Fighting fornication

Is it morally right for a State organisation to promote an abstinence-only policy? In a real society, the question would not be phrased this way. Instead, the question would be: Is an abstinence-only policy the most effective method of reducing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases? In Trinidad and Tobago, however, the religious spokespersons have succeeded in making the debate about morality. Of course, they have couched their arguments in supposed facts: mainly, that promoting condom use does not reduce STDs and that abstinence-only policies work. But this is just camouflage for their true reason: that they believe fornication to be sinful. In March 2000, Catholic fundamentalist Professor Courtenay Bartholomew told an AIDS conference, “Whereas the faithful use of a condom may indeed lower one’s risk of HIV infection, unfortunately, on the other hand, it promotes and increases promiscuity world-wide.” To enthusiastic applause from the mainly religious audience, he added that God often sent plagues to punish mankind.

Since stopping fornication is these people’s underlying motive, they see nothing wrong with telling untruths in order to further their cause. Their favourite lie, most recently voiced by Dr Peter Gentle, is that condoms do not protect against HIV infection. Now me, I consider this a gross abuse by Dr Gentle of his position as a medical practitioner. But I do not expect the TT Medical Association or MPATT to censure Gentle or even issue a statement to correct his misinformation: after all, they’re far too busy asking for favoured treatment for murder-accused Dr Vijay Naraynsingh. However, every authoritative body agrees that condoms, when used correctly, do provide protection against STDs. One study in the New England Journal of Medicine observed heterosexual couples over an average period of 20 months, where one person was HIV-positive and the other not. Among 124 couples who used condoms consistently and correctly, no infection occurred.

Where condom use was inconsistent, however, ten percent of the HIV-negative partners became infected. The US Food and Drug Administration says that proper condomuse decreases exposure to HIV 10,000-fold. The other lie that the anti-fornicators like to promote is that abstinence-only policies are effective. Newsday columnist and devout Catholic Marion O’ Callaghan has, for example, touted the usual propaganda of Uganda reducing its HIV-infection rate through an abstinence-only programme. But, as is often the case with O’Callaghan’s claims, you have to ask: What’s the truth? Well, according to a 1999 Population Report published by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the Ugandan programme is a comprehensive plan. “In 1991, Amulti-sectoral programme began, including condom distribution and promotion involving popular songs and drama groups, counselling, and support services,” the report notes. “In 1995, a nationwide promotion campaign started — with songs and soap operas, dr ama, posters, and other approaches promoting safe sex, abstinence, fewer sex partners, and condom use among young people.

There was a subsequent rise in age at first sexual intercourse and in monogamy and a decrease in HIV prevalence, especially among young people. The use of condoms has increased substantially among young people. Among men ages 15 to 19, the percentage who had ever used condoms rose from 20 percent in 1989 to about 60 percent in 1995.” In the United States, where this nonsensical abstinence idea started, a study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that abstinence-only programmes do not work. Researchers found that teenagers who made public pledges of abstinence had the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those who didn’t. Significantly, only 40 percent of males who pledged abstinence used a condom during sex, as compared to 59 percent of non-pledgers. And female non-pledgers were twice as likely as female pledgers to go for STD tests. But nobody whose brain isn’t corrupted by religious morality would need such studies to prove the dangers of promoting an abstinence-only policy (and those whose brains are so corrupted can never be convinced by any empirical or logical arguments).

Even a superficial knowledge of history and human psychology tells us that adults have always attempted to control young people’s sexuality and, in all but the most repressive or primitive societies, have always failed. Even the threat of HIV-AIDS will not change this, since young people always feel invulnerable. Abstinence-only messages may well get through to many of them, maybe even most of them. But does this mean that the State and persons in authority should avoid condom education for those who consider abstinence absurd or who may not have the choice to be abstinent? I hold that anyone who supports such a course of action is an immoral human being. The anti-fornicators also argue that comprehensive sex education would lead to social chaos and collapse. What does the evidence show? The Netherlands, with its liberal attitude towards sexual matters, also has the lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the world and, despite both prostitution and marijuana being legal, negligible STD infection rates.

(It is perhaps also worth noting that the Netherlands consistently ranks in the top ten of Transparency International’s least corrupt nations.) It seems fair to say, then, that anyone who promotes abstinence-only, apart from being either ignorant or a damned liar, is also promoting a grossly immoral policy. They are doing so because, by helping hamstring a rational approach to sex education and HIV-prevention, they are adding to the sum of human misery. Nor can one say that their effects are negligible: the Education Ministry, which is best-placed of all State departments to affect behavioural change, promotes abstinence-only in schools. A rational policy would, obviously, promote abstinence as well as condom use. But, for the moralists amongst us, that will not do. It is not enough that they oppose fornication for themselves: they don’t want anybody else fornicating, either. This is because, in the final analysis, their motive isn’t really about morality: it is about power. And you know what they say power tends to do.