Do some ordinary thinking, Mr Baldeosingh

THE EDITOR: I note that some time ago Kevin Baldeosingh attacked me on the question of abstinence, AIDS and Uganda. I have worked as a social anthropologist in parts of Africa and supervised PhD theses on the question of women in some African countries. I am therefore not particularly ignorant about African societies. In Uganda, as in many African countries particularly those who feed their male labour to mines or plantations, there is an agrarian crisis which drives poor young girls to the cities. There both social pressure and poverty make them easy prey to the “Sugar Daddies” or to full-scale prostitution.

Abstinence campaigns have not only presented abstinence as an alternative to early sex but have established support groups for these girls, undermining the Sugar Daddy syndrome. All who have worked on AIDS in Uganda agree that it is false to say that only abstinence is responsible for the decline in HIV infection. It is equally false to state that the decline was only due to condom use. Abstinence campaigns in at least postponing sex for a few years until girls are more mature, and in saving from “Sugar Daddies,” have been one of the important factors in the decline of HIV infection. May I underline that even when we add the impact of condom use to that of abstinence, the decline cannot be fully explained outside of other social factors. 

Kevin Baldeosingh bashes abstinence as somehow the supposed lack of freedom of the Catholic Church. Any relationship of love between a man and a woman or between gays for that matter, always supposes abstinence as a component of loving. One does not pick up a partner for a one night or week long stand because someone you love is ill or temporarily abroad. If you did the bond of trust would be broken. This is so whatever you believe or do not believe, and in spite of the determination of the sexual revolution advocates to disassociate sex from fidelity.

May I take the opportunity to make one remark on Kevin Baldeosingh’s principal reference: Bertrand Russell. Those of us who knew Bertrand Russell in his later years knew a complex, unhappy and na?ve man, not nearly the agnostic with all the answers that Kevin Baldeosingh presents, and completely manipulated by his young partners. The last of these, an American man, is now suspected as having been a CIA agent. It would seem to me that it would help if Kevin Baldeosingh checks his facts and does some ordinary thinking, rather than his depending on cynical sniggering to give the impression of knowledge. Not everyone is fooled or impressed.

MARION O’CALLAGHAN
Woodbrook