Pro-Family Leader Calls for World AIDS Day to Focus on Prevention Successes
by Bill Fancher
December 2, 2003
(AgapePress) - They're promoting the problem but missing the solution. That's what one pro-family activist says of the agencies that fight the AIDS epidemic on a worldwide level.
Monday was World AIDS Day. The event has been observed since 1988, and this year's theme was "Stigma and Discrimination." One Christian activist -- Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Call to Renewal -- says Christians should show the same compassion for AIDS sufferers that Jesus showed for lepers.
Wallis joined other activists outside the White House yesterday, insisting that President Bush provide $3 billion in the first year of his five-year $15 billion global AIDS initiative. And the Vatican used the opportunity to renew its call for people to practice chastity as "the main way for the effective prevention of infection and spread of HIV/AIDS."
Bob Knight | |
Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute does not expect the meetings across Capitol Hill on Monday in observance of World AIDS Day to accomplish much in the way of ending the killer disease. "World AIDS Day is usually an exercise in self-congratulation," Knight sways. "All the agencies that have promoted policies that have been disastrous pat themselves on the back and say, 'Gee, we have to do more.'"But Knight says until they abandon their "safe sex" message and promotion of the homosexual lifestyle, people will continue to die. He has a suggestion:
"I would like to see World AIDS Day be a refocusing on programs that work, like the one in Uganda where they've cut the AIDS rate considerably by emphasizing abstinence and fidelity within marriage," he says. "The rest of World AIDS Day just seems designed to call more attention to the problem, but not to solutions to the problem."
So is there any benefit to the observance? "If World AIDS Day does any good, it would be to remind us of the terrible human toll that AIDS is taking all over the world [and] that we shouldn't forget [those suffering from the disease]," Knight says.
He adds that pro-family groups should be encouraged to work harder to get the right message out, which he says is not the "safe sex" message but instead messages of chastity before marriage and fidelity within marriage. "This is the only thing that works," the pro-family spokesman says.
According to United Nations' estimates, 37 million adults and 2.5 million children were living with HIV at the end of 2003; an additional 5 million new people became infected with the virus during the year. About half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they reach the age of 35.
