ignore one statement and follow the other. Whilst they may be ‘uneducated’ Jo they aren’t idiots
Because your idea of the dynamics between Catholic influence and the use or non use of condoms among the entire (Catholic and non-) population is entirely wrong and inaccurate.
@TropSmurf:
You don’t think it makes rather a large difference whether the local Catholic hospital or charity providing health care (in some places the major provider of health care) does or does not provide condoms as part of their health programs?
You are arguing ,TropSmurf, that the church has no influence amongst African catholics and therefore its ideas on condom use are irrelevant. There is just no evidence for this and thus the pope cannot escape culpability for an irresponsible teaching.
“Why would they ignore one statement and follow the other.”
How about because one of the prohibitions relates to something that is very enjoyable and which everyone wants to do, while the other relates to a relative hassle for which superstitious mumbo jumbo is an all-too-easy and convenient substitute? Just a thought. Not idiots indeed.
BBB
Tig Tog posts:
Tig Tog has a partially valid point. The Popes prohibitive attitude towards condom usage is more harmful than helpful. Regular use of condoms is an effective constraint on STDs. But she diverts more than she informs.
If we are interested in saving lives we have to abandon politically correct agendas that place a taboo on scientific analysis.
To make condoms an effective disease prophylactic have to get people to use them properly. African males dont need the Pope to deter them from condom usage, they dont much like using condoms themselves. African males prefer “Dry Sex” which is obviously not possible when using a condom. This paper elaborates the epedimiology.
African ethnics still seem to be highly susceptible to HIV even when condoms are freely available. The Washington Post reports on the surging HIV epidemic in the largely black federal capital:
A real problem is getting people to acknowledge the cause-effect relationship bw blood-borne viruses like HIV and diseases like AIDS. This is not always easy when the average IQ level of the more disadvantaged section of the community is sub-90. As is the case in both Sub-Saharan Africa and inner-urban African-America.
It is possible to raise IQ by progams such as iodine additives and improved nutrition that increase birth weight. But that requires acknowledging the prevalence and potency of that factor. SOmething politically correct social analysts are loathe to do.
Also, the Pope’s promotion of “family values” as a constraint on STD spread does have a partial point based on anthropological evidence. Discouraging multiple concurrent partners”, which is surely a fairly important Catholic moral regulation, would act as a powerful constraint on the spread of the disease. The Washington Post reports from Sub Saharan Africa:
I know, I know, it sounds like a real party-pooping killjoy dont it? But not “getting it on” and “getting it on” are both effective at saving lives.
No woman, and no nice man, should read that ‘Dry Sex’ link at #98 unless she or he wishes to be parted from her or his breakfast sharpish.
I should imagine in regions where ‘dry sex’ is the preferred option, the HIV/AIDS fighters won’t have any trouble at all in persuading the women to abstinence. But they’ll have to get all the male heads round the distinction been sex and rape first, and since the First World hasn’t managed that one itself yet, I don’t see it happening in the sub-Saharan regions any time soon.
It’s remarkable isn’t it that the very simple dynamic that NOTHING stops people having sex while influencing HOW they have sex is relatively easy is anything other than intuitively obvious. Pledge bands have no effect on age at first sexual encounter, for instance.
Yet still people trot about talking about abstinence rather than condoms.
To quote Hannah’s Dad
“Wow”
Saint: “Of course many of you here won’t want to hear about that because you are more concerned about “have orifice, stick a dick in it”, then you are about people suffering AIDS or even people full stop.”
I might quote Hannah’s dad also
Here are the pope’s remarks, in full.
Entirely true. And it’s wonderful that he pointed out that the Church is the expert here, not the UN’s ideologists – with their appalling, humanity-destroying record in Africa. The UN’s West African rape squads alone disqualify it from any further pretended authority on morality and humanitarianism in Africa.
On the question of lies – Jo’s favourite theme and UNAIDS’ notorious specialty – is tigtog now willing to withdraw her loopy argument that female genital mutilation shouldn’t be too severely criticised?
African women attack the pope!
I asked:
“Can you point me to where he has suggested anything ‘revolutionary and bold’ to combat AIDS?”
CL answered:
“Sure, FDB. Notwithstanding that you’ve just declared your hatred for Catholicism over at Catallaxy [UTTER LIE], let’s pretend two things: 1) that someone as down-the-line bourgeois as you would recognise ‘revolutionary’ if it bit him on the bot [ODDBALL CLAIM]; and 2) that you actually give a shit [OFFENSIVE SLUR]. The pope belives that condoms haven’t solved – and won’t solve – the African AIDS crisis. He’s right. No argument there, except to denialists. They haven’t [REPETITIVE SERIES OF TRIVIAL OBSERVATIONS]. What he’s suggesting is that rather than continuing to impose the white man’s subjectivist notion of responsibility – guaranteed with condoms [STRAWMAN]- that official policy should emphasis abstinence and monogamy as the strongest underpinning available for a culturally revolutionary AIDS policy [YOUR ACTUAL ANSWER TO MY QUESTION I CAN ONLY ASSUME].”
Fail.
“The UN’s West African rape squads alone disqualify it from any further pretended authority on morality and humanitarianism in Africa.”
Hilarious, from someone who toes the moral line of the Catholic church while they presided over institutionalised and officially condoned child rape for generations.
Anyone know what he’s talking about?
So, CL basically your saying abstinence is the solution even though you’ve also said it doesn’t work. Hello?
Of course condoms helps prevent HIV/AIDS. Of course it isn’t the perfect, or only solution. But please point to some evidence which shows that using condoms makes the problem of HIV/AIDS worse. If you can’t show this evidence, then what are you on about?
FDB on the UN’s West African rape squads: “hilarious”.
Pavlov’s Cat: “Anyone know what he’s talking about?”
Two LP experts on Africa.
Papa Ratzi: stop it or you’ll get AIDS
CL: whatever he said
Two RC experts on sex: a celibate old bloke in a frock and his stooge.
Er, I think FDB was referring to your views as ‘hilarious’, not “West African rape squads”.
It’s so unlike you to twist and deliberately misinterpret the words of other commentators, so I’m sure that you won’t do it again.
That’s horrible CL. But what does it have to do with the Pope’s view on HIV/AIDS? You really do seem to have problems with logic. Several people have asked for evidence as to how condom use makes AIDS worse. Are you able to provide that evidence?
It seems to me the rape squads C.L. is referring to are nothing of the kind. I remember hearing some of the allegations in the article he pointed to at the time, and while I don’t doubt that those incidents occurred, I think it’s a bit rich to blame it on a deliberate UN policy, which C.L. does by implication. Having spent almost half my life (in fact, most of my adult life) in the company of soldiers, I can tell you that a lot of them are not very nice people, and some of them will act badly given the opportunity, especially if they slept throught the lesson on cultural sensitivity.
The pope makes an easy target, but it is quite true there are many others who have contributed to the HIV epidemic by demonizing condoms.
If tigtog had found a suitably high profile Muslim cleric, or Mbeki for that matter, and done a similar piece on them, would CL, Saint and so on be coming to their defense in the same way?
Ah yes, CL, I thought that was what you were talking about; I just wanted you to spell it out so people could see for themselves what the truth of the matter is, as per David Irving’s account. But the misrepresentations in the clearly biased source to which you link are as nothing to your own specious spin. ‘A bit rich to blame it on a deliberate UN policy’ is a very generous way of putting it, David.
But okay, for argument’s sake, let’s accept this at face value:
By your own logic, using your own methods and in your own words, it must therefore also be true (as FDB suggests at #105) that the Catholic Church’s international, school-based rape squads alone disqualify it from any further pretended authority on morality and humanitarianism in Africa.
Or, if not, why not?
In Hong Kong where I live, condoms are available in every bar and nightclub. Schools and the media run campaigns and programs emphasising safe sex. Yet the most recent statistics show a sharp rise in HIV infections among gay males. A blip ? Maybe. Christians number 3% of the population and Catholics are a smaller group within that number so how the hell you blame the Pope for this is a mystery to me, yet people do !
It’s so unlike you to twist and deliberately misinterpret the words of other commentators…
Right. But consider tigtog arguing that the pope wants to make profits from AIDS victims. Can we have a quote evidencing that please, tigtog? Hello, tigtog? Where’s the link?
And now Pavlov’s Cat is denying/playing down the African UN rape scandal.
So tigtog’s on the record counselling against too rigorous a condemnation of female genital mutilation and Pavlov’s Cat is denying what the UN’s rape-addicted “soldiers” did in West Africa. She blames my “biased source”.
From the notoriously right-wing Guardian:
Report reveals shame of UN peacekeepers.
But there’s some good news in that report:
And you criticise the pope? Pathetic.
Mbeki, now there’s a name to link to the AIDS epidemic. Thought it could be prevented by herbal treatments? He’s not the worst. If Mugabe is criminally liable for disease spread in Zimnbabwe, then Mbeki is similarly liable for AIDS/HIV rates being so much higher in South Africa, than they need be.
His ignorance and influence are as harmful as those of, umm, well, the current Pope. In Mbeki’s case, his Govt had a Dept of Health, ran hospitals & clinics etc. Stymied foreign medical aid groups who wanted to minister to his poorest people. So Mbeki likely wins the contest. Sorry, Benedict.
StephenL: Damn good question – and one that’s subject to empirical testing. Let me see… Mbeki’s AIDS legacy – 330,000 premature deaths, 35,000 HIV-infected babies. That’s an LP thread from 3 months and 3 weeks ago. I see no sign of CL, Saint and other Defenders of the Faith.
So the short answer is “No”.
“Right. But consider tigtog arguing that the pope wants to make profits from AIDS victims. Can we have a quote evidencing that please, tigtog? Hello, tigtog? Where’s the link?”
CL, point to anywhere on this page that tigtog argued the pope wants to make profits from AIDS.
Pavlov: ‘the Catholic Church’s international, school-based rape squads’
WTF ???????
I don’t understand why you guys continue feeding him; I really don’t. You can’t think you’re going to persuade him to change his mind. He doesn’t argue with you, he ignores your arguments. He clips words from what you say to create a golem of rhetoric; they stop being your arguments when he innervates them with what he wishes you believed. He lets it shamble forth and then dances around landing telling blows against a monster he created in his mind.
Is it because you have some hope, however small, that by arguing with him you’ll change the minds of wavering lurkers? Or is it just the act of arguing itself? Is it giving you joy to wade through his mind? He’s not Grendel. He’s a blow-up clown with a rounded, wieghted base, a bop bag; anybody can knock down his arguments, but he’ll always come back with the same ones.
Hi Jo @79 – by all means, I dont deny the One True Church is influential in Africa. I just think the figures make it clear we need to cast our net wider than Papa Ratzi and look at the influence of all the Christian denominations, other religions, aid organisations, international and local elites etc.
Id like to know the politcal economy of condom availability -and how these interesect with lcoal cultures of sexual activity and practices.
Lets face it – the Pope issuing edicts has never really stopped your average Mick buying a franger. Frankly, my sense is the key problems (in SA at least) has in been the incredibly head-up-arse attitude of successive ANC leaders – which in turn seems to resonate v strongly with the attitudes of the African Protestant Churches, rather than your Papist types.
I take note of what you say gilmae. But, I have to ask CL again to post some evidence that condom use increases the problem.
‘…rather than JUST yor papist types’, I meant.
Im referring there to African Anglican Churches and their near monomaniacal and phobic obsession with homosexuality. I think thats a big factor here in Southern Africa.
What utter malarkey, I was doing nothing of the sort. I was calling you on your wilful misreprentation and exaggeration, not to mention your blatantly right-wing, anti-UN source.
That is a parody of CL’s own florid WTFness, as you’ll see if you actually read the whole comment for meaning.
At this point I’m sure Jeff Sparrow won’t mind me quoting a serendipitously pertinent remark of his today at Crikey:
While I rather doubt the success rate for condoms is only 90% (as quoted above) it is worth noting that even something with a 10% failure rate, if used sufficiently widely, stop the HIV pandemic in its tracks. I am constantly amazed at how few people understand this.
Transmissible diseases are all about the average rate of transmission. If each infected person on average infects two others before they die you quickly have an epidemic. If they infect 0.5 people then the disease disappears very quickly. If prior to intervention 1 million people are infected then a 0.5 infection rate means .5 million in the next round, followed by 250,000, then 125,000 and so on. Still tragedy on a massive scale – but compared to the 40 million (and rising) HIV infections its a contained tragedy.
I don’t know the figures for HIV transmission rates where no action is taken, but its probably of the order of 3, at least until the infected population becomes large enough that many infected people are having sex with those already infected by someone else. 90% success would drop that to 0.3. Of course it isn’t that simple – even if people reliably use condoms outside marriage they might not when trying to get pregnant, and there are plenty of other complicating factors.
Nevertheless, the overall message is unambiguous – even if condoms only work 90% of the time (and underestimate) and people only use them 80% of the time (we wish) they would still be enough to bring this horror under control. It is this theory (with different numbers) that was the basis for Australia and Sweden’s programs against HIV in the 80s, eventually adopted by most of the developed world.
Logic is not CL’s friend.
If tigtog had found a suitably high profile Muslim cleric…
Well that’s unlikely given that Tigtog criticised Ayaan Hirsi Ali for campaigning against female genital mutilation.
Let me see…Mbeki’s AIDS legacy – 330,000 premature deaths, 35,000 HIV-infected babies. That’s an LP thread from 3 months and 3 weeks ago. I see no sign of CL, Saint and other Defenders of the Faith.
Probably because the post and the story concerned Mbeki’s policy on antiretroviral drugs, not condoms and the pope. Just a wild guess.
CL, point to anywhere on this page that tigtog argued the pope wants to make profits from AIDS.
Sure – scroll up to the picture that actually constitutes the “post”.
Pavlov’s Cat on the UN’s rape squads earlier:
Accused of downplaying that scandal, Pavolv’s Cat now:
Again: the blatantly right wing Guardian:
Report reveals shame of UN peacekeepers.
All “exaggeration”, according to Pavlov’s Cat.
Like the header says, disgusting.
[Accusation of "misrepresentation" in 5, 4 ,3, 2...].
Hey CL, can you find us some quotes from articles about sex scandals involving the Catholic Church?
I’m sure they’re just in your other dossier, right?
FDB: ‘Logic is not CL’s friend.’
Obviously not yours either. You’re losing the argument when you resort to unsubstantiated abuse.
Lefty E – I was careful to point out that the Catholic Church’s anti-condom policy is just part of the problem, and as I’ve posted quite enough times now – condoms are usually just <em. one part of overall prevention strategies when done right – see my post @79.
I also was clear to point to Mbeki and other African administrations for their culpability in respect of allocation of resources esp.. during the late 90′s etc.
As we all know, HIV-Aids is also just one of a myriad of problems facing many Africans. Of which CL would like everyone to focus on, instead of the evidence around the efficacy of HIV-Aids prevention programs.
And I know why you won’t answer my question CL, it’s because you have to expose yourself, you have to step out from behind the blustering, stop promulgating the latest pronouncements and answer a simple direct question that only you and your own conscience can answer, and not rely on the authority of the church….”I was only following orders” etc…
So again…do you think it is morally wrong for a married couple with children to use a condom when say the father is infected with HIV-Aids, who will ithen infect the mother, and in all likelihood orphan the children.
It’s a simple straight forward question – can you please answer it?
(sorry bout typos – my turn at car pooling the kids – gotta go)
Malarkey, again. I said you were exaggerating, with your disgraceful phrase ‘the UN’s rape squads’, which you used as a deliberately dishonest implication that the UN was doing it on purpose as a matter of policy. As you know perfectly well, and as I am sure you will now deny.
So lest I be further accused of failing to Loudly Denounce: Yes, the reports are true. Yes, they are appalling. I see The Guardian has reported them objectively; I first heard of them some time ago when a friend who worked in the UN for 20 years told me about them, in despair, when it first became known. As a feminist (and I’m sure you’ll find some ludicrous spin to put on that as well) I am not an apologist for rape and it is utterly ludicrous of you to suggest as much on the basis of this thread. Or on any basis.
In the meantime, I see you still haven’t answered my question at #114. I don’t know why anyone gets into it with CL expecting rational argument, rahlly I don’t. It’s like trying to catch an octopus in a bath full of chocolate sauce. And isn’t it way past time for him to tell me I’m on drugs?
“It’s like trying to catch an octopus in a bath full of chocolate sauce.”
(hmm, dunno about animated emoticons! i don’t want to seem like i’m laughing forever)
CL & Helen, there are many differences between the loudest critics of the catholic church and the KKK, and one is that KKK members weren’t born black.
I must say I don’t really understand what sexually miscreant national soldiers (whose units are on secondment to the UN) have to do with the effectiveness or otherwise of condoms.
Why do religeous fundies fear sex so? This desperate need for an external absolute moral authority is clearly indicative of someone at least partially stuck in an infantile mindset, and there’s your answer for mine. Kiddies are uncomfortable with that business as is should be, but it certainly seems pathological in an adult. Such people are willing to sacrifice many others’ lives and health to maintain the infant’s delusion of an infallible Father, and the more cosy perceived universe that results.
Ah Mr Strochi. Yes, most posters here are drawn from the 1/3 of Europeans who survived the black death, and due to similar infection mechanics are less susceptible to the AIDS (as I understand it – has this theory been debunked?). A good reason for Africans to reach for the rubber I’d have thought, given that they will definitely continue to get it on whilstever they remain homo sapiens.
“So again…do you think it is morally wrong for a married couple with children to use a condom when say the father is infected with HIV-Aids, who will ithen infect the mother, and in all likelihood orphan the children.”
This is an interesting case you raise jo. Apart from the moral implications, failure to use proper protection is a serious legal matter, sometimes leading to a jail sentence as was the situation in a recent Victorian trial where a husband also failed to tell his partner of his HIV-Aids status. Not sure whether children were involved but it is a good example.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/hiv-husband-spun-web-of-lies-20090313-8x4c.html?page=-1
C.L.
Mar 19th, 2009 at 11:43 am
FDB on the UN’s West African rape squads: “hilarious”.
Pavlov’s Cat: “Anyone know what he’s talking about?”
Two LP experts on Africa.
Now that was amusing. And effective.
PP:
Well, at least your admission that it’s no friend of CL’s is a start.
While it’s cute that CL seems to have found a friend (lord knows he needs one), I must take issue with your suggestion that I have either ‘lost the argument’ or resorted to ‘unsubstantiated abuse’.
I mean, just a single piece of evidence for either would be nice, or I think it would be fair to say that you’ve ‘lost the argument’ because you’re resorting to ‘baffling poppycock’.
PP @137, do try to keep up with the conversation.
In reply to Fine @123.
Fine if you haven’t already you might want to read all of what Pope Benedict said to journalists on his flight to Africa. See the sixth question from the link below.
http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-25405
Fine, it may be slightly pedantic but the actual words from the Pope were:
“…the [AIDS] scourge can’t be resolved with the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, there is a risk of increasing the problem.”
Fine, I’m guessing you don’t agree with the Pope’s assessment that distribution of condoms cannot resolve the AIDS problem. If my guess is correct could you explain why the world still has an AIDS problem after all these years of distributing and promoting condom use?
But to answer your question, the risk to human culture from the Church distributing condoms is that it undermines the promotion of the most effective means of stopping HIV transmission — abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage. To use an analogy – If a government ran an anti-rape campaign but included in the campaign the following message “however if a man decides to rape a woman he should use a condom” the whole anti-rape message would be undermined and the act of rape would be given some kind of legitimacy.
In his interview the Pope also said:
“The solution [to the HIV/AIDS problem] can only be found in a double commitment: first, a humanization of sexuality, that is, a spiritual and human renewal that brings with it a new way of behaving with one another.”
Fine do you agree or disagree with the above statement? Maybe those African women cheering the Pope that CL linked to earlier want a humanization of sexuality, as opposed to the “quick woman I’m feeling horny, give me one of you orifices for five minutes” mentality.
The Pope continues:
“…and second, a true friendship, also and above all for those who suffer, the willingness — even with sacrifice and self-denial — to be with the suffering. And these are the factors that help and that lead to visible progress.”
Fine how about these statements do you agree with the Pope here? What about those real horrible bits like “sacrifice and self-denial”? The condom culture hampers the development of virtues like sacrifice and self-denial which are needed in a society ravaged by HIV/AIDS?
As our other Pope said,
“Anyone who thinks that condom distribution, education and/or research is going to solve a problem which is mostly a function of behavioral recklessness is positively clueless.”
And
“If condoms were the answer, then why is it that New York City, which under Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given away tens of millions of free condoms, has an HIV rate three times the national average? Furthermore, the promiscuous distribution of condoms in New York has coincided with a spike in sexually transmitted diseases of all sorts.”
And
“Isn’t it time we learned that condom worship is irrational?”
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=32707
Amen Amen.
Because people don’t use them Colin…If people used condoms properly they wouldn’t get infected at least > 90% of the time.
It’s sort of like venereal diseases Colin, they hand out all this penicillin, but you know after 70 years, why do we still have venereal diseases?
That’s right, I should stop worshipping at the cult of penicillin. We know it only encourages them.
Sean said: “This desperate need for an external absolute moral authority is clearly indicative of someone at least partially stuck in an infantile mindset, and there’s your answer for mine.” We’ll be reduced to handing out jigsaw puzzles and quisinaire rods if this thread goes on for much longer.
Colin @ 141,
“Furthermore, the promiscuous distribution of condoms in New York has coincided with a spike in sexually transmitted diseases of all sorts.”
That is blatant nonsense.
Please download and read the following NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reports. If you still need help interpreting why it’s (quite clearly) blatant nonsense, ask, and I can explain to you in more detail tomorrow.
2007 HIV/AIDS Annual Surveillance Tables
Trends in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic, Pre-1981 to 2006
Sexually Transmitted Disease Control Quarterly Report (2008: 1st Quarter)
Fine, I’m guessing you don’t agree with the Pope’s assessment that distribution of condoms cannot resolve the AIDS problem. If my guess is correct could you explain why the world still has an AIDS problem after all these years of distributing and promoting condom use?
Several reasons. Because they’re not available (or too expensive to buy), because HIV is transmitted through other mechanisms (such as blood transfusions and sharing needles), and because the manufacturing is not up to scratch.
Oh, and because rapists as a rule don’t use condoms – and one of the biggest problems with Southern Africa is its high incidence of rape inside and out of marriage.
As many people have said, no-one here is implying that condoms solve the problem by their lonesome.
“The solution [to the HIV/AIDS problem] can only be found in a double commitment: first, a humanization of sexuality, that is, a spiritual and human renewal that brings with it a new way of behaving with one another.
Empty words, unless they enable women to protect themselves from the men around them. A wife may be a faithful and monogamous and trust her truckie husband. Unfortunately, the hubbie is sleeping with prostitutes at every truck stop from Jo’burg to Lusaka. How is Pope Ratzy’s words going to help her when hubbie comes home?
Colin, abstinence before marriage and fidelity within it doesn’t work. People don’t do it. All the beautiful words about ‘self-sacrifice’ and ‘humanization’ are pure codswallop. Sex before marriage is fine by me and fidelity within is purely a personal choice. Stop trying to make eother people conform to what you think is right. Especially when it results in death.
Condoms won’t entirely prevent AIDS, but they will mean that far fewer people will be infected. That’s what’s important. Read Stephen L at 126.
But Colin, the Catholic sacrament of confession provides incentive for sinners to sin and sin again for so long as those sinners believe that they can drag themselves to a confessional before they wheeze their last death rattle.
Like the condom, according to your argument, confession removes or weakens the incentive for moral behaviour.
The confessional is God’s franger!
“The confessional is God’s franger!”
But will it fit on the t-shirt?
Colin, abstinence before marriage and fidelity within it doesn’t work. People don’t do it.
So you’re telling us you screw around when you are single and cheat on your partner when you’re not, because abstinence and fidelity doesn’t work.
Fine.
Stop trying to make other people conform to your behaviour. Especially when it results in death.
The Pope is trying to turn “ought”" into “is”, which never works. (Never mind whether or not you agree with his “ought” – I certainly don’t, but that’s just me). Those of us who live in the real world just try to deal with the situation at hand.
Perhaps CL and saint and others could tell us whether they consider HIV to be a divine punishment for promiscuity? And where they stand on papal infallibility.
Damn pitiful answer. Robert Merkel posted on Mbeki, what, on 27 November 08? Let’s see, what else was happening on that day?
saint @ 151,
Trying to derail. Look, mate, one of the reasons why HIV AIDS policy worked in Oz at the beginning of the epidemic was because politicians of all colours took a non-partisan approach and energetically advocated the use of condoms, the practice of safe sex, and the setting up of needle exchanges, even in country towns like Armidale. And that policy has saved a lot of lives.
I hate to tell you this but Benny Whatever is just plain wrong. As Fr. Kennedy said tonight on Q&A, its time the Catholic Church got out of people’s bedrooms.
1900 years ago monks were castrating themselves because they were scared shitless of sex. I can’t tell you how many ex-Catholics I know whose lives were ruined because of the bullshit about sex dinned into them as children.
I hate to tell you this, but wearing condoms in Africa or anywhere else in the world is not about sex. It’s about not dying.
…could you explain why the world still has an AIDS problem after all these years of distributing and promoting condom use?
Ssshhh, Colin. That’s the question they can’t face and won’t answer. It interferes with the magical cargo cult of the condom.
Maybe those African women cheering the Pope that CL linked to earlier want a humanization of sexuality, as opposed to the “quick woman I’m feeling horny, give me one of you orifices for five minutes” mentality.
It has ever been thus. In the earliest age of Christianity, women were attracted to the faith precisely because it it lifted up their dignity vis-a-vis the various other alternatives on offer. One example of a more callous alternative was demonstrated here at LP where this post’s author – Tigtog – counselled people not to demonise a whole religion or condemn female genital mutilation too severely. (This was part of LP’s ongoing jihad against uppity black woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Tigtog also praised the Algerian model for improving women’s rights. (Preponderantly, a Potemkin village model according to the Special Rapporteur who studied the subject). Yes, this is the same Tigtog criticising the pope and suggesting he wants people to die en masse.
…abstinence before marriage and fidelity within it doesn’t work. People don’t do it.
The ongoing tragedy of violence against women proves that public education campaigns don’t work. We should stop them immediately and instead encourage men to [potentially triggering description of domestic violence redacted - moderator].
Perhaps CL and saint and others could tell us whether they consider HIV to be a divine punishment for promiscuity?
No, I don’t. If you want examples of irrational eschatology, see Al Gore – who believes we’re being punished for light bulbs and farting cows – or President Obama’s former spiritual adviser and mentor, Jeremiah Wright. The latter believes AIDS is spread by the CIA. That’s right: we now have a US President who spent 20 years perfectly at home with that message. Scary stuff. I’m sure that most LP commenters will agr… oh, wait…
And StephenL @113, since it was you who asked:
You will note that on the 28/11/09, Mark offered his preferred interpretation of the events on 27/11/08. Short version: one mustn’t rush to judgment. That is for Tigtog.
And never say anything bad about Muslim clerics. Save that for the Christians, with extra special attention for Catholics.
This is why, perhaps, you did not see any moral outrage from Tigtog about these Kenyan Muslim clerics, even though the 2008 UN AIDS report to which Jo referred to @58, reports that the HIV rate in Kenya is rising.
Oh wait. Did you spot a little anomaly there?
If you want to inform yourself about high profile Muslim cleric’s views on condoms, you can. Or else you can inform yourself about other high profile Muslim cleric’s views on promiscuity.
But why not just check out just how much money and effort has been spent on HIV/AIDS programs in Kenya in recent years, and then go and evaluate their outcomes. Given you won’t be able to do that in a two minute google, let me tell you the answer.
The Pope was right. HIV/AIDS programs focusing on condom distribution and education for their use have failed. And have continued to fail for decades.
Quote Hannah’s mum again. Fancy that.
Perhaps CL and saint and others could tell us whether they consider HIV to be a divine punishment for promiscuity?
I can’t because I don’t consider HIV to be divine punishment for promiscuity.
There are a lot of reasons why HIV has spread and continues to spread, despite the use of condoms.In the US it was because for a while the Reagan administration thought it was only killing gays and blacks and they didn’t matter.
The reasons for the spread of HIV AIDS in Africa have already been widely canvassed on this thread, so there’s no need for me to repeat them. Varying cultural practices and, from what I can gather, a sheer reluctance to even discuss sexual practices explain some of the Asian outbreaks. In Russia I gather one of the main reasons HIV AIDS spread rapidly into the general population was because of needle-sharing among drug addicts. Condom use helps prevent the spread of AIDS. It stops people dying.Benny Whatever is sentencing people to death.
Now, I am a lapsed Catholic, but I do have a certain affection for my old religion, and I readily acknowledge that it is frequently life-affirming. Unforetunately, Benny Whatever’s pronouncement is the opposite. And I find that not disgusting, but very sad.
And StephenL, Paul – my answers for you have either been spammed or deleted again.
[please educate yourself about how WordPress autofilters work, seeing as how it is one of the most common blogging platforms on the Web - this post went to moderation, which means that a message appeared on your screen telling you that it was awaiting moderation. If you don't want your comments to go into moderation or the spaminator, then don't put more than two links in them ~ tigtog]
Ssshhh, Colin. That’s the question they can’t face and won’t answer. It interferes with the magical cargo cult of the condom.
Read the thread again, C.L. At post 142, there is jo’s answer to the question, and a very worthy answer it is too. At post 144, there is mine. I’m amazed how someone could make such a flimsy and debunkable fib, but there you go.
…for a while the Reagan administration thought it was only killing gays and blacks and they didn’t matter.
Please provide evidence that to Ronald Reagan, gays and blacks didn’t matter. I’m talking about evidence equal to or beyond that which proves Democrat Robert Byrd was an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.
Read the thread again, C.L. At post 142, there is jo’s answer to the question, and a very worthy answer it is too. At post 144, there is mine.
Jo’s “answer”: “Because people don’t use them.”
Your “answer”:
So which is it? Not used or not available?
Come up with a different bullshit story.Make up your minds. And some rapists do actually use them. Specifically, rapists working for the United Nations.Anthony McCarthy is Research Fellow at the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, London and Oxford:
The Pope’s critics are in the grip of dogma.
Which reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s observation: “There are two kinds of people: Those who have a dogma and know it, and those who have a dogma and don’t know it.”
Actually, the part of the Pope’s message that I do agree with is that there is a need for humanising sexual activity. Whereas he goes for “fully committed love” I’d settle for mutual affection and respect.
There’s nothing at all wrong with casual “uncommitted” sex as long as there is mutual affection and respect. The various horrendous problems of exploitation and degradation come with treating sex as a commodity, which the Church’s views on sexuality in general merely perpetuate.
C.L. continues the “LP hates Ayaan Hirsi Ali” lie as well. She is an admirable woman in very, very many ways. Her tactics against FGM have been criticised, not her goal of ending FGM, nor her sincerity.
@ Saint #154:
Bullshit. I find the attitude of those religious authoritarians just as disgusting as that of the Catholic religious authoritarians, along with any other religious authoritarians who are concentrating their attention on the oh-so-nasty condoms instead of the whole panoply of exploitative sexual attitudes that feed the AIDS epidemic.
I don’t have either the time or the energy to post on every single thing that happens that outrages me, and not everything that would outrage me comes to my attention anyway. That I don’t post on something is not a sign that I don’t or wouldn’t find it outrageous/disgusting, just a sign that blogging is not the only thing in my life.
I find ALL religious authoritarianism repugnant, in whatever particular example you would like to present. What you can’t stand is that I don’t give the Vatican a free pass.
Get a grip jpz. Just because CL and Colin are wrong, doesn’t mean to say they should be called “midgets” or out of their minds. Or immersed in an “ocean of hatred and stupidity” indeed.
And stop spitting on the floor. How uncouth!
And BTW, which part of comment 157 wasn’t against the comments policy????
Not all catholics appear to agree with CL on this.
(AGE Letters, March 19)
TIMES reports that Vatican has backtracked on the Pope’s rejection of condoms as a means of preventing AIDs
(One mildly interesting point – the Italian word for condoms is “preservatives”. Perhaps Benny’s just become an advocate for unadulterated groceries and has been misquoted?)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5934912.ece
@adrian:
And BTW, which part of comment 157 wasn’t against the comments policy????
Good point. It’s now been deleted.
Saint @148, I don’t care whether people have sex before marriage, or extea-marital sex. That’s called personal choice, not compulsion. As Paul Burns said, learn to get out of other peoples’ bedrooms.
C.L. continues the “LP hates Ayaan Hirsi Ali” lie as well. She is an admirable woman in very, very many ways. Her tactics against FGM have been criticised, not her goal of ending FGM, nor her sincerity
The sheer gall required to even type the word lie must be immense in someone who accuses the pope of wanting people to die en masse for profit. Leaving that self-evidently despicable claim aside, there is a good summary of LP’s DISGUSTING attitude to female genital mutilation here. (And no, an anti-Blair ad hom is not an argument). It features an hilariously hypocritical comment from you, Tigtog, in which you oppose strenuous condemnation of FGM but go out of your way to lament Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s alleged “demonising” of her ex-coreligionists. Apparently you’re the only woman who gets to demonise religions – not uppity black women who’ve had their [triggering description of FGM redacted].
TIMES reports that Vatican has backtracked on the Pope’s rejection of condoms as a means of preventing AIDs.
No, it hasn’t. An officious Vatican spokesman independently re-wrote what he thought the pope meant for a press release. What the pope said – which is absolutely correct – stands. The Times’ Ruth Gledhill – renowned for anti-Catholicism – has bungled the story. Her dishonesty is also demonstrated by the fact that she quotes Jon O’Brien of the US-based “Catholics for Choice” as some kind of Catholic lay-spokesman. She neglects to mention to her readers that “Catholics for Choice” is in fact a radical pro abortion lobby group with no official connection to the Catholic Church and which the American bishops long ago dismissed accordingly. But that’s Ruth.
Interesting story in Time magazine:
HIV/AIDS: A Surging Epidemic in Washington, D.C.
Guess they don’t have enough condoms. You know, they’re rare in America.
CL, you’ve found a way more sophisticated version of yourself at a Catholic Healthcare group in the UK – well done.
Here is however Dr. Daniel T. Halperin, Senior Research Scientist at the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project:
The Journal for International Development is the organ of USAIDS – which as Shaun linked above, drove the policies of Botswana to abstinence only during that period. I might spend some time over the weekend seeing if we can find some independent verification of the claims above.
And as for your make up your minds?!….It’s both CL – condoms aren’t being used by people when they are available and condoms are not available to other people. (jigsaw puzzle time again)
As for the FGM debate…Anyone trying to score points over the FGM debate should have to make a $50 to this organisation. Put up or shut up CL. http://www.tostan.org/
And got your answer yet?
For a Christian, you’ve got a lot hate going on here CL.
@C.L.:
CL continues to fail to make the distinction between criticising a religious authoritarian and criticising the whole religion. (As well as appearing to have bought full-tilt into the capitalist lie that the only profit that counts is monetary.)
Every religion in the world is full of people who are not authoritarian about their religion, and who refuse to use their religion to justify harming others. The vast majority of every religious authoritarian’s coreligionists are just ordinary people who want to get on with an ordinary life free of violence, who follow the faith of their parents only because it was the faith of their parents – they’d be just as happy in a different faith if they’d been born elsewhere.
That most people of any religion are just ordinary people without particular malice does not excuse the actual religious authoritarians from criticism on the basis that they represent the faith. In rigidly hierarchical religions it may be difficult to distinguish those authoritarians from the religion as a whole, but it should always be done, both by me and by Hirsi Ali.
That’s why my post only criticised the Pope for his own actual words.
CL, you’ve found a way more sophisticated version of yourself at a Catholic Healthcare group in the UK – well done.
The good old ad hom. Ignore the argument, just mention Catholicism.
And as for your make up your minds?! It’s both CL – condoms aren’t being used by people when they are available and condoms are not available to other people.
So condoms have failed as a policy. Thanks.
For a Christian, you’ve got a lot hate going on here CL.
Gee, I haven’t heard that one before. I take it you were moved to make that comment by my criticism of Tigtog for imperiously patronising a black FGM victim who requires 24 hour protection for condemning [triggering phrase redacted ~ moderator]. And would you say it’s hateful to accuse the pope of wanting as many people to die of AIDS as possible for “profit”? No, of course you wouldn’t.
Still waiting for
ideologically driven crapolaan explanation of the HIV/AIDS surge in Washington DC.Not enough condoms? D.C.’s health department, panic-stricken, has distributed 1.5 million of them for free, reports Time magazine.
“Getting worse” despite 1.5 million free condoms? Why, that sounds like an argument made the other day by… gosh, who was it, I forget…um, oh yeah, the pope.
So which is it? Not used or not available? Come up with a different bullshit story. Make up your minds.
You want some neat answer to saint’s question? Sorry, mate, but no such neat answer exists, and I’m not going to provide it for you. Reality’s messy, son.
Let me break it down for you, C.L, my lad – because you didn’t understand the first time.
1. There are situations where condoms are available but not used, thus not preventing HIV transmission, such as sexual relations between a HIV-free wife and a HIV-infected husband. See joe2′s link at #136 for an example.
2. There are situations where condoms are not commonly available or are too expensive. They may not be that commonly available, because the government was subject to Bush’s abstinence-only funding. (No more free transmission of condoms – the funding will be cut off). Or look at poor old Zimbabwe. I doubt the can afford condoms there.
3. There are situations where condoms are irrelevant. For example, there’s sharing needles, blood transfusions, and even scarification.
Trying to pretend that either of the three groups of situations don’t exist is delusional.
Ah, so we’re on to mindless repetition of long-refuted crap are we CL? Meanwhile you simply ignore or dismiss anything anyone asks you that doesn’t lend itself easily to distortion and misrepresentation.
I ask you again – what do YOU suggest (something “revolutionary and bold” as you would have it) for combatting HIV/AIDS in Africa?
Bear in mind that ‘revolutionary and bold’ pretty much excludes both condoms and calls for abstinence/fidelity, both of which have at least been tried and have not succeeded.
Please also bear in mind that if you fail to answer this question and just bluster on about the UN rape squads and magical cargo cults, people will notice and think less of you.
I like that bit at #173 where CL implies that ideologically driven crapola is being used by everyone but him.
You know what I find disgusting? Right wingers coming over all “feminist” about FGM and other cultural practices simply because it advances their other agendas, such as attacking countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, while disparaging any other feminist argument when it suits them. In other words, using peoples’ suffering for their own ends. That’s really disgusting.
CL, clutching at straws yet again. From the report that CL linked to, the last sentence. Guess you didn’t read that far:
No prizes for guessing what ‘proper protection’ refers to. Unless you’re unfortunate enough to be living in CL’s fantasy world, in which case it probably means abstinence.
Good point, Helen.
I had hoped to engage further, and with more philosophical depth, in this difficult and vexing problem, in which I see merits (as well as demerits) in all of the various contending sides. The evidence of epidemiology which supports a culture of condom use as a tool against AIDS, under certain given circumstances, is pretty darn solid; on the other hand, a culture which supports less anarchic sexual mores has its demonstrated advantages as well. And in Africa, the “given circumstances” simply cannot be taken for granted. What is the best method in a place like Africa, which does not conform to understood Western moral and public-health norms? It’s not entirely clear: which, I suppose, is the reason why the best way to proceed is through gross insults, and the deletion of any comments which register an objection. How grand.
Here are two links which I would like any interested persons to read and reflect on; to avoid the spaminator for posting multiple links, I will continue the rest of my comment in a separate comment-bubble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanoia
More to follow…
Three percent of people in Washington DC are infected. In sub-Saharan Africa, three percent is considered a fantastic success, a rate so low it can scarcely be considered even a dream; it would be a miracle.
But no, by all means, infection rates in Washington DC should be considered a crushing rhetorical blow.
*sigh* Further clay for the shambling automaton. I need a new project to keep myself occupied and out of these kinds of threads.
Here is the other link. In spite of the obvious retro-pagan references, I’d ask readers to, well, keep their eye on the ball, so to speak…
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15814
And now to the meat of the matter.
tigtog @ #165: “Good point. It’s now been deleted.”
Granted wholeheartedly, this is your own site, and you can do as you please, and rightly so. I made it quite clear in my early missives to this place, way back in spring of 2006, that if anyone with a vested interest in the site objected to my participation, I would happily withdraw in deference to their wishes.
So now it’s come to that. I think I am as good a judge as any of what constitutes fair discourse regarding a highly-contentious matter; a matter, even, in which open hatred and contempt has been given a free slot (and rightly so) here at the ostensible Speaker’s Corner. But apparently I do not meet your fine standards lately, per adrian and tigtog. Like I say, that’s cool. So I hereby withdraw, rather than submit to what seems to my mind to be an arbitrary authoritarianism exercised over opinion.
This will be my last comment at LP. Thank you to all who have patiently put up with me, etc. etc. Whaddaya gonna do.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled mind control.
fondly,
j_p_z
I wonder what’s causing this?
Abstinence-based sex education or promiscuous condom use?
Every religion in the world is full of people who are not authoritarian about their religion, and who refuse to use their religion to justify harming others.
Right, Tigtog. Islamic fascists who advocate the mutilation of genitals aren’t amongst them. Which makes your condescending criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali incredibly strange and deplorable. That you should be the one criticising the pope is simply laughable.
You want some neat answer to saint’s question? Sorry, mate, but no such neat answer exists, and I’m not going to provide it for you. Reality’s messy, son.
This bonza Aussie just capitulated. Not before helpfully providing reasons why condoms have failed in Africa – for which I’m grateful.
You know what I find disgusting?
(Um, a privileged Western woman patronising a black terror target who had her genitals mutilated in childhood?).
“Right wingers.”
No prizes for guessing what ‘proper protection’ refers to.
If you’re saying “proper protection” in Washington DC refers to condoms, please explain why health officials there say the situation will get worse despite giving out 1.5 million of them. Despite, moreover, the fact that condoms are not exactly hard to come by in, you know, America. Still waiting for an answer: condoms hard to come by/too discombobulating to use? Choose one, folks, because this diadic banality is all the condom ideologists have got. Their argument against the proposition that condoms aren’t solving the problem is to say that they aren’t solving the problem. When you ask why they aren’t solving the problem, they repeat that they aren’t solving the problem. Rince, repeat.
Japerz, I see where you’re going with the whole metanoia thing (unless I’m wrong and it means ‘fear of paranoia’ or something, hurk hurk). You’re suggesting, I infer, that both ‘sides’ of this ‘debate’ would do well to consider things from outside their current system of beliefs.
That’s all very well.
But see, there’s not actually anyone out there (that I’ve ever heard) who think that condoms are the only solution. One ‘side’ of this ‘debate’ believes in using all available weapons to fight HIV/AIDS, the other does not.
So really, metanoia would only be a worthwhile prescription for those dogmatically opposed to condoms.
Also, remember this was all kicked off by papa Ratzi’s assertion that condoms make the problem worse. What do you reckon about that?
Oh well, looks like you’ve gone and chucked a hissy fit.
For what it’s worth, I doubt anyone round here wants to see you go.
I think it’s risky to use the US for examples. In so many respects, they’re an outlier from the rest of the world – “Western” countries included. For example, they are one of the few Western countries that had a federal (or equivalent) ban on needle exchange programs. They also seem to have an issue with harm reduction strategies:
Things are different in the USA, and some of those things are policies. Why shouldn’t policy outcomes be different as well, like a high rate of HIV?
Though I’ve no comment to make on the substantive arguments and didn’t see what #157 was, I do want to echo FDB.
I’ll read your comments, JPZ, before almost anyone else’s when they appear in the recent comments sidebar, and urge you to reconsider.
Jeez, you’re dishonest arguer CL. Just take one phrase out of someone’s argument and ignore the rest of it. And it’s interesting how tigtog and Helen morph into one frightening figure- the Western feminist. All we women are just the same I guess.
This bonza Aussie just capitulated.
No, C.L. I answered the question. Twice. You don’t seem to understand me. Why is that? Do you like making up things that aren’t true? Do you have a problem with reading comprehension? Or do you like ignoring what people say? Here’s a clue for you – denial isn’t a river in Egypt.
Not before helpfully providing reasons why condoms have failed in Africa – for which I’m grateful.
You seem to have the view that condoms are useless because they don’t always prevent HIV transmission by their lonesome. That’s just illogical. Like other people on the thread, I think condom use is ok but insufficient for preventing AIDS. Needle exchanges and other harm reduction strategies help, but education is even better – especially for women, but also for men.
I think it’s risky to use the US for examples. In so many respects, they’re an outlier from the rest of the world – “Western” countries included.
LOL. The capital of the richest nation in the world (nominally) has an AIDS crisis despite millions of free condoms and their availability in every lounge, loo and 7/11 in sight. Clearly, values education and personal responsibility – a cultural revolution – are FAR MORE important than condom cargo cultism. But I still haven’t got an answer to my question: please explain why health officials in Washington DC say the situation will get worse despite giving out 1.5 million condoms. And despite the fact that condoms are not exactly hard to come by.
And no, “Bush”, “right wingers,” ‘I hate CL’ and variations on ‘they’re not working because they’re, like, not working’ will suffice.
“But I still haven’t got an answer to my question: please explain why health officials in Washington DC say the situation will get worse despite giving out 1.5 million condoms. And despite the fact that condoms are not exactly hard to come by.”
Because people aren’t using them properly.
Now, how about an answer to mine?
Fine
@145 you said:
@166 you said
So Fine, you are either telling us abstinence and fidelity don’t work because they are beyond the level of choice(in which case you are also saying you yourself and everyone posting here are neither abstinent nor faithful) or else abstinence and faithfulness is a choice because you see Fine, if you chose to have sex before marriage or extra-marital sex as you said @166, then you can also chose not to have sex before marriage or extra-marital sex.
So which is it? A choice only when it suits you?
It’s a no brainer that sex outside of monomgamous marriage has many devastating consequences – the risk of STIs and AIDS being just one of them. One hasn’t spoken of the myriad other wider impacts, not least on children. This is true and has been true throughout time and across all cultures.
You of course might like to think that faithfulness in a monogamous marriage is of equal consequence as unfaithfulness in marriage but you’d be one of a handful of fools to think so, and would have to think so despite the overwhelming evidence against you.
So why should we encourage non-abstinence and unfaithfulness, much less spend more effort in encouraging bad behaviour and mitigating the consequences instead of encouraging people to avoid it all together and pointing them to a better way?
What is so bad about encouraging people to make good choices and pointing people to a better way to live?
What are you afraid of?
Japerz!
Say it ain’t so!
You’re one of my favourite commenters.
C.L 2 159,
Randy Shultz (sp?) And the Band Played On.
I think people in Western countries have become less concerned about HIV/AIDS because there isn’t the publicity about it that there used to be, government isn’t funding educational campaigns as much as they used to and the increased success of anti-viral drugs in combatting disease has made it seem less serious. So, what’s the answer? More education and more condom use. What’s the Pope’s answer. Don’t use condoms. Don’t have sex. And CL could you please answer the question as to how condom use makes the problem worse. You’ve been asked for evidence and there’s been non forthcoming.
Saint, I’m pointing to the really obvious fact that people have sex outside marriage and nothing is going to change that, because many people see nothing wrong with that choice. You do think its the wrong choice. Fair enough. Don’t have sex outside marriage then. Don’t assume your choices are morally superior and that they constitute better behaviour.
J-P-Z,
Please don’t go. I really enjoy your comments too. I remember when I first came on LP, I was delighted there were people all over the world on this site, and especially people from America. Even though I’m a socialist, I got a soft spot for Americans. Please come back.
Lol. Poor Ratzinger. He should really learn to shut-up about stuff he knows nothing about.
As for his comments having any effect, well I dunno about you lot, but the last thing I’m thinking about when I’m about to give the ferrett a run is what the Pope might think about how I should do it.
CL has a fervid imagination too: “[triggering phrase redacted]” and “[triggering phrase redacted]” are particularly impressive, when “FGM” would have done for the sake of this argument, not to mention “[triggering phrase redacted]“.
Ever get that feeling CL?
[grace - good point - all such phrases are now being redacted as potentially triggering for survivors of such attacks ~ tigtog]
@181
Sure, if we close our eyes and click our heels twice, we might not notice three percent of people are well people. Just as well that three percent doesn’t include you, ay? You might be a little less chirpy.
Because people aren’t using them properly.
Suddenly, inexplicably, Washingtonians don’t know how to use condoms.
It’s like a 50s sci-fi: Attack Of The Fumbling, Forgetful Fingers!
And CL could you please answer the question as to how condom use makes the problem worse. You’ve been asked for evidence and there’s been non forthcoming.
There has been, of course, but you’re doing the finger-in-the-ears la-la-la-la routine. I’ve cited the case of Washington whose health officials are predicting the AIDS crisis will “get worse” despite handing out 1.5 million condoms and despite the easy availability of them everywhere. Still no answer to my question as to how this came about, beyond – you guessed it – the old rinse/repeat: ‘well, they’re not working because they’re not working because they’re not working… which means we need to provide more of them – but, wait, even people in Washington can’t use them properly, oh my, I hate CL and Bush and TEH Catholics are big stupid heads.’
I also cited Anthony McCarthy, Research Fellow at the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, London and Oxford:
So, how about an answer to my question?
@199
Yep, far be from you Evan, to think about anyone but you and your ferrett.
Any problems with that there Laura?
Ah but
misrepresentations ‘r’ ussaint, Evan didn’t say ‘anyone’ – he specifically referred to that funny looking guy at the top of the page. You know, the celibate one who likes to get around in a frock.Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies:
“The pope is correct…”
Thank you umpire, thank you ballboys.
@200
They are also particularly descriptive of the reality of what you call by the suitably anaethatized term FGM.
Oh wait, there is no anaesthesia involved. And even if there were, women still have their [vivid description of FGM redacted as potentially triggering]
[moderator note: I'm redacting every one of these descriptions that could be triggering to a survivor of a mutilatory attack. ~ tigtog]
CL @ 202,
No, that’s a sleeveful of sleight.
“Washington whose health officials are predicting the AIDS crisis will “get worse” *despite* handing out 1.5 million condoms and *despite* the easy availability of them everywhere.”
True.
“Washington whose health officials are predicting the AIDS crisis will “get worse” *because they handed* out 1.5 million condoms and *because of* the easy availability of them everywhere.”
False.
Aw C’mon saint and the rest of you. Lighten-up fer fuxsakes.
The Pope puts his foot in his mouth again and Holy War in the from of sexual jihad breaks out on LP.
Jaaaaysus.
Saint, I believe his comment related to not thinking about the pope, rather than thinking only about himself.
@197
Cue Helen. Helen would you like to educate Fine on how fidelity and infidelity are morally equal? I know you want to.
It’s the Jesuit half-hour around here.
I’m off.
Later all.
@j_p_z:
j_p_z, your opinions aren’t the problem. You disagreed with my opinions and thought that my post was contemptible. If you’d kept it at that your comment would still be there.
But you had to add direct abuse, of quite a few contributors here, to your comment. That was unacceptable.
If you avoid direct abuse in future, you’re more than welcome to continue commenting.
@C.L.:
The capital of the richest nation in the world (nominally) also has a poverty crisis, a homelessness crisis and homicide crisis. Is capitalism then useless? Law and order too? Or is the American system of organising their society fundamentally broken?
If one partner is cheating, it’s even more important that the use of barrier methods like condoms are the default, otherwise people who are perfectly faithful in their own relationships may be HIV positive without even knowing it, obvs.
Um, a privileged Western woman patronising a black terror target who had her genitals mutilated in childhood?).
Jeez, that would be a devastating riposte CL, had you not got it completely arse about.
“I find your arguments interesting but disagree with your overall response to the problem, also, I find the motivations of some of your followers suspect, although I don’t think this is your fault” = Not patronising.
“You’re so obviously a victim I won’t disagree with anything you say, your victimhood will stand instead of logic and argument.” = Patronising.
@208
Nick, if it is worse despite condom distribution, then condom distribution has little if any effect on rates of infection, changing behaviour etc. So continuing to persist in condom distribution/education is in effect contributing to rising rates of infection. Like doing nothing.
@210
The first thing Evan thinks about is “giving the ferrett a run”.
Logic fail.
If it’s getting worse despite condom distribution then that means condoms don’t solve the problem on their own (which no one is claiming is the case). For all we know, without condoms the situation would be getting worse at a faster rate.
Condoms can only combat the sexually transmitted forms of HIV. Is that the primary method of transmission of HIV/AIDS in Washington?
If condoms can prevent junkies infecting their sexual partners, then they are having a positive effect. If the junkie is still infecting other junkies through sharing needles, the rate of infection can still rise. But those sexual partners who remain HIV-free are still a successful application of condoms in a HIV situation.
As we’ve said all along, condoms are only one part of the toolkit. But in areas where the primary form of HIV infection is through sexual contact, they are far more important even than in areas where the primary form of transmission is through drug needles.
Can I just re-state, and ideally have Saint or CL address, the following two questions:
1) Why do the Catholic Church and those here agreeing with What Ratzi Said not want to employ all tools that might help (even a little bit) in curbing infection?
2) What new (sorry, “revolutionary and bold”) ideas do any of you have? If the measure of condoms’ failure is that rates are still rising, surely this means everything so far tried has failed. So what then? What?
And just because I can’t resist, here an even more important question:
3) Why don’t you make any effort to answer the first two questions?
@218 But we do know that infection rates go down faster when the emphasis is not on condoms.
“No other country in the region has so dramatically reversed the epidemic as Uganda…“
FDB, while we’re all waiting, I would like to say to Tigtog: nice redactin’. And I can’t help wondering why CL and Saint seem to enjoy repeatedly typing out those phrases quite so much.
[commentary on moderation decisions deleted]
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s own account – as published in The Australian – of her butchering.
[commentary on moderation decisions deleted]
Helen @215
So Helen, do you think the cheater is going to tell they’re unsuspecting partner that they’re cheating?
Oh wait, are you saying everyone should use condoms just in case their partner cheats?
Wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall for that converstation.
Is faithfulness to the condom cult more important than a partner’s faithfulness to their husband or wife Helen?
Is faithfulness and unfaithfulness in marriage morally equivalent? Anyone?
You know, Wordpress is such a funny thing tigtog. Even if I post a comment with no links, or one comprising a quote of other people’s comments on this thread, it disappears or goes to moderation. Nice one tiggers you braveheart you.
[Moderator note: Saint, how perspicacious of you to note that repeated posting of descriptions that might potentially trigger PTSD in sexual violence survivors has resulted in you being placed back into permanent moderation, so that such descriptions can be redacted before your comments are published on the thread. ~ tigtog]
@221 ‘their’ not ‘they’re’
I’d also quite like to know how and why a thread about the Pope and condoms has somehow turned into one about certain elements’ monomaniacal obsession with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and FGM at all.
No, wait. I do know how and why.
They should wear them anyway, just like you wear a seatbelt everytime you drive.
“Is faithfulness and unfaithfulness in marriage morally equivalent? Anyone?”
That’s some gall – repeatedly demanding answers to your own only marginally relevant questions while refusing to address mine. But anyway…
It depends on the marriage. Lying is morally wrong IMHO, so in a situation where faithfulness has been agreed upon, then being unfaithful (and especially lying about it) is wrong. Not quite on the same scale as lying to entire continental populations about the options available to them for fighting fatal diseases, but wrong, yes.
FDB @ 220 says.
1) Why do the Catholic Church and those here agreeing with What Ratzi Said not want to employ all tools that might help (even a little bit) in curbing infection?
I thought I answered that back at comment 140, at least in part.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/03/18/disgusting/#comment-664518
@Zarquon:
Indeed: why not use condoms routinely so that you don’t pass HPV onto your partner resulting in her developing cervical cancer in later years? People can become infected by HPV without engaging in sexual intercourse, but only sexual intercourse routinely deposits samples containing HPV in the vicinity of the cervix. Women who marry young have twice the rate of cervical cancer of women who marry later in life. Presumably because women who marry later in life are more likely to either be celibate or use condoms as part of their contraception plan.
CL, if the latest evidence or analysis reveals that the AB part of the ABC strategy is where the emphasis should be, then that is were it should be i.e. “know your epidemic”, “know the evidence” and “know your responses” .. As well as male circumcision which Green also points to, which is neither here nor there in this debate.
As all my posts have made clear there are a combination of strategies including condoms to promote, just as you will find at Green’s Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project. However, that said, the evidence must be more than compelling for the need to massively up-scale AB strategies at population wide levels for Green and other high level HIV-Aids researchers to back the Pope esp. on the monogamy message or “reducing multiple concurrent partnering” stance….and evidence is all I need.
I have no problems with these messages whatsoever esp. in a community riven with with HIV-Aids and the sort of violence against women and of course the position of women in many traditional societies, however, there are discrete populations and many indivduals within all communities where the AB message is not going to be applicable – ie. sex workers, prison populations, guest workers and other high risk groups, and these groups overlap with the wider community and which is why the quote I posted @169 also from the Harvard Research Project would superficially seem to contradict Green media statements.
However, possibly the biggest broadest brush might be vital for a rapid upscale when dealing with multiple Govts and health organisations so it’s – AB, AB AB …and C. What is it again – AB AB AB and C.
Also I have no doubt that the epidemic itself has changed attitudes within different communities and that messages that may not have been receptive 8-10-15 years ago are now being listened to…esp. when huge swathes of your population is infected/dying or dead.
And of course, this is all about prevention – managing those who are infected also involves the management of their sexual behaviour over their lifetimes including within marriage etc. And condoms play an important role obviously.
As for jpz – I was a little surprised that that particular comment got binned – not my call at all obs. , but I agree with others that LP would be the poorer wifout ‘im.
Thanks for answering the question in good faith Colin, and sorry I missed it before.
Your response is more or less a defence of business-as-usual, though, which we’ve established isn’t working. Is it really that difficult to give people a nuanced message though? “Use a condom whenever you’re not trying to have a baby”, for example.
Doesn’t seem that complicated – the difficulty comes not from an inescapable conflict in mixed messages, but from one of those messages being idealistic, dogmatic and religious while the other is realistic and pragmatic.
Now you might like to say that the Church has no obligation to be realistic and pragmatic, and that it has more important concerns – based around the moral well-being of its flock and their status in God’s eyes. Just be aware when you’re saying that, what you’re really saying is “more important than the lives of Catholics“.
Aren’t you?
@229 Some gall FDB? I was responding to Fine who said @197:
Does Fine have gall?
So you reckon everyone who has no problem with sex oustide of marriage has no problem telling their partner about it and too bad, it’s their choice? What if it isn’t their partner’s choice?
Is mere choice the arbiter of what is good or right?
What?
[Moderator note: commentary on moderation decision deleted ~ tigtog]
Geez. How on earth did you fashion what I said into that steaming pile? I think that a marriage should have at or very near its very core, a covenant between those getting married about the sexual terms on which they are doing so. They must be mutually agreed upon. Any transgression of them constitutes a betrayal (i.e. is wrong), and a failure to fess up about that transgression is in my view an even greater wrong. People make mistakes, sometimes on purpose. Adults who care about each other should be honest about their failures and try to work them out, or admit that they can’t be worked out, rather than going on lying.
Anyway, you persist in failing to address my questions. Why is that?
Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies:
“The pope is correct…”
The pope: realistic and pragmatic and, by the way, correct.
Taking the opportunity to remind the obtuse about this line in our Comments Policy:
This means that any comment that refers to any moderation decisions will be deleted. No matter what else in the way of cogent commentary it contains.
Move the conversation on.
Not in Thailand, which suggests that the debate must be more nuanced than the extremists on both sides have conceded.
There is little sense in asserting that simply dropping condoms from squadrons of helicopters is going to change infection rates among the folks who live in the drop zone.
Neither is it sensible to assert that the mere sight of a condom is inevitably a stimulus for irresponsible behaviour.
The pontiff is guilty of the latter invalid assertion. As a person with a public profile it behoves him to be more prudent in his pronouncements or at least to acknowledge that his pronouncements are the result of a priori beliefs rather than empirical study.
#239
It is you who are making the invalid assertion. Otherwise show us where the Pope said any such thing.
As for Thailand:
Obviously the sight of a condom doesn’t texactly encourage responsible behaviour either. But we already knew that.
@235 And here’s an answer to your question FDB.
“This will be my last comment at LP. Thank you to all who have patiently put up with me, etc. etc. Whaddaya gonna do.”
That’s sad and bad, j_p_z. You’ve been a stellar contributor over the years. May I without infringing the comments policy echo Liam @ 188 and Katz @ 194?
C.L. writes:
Oh please.
A National Review printed diatribe from an ideologically based institute that’s got a little “harvard” sugar on it, that cherry picks AIDS/HIV reports?
It’s another epic fail.
I am fascinated by the idea that the availability of condoms increases risky behaviour though – didn’t you say before you didn’t think they were magic, but now apparently they are? I want a magic condom! No wait!
@Rob:
That doesn’t infringe the comments policy at all. I don’t want to see j_p_z leave either.
@227 – you can’t know why because I didn’t tell you.
A National Review printed diatribe from an ideologically based institute that’s got a little “harvard” sugar on it, that cherry picks AIDS/HIV reports?
David condemns – and implicitly argues that he knows better than – the director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.
Not just garden variety denialism but ad hom of the year!
Just to reiterate:
[regurgitation of earlier quotes from Edward C. Green by C.L. at #236 snipped - moderator]
David’s response: ‘nonsense because it’s nonsense because I say so and, also, CL is a big poo head.’
Again for the obtuse using comments in moderation to ask questions:
No public discussion will be entered into regarding moderation decisions. If readers or commenters have queries about this policy, they may email the site or its contributors.
Take it to email.
And a webpage from the Harvard Aids Prevention Research Project that CL has linked to for Edward Greens opinion.
I think it speaks for itself.
“David condemns – and implicitly argues that he knows better than – the director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.”
David may well be arguing that (although I doubt it), but instead of taking at face value the one-sided viewpoint of one writer at NRO, look no further than the publications section of the very institution whose director you constantly link to. I think you’ll find they undermine the position you are trying to assert.
“The pontiff is guilty of the latter invalid assertion. As a person with a public profile it behoves him to be more prudent in his pronouncements or at least to acknowledge that his pronouncements are the result of a priori beliefs rather than empirical study.”
Exactly. The fact is nobody on this thread has asserted condoms are the only solution to the HIV epidemic in some countries, yet the dishonest debaters constantly twist and misrepresent the comments of others to slot conveniently into their own perspective. This very thread is about the Pope’s irrational statement which incidentally may contradict the work of Catholic faith-based aid organisations in combating this disease. Yet to read some comments is akin to delving into the absolutist opinion of extremist groups like Opus Dei.
Also to give some context to the Washington situation frequently referred to, while only 3 percent of the population may be affected, this represents a 22 percent increase in prevalence in two years (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/14/AR2009031402176.html?referrer=emailarticle&sid=ST2009031402211). A significant jump in anyone’s language. This is principally attributed to men who have unsafe sex with men, followed closely by injecting drug users, with an increase in prevalence among heterosexual women, proof that a condom only approach is folly, but that condom use must be promoted for all forms of sexual intercourse.
In short, promoting abstinence only fails, a fact revealed recently (http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=213) but also in a very personal way with a certain VP candidate in the US.
C.L. wrote:
Nice.
You’re reading an awful lot into the Harvard centre for keeping darkies under control C.L.
At best, all they’re doing is backing up the “technically true” idea that the Pope knows condoms occasionally fail.
However, since the overall thrust of the argument is a fallacy (condoms are not perfect, therefore we should never advocate the use them) you’re really stuck with a kind of “Pope of the Gaps”. I know you know this has been pointed out to you endlessly and you choose to ignore it for the sake of argumentativeness (clearly it’s a bit of a hobby horse for you).
However, I quite like a “Pope of the gaps” argument with respect to ex cathedra statements as, like the older god of the gaps, it means arguments from faith like yours have exactly nowhere to run and are exposed as the logical fallacies they are.
You would be more honest to lay out the real argument against condoms (that they are a very, very effective contraceptive device) which is the only real reason the church forbids their use. Have the courage and the faith to admit it, or are you really too deeply embarrassed by your own religion and beliefs and refuse to profess them in public?
From an article written by Edward Green:
Furthermore, mounting evidence suggests that inconsistent condom use does not protect people, possibly because risk compensation or disinhibition may cause condom users to take greater risks in their sexual behaviour
Back to the popes remarks in full:
One cannot overcome the problem with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem.
All the nuance and ifs and maybes gone! But then it was a short flight wasn’t it?
Christ. Is the Thirty Years’ War still going on here?
I reckon Tom Lehrer said it best:
“Do whatever steps you want if
you have cleared them with the Pontiff.
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison
Doin’ the Vatican Rag….”
And the same goes for sex.
And exactly what’s wrong with me giving the ferrett a run?
Haven’t you lot heard of satire?
I think that was the whole point of the Ratzi poster that triggered this whole debacle off.
Where’s your sense of humour?
And for those into satire, I present for your enjoyment Tom Lehrer hisself singing (you guessed it) The Vatican Rag:
Enjoy.
And try not to rip each other’s throats out over it.
@250 rf
Inconsistent condom use = distribution of condoms.
All the differentiation and meaning of English words gone! But then yours was a low grade at school wasn’t it?
Spotto the contradiction in Saint’s “contribution”.
(This is just too easy.)
“You would be more honest to lay out the real argument against condoms (that they are a very, very effective contraceptive device) which is the only real reason the church forbids their use. Have the courage and the faith to admit it, or are you really too deeply embarrassed by your own religion and beliefs and refuse to profess them in public?”
Yes, he is.
I been told that nowadays a lot of sensible Catholics just ignore the old bugger nowadays. A bit like they did with Paul VI’s encyclycal against the pill. (Remember Brides of Christ?) And those who note that what the practising Catholics are really talking about here is contraception, not HIV/AIDS prevention are spot on. And if I’ve got my modern church history right, an awful lot of us left the Church because of the Paul VI debacle.One wonders if the same is happening because of their stupid stand on HIV/AIDS prevention? Has anybody seen any research on this aspect?
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/now/jan9/abc.html
Katz, the Green quote you were discussing was in relation to Sub-Saharan Africa where unlike the rest of the world, it is a population wide epidemic rather localised to discrete populations ie. Thailand.
In some overview I was just reading, apparently infections are increasing again in Thailand and one of the factors was that boys/men are not visiting brothels as much, which were sites of injections, but which were then not, due to condom use etc…but as brothels became associated with HIV-Aids, there was consequently more pre-marital sex without condoms and new infections etc. The best laid plans of HIV-Aids prevention program designers!
The UN and projects like Green’s all promote combination prevention programs based on “know your epidemic”, “know your evidence”, know your responses” modelling. It’s all about nuance.
Hey CL, got an answer yet?
Do you think it is morally wrong for a married couple with children to use a condom when the father is infected with HIV/Aids and will in all likelihood infect the mother and orphan the children?
I find ALL religious authoritarianism repugnant, in whatever particular example you would like to present
Except your own, obviously. What a pill!
Who are you quoting there Greenfield?
Hm. Just working out the logic here. Is this how it goes? ‘If you give teenagers, Africans, footballers and other irresponsible types things that will help to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, it will merely encourage them to have more sex. Therefore, you must stop preventing disease, because if you don’t, you will be removing that (alleged) deterrent. Kind of like abolishing the death penalty. Actually, considering the effects of cervical cancer and AIDS, it virtually is abolishing the death penalty. Can’t have that.’
This is exactly the ‘logic’ behind that appalling argument that certain religious conservatives were making about Gardasil: No no, if you give her this cervical-cancer-preventing thingy, it will send her the message that it is all right to have sex! Therefore I would rather expose my daughter to an increased risk of cancer than have her think it’s all right to have sex.
People have sex because they want to f*ck, not because someone has seductively dangled a condom before their startled eyes. What interests me about this argument is neither its speciousness nor its apologia for mindless dogma, neither of which is interesting, but rather its built-in assumption that fear of punishment will make people stop having sex. That assumption is clearly wrong, or they would.
I’m sure the condom-haters on this thread are also abortion-haters, but (with their usual, erm, special logic) would balk at, or deny, the fact that more condoms = fewer unwanted pregnancies. Because what this is all really about is stopping other people from having sex at all. And to me the most interesting, if icky, thing about this debate is the psychology of people who want to stop other people from having sex.
@FDB:
Why FDB, la Greenfield appears to be quoting moi.
I’m not quite sure how an atheist can engage in religious authoritarianism, as atheists have no hierarchy nor any enforcement thereof, but never mind.
In reply to FDB @ 233,
You say:
“Now you might like to say that the Church has no obligation to be realistic and pragmatic, and that it has more important concerns – based around the moral well-being of its flock and their status in God’s eyes. Just be aware when you’re saying that, what you’re really saying is “more important than the lives of Catholics“.
Aren’t you?”
No FDB what I’m saying is that the Church has a duty to tell its followers the truth. With regard to sex that truth is that fornication and adultery are wrong and damaging to society and the individual in many different ways, not the least of which is spiritually. You may disagree with that but that is what the Church believes, and faithful Catholics have a right to have that truth repeatedly proclaimed, for their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of their children. The primary duty of the Pope is not to appease secularists but to confirm the faith of Catholics who take their religion seriously.
The strangest thing in all this controversy is that anti-Catholics seem more concerned about the Catholic Church telling its faithful followers to abstain from premarital sex and adultery, than it does about cultural forces that encourage all people but particularly vulnerable teenagers to adopt a sexually promiscuous lifestyle.
In the end the promotion of condom use is not compatible with the promotion of abstinence/fidelity which is probably why the most vocal condom advocates rarely if ever promote abstinence/fidelity. Isn’t the usual line from secularists, “abstinence/fidelity doesn’t work” or “abstinence/fidelity is unrealistic”? Yet in many ways the condom campaigns have also failed. And even though secularists tell us it’s unrealistic to tell people to abstain from sex we still get condom campaigns from them saying, “If it’s [a condom] not on, then it’s [sex] not on”. So we all have to pretend that hot and bothered couples who want to have sex but don’t have a condom are going to abstain from sex, which is something the condom promoters say people can’t do.
As I said early FDB, the Church would be undermining it’s own teaching on sexual morality if it started promoting condom use, just as any women’s group that launched a campaign for rapists to wear condoms would undermine any anti-rape message they might wish to promote. The Church’s message to faithful Catholics on how to best avoid HIV is correct – abstinence and fidelity. FDB, could you explain to me how fornication and adultery (using a condom) fits into Pope Benedict’s call for a humanization of sexuality?
This might help you understand what the Pope is referring to with his call to a humanization of sexuality.
http://www.ccgaction.org/index.php?q=family/protectmarriage/principles/CatholicSexualEthics
I’m not quite sure how an atheist can engage in religious authoritarianism
.
Atheism is a form of religious authoritarianism. One is proclaiming that there’s no God. This premise is only a slightly better supported, on evidential terms, than that that says there is.
.
True there’s no organized Atheism in the sense of, say, the Greek Orthodox Church but without any compulsion to participate religion or the lack thereof only possess the authority you let ‘em possess.
.
Still Atheists make a metaphysical claim about the Divine that can be called an authority. Personally I think they should stop the Religion Wars and put all their efforts into discovering the Babelfish. If they find it and God exists, S/he won’t.
Scarily, Colin is absolutely correct about the Church’s position. The Church does not recognise the sinlessness of consensuality outside the bonds of marriage. This is the a priori position of the Church on these matters. Thus, the factuality of the effects of condoms on transmission of disease is subservient to the much larger aim of insisting upon, and where possible enforcing, Church doctrines on sexual behaviour.
But of course Colin’s insistence on the parallel between encouraging caution and responsibility in consensual sex and encouraging caution and responsibility for persons bent upon violent violation is both bizarre and grotesque.
Ah Currency Lad -
.
So instead of imposing the White Man’s (men CL?) Imperium viz condom use we impose the White Man’s Imperium v monogamy and abstinence. Okay. Would you care to explain how this will work amongst societies with a fierce patriarchy, a culture of male philandering and an obstinant refusal to use condoms even when the man knows they prevent deadly disease?
.
What you’re in effect saying is that because condoms aren’t solving the problem (because as you never fail to omit they aren’t being used) you expect instead that people will subscribe to Holy Mother Church’s formula of sexual management.
.
Indeed the Church has been so successful in bringing adultery to a screeching halt just look at the Italians.
Nope. Atheists show that the metaphysicians claims about the divine lack conceptual coherence and evidentiary support, meaning that when it comes to belief in deities, there’s no there, there.
@Adrien:
Actually, this atheist and many others merely note that we are not persuaded that there is a god(s). This is a negative belief, a lack of belief, not a positive dogma.
Atheists do not subscribe to the god belief. That is the definition of an atheist. Some go so far as to say god(s) definitely do not exist. Even Richard Dawkins, to whom you link but who is just a celebrity atheist, not an atheist leader, acknowledges a very small possibility that a supernatural creator might exist.
ETA: Deists are also atheists. They don’t subscribe to the theistic view of god i.e a personal god who intervenes directly in human history.
@Adrien:
There’s also a big difference between an authoritative argument and authoritarianism.
If you don’t have punishment for dissenting views (imprisonment, fines, shunning, excommunication) then it’s not authoritarian.
I thought that was agnosticism, and atheism was Dawkins without necessarily the belligerence.
@Laura:
Atheism is the rejection of Theism. Theism is not the only view of deity, it is merely one ontology. The term was first used to distinguish Theistic views of the nature of God from Deistic views of the nature of God in the 17th century.
Agnostics are not Theists, therefore they are A-Theists. Strictly, A-Gnosis is the view that the nature of deity is unknowable by humans (i.e. lack of any Gnostic revelation about the nature of deity). Popular usage has diluted A-Gnosis to “haven’t made my mind up” which is an egregious misunderstanding.
The philosophy of atheism is just as abstruse and convoluted as most other philosophies. Most people have as little idea about the history of atheism (eta) as most other philosophies, sadly, so it’s easy to just stick it on as a simplistic label.
Atheim is postive disbelief though isn’t it? That’s what I’ve always used and understood the word to mean.
@Laura:
What exactly is “positive disbelief”? To me it’s “I lack belief in god(s)” not a declaration that there can never possibly in the whole wide cosmos be any gods in any form. Some atheists take that further step into what is called the “strong” atheist position, or antitheism, but not all.
Like a lot of words that have been lifted from nuanced scholarly discourse and entered the public realm, the common usage of the word atheism differs markedly from the scholarly usage.
Most atheists who have read about the history and philosophy of atheism are well aware of these distinctions. Most other people (other than a few theologians) are not.
Benny Whatever is also putting shit on witches – well, sorcery actually. Ah. well, good to have a bit of variety. I was getting bored with condoms. Though I have to admit, I never thought so many words could be spilt about such a strangely shaped piece of latex.
P.S. I actually hate the old division of anti-theism as “strong a-theism” and a-gnosticism as “weak a-theism”. I’m a militant agnostic, not a “weak” atheist.
I’m unpersuaded that god(s) exist(s) (=> a-Theist).
I am also absolutely convinced that not only is it absolutely impossible for me to know the nature of any supernatural creator (=> a-Gnostic), it is absolutely impossible for anyone else to know the nature of any supernatural creator too (=> militant a-Gnostic).
I can’t know the nature of god(s), and nobody else bloody knows either.
There are lots of things I choose not to believe in without proof. Gods are just one of them. Seems silly to give it a separate name.
I really dig that old Christian tradition of Gnosticism as a kind of proto-atheism. The idea that a wacky, evil and capricious god roams around while the true loving god has gone off gardening or something. It’s terrific stuff.
Militant atheism? Is that like signing up for the atheist version of the salvos?
@Darin:
It’s only given its own name because religionists demand that unbelievers justify themselves unceasingly, so a broad philosophy of unbelief developed.
I’m also an A-Phrenologist, A-Homeopathist, An-Astrologist, An-UFOlogist and A-Psychicist, just off the top of my head. But nobody asks me to justify those all the time.
@David Rubie:
Now I really want a special A-Theist tambourine.
tigtog, your request answered in comments here.
@tigtog
Yeah, I can see that. It’s still amazing that they demand an entire sub-genre for “don’t know” though.
A-Gnosticism was/is a lot more than just “don’t know”, Darin. It’s actually a strong critique of metaphysical religious claims as Zarquon described in #266:
Those who argued against various forms of Gnosis (not just the ancient Gnosticism as alluded to by David Rubie) were making a strong critique of metaphysical claims that the Bible is “revealed truth” aka divine revelation, by pointing out all the logical and evidentiary problems with that claim.
Strict A-Theist arguments concentrate more on the conceptual coherence. Here’s a simple one – if God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then why is there still suffering?
If a god knows suffering will occur but cannot prevent it, then that god is not omnipotent. If a god knows suffering will occur, could prevent it but will not do so, then that god is not omnibenevolent. If a god does not know that suffering will occur in time to prevent it, then that god is not omniscient. At least one of these scenarios must be in place for suffering to still exist, so which is it? Is God not all-knowing after all? Or not all-powerful? Or not all-goodwill?
Let’s face it, an awful lot of suffering in the world could be alleviated just by God placing a hypnotic injunction in all our heads about greed and violence being so wrong, so literally unthinkable, so that every time someone imagined cheating or hurting someone else, they fell straight to the floor asleep for fifteen minutes. People with dysfunctional empathy would be asleep most of the day and people brimming with compassion would be the only ones who could get anything done. No muggings. No armed robberies. No rape. No murder. no child abuse. No war.
Just imagine that world, and seriously ask yourself: if God is actually the loving entity that Theists claim, why not make the world like this?
On the evidence of how the world is, the ancient Gnostics seemed to have a more representative picture of the psyche of a putative deity of this planet than modern Christians. of course, I’m not actually persuaded by the Gnostic theology either, but at least it’s more consistent with how the world actually is.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Tigtog @281
I rather like this version:
(Epicurus)
Anyway, it may be time for “old” condom humour. A Scottish man goes to a rubber product repairer and asks for a quote to repair said item with a small hole at the business end. “That’ll be one penny.” Scotsman departs but comes back a week later.
Katz@264,
You seem to be inching towards the relevant issue but you still haven’t quite got there. The Church DOESN’T tell people engaging in sex outside of marriage not to use condoms. It seems to me you think the Church does. What the Church does say is that the best way to avoid becoming HIV positive is to abstain from sex before marriage and to be faithful to your spouse. You seem to think this is bad advice – for society and individuals. People are free to ignore what the Church correctly teaches. But the Church is under no obligation to make you feel good about the irresponsible choices you may make with regard to your sexual practices.
And if you think consensual sex between a married man and a prostitute is morally okay, then good for you. However, if you were asked to explain to the man’s wife and children why such activity is morally acceptable what exactly would you say?
I suspect you don’t think to deeply about things. Maybe Pope John Paul II’s book “Love and Responsibility”, which he wrote in the 1950’s I think, might help you in that area.
Na. The Joy of Sex would be even more helpful.
You appear to be remarkably ignorant about Church teaching on the sinfulness of condom use. Any device that aims at negating the possibility of conception is expressly forbidden by Church teaching.
Moreover, sexual relations outside marriage of any kind, with or without protection, is condemned as a grave sin.
And you seem to be entrapped still in the maze of your own moral perfectionism.
Of course, absolute abstinence is the surest way to avoid HIV, just like the best way of avoiding industrial accidents is to stay in bed. But this isn’t particularly practical advice, as has been said too many times to merit a repetition of that well-rehearsed argument.
Nice red herring. The moral infraction here is the breach of faith implied in the marriage oath, not in the sex act itelf. It is not unknown for wives to encourage their husbands to seek sexual outlets with prostitutes.
You really need to attempt to think more clearly about these issues, with a mind unclouded by shopworn doctrines.
Wow. What classic internerds stoush:
http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/03/whose_worse_the_pope_or_the_co.html
What do you get if you cross a Mormon with an atheist?
Someone who knocks on your door for no reason at all.
…
Thank you thank you. Try the veal. It’s risen from the dead too.
Further to Katz @ 286 I’ve got two stories. One is that in the late 1970s my wife and I were in Sydney for a short holiday. We’d gone up the communications tower, the West Indies were playing Australia at the SCG in pyjama cricket, it was dusk and the lights had just come on. We decided to take a stroll up to King’s Cross for no particular reason. A few hundred metres from our destination a car pulled up, a young man hopped out and ran around the other side to open the door for his female companion. She emerged, obviously a hooker. With a peck and a “See you later, honey” he hopped in and drove off while she went about her work.
Around the same time a particular department in the Qld public service had a young married woman on the front desk who was known to be a nymphomaniac. Her husband used to take two nights off every week and ‘go out with the boys’ while his place was taken by a lover.
I’ve got other things to do than make moral judgements about how other people arrange their sex lives.
Heeeelp… the stoush is spreading… to our place, and in response to a CARTOON. Normally Deus Ex Macintosh’s offerings (like Ned the Bear’s over at Troppo) get one or two comments, a thanks for the chortle etc.
Not this time.
tigtog
Nobody would suggest you are a deist, but you flaunt a stunning lack of self-awareness in denying you are a theist
Nup. A-anything, = not-that thing. A – theist, not theist. Can it be any simpler? Perhaps a piece of two-be-four? (Note for the literal-minded, that was hyperbole. Thanks)
Ackshually, DoTW, I have been known to describe myself as a militant agnostic with intermittent Deistic yearnings.
Of course, for those who are unfamiliar with atheistic philosophies, that’s just a string of words. For those who do know their atheistic philosophies, it’s a precise position statement.
Jesus fucking Christ indeed, FDB. What a total trainwreck of a thread, from the original offensive quasi-sectarian LOLPOPE from the 4chan rejection pile to the bitter “is that Campari bottle seriously all that’s left? Fuck it let’s drink it straight and talk about God” end.
You know, one time I saw a thread bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ commenter left. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole thread. It smelled like … victory.
…
As to positive disbeliefs: TT, you can’t get around the central problem that any philosophy centred around the question of the existence of God(s) has to be itself, essentially, one that deals with a theological problem. You can’t piss on other people’s Gods and Monsters* and pretend to be above theology yourself when you come out with I’ll-have-it-both-waysisms like this:
And I’m not quite sure you’re using the word “belief” in the same way as the rest of us. You do quite clearly have a corpus of positive beliefs about how the existence or nonexistence of God(s) can be reasoned, they’re just not Scriptural or dogmatic. You can dress theology up in a lab coat and put it in front of a microscope, it’s still theology.
*Great film, you know. Who the hell knew that Brendan Fraser could act?
No, it’s not. It’s a philosophical dismissal of the validity of the whole field of theology.
“You can dress theology up in a lab coat and put it in front of a microscope, it’s still theology.”
And you can put epistemology in tails and a top hat, but it’ll never tapdance like ontology.
I’m a ‘strong’ atheist personally. I believe that there is no God, not that there might be but nobody’s found quite the righht way to convince me. Billions of people have have thousands of years to think up some compelling way of talking me around – would it be realistic or fair for me to say that they just haven’t been trying hard enough?
That’s as may be, Desipsis, but if you want the bus to the Enlightenment, you’ve got to catch the train to scepticism first, and change where it says “Question Of The Existence of Deities”.
I’m sorry, FDB, do you want to come back in and read that again?
Me, I’m a supporter of the Canterbury-Bankstown Teleologists. I do love a game of two halves.
And besides that, and further to nothing at all, growing up Catholic in Australia meant developing selective hearing when it came to papal pronouncements. That is to say, Catholics did what they liked. Had teenage sex when single even, took the pill, or not, used condoms (or didnt out of sheer stupidity), got pregnant and had abortions. And still went to church. I know you havent got that feeling from the two St. John Rivers commenting on this thread (arent there a few liberal Catholics who blog here too?) but thats just the way it was when I was going to Catholic school and in my own family.
Which is also to say, don’t you think that African Catholics might just be capable of using selective hearing too? Or not using condoms cause they are being stupid, rather than following the Pope’s pronouncements? It seems infantilising to me to think that Africans, unlike the much of the rest of the Catholic popularion, do not pick and choose right and wrong according to their own consciences (or lack thereof) – rather than uncritically listening to the Pope.
Take the last papal press release celebrating the washing machine as the biggest development in women’s liberation evah. I haven’t had the urge to pash my washing machine just yet and I suspect that African women wouldn’t either, given they probably dont have one anyway.
Aren’t we, all of us, – the Pope, the a-Popes, the peanut gallery, whatever – orientalising Africa just a little?
“I’m sorry, FDB, do you want to come back in and read that again?”
I don’t get you. Then again I’m pretty slow today.
@Microsoft Stoush Assistant:
No, I have a corpus of positive beliefs about how the truth status of certain religious claims about god(s) can be reasoned. That’s not at all the same thing as the overarching metaphysical question about the existence/non-existence of god(s), and the conflation of the two is one that I’m surprised to see you make.
My positive belief that all recorded human claims to any divine revelation from any deity are simply human delusion/invention has nothing at all to do with whether god(s) do or do not exist. They are two separate questions.
Evaluating hypotheses by building a model of the behaviour those hypotheses should predict is just evaluating hypotheses. Doesn’t matter whether the hypothesis is biological, astronomical, economical, political or theological. If the predicted behaviour cannot be observed, then there’s a problem with the hypothesis.
Is it your claim that I have a positive belief in clairvoyance because I apply exactly the same method to analysing the claims of its proponent?
Only if you start from positions arising from your own positive beliefs! Faithful people live their lives as if the two were indivisible. Both, in any case, are clearly questions well within the domain of theology.
You can test hypotheses about God—omniscience, omnipotence, benevolence, and so on as you’ve described—but all you’re doing is applying a scientific method to a question that, depending as it does on faith, is by definition untouchable by evidence. It’s the same problem extremely fundamentalist Christians run into when they elevate divine revelation into the realm of science and ontology: thelogy doesn’t belong there.
(I can’t believe, by the way, that this thread’s made it so far without mention of falsifiability or the Popperian method of testing claims to truth. WHAT WOULD POPPER SAY?)
There’s a more important problem, here, though, let’s face it, of sexual politics. The question isn’t about whether some people are justified in having a positive belief either in the trinitarian God of the Nicene Creed or in FDB’s positively asserted faithful un-God, it’s about whether many people should be allowed to wear condoms while they’re having sex.
That question’s not a theological one, and as Casey rightly argues, can be sorted out without kicking people’s theologies. You’re not going to change Catholic minds about safe sex by telling them that the Pope’s in it for the LULZ.
You’re not going to change Catholic minds about safe sex
by telling them that the Pope’s in it for the LULZ.It’s a software issue, not a hardware issue.
Casey @ 298,
I didn’t hang around long enough to be a liberal Catholic. First, I stopped going to Mass every day, then I stopped gong to Mass on Sundays, then I fell among anarchists, communists, atheists, occultists, witches,tarot card readers, astrologers, nice Protestants, friendly Jews, pleasant Muslims, secular humanists and before I knew where I was I didn’t believe in anything religious at all. Sixteen years later I got punched out in the New England Hotel in Armidale for telling jokes about the Pope. That’s when I knew I wasn’t a Catholic anymore, and the bloke who punched me out certainly wasn’t a nice Catholic. But I’ve met quite a few since.
Liam wrote:
Humour is the only known antidote to conservative stupidity Liam. You can’t use rationality or scientific studies on the faithful for the very reason you’ve highlighted (the domain of arguments simply do not intersect).
“Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games. Semiotics,
deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis, it all seems
like good, clean fun. But when the heart gets involved, all our
painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and
we’re reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It’s not
pretty.”
–Jerry Springer.
(H/T: John Quiggin)
FDB, if this is a slow day for you I can’t even imagine what you look like on a fast one. So, where do you put music on the spectrum between those two things?
DR @ 304 and Liam,
Besides which, apologetics (the art/science of defending the Catholic faith against non-believers) teaches that there’s no point arguing with people who are prejudiced – that is, people who think you’re a deluded victim of popery – because they got closed minds.
@Liam:
You assume that’s what I’m trying to do. What I’m actually trying to do is add my two cents worth to the movement that aims to shame the hierarchy for their disgustingly callous policies.
Catholics have, by and large, already made their minds up about safe sex and whether they plan to abide by the Vatican strictures against contraception or not. Most Catholics in the West think the condom rules are rubbish, and quite probably so do many Catholic in Africa.
But some men’s only justification for not using condoms when their partner would prefer them to use them, other than “I don’t like the idea”, is “the Church says that it is wrong”, which they use to shame their partners for even asking. I don’t want those selfish men to hide behind the Church any more while they endanger their partners’ health, and I want the hierarchy to stop enabling them.
Popery? Is that like mopery but with blind clergy?
I see you’re familiar with the scenic route. You must have seen where it says “Question about the Existence of Pink Unicorns.”. I think it was just past the unmissable “Question about Whether all Wigwams are Doodads.”. Going via those questions will let you see some interesting sights, but in the end the answers you find are equally irrelevant. You can still end up at Enlightenment because in the scheme of things the questions are meaningless. I prefer to take the “What is Knowledge?” express.
No, DR, as I recall it, there were the Popers, the Rockers, and the Mods. The Mods had two-stroke scooters, crew cuts and too-short trousers, the Rockers had blue jeans and British cafe racer singles and twins, and the Popers rode Encylicals imported from Rome. Pause, rimshot, canned laughter.
Tigtog, I don’t assume anything about what you’re trying to achieve. I’m not sure “achievement” and an image macro like the ones you’ve put up really should be associated.
In any event, there’s an unfortunate cycle of argument that always comes up in religious and sexual threads like these. Because the reproductive and sexual dogma of a Church is held on faith, it goes, the best way to change reproductive and sexual policy is to attack the basis of the faith itself. Humanae Vitae is one thing, Catholic faith is a larger, far more difficult target.
DR,
Been influenced by my recent reading. It is/was the term used by Puritans to describe Catholics and High Church Anglicans in the 16/17th centuries.
“Question about the Existence of Pink Unicorns”
The debate has moved on now Desipis. Invisible Pink Unicorns are now the main concern.
Unfortunately though, the What is Knowledge? Express doesn’t stop in Faithton, where a whole lot of folks come from, and where they were all given, free of charge, the Faithton Ontological Society’s notoriously tricky and dense Journey Planner (For Dummies).
Isn’t Popery an urn full of fragrant rose petals?
@Liam:
It’s just my 2c worth, Liam. Never claimed any more for it than that.
The first mention of atheism came when I was accused of being a religious authoritarian myself. I stand by my argument that atheists, being both unorganised as a movement and nonreligious, cannot in any way be religious authoritarians.
Since then it’s basically just been answering questions on my side.
tigtog wrote:
SSSHHHHHHH! You’ll give the game away tigtog. In the future, when asked, Atheists are actually a well organised esoteric sect who form a vast underground conspiracy. We secretly fund Rush Limbaugh, Fred Nile, Stephen Fielding and 60% of Catholic archbishops to make the overtly religious defend the ridiculous.
“…the Popers rode Encylicals imported from Rome.”
Vespers?
Nothing but net, Nabs.
Casey,
You might want to run your personal history against say a similar aged woman who grew up in Ireland, well until 10 years ago, or Romania, or about a dozen Latin American countries..not so easy to obtain the pill, and/or safe abortions in these places (amongst other issues), and which is why the Church’s pronouncements are still very important in countries where they may be the only providers of health services or the Govt is greatly influenced by the Church, (and obs for all other religions) in relation to health service options etc.
The reality otoh, is that ‘multiple concurrent partnering’ is very widespread even amongst married couples in many sub-Saharan countries – much more so than in the west and for a variety of reasons. Obviously many individuals are not overly influenced by the Church to date …so back to where we started.
Just FTR – the HIV-Aids epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa is at population wide levels. There has been enough links to experts and researchers on this thread for everyone to be aware that there is a serious debate among researchers about scaling up the “b” (fidelity) part of their programs (discouraging “multiple concurrent partnering”), based on the evidence to date, however while still maintaining the C and other programs, some which some conservatives also may not agree with, like needle exchanges etc.
Maybe these sort of messages need to be sewn up in a hi-morals campaign in different African contexts – I don’t know. Our early community wide campaigns which focused on the risks of ‘sleeping around’ – were pretty straight forward too – the ‘Bed’ campaign and the ‘Grim Reaper’ campaigns; “sleep with only one safe partner!! … or use a condom”
Anyway’s, dk.au’s post @287 is an excellent summation of the situation re: the popery.
And the French never miss an opportunity:
“St. John Rivers” lol.
“You might want to run your personal history against say a similar aged woman who grew up in Ireland, well until 10 years ago, or Romania, or about a dozen Latin American countries..not so easy to obtain the pill, and/or safe abortions in these places (amongst other issues), ”
But why would I? I wasn’t talking about that at all and the point of my argument did not relate to that issue. It related to 2 other issues detailed below.
And erm, lets be clear, its not ALL my personal history just for the record.
1) So without making any analogy between Australia and Ireland, or anywhere else you mentioned, it was about what I saw going on in the Catholic community of women here in Australia and I spoke about a lived experience of Catholicism specifically to counter the doctrine of perfection being preached by the Catholic men upthread who would have no idea, or rather, quite simply elide, the decisions Catholics (both men and women) make behind closed doors in Australia, regardless of what the Pope says. I tell you plainly that many Catholic women have abortions and use condoms. And have no prob with it.
2) Also, my whole point was not an unproblematic assertion about how easy these choices have been in Australia, la la la, without thought to how hard it has been elsewhere. I was arguing from a specifically postcolonial lens, against an essentialisation of Africans which renders them as childlike creatures who automatically follow every papal edict. That is a crock. Their choices will be influenced as much by their culture as we are ours, which in our case was the cultural revolution of the 60′s coupled with Vatican II and as you say, the freedom to obtain medical services. You have suggested this yourself and that is all I meant.
I want to say though that while abortion has not (and is not) medically avalaible in some countries, Catholics have, been operating outside papal edict concerning sexual and reproductive choice.
…since time immemorial. That is the lived experience of Catholicism. What the pope says and what people do about it are two different things.
Yeah fine, precisely my point.
The only representatives on this this thread. Iron fisted ram rod St John Rivers. If only they would look at the moon, whitely, once in a while….
Katz @286 says of the Church’s teaching on sex,
“Moreover, sexual relations outside marriage of any kind, with or without protection, is condemned as a grave sin.”
Hurray Katz you finally got it.
So if the Church teaches Catholics and anybody else who wishes to listen, that sex outside of marriage is a grave sin, why would the Church also teach the same Catholics to wear condoms, when everyone knows the promotion of condom use is aimed primarily at those involved in sex outside of marriage? I think you’re smart enough to see the conflicting messages.
Are you really asking us to believe that those people who reject the Church’s teaching on fornication and adultery are going to at the same time accept the Church’s teaching on the non-use of contraceptive devices?
It seems tigtog @ 308 has bought that argument. Tigtog says,
“But some men’s only justification for not using condoms when their partner would prefer them to use them, other than “I don’t like the idea”, is “the Church says that it is wrong”, which they use to shame their partners for even asking. I don’t want those selfish men to hide behind the Church any more while they endanger their partners’ health, and I want the hierarchy to stop enabling them.”
The Catholic Church enabling men to infect people with HIV? Jack Chick would be proud of you tigtog.
http://www.catholic.com/library/sr_chick_tracts_p1.asp
What about this mob tigtog they seem to think that anyone who knowingly passes on HIV just needs a big hug.
http://napwa.org.au/pl/2008/11/ashm-2008-unity-against-criminalisation
But tigtog your first paragraph @308 is telling. You say.
“What I’m actually trying to do is add my two cents worth to the movement that aims to shame the hierarchy for their disgustingly callous policies.”
The “movement to shame the Catholic Church” is motivated primarily out of hate. The Church refuses to affirm your sexual lifestyle and you hate her for it. This whole condom debate is simply a means to spread some hate and contempt for the Church.
@Colin:
You simply will not accept any effort made to distinguish between the decision-makers in the Vatican hierarchy and the body of the faithful, will you?
As long as various bishops, cardinals and popes keep on laying down callous policy that endangers their congregants, I will continue to say that the congregants deserve better.
Don’t presume to assume what my sexual lifestyle is. I’m sure you’d be horribly disappointed at how very chaste I am.
Both Colin and saint are marvellous at telling people what their sex life is like without any evidence. Vivid imaginations, I think. If only mine were as colourful as they seem to think. They also make the mistake of assuming that if you accept something is likely to occur (sex outside of marriage) then you want to make it compulsory. They are indeed the St. John Rivers of the blogosphere.
Still going in both places. This is classic, in its own way.
Word, Fine.
Bit hard on St John Rivers there, I reckon.
Nah, I reckon he deserves it Pav.
1. I’d like to be a world class root rat but the bible says “no”
2. That person is an atheist therefore has no reason not to be a root rat
3. general root ratting….
4. Profit!
Casey, was posting from work – bad me – and I sorta jumped at the my/my generation’s experience equals every catholic woman having similar autonomy.
But more so, that while this popery really doesn’t interest non-believers both internal and external for it’s own sake, it still does translate at all sorts of levels including importantly service delivery. You also pointed out the impacts of Vatican2 for instance, so without knowing all the in and outs – you’d have to say that Popery esp. for believers and co-dependents can be hugely impactful irrespective of the wandering flock/time immemorial. Catholics here for instance are at different times over-represented in abortion stats. meaning that contraception for some is still problematic etc.
In terms of infantilising Africans (& not sure if HIV-Aids in Africa was really much of a concern for some on this thread anyway)…but I would think that most population wide Govt. Health promotion campaigns infantilise their audience esp. if they are fudging some moral position for a greater health benefit outcome. And this is where the “reducing multiple concurrent partners” message without suggesting or use a condom is ah, um, interesting.
Anyways, Just say No!
Darin, that’s very funny. Well done.
Reading this thread makes me glad to be Jewish.
Cheers Jo. I will, I will say….what was it?
Further:
I think this APPALLING. It is barely contained mysoginy. How does it not break comments policy???
No Ive understated it. Its not barely contained. Its in flagrante delicto.
Mecurius @333
ok, ok, so how we do we know that Jesus was a Jew?
Come on, he didn’t leave home until he was 30…
Hey, he thought his mother was a virgin…
And she thought he was the son of God…
Only slighter older than the matzo ball soup, only kidding, it’s on special all week.
1. The pontiff didn’t argue against condoms on moral grounds. He argued about their alleged detrimental effects on health. If he were sincere the pontiff would have argued the moral line. But quite evidently, sincerity was not uppermost in his mind.
2. But again, unless the pontiff sincerely believes that condoms are used solely in sexual relations outside marriage, this argument is very weak and insincere. And what evidence can be adduced to suggest that condoms are more widely used outside marriage than any other method of contraception, including the approved “rhythm method”. (Alack, even the withdrawal method is also condemned. Rome decrees that no trains shall stop at Redfern.)
Is Missy Higgins a lipsnigerin’ Lutheran? That’s what I really want to know.
Marcus Einfeld? Oi vey, he was MADE for the phrase “cherchez la femme!” or, in his case: “cherchez les femmes!”
I’ve received an e-mail from Aavez launching a petition to Benny Whatever re his stupid AIDS statement. After the world wide uproar at his statement, they state there are signs from the Vatican that Benny will modify his statement. Those of you who are Vatican Watchers, as opposed to People Who LIke To Poke Fun At The Pope (I’m both) will know how arcane (and probably lengthy) this process is likely to be.
Because (a) its an e-mail (b) because it has a field in it and so probably wouldn’t stay up and (c) because I’m lousy at linking, I haven’t linked to it. But I assume you can google it.
Might I suggest we, very very briefly, stop the enormous fun this almost Lipsinger proportions thread has become, and join the Aavez petition?
sorry Mercurius, I don’t know what possessed me to post that very old joke last night…probably because my own part-Jewish heritage totalled in sum reading lots of the “best of Jewish humour” books as a young kid and living in Bondi……”A priest and a rabbi go to the movies”…sorry if I caused any offence.
yoiks – Einfeld (Syd really will be turning in his grave now.)
Jo – wasn’t he just fucking odious?
All that “I wouldn’t say that” and “I don’t think that’s why I did it”, and “I’m not dishonest, I just made a mistake… okay a whole bunch of mistakes”.
Word to the wise Marcus – when the “mistake” you make is to tell a lie, then compound the lies upon each other until you’re up to your neck in them and drowning… when that is the ‘mistake” you’ve made, that’s what we call dishonest.
He’s done some great advocacy work yada yada, but seems like an incredibly arrogant, deluded, almost unhinged fantasist.
I watched Underbelly. Would seem Marcus Einfield runs by the well established underworld code of:
1. Deny, deny, always deny; and
2. Never back down.
Guess he must’ve picked it up from his years on the bench.
Paul – yup. And even when you must (surely?) know that everyone knows you’re a liar, why keep it up? For a politician, I kinda understand – everyone knows they’re constantly caught between the simplistic and the nuanced, the surface and the depths, the populism and the principle, and they must occasionally bend the truth to steer the course – but a judge who’s already going to jail?
Surely he knows from professional experience that only a proper fessing up will do the job. Is there any rehabilitation possible after that performance last night?
Hats off to the cop who nailed Einfeld.
He made Raskolnikov’s interrogator look like a quitter.
Tictog – There’s also a big difference between an authoritative argument and authoritarianism.
.
True. In a society where freedom of and from religion obtains than there is no authoratarianism pertinent to matters of divine providence. Atheism is just as authoratative as religion no more no less. That is what I meant.
.
This is a negative belief, a lack of belief, not a positive dogma.
.
Not really, or maybe. The term anti-theist has been coined to describe those who actively seek to debunk religious belief. The term agnostic describes those who don’t know. To avoid semantic hairsplitting let’s just say that if one actively believes there is no God or supernatural explanation for the Universe etc than that is a positive belief. You’re not just saying you have an absence of belief you believe positively that there is no God.
.
Deists are also atheists. They don’t subscribe to the theistic view of god i.e a personal god who intervenes directly in human history.
.
No. Deists believe in God. They may not believe in a puppet master god but they believe in God nonetheless.
.
The real dividing line here tho’ is whether one believes that certain sacred texts should be imposed as law upon society and whether one believes that the human ethos is a human creation or the result of divine proscription. In other words is the law God’s or ours. If the latter than it doesn’t matter what you believe personally you shape the laws according to utilitarian expediency. (IMHO)
FDB, one can only conclude Einfield isn’t very bright, for all his qualifications.And as I intimated in my previous post, he’d HAVE to have known his behaviour was a manifestation of criminal psychology/pathology. But then again, in my lonely anarchist moments I truly believe most people in hierarchical positions of power have a criminal psychology, otherwise they wouldn’t have got where they were.(That includes Popes – just so I’m not OT.
)
Adrian wrote:
Eh? You can probably make that argument for a particular style or flavor of god (i.e. it’s a positive belief that the christian god as envisaged by Papa Ratzi does not exist) but to widen the definition of atheism that far doesn’t work. Absence of belief is orthogonal to belief/disbelief in the Abrahamic god, which I think is what Tigtog was saying.
Atheism for me has always that their will be natural answers for everything (i.e. the positive belief that natural processes govern the universe rather than supernatural), whereas agnosticism is more like “it’s unknowable and therefore irrelevent”. Positive belief that there is no god doesn’t quite cut it unless you’re talking specific examples as outlined above.
I have faith that there is no God.
Where does that leave me?
In the solipsist car park without a ride home FDB.
Luckily for me, my Panel Van o’ Positivism in parked in the corner.
Do you have faith that the old bastard will start?
Don’t bother knockin’ if you see the Panel Van o’ Positivism rockin’. And watch out fer the secondhand condoms tossed flagrantly out the window.
in esseda veritas
“in the chariot, truth”
A little rose petal pot pourri for youse roamin’ Romans.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Esseda.html
Tigtog @325 says,
“You simply will not accept any effort made to distinguish between the decision-makers in the Vatican hierarchy and the body of the faithful, will you?”
You seem confused tigtog. All of the faithful (hierarchy and pew sitters) together make up the “body of the faithful”. Moreover, I DO make a distinction between the bishops in union with the Pope, who are the authentic teachers of the faith, and the rest of the Catholic Church whose duties DO NOT include inventing doctrines that are opposed to Catholic teaching.
tigtog@ 325 continues,
“As long as various bishops, cardinals and popes keep on laying down callous policy that endangers their congregants, I will continue to say that the congregants deserve better.”
What policy are you referring to that you call callous? The one saying Catholics should abstain from fornication and adultery? You can improve on that can you? You seem to believe that those Catholics who ignore the Church’s teaching on fornication and adultery will suddenly listen to the Church if she tells such fornicators and adulterers to wear condoms? Is that what you really believe?
Also, what is your view about those people who oppose the criminalization of acts where people knowingly pass HIV onto another person as I mentioned in my above post @ 324?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/03/18/disgusting/#comment-669035
@Colin:
My you are tedious.
They are disgusting, callous and dangerous.
By the way Colin, what do you think of these news stories?
* Vatican in new row over attempts to alter Pope Benedict XVI’s Aids comments
* Vatican insiders declare the Pope a ‘disaster’
“…and the rest of the Catholic Church whose duties DO NOT include inventing doctrines that are opposed to Catholic teaching.”
Catholic teaching, say as such about birth control, which was of course not invented and just sprang, divinely ordained, into corporeal existence.
While we’re on the subject of catholic teaching and Panel Vans – what’s the church position on nose cones? Clearly the Belmont and Kingswood are unacceptable in thine eyes, but how to choose between Premier and Statesman grilles?
And how do you get the shag carpet to stick to the roof?
“And how do you get the shag carpet to stick to the roof?”
Seek solace in the good book my son. I do believe Psalms 137:6 has some handy pimp my ride tips about “cleaving to the roof”. Or was it about about bong mouth?
In the beginning, there was the word,
and the word was “Sandman”
And it was good.
Then Davo was created for to drive the sandman,
but he was lonely as he stretched out on the mattress
so he asked “Oi, how about a kohl eyed, eyebrow tweezered mate for me mattress?”
So thus was a ciggie taken from the winnie blues tucked in Davos’ t-shirt,
and Sheila was created, all bouncy pneumatic goodness.
And she was good. Really grouse.
Sheila doth observed Davos’ bollock hugging Wranglers and felt a strange stirring.
And, lo, did the Sandman rock. The rock of ages.
Here endeth the lesson.
But not the begatting hey mate?
Begetting is next week service Nabakov – now chuck your money in the plate (all of it this time, no half-inching 20 cent coins to waste on Galaxian) and don’t take more than one of the chocolate slices after the service. Net week I better hear some singing during the hymns too and less fidgeting when you’re kneeling.
He’s seen inside your black little soul, you know, and He is not amused.
“He’s seen inside your black little soul, you know, and He is not amused.”
Yes, one way or another, we’re all on a one way ride.
And, lo, The General was not amused with Shiela.
“Thou hast licked the sweat from his Adam’s Apple,
and tussled intertwiningly with his snake”
And thus, The General cast them out of the Sandman,
and into a brick veneer desert in the suburbs
and punished them thusly:
“Davo, you shall spend thine days knee deep in thy brothers shite,
and thy Sandman replaced with a Mitsubishi L300 full of tools,
with a drain snake to remind thee of thine own wickedness”
“and Shiela, thine days will be drudge filled and dull and thy growing belly
contains a kid with a giant head that will require thine episiotomy,
and thy shall be cursed to watch Days of our Lives, all the episodes with
Stefano DiMera, and Davo will be cursed never to find the washing machine for his shite stained trousers, so you’ll have to wash ‘em”
And, lo, did the weeping and gnashing of teeth begin.
And Sheila demanded that Davo cover his wickedness with rubber henceforth,
lest another giant head be conceived, because they’d already been delivered
unto hell as their offspring refused to sleep for two years and a little extra wicked at that point was of no consequence.
Thus endeth the lesson.
Tigtog @ 355,
You think those people at the National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Australia (NAPWA) are disgusting, callous and dangerous because they don’t want the deliberate sexual transmission of HIV made a criminal offence. Good, I with you on that. Are you aware of any other bloggers who share our opinion? Given that NAPWA is at least party funded by Australian taxpayers one would think those blogging here against the Pope would also be blogging against NAPWA and their disgraceful policy. Of course in reality most of those blogging against the Pope weren’t doing so out of concern for African people, but instead because they wanted to put their boot into the Pope.
And wow tigtog @ comment 356 you’re introducing conspiracy theories and anonymous Vatican insiders in a single post. It must have been a long day for you. But let’s play investigate the conspiracy theory game.
Firstly why would the Vatican do something like this that would be so obviously detected by her enemies?
But let’s look closely at the reporting.
Tigtog, the Guardian article you linked to at the start of this thread dated 17th March has the Pope saying these words: “…condoms were not the answer to the continent’s fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.”
The Vatican version of the Pope’s words dated 18th March, which I might add I linked to way back at comment 140, said: “…the scourge can’t be resolved with the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, there is a risk of increasing the problem.”
And from the promoters of the conspiracy theory we have this dated 19th March the Pope supposedly said: “that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”
Which of these 3 versions is the odd one out? If you can’t pick it tigtog I’ll tell you. It’s the third story created by the conspiracy theorists at the Telegraph. The original Guardian article you linked to says, “could make the problem worse”. The Vatican article published a day later says almost the same thing, “there is a risk of increasing the problem”. The conspiracy theorists at the Telegraph say something slightly different from both the above, “which even aggravates the problem”.
It’s also worth reading the actual question posed to Pope Benedict:
“Holiness, among the many evils that scourge Africa, there is also and in particular that of the spread of AIDS. The position of the Catholic Church on the way to fight against this is often regarded as unrealistic and ineffective. Will you address this topic during the trip? Very Holy Father, would it be possible for you to answer this question in French?”
So the journalist from the French media asked the Pope to answer in French. Presumably he did. The conspiracy theorists at the Telegraph, who seem to be shy on facts, tell us:
“But journalists who were on the Papal plane stood by the remark they originally attributed to the German-born Catholic leader.”
Just as the Telegraphs conspiracy theorists talk about “anonymous Vatican insiders” they also fail to tell us the names of those journalists who now claim the Vatican is lying. Anyway, how many of the journalists on the plane would have been able to understand what the Pope said if he answered the question in French?
Now tigtog when will you come to your senses and concede that the Pope’s words and the Catholic Church’s position are sound? Stop promoting conspiracy theories and admit the best advice any leader can give to a society scourged with HIV/AIDS, is for the people of that society to abstain from sex before marriage and remain faithful to their spouse.
When, Colin, are you going to accept that we get that abstinence works, if you can get people to be abstinent? That is the real problem here, the Church preaches abstinence, but can’t even uphold it in it’s own ranks ffs. Given that, why can’t the Church accept that people who refuse to be abstinent could use condoms and reduce the spread of HIV?
So the organisation for people living with HIV doesn’t want to make HIV transmission a criminal offence and this somehow means that Tigtog is wrong to say condoms are a necessary element in checking the spread of HIV? Or has anything at all to do with that argument? Col you’re desperate.
Get up to speed, Colin…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5wHLegCnmU&feature=related
Watch and listen to the Pope’s actual response. The Vatican transcript is clearly false. He certainly didn’t say ‘rischio/risk’, just for starters.
Mindy @366 says,
“…the Church preaches abstinence, but can’t even uphold it in it’s own ranks ffs. Given that, why can’t the Church accept that people who refuse to be abstinent could use condoms….”
For your benefit I’ll explain, as I have before, why your logic is flawed.
The first question you need to answer is:
Who is stopping those people who wish to ignore the Church’s teaching on fornication and adultery from using condoms? Does the Catholic Church? NO. The only temporal power the Catholic Church exercises is in the tiny Vatican State. So who stops people from using condoms? NOBODY.
But then you may reply that when the Catholic Church speaks it has the power to influence the actions of its members. But the Catholic Church can only influence the actions of those members, who wish to submit to the Church’s teachings. Everybody is free to ignore what the Catholic Church teaches, as sadly most people do.
But Mindy you would have us believe that those Catholics who choose to ignore the Church’s teachings on fornication and adultery are somehow forced, either mentally or physically, into adhering to the Church’s teaching on contraception i.e. not using condoms.
What a strange world you must live in.
Helen @ 367,
I’m not sure how you’ve managed to come to that conclusion. If you followed the thread you would have realized I was simply questioning the real motives behind tigtog starting this thread. At comment 308 tigtog made the claim:
“What I’m actually trying to do is add my two cents worth to the movement that aims to shame the hierarchy for their disgustingly callous policies.”
Apparently for tigtog, trying to promote a culture where Catholics do not fornicate or commit adultery is a disgustingly callous policy.
At comment 308 tigtog also made the outrageous claim that the Catholic hierarchy was enabling men to infect other people with HIV. In response to that claim I implied @ 324 that maybe tigtog’s motivation for starting this thread wasn’t so much concern for those at risk of HIV infection, but that he was following in the footsteps of that great anti-Catholic nut case Jack Chick whose diatribes against the Catholic Church seem to be motivated by hate as oppose to reason. I raised the issue of NAPWA opposing the criminalization of deliberate transmission of HIV to see if tigtog was going to defend that group.
It’s interesting that @ 325,tigtog chose not to condemn NAPWA. It was until I questioned tigtog again at comment 354 that tigtog responded at comment 355.
What about you Helen what are your views on NAPWA’s position that the deliberate passing on of HIV should not be criminalized? I’ve noticed that that darling of Progressives Michael Kirby also opposes the criminalization of deliberate HIV transmission.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/16/2304735.htm
So is Michael Kirby’s position disgusting, callous and dangerous like NAPWA’s? If it is how come the blog world (at least in Australia) didn’t come alive with people condemning the then Justice Michael Kirby’s position?
My theory is that Progressives generally hate the Papacy. As such they will use any issue to beat the Papacy about the head. Most of those condemning the Pope of late are not doing it out of concern for those who may contract AIDS but because they hate the Pope.
In a nutshell Helen why do people come out in force to criticize the Catholic Church’s belief that abstinence/fidelity is the best way to stop the spread of HIV, and label such a policy as disgusting, yet remain silent when one of Australia’s peak HIV/AIDS organizations as well as one of Australia’s top judges says people who deliberately pass on HIV to another person should not face criminal sanctions?
“Everybody is free to ignore what the Catholic Church teaches, as sadly most people do.”
No, people are free to selectively abide by or ignore the Church’s dictates. So, when the Church tells them not to screw around, they might think “hmm… well actually I’d prefer to screw around”, and when the Church tells them condom use is sinful (and now dangerous too), they think “now THAT one I can abide by”.
People LOVE having sex. It’s a biological drive, that really takes some beating off (a-BOOM tish!!!). Advice against it has this to contend with.
On the other hand, even those who use condoms generally think of them as a bit of a hassle. Advice against things which are a bit of a hassle, to the effect that they’re also sinful and “make the problem (of HIV/AIDS) worse”, is much easier to follow.
What about this is difficult for you to grasp? Seriously, I want to know. It seems so simple to me.
What’s the point of hating the papacy when its irrelevant.
Colin, the Catholic church has just a smidgin more power and influence in the world – and that’s literally the world, not just here – than a ginger group of marginalised HIV positive people, wouldn’t you think?
You have also misrepresented this group, of course. They are taking the usual sensible argument that harm minimisation results in fewer deaths than does criminalisation – of infecting others, not deliberately infecting others. In the case of deliberately infecting others, I see they recommend having a last-resort kind of action. They are not coming out in favour of deliberately spreading HIV, as you want us to think.
Disgusting? This is disgusting… (Those with small children or about to have one might like to stay away from this link.)
“But Mindy you would have us believe that those Catholics who choose to ignore the Church’s teachings on fornication and adultery are somehow forced, either mentally or physically, into adhering to the Church’s teaching on contraception i.e. not using condoms.”
As FDB has pointed out, people won’t be abstinebt because they love having sex, so they’re not going to stop no matter what the Pope says. But, hey, they could be persuaded to wear a condom, because they still get to have sex.
FDB @ 371 says,
“…people are free to selectively abide by or ignore the Church’s dictates. So, when the Church tells them not to screw around, they might think “hmm… well actually I’d prefer to screw around”, and when the Church tells them condom use is sinful (and now dangerous too), they think “now THAT one I can abide by”.”
FDB, that you seem to consider such an argument to be reasonable is hilarious.
You’re correct in saying “People LOVE having sex. It’s a biological drive, that really takes some beating off…”
However, it is also true that when the sexual urge is not ordered to God’s plan for humanity (i.e. natural sex between a man and a woman in a permanent marriage) then sexual acts can cause immeasurable harm to both individuals and society at large. Whilst anyone can have a simple faith that is sound and productive, the Church does not adjust its teachings to accommodate simpletons who think their disregard for the Church’s teaching on fornication/adultery can be ameliorated by accepting the Church’s teaching on contraception.
I understand that you don’t “get it”. I didn’t in my atheists days of old either. The following link to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae may be of help.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html
Paul Burns @ 372,
Yeah, keep thinking the Papacy is irrelevant (lol).
Helen @ 373,
I never accused or implied that NAPWA or Michael Kirby supported the deliberate spreading of HIV. Shame on you for saying so. I simply raised the point that NAPWA and Michael Kirby opposed the criminalization of deliberate HIV transmission. And to my thinking such a position warranted a response from those in the blogging world concerned with the spread of HIV, particularly since so many bloggers have responded to the Pope’s comments.
I must admit reading the story you linked to I was at a loss as to what it had to do with this thread… until I got to the last paragraph which says:
“Once again, I am confirmed in my opinion that Christianity is a breeder of evil, a cesspit in which the most hateful and inhuman commitment to lies and delusions can ferment. Don’t ever preach at me about Christian morality: I’ve seen it, and it is empty of love for humanity, replaced with sanctimonious idolatry and commitment to dead, dumb superstition.”
I think the author of the above paragraph has “issues”.
Colin wrote:
It’s called confirmation bias Colin – well researched and well understood. That people who like sex but don’t like condoms will use any excuse not to use one is not particularly remarkable. The catholic church knows this.
David Rubie @ 377,
If you want to call the scenario that FDB described an example of “confirmation bias” then so be it, although in my opinion the definition of “confirmation bias” as given at your Wikipedia link seems to better describe those who oppose the Catholic Church’s position on HIV prevention.
Even if the Church did change it’s position on condom use the simpleton in FDB’s example would simply think up another irrational argument to try an justify his non-use of condoms during his acts of fornication/adultery. So you’re still left with Mr Simpleton not wearing a condom.
Isn’t FDB’s attempt to justify HIS opposition to the Catholic Church’s position on HIV prevention by using the example of Mr Simpleton a better example of confirmation bias? And indeed couldn’t the same be said of most of those on this thread attacking the Pope. They ignore the evidence put up by Saint, CL, and I that the promotion of condom use is not solving the problem of HIV transmission, whilst promoting abstinence/fidelity does seem to be more successful.
In Edward Green’s critique (link below) of the West’s approach to HIV prevention he says:
“One must ask whether they [those working in HIV prevention] are more concerned with upholding a Western notion of sexual freedom or with saving lives. Their concern over any prevention approach that might be “moralistic” causes them to miss entirely the evidence for the remarkable success of sexual-behavior change in reducing HIV infections.”
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6172
The bottom line is that many people commenting on this thread don’t want to see a society where fornication and adultery are again frowned upon. For these people it’s important for the Catholic Church’s approach to HIV prevention to either fail or appear to fail. For such people sexual freedom is more important than HIV prevention.
The bottom line is that a few people commenting on this thread don’t want to see a society where fornication is not controlled by Authoritarian celibate men. For these people it’s important for the Catholic Church’s approach to HIV prevention to either succeed or appear to succeed. For such people control of others sexual activities is more important than HIV prevention.
One might ask Green’s question, but not before checking the report he cites as reflecting ‘the thinking of many international organizations, including many of the faith-based organizations that respond to AIDS’, Faith Communities Engage the HIV/AIDS Crisis. On the report’s lead authors, Green says:
That quote has, quite blatantly, been lifted out of context and misread:
Colin wrote:
No. Read the article on confirmation bias again, closely this time.
Where is this proof that abstinence promotion is “more successful” than the distribution of condoms? Do you have a special definition of “successful” like C.L had a special definition of “true”?
“…whilst promoting abstinence/fidelity does seem to be more successful.”
You’d need to cum in on a wing and prayer to provide empirical proof of that.
Except that, according to one theory angels angels are sexless beings. But, according to another theory, we got into all this shit about weird attitudes to reproduction because the Sons of God mated with the Daughters of Men. Sort of got into it, anyway. (How different would the world be without the Book of Genesis?)
Sigh. It’s not an “argument”.
It’s a description of reality. Do you find it an implausible one?
Is there any point bothering, FDB? You’re dealing with a man who calls sex ‘fornication’.
I think he lives in his own special reality FDB and Fine.
Sometimes I’m just interested, from a purely disinterested POV mind, in how long someone can keep being obtuse.
Colin’s got promise – he’s already outlasted two Grandmasters on this thread (though I suspect CL’s heart was never really in it).
Just keep on goin’ then FDB and see what other pearls emerge.
No, no. Not fornication, forniCATion. You have to get the inflection right.
Also,
BLASphemy. SINS of the flESH. RIGHTeous ANGer. etc.
Plus, don’t forget to point your finger forcefully skyward and wobble your jowels, while consulting an open bible on a podium without ever reading it. Ever.
Yes, the emphasis should be on the third syllable. And there needs to be a docile wife looking earnest somewhere in the picture.
Fornication is sex outside marriage. Sex inside marriage, so long as its yer missus, ain’t fornication. Just sayin’.
Ah here we go again. Colin argues his POV quite carefully and all you lot can do in the end is come back with childish ridicule. How pissweak !
“Sex inside marriage, so long as its yer missus, ain’t fornication.”
I thought it was if you wore a condom.
PP @ 392,
I was brought up a Catholic. I know how to split hairs. Are you inferring my defintion of fornication, as defined by the Catholic Church, is wrong?
FDB @ 393,
No, that’s contraception, which according to the Catholic Church, is a no-no whether you use a condom, the pill, an IUD or coitus interruptus. Sex is for having lots of little Catholics (if you’re a Catholic.)
Actually PP, lots of people have offered well-argued rebuttals of Colin’s position.
The problem is that he never engages with them – just uses them as a launching point for yet another iteration of the same tired assertions. See above.