cool article, interesting quote

Unfortunately the RC Church and the US position is that you should abstain from sex unless married and that condoms are not Gods way.

This has caused an increase in aids and unwanted children.

What would be better is to get contraception out there and in use. This would cut both the aids and the increase in children. Unfortunately the Catholic church and the US government aid is working against it.

Preaching abstinence has never worked anywhere.

While I think "who is living off the 84 cents that doesn't go to the child".

Oyster sauce in cooking is fine, so maybe the oysters themselves taste all right. It's just that they look like a bad cold in a seashell... But ironically, I'm a fish-eating vegetarian ("What do you call a vegetarian that eats fish? A sell-out"), so it's the bacon I don't eat.

mvh.,

David

There were news stories about the African natives making necklaces out of birth control pills on TV years ago.

It's got worst now. All the US aid is being pumped into evangelical church groups whose idea of aids relief is to preach abstinence. It is being removed from groups who were doing a lot of good but were not pushing the Christian message.

Overall in those areas the situation is deteriorating rapidly.

It's no accident that most cultures have always had some level of condemnation of promiscuity; it's dangerous. Cheap antibiotics resulted in a temporary relaxation of the pressure to not screw around, but AIDS and resistant bacteria are here now.

In most of Africa, neither condoms nor AIDS drugs are affordable. Monogamy (which is different from abstinence) is free. If the Christians aren't successful in promoting monogamy, natural selection will be.

John

How effective has that been?

Effective enough that the prohibitions have remained, and the societies without any mostly disappeared, and are disappering even today, as villages in Africa and parts of Asia are being stripped of young adults. In any group, the propagation of STDs increases dramatically with the mean number of sexual partners. If humans mated monogamously for life, there would be no STDs... all that's pretty obvious. Things were pretty wild and wholly, even within the Catholic church (read some Chaucer) until syphilus swept into Europe in, what, the 1400's? The resulting "morality" was a sensible biological defense.

There's a billboard I see, driving home from work, that suggests people donate to AIDS vaccine research so that we can "date without fear." The word "date" is of course, in this context, a euphemism for "go wild and screw a lot of strangers."

John

I like a "Slow Comfortable Screw" myself ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Whoa. That's harsh.

Steve

One serious flirtation with Sloe Gin is enough to last a lifetime.

Rum is my liquor of choice, and I remain faithful to it. Well, a little cognac on the side now and then, maybe.

John

Isn't that "Sloe Comfortable Screw"? ;-)

I don't like rum at all.

Chardonnay is my drink of choice, Drambuie if I have an urge for something stronger. Of course an occasional Scotch or Jack Daniels works too, or a Saketini or an Appletini ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Sure is. Viruses are not nice people.

John

When I was in school, they used to say, "You only get sick from [drinking too much] Southern Comfort once..."

Regards, -=Dave

Of course it's "sloe" gin, but the drink name commonly uses "slow". It's a woman's drink, they get giddy just placing the order ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Heh.

Actually I meant equating membership of a given culture with a death sentence. ISTR something like that was tried in the 30s and 40s, and it didn't work out too well...

Steve

I only wish that were true... it took three incidents during my high school/college career to teach me - but now even the scent is enough to turn my stomach.

Condoms are readily affordable by most every African and donors to same (about 2.5 cents each US wholesale). Education and distribution is the challenge, and it's hindered by the faith-based ideologues and their junk science 'faulty intelligence'. Anybody who can afford a hooker anywhere in the world can afford a condom (really he can't afford not to use one).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany