Americans for Truth

International AIDS funding massively disproportionate to other diseases

There is no precedent in history for such myth-driven “democratization” of a disease, nor for the abominable unfairness in allocating funds away from so many curable illnesses. — Michael Fumento

The full New York Post column by Michael Fumento appears HERE. Emphasis added below:

A Myth that Kills

By Michael Fumento

New York Post, July 3, 2008 –THE Senate is near to passing a massive $50 billion Emergency Plan for HIV/ AIDS Relief — a bill whose priorities are based on myth, just like virtually all anti-AIDS efforts worldwide.

The world’s top AIDS bureaucrat recently admitted the truth: “It is very unlikely that there will be a heterosexual epidemic” outside Africa, Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization, told London’s Independent newspaper. His bosses at the United Nations issued an official denial — but couldn’t truly challenge his science.

The effort to “democratize” AIDS dates back to the mid-1980s, when the media and health officials began a desperate and concerted effort to divert attention and make it seem everyone was at risk. The 1985 Life magazine cover, blaring “NOW NO ONE IS SAFE FROM AIDS” in huge red letters, represents this effort. Surgeon General Everett Koop coined the term “heterosexual AIDS explosion” in 1987, while in 1993 HHS Secretary Donna Shalala told Congress that AIDS may leave “nobody left.”

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Excerpted from While Critics Blame Catholic Church for AIDS Deaths Stats Show Just the Opposite, by Hilary White, published Mar 5, 2007, by LifeSite News:

…The available statistics show that countries with a large Catholic percentage population, show significantly lower rates of HIV/AIDS infections than countries with mostly non-Catholic populations.

2003 statistics from the World Factbook of the US Central Intelligence Agency, shows Burundi at 62% Catholic with 6% AIDS infection rate. Angola’s population is 38% Roman Catholic and has 3.9% AIDS rate. Ghana is 63% Christian, with in some regions as much as 33% Catholic and has 3.1% AIDS rate. Nigeria, divided almost evenly between the strongly Muslim north and Christian and “animist” south, has 5.4% AIDS rate.

Strongly Christian Uganda continues to frustrate condom-pushing NGO’s by maintaining its abstinence and fidelity AIDS prevention programs and one of the lowest rates of AIDS in Africa, at 4.1%. Uganda’s population is listed by the CIA Factbook as 33% Roman Catholic and 33% Protestant.

Of African countries with low Catholic populations, Botswana is typical with 37.3% AIDS, one of the highest in Africa, and 5% of the total population Catholic. In 2003, Swaziland was shown to have a 38.8% AIDS infection rate and only 20% Catholic population.

Continue reading at LifeSite News…

Excerpted from At Axis of Episcopal Split, an Anti-Gay Nigerian, by Lydia Polgreen and Laurie Goodstein, published Dec 25, 2006, by The New York Times (free registration required):

…Archbishop Akinola, a man whose international reputation has largely been built on his tough stance against homosexuality, has become the spiritual head of 21 conservative churches in the United States. They opted to leave the Episcopal Church over its decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop and allow churches to bless same-sex unions. Among the eight Virginia churches to announce they had joined the archbishop’s fold last week are The Falls Church and Truro Church, two large, historic and wealthy parishes.

In a move attacked by some church leaders as a violation of geographical boundaries, Archbishop Akinola has created an offshoot of his Nigerian church in North America for the discontented Americans. In doing so, he has made himself the kingpin of a remarkable alliance between theological conservatives in North America and the developing world that could tip the power to conservatives in the Anglican Communion, a 77-million member confederation of national churches that trace their roots to the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

…The 62-year-old son of an illiterate widow, Archbishop Akinola now heads not only Nigeria — the most populous province, or region, in the Anglican Communion, with at least 17 million members — but also the organizations representing the leaders of Anglican provinces in Africa and the developing world. He has also become the most visible advocate for a literal interpretation of Scripture, challenging the traditional Anglican approach of embracing diverse theological viewpoints.

“Why didn’t God make a lion to be a man’s companion?” Archbishop Akinola said at his office here in Abuja. “Why didn’t he make a tree to be a man’s companion? Or better still, why didn’t he make another man to be man’s companion? So even from the creation story, you can see that the mind of God, God’s intention, is for man and woman to be together.”

Archbishop Akinola’s views on homosexuality — that it is an abomination akin to bestiality and pedophilia — are fairly mainstream here…

Other conservative American churches that have split from the Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Anglican Communion, have aligned themselves with other archbishops, in Rwanda, Uganda and several provinces in Latin America — often because they already had ties to these provinces through mission work…

…One of Archbishop Akinola’s principal arguments, often heard from other conservatives as well, is that Christianity in Nigeria, a country where religious violence has killed tens of thousands in the past decade, must guard its flank lest Islam overtake it. “The church is in the midst of Islam,” he said. “Should the church in this country begin to teach that it is appropriate, that it is right to have same sex unions and all that, the church will simply die.”

He supports a bill in Nigeria’s legislature that would make homosexual sex and any public expression of homosexual identity a crime punishable by five years in prison…

Archbishop Akinola said he supported any law that limited marriage to heterosexuals, but declined to say whether he supported the specific provisions criminalizing gay associations. “No bishop in this church will go out and say, ‘This man is gay, put him in jail,’ ” the archbishop said. But, he added, Nigeria has the right to pass such a law if it reflects the country’s values.

This surprising news just in: God the Creator knows best.

Excerpted from Abstinence Alone Protects Fully Against HIV, Ugandan First Lady Tells Youth, by Gudrun Schultz, published Dec 6, 2006 by LifeSite News:

Janet Museveni, First Lady of Uganda, has continued her strong support for the country’s successful abstinence campaign against HIV/AIDS with a statement encouraging youth to live lives of “love, faith and purity,” New Vision reported December 2.

“I would not be caught advising you to take any shortcuts or compromise your lives by using any device invented by man, such as condoms, in order to facilitate any desire to go against God’s clear plan for your life,” Mrs. Museveni told students at the Uganda Christian University, Mukono, for World AIDS Day.

“God’s plan for your life is that you should honour your body because it is His temple.”

Warning the young people that they should not be complacent as HIV infection rates rise, Mrs. Museveni asked them to encourage other students to abstain from premarital sex.

Ugandan President Museveni and his wife introduced a program encouraging sexual abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterwards, in an attempt to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

The program has been harshly condemned by international organizations promoting condom use, but in fact Ugandan HIV transmission rates dropped by as much as 75% in some regions after the program was introduced, down to 5-7% from a high of 18%.

Continue reading at LifeSite News…

Excerpted from Final Seal of Approval for Gay Marriage Bill, published Nov 20, 2006, by Business Day:

…“The bill has been signed by the acting president,” Mukoni Ratshitanga, a spokesman in the president’s office, said.

The law, which allows for civil unions to be solemnised by way of either a marriage or a civil partnership, had been widely opposed by religious groups, conservatives and traditionalists.

The government has defended the new legislation for representing a wider commitment to battle discrimination.

“In breaking with our past … we need to fight and resist all forms of discrimination and prejudice, including homophobia,” Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told members of Paliarment earlier this month, when the bill was passed by the National Assembly.

Continue reading in Business Day…

Excerpted from Israeli High Court Orders ‘Gay Marriage’ Recognition, by Michael Foust, published Nov 21, 2006, by Baptist Press:

The land where Jesus once walked soon will recognize “gay marriage.”

In a landmark 6-1 decision, Israel’s Supreme Court Nov. 21 ordered the government to begin recognizing “gay marriages” from other countries, such as Canada. Although the decision doesn’t give homosexual couples the ability to “marry” within Israel’s borders, it nonetheless puts Israel at odds with countries such as Great Britain and the United States, neither of which recognizes foreign “gay marriages.” In fact, the U.S. government doesn’t even recognize “gay marriages” that occur within its borders in Massachusetts, the lone state where it is legal.

Four countries — Canada, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands — have legalized “gay marriage,” and a fifth one, South Africa, is expected to do so within days.

The ruling by the High Court of Justice — the name for Israel’s highest court — gives homosexual couples the same legal benefits as traditional couples, including tax breaks and the ability to adopt, The Jerusalem Post reported. The decision forces the government to register the “marriages” like it does any other marriages.

“We don’t have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here,” lawmaker Moshe Gafni told Israel’s Army Radio, according to the Associated Press. “I assume that every sane person in the state of Israel, possibly the entire Jewish world, is shocked, because the significance is … the destruction of the family unit in the state of Israel.”

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