31/03/08

Catholics proclaim being faithful kills

I’m not easily shocked. Really. But I have to say that the hairs rose on the back on my neck when I saw this:

tanzania anti condom ad

A catholic NGO, calling itself Human Life International, has put up three of these billboards in Tanzania. It’s president, Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, crows about this achievement on a Catholic web site, and immediately sticks his hand out for cash:

Now that you see the impact our billboards are having, I need you to send HLI the largest gift you can so we can spread this program to every one of the 55 nations on the continent of Africa!
The cost to do so is prohibitive … $6,000 per country (that’s how much we sent Emil Hagamu, our man in Tanzania, to erect the three billboards) … times 55 countries … equals $330,000! That money will enable HLI to erect three billboards in each country.

He is lauded by promoters of the wider spread of HIV, such as Jill Stanek, whose grasp on epidemiology is a feeble as her moral logic. To Jill’s credit, she’s one of the few of the anti-condom evangelists who actually allows comments on her site. Others, such as Brown Pelican, Doug Laurence et al propagate this stuff without allowing others to have their say. Tanzanians themselves are appalled by the billboards’ insidious suggestion that condoms do not protect against HIV. Read this editorial from The Citizen, for example.

On the “clouds and silver linings” front, I suppose I could say that Human Life International are equal opportunity slanderers. Because after all, doesn’t this poster also suggest that if you’re faithful, you’ll end up a skeleton sooner rather than later?

This post was published on 31/03/08 in Condomania, Ideology and HIV, Pisani's picks.

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5 comments

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  1. Comment by Willie, 01/04/08, 11:14:

    Truly shocking and should be widely publicised, not least amongst the majority of Catholics in Britain who happily ignore their Church’s teaching on contraception.

    Only last week, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, had an article in The Guardian and had the audacity to talk about the Catholic Church’s work in Aids prevention.

  2. Comment by sophia, 18/07/08, 04:53:

    Although I do find it difficult to cope with given the extent of STDs in the developing world and especially given the lesser ability to treat them, still, the fact is that according to the Church it is objectively immoral to use condoms. They didn’t just invent that idea out of nowhere because they want people to get diseases but because they believe all contraceptive acts are immoral, they sort of fudge around the NFP issue basically by saying NFP isn’t contraceptive because you can still get pregnant if it happens that you are more fertile than you thought… but thats how it goes.
    The thing is though, you CAN still catch a deadly disease using a condom, it might be less likely, but they are not lying here, they’re just trying to get people to stop doing what they believe is wrong.
    Of course it would be better combined with a more active abstinence message because it DOES give the impression condoms make it more likely to die than not using them, which is a troublesome message.

    I will for the record never use contraception – and I will require my husband to have an STD test prior to marriage if he is not a virgin. And I live in Britain.

  3. Comment by Lee Rudolph, 20/07/08, 11:38:

    “I will for the record never use contraception”

    Oh, my dear, *please* don’t breed, whatever you do!

    ” – and I will require my husband to have an STD test prior to marriage if he is not a virgin. And I live in Britain.”

    Have you considered becoming a Bride of Christ? I gather there’s quite a premium these days on BoC’s from the Global North. And then you could waive the STD test, no worries.

  4. Comment by Dallas, 26/10/09, 09:41:

    If perhaps his message were to promote abstinence rather than appear as if contraceptives are worse than using nothing at all, he’d come of as less of a twit.

    @Lee Rudolph
    She actually made a lot of sense in her statement. She doesn’t want to use contraceptive, and that is her choice. By bashing her for it, you certainly come off as an idiot.

  5. Comment by Adriano Vinícius, 09/12/10, 03:56:

    Excellent photo! Read: The scientific evidence of the failures of the condom:http://vaticano-on-line.blogspot.com/2010/12/camisinha-aids.html

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