Perhaps we should be focusing on the fear-mongering and outright lying on behalf of anti-choicers. Amanda tackles the hypocrisy of Wright’s critics — the same people who attack him for repeating inaccurate messages about HIV/AIDS were the primary architects of Bush’s anti-science, deadly HIV/AIDS policies abroad.
And while Wright’s conspiracy theories about where HIV came from are a little whacked out, when you know the history of medical experimentation on people of color, you can understand his paranoia a little better. Heck, even today, people of color tend to receive medical care from lower-skilled professionals, and are more likely to be “teaching subjects” than white people.
None of that is to say that his statements about HIV are correct. But Wright is only Obama’s pastor, and he has never been invited to influence policy — unlike, say, Jerry Thacker, a man who called AIDS a “gay plague” and homosexuality a “death style” and was rewarded with a nomination from President Bush to serve on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS.
And the mainstream anti-choice movement spreads all kinds of lies about HIV/AIDS and other diseases — except they don’t keep it in the pulpit, they bring it into the classroom. A large anti-choice website — prolife.com — “warns” people about condoms, implying that HIV can penetrate microscopic holes in latex and flat-out stating that condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission 31% of the time. The site also says that “one out of every three teenage couples using condoms will become pregnant each year.” They further falsely claim that all STDs can be spread without exchanging body fluids:
STDs are frequently passed through “skin to skin” contact even when condoms are used. This can happen because the bacterial or viral germs that cause many serious STDs (such as human papillomavirus, chlamydia, herpes, and syphilis) do not infect just one place on your body. They may infect anywhere in the male or female genital areas.
So, even if the virus or bacteria isn’t passed through tears or holes in the condom itself, you can still get diseases because condoms don’t cover or protect all areas of the genital region. That means condoms don’t prevent many of the STD infections that take place during sexual contact.
This is what young people are learning from “pro-life” groups. And anti-choice groups are being well-funded by federal abstinence-only dollars to teach this kind of BS in the public school classroom.
But, yes, let’s be upset that Rev. Wright made a ridiculous statement about the origins of HIV to his church. After all, that will have absolutely no effect at all on what people do when it comes to HIV/AIDS prevention, but it’s a tasty news tidbit to bandy about in an effort to make Obama look like a run-of-the-mill crazy/paranoid/racially-divisive black man. Why would the mainstream media take a step back from the headline du jour and instead worry about the millions of people here and abroad who are being told that condoms don’t work to prevent HIV? That won’t have any negative public health consequences, right?