|
Dear Friends
I wonder how many have heard about the strange "condom controversy" underway in Kenya.
It began when Doctor Nelson Muiru of the National AIDS Control Council made a strange series of claims.
He admits that his organization is in possession of a banner that was
stolen from Human Life International's Kenyan affiliate, adding that
the NACC will remove any other such banners placed in public places.
Yet, NACC Regional Director Muiru also tells reporters "I heard they
are saying we confiscated their banner, that is not the case we are
just holding it."
We had hoped that the journalists
of Kenya would have a field day with this, yet it has only been
challenged by our affiliate. When an official like Dr. Muiru feels free
to openly contradict himself in public, he expects some help from the
media in covering it up.
Nor is this the NACC's only
contradiction. The more serious one has to do with Dr. Muiru's odd
statement: "We have made a great step towards achieving 'Zero
Infection' but the church seems to be pulling us back to 1980s. We
won't allow this to happen anywhere in this country."
The message on the stolen banner is completely factual, a graphic
representation of the condom producers' own admission and other
researchers' well known claim that, on average, one in twelve condoms
fails. There is little factual debate over this, as Dr. Muiru and every
knowledgeable public health journalist know. And if one in twelve
condoms is likely to fail, how safe will you feel using one if you are
with a person who has Aids? Should you feel safe?
Would you eat at a restaurant if every twelfth customer was poisoned?
Dr.
Muiru's continued employment with the NACC depends on you answering
"yes" to these questions. A large part of his job is to get as many
Kenyans as possible to feel "safe" using a product with a one-in-twelve
failure rate, even when the failure of the product can lead to death.
His agency, as every knowledgeable public health journalist in Kenya
knows but has yet to report, receives a great deal of its funding from
Western sources - the exact same groups who think that there are too
many Africans and that "overpopulation" threatens the lifestyle of
"elites" in the West.
Dr. Muiru knows that the
HIV/Aids pandemic began not because people followed the ancient and
very well-known position of the Catholic Church: that sex should occur
only within the exclusive, lifelong, sacramental union of marriage
between one man and one woman. Indeed, if men and women only had sexual
relations with one person their entire life, every scientist knows
that the disease would never have been able to spread. The disease was
spread by those who clearly rejected this teaching and chose multiple
sexual partners. Every epidemiologist knows this is true, yet they
continue to blame the Church for the actions of those who reject Church
teaching.
So Dr. Muiru's most serious contradiction
is not his nonsensical claim that his organization did not confiscate
the banner that it now possesses and will not return. His most serious
contradiction is in his propaganda that would have Kenyans feel "safe"
using a product that fails, on average, with every twelfth use.
Further, his attempt to blame the Church for the actions of those who
obviously rejected Church teaching is common but flagrantly dishonest.
Like his Western funders, he needs a "bad guy" to campaign against,
even if he has to grossly misrepresent the facts. If he fails, he may
well lose his job, and his sponsors will find someone who is better at
getting Kenyans to feel safe as they engage in risky behavior with
inadequate protection.
Our affiliate has gladly
offered to hold a debate with Dr. Muiru and see if he can publicly
address why he is telling Kenyans that they should feel safe using a
product that fails as often as condoms do. They also hope to discuss
the sources of funding, which are not listed on the NACC's web site,
but are easy enough to find with a basic web search. Let us discuss the
incredible reversal of HIV infection rate in Uganda in the 1990s as
the emphasis was shifted from a condoms-first policy to one of
abstinence and fidelity, and why, as condoms are again being given
priority in Uganda, their HIV infection rate is again on the rise. 
By
all means, let us have this conversation, even if the journalists of
Kenya will not cover both sides of this very strange story. Our
affiliate, their perspective mostly ignored in the press, has taken to
the streets with their message of responsibility and chastity as the
best way forward for a nation that wants to flourish.
Let
us also further discuss all that the Catholic Church has done for Aids
victims all over Africa, with corporal works of mercy performed by
those whose love for Jesus Christ moves them naturally and joyfully to
serve those most in need. These heroes see the on-the-ground truth of
what sadly happens when the Church's prophetic moral and social
doctrines are ignored and hidden, even as the Church is blamed for not
accommodating the pathologies of the mainstream culture.
We
must be unafraid to proclaim that sin - including sexual sin - has
eternal consequences for those who do not repent and turn back toward
God. That these same sins have destructive earthly consequences will not
surprise anyone who knows that we were made by the same loving Creator
who created all of nature, who Himself continues to call us to accept
his mercy and forgiveness if we will only seek it out and act
accordingly, in truth.
|
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Father Shenan J. Boquet
President, Human Life International
|
|
| 
