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LaBarbera: UNAIDS has ‘backwards’ thinking
By Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow – 3/17/2010

A United Nations Aids agency complains that homosexuals, drug users and prostitute don’t seek help because of laws that criminalize their practices.

Michel Sidibe of UNAIDS is quoted as saying it is unacceptable that 85 countries still make homosexual conduct illegal, but Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), does not accept that thinking.

“They’ve got everything backwards,” he contends. “Rather than have a campaign – for example an anti-sodomy campaign, an anti-prostitution campaign, an anti-drug abuse campaign that targets the bad behaviors themselves – instead they target countries that are trying to implement conservative policies that target homosexuality.”

In compatibility with his logic, Sidibe suggests that laws against the immoral behavior be changed.

“Mr. Sidibe is just completely confused,” LaBarbera notes. “He says that in states where there are not repressive laws, HIV is contained. Then he goes on to express shock that more than 50 percent of infections in the United States are among homosexuals. So he contradicts himself.”

Homosexual behavior is not illegal in this country, but the AFTAH president believes the answer to the issue is to launch an all-out campaign to educate people and change the behavior that results in infection. That is what reduced smoking in this country.

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Excerpts from the Associated Press story:

“New HIV infections increasing among homosexuals”

By EDITH M. LEDERER (AP) – March 16, 2010

NEW YORK — New HIV infections are increasing among homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes who don’t seek help because of laws that criminalize these practices, the head of the U.N. AIDS agency said Monday.

Michel Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, said “it is unacceptable” that 85 countries still have laws criminalizing same sex relations among adults, including seven that impose the death penalty for homosexual practices.

He called a proposed Ugandan law that would impose the death penalty for some gays “very unfortunate” and expressed hope it will never be approved.

At a time when UNAIDS is scaling up its program and seeking universal access to HIV treatment, Sidibe said he was “very scared” because bad laws are being introduced by countries making it impossible for these at risk groups to have access to services.

“You have also a growing conservatism which is making me very scared,” Sidibe added….

Sidibe told a group of journalists at a luncheon hosted by the United Nations Foundation that in countries from China to Kenya and Malawi, about 33 percent of new HIV infections are in men having sex with men, a significant increase.

By contrast, he said that in the Caribbean where most countries don’t have repressive laws, only between 3 and 6 percent of HIV infections are in male homosexuals.

Even in the United States, where laws are not restrictive and the gay community was the first to tackle AIDS, Sidibe said it is “shocking” that more than 50 percent of new HIV infections last year occurred among homosexuals. And he said in the 19-25 age bracket the infection rate was even higher.

“It seems like we have come full circle” in the United States, he said. “After almost no cases a few years ago we are seeing again this new peak among people who are not having access to all the information, the protection that is needed.” …

In Nigeria, where there are 1,000 new HIV infections every day, over 30 percent are in vulnerable groups — drug users, sex workers and homosexuals, he said.

Sidibe called for “a prevention revolution” including a campaign in major cities around the world like the anti-smoking campaigns launched in recent years.

Grove City College professor Warren Throckmorton -- who is on record affirming homosexuality as "natural, normal and healthy" despite the College's biblical faith charter -- has joined homosexual activists in crusading against Uganda's proposed Anti-Homosexuality law. Perhaps Throckmorton, who has lost his faith in the ability of Jesus Christ to help "homosexuals" leave the lifestyle, could learn something from the more biblically faithful Ugandans.

TAKE ACTION: contact Grove City College HERE and GCC President Richard G. Jewell (rgjewell@gcc.edu; 724-458-2500) and request a written explanation as to why they employ an activist professor who undermines the Bible’s clear teachings on homosexuality as a changeable sin (and not a natural “orientation”).

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Folks, I’ve been trying to avoid the Ugandan “Culture War” on homosexuality because I figure we’re busy enough with our own here in the USA. But that hasn’t stopped American homosexual activists and fellow travelers like Professor Warren Throckmorton of the “evangelical” Grove City College from insinuating themselves into the Ugandan situation. (Sadly, Warren has lost his faith in the ability of God to radically change homosexuals through Christ, and now busily works — even in Uganda! — to promote the faithless and disheartening message that most “gays and lesbians” cannot change their basic “orientation”; see his Uganda Independent column in which he makes that assertion HERE.)

Here’s the question I keep asking myself about the Uganda controversy: just what is it that qualifies the United States of America to lecture the Ugandans about homosexuality? Is it our public policy that enshrines immoral sexual behavior (oops: “sexual orientation”) and gender confusion (er…”gender identity and expression”) as a “civil right”? Is it our homosexual “marriage” laws that make a mockery of this divine institution (laws about which Prof. Throckmorton is curiously silent)? How about our pro-homosexuality educational propaganda in K-12 schools that corrupts young students’ minds in the name of “tolerance”? Or the 24/7 “gay bathhouses” and sex clubs that proliferate in urban centers across the United States to facilitate quick-and-easy (and anonymous) deviant sexual hook-ups? (“Come to America: where you can have all the safe sodomy you want! Discounts for students (no joke) and free condoms available for your perverted pleasure!”)

Tell me: does Uganda have something to learn from Christian “defectors” like the opportunistic Prof. Throckmorton — who is now a de facto promoter of homosexuality as normal, natural and healthy while ostensibly still claiming some sort of “Christian” mission at GCC? (Grove City College boasts in evangelical circles that it is “authentically Christian” — an advertising claim of diminishing accuracy the longer it abides likes of Throckmorton.)

[TAKE ACTION: contact Grove City College HERE and GCC President Richard G. Jewell (rgjewell@gcc.edu; 724-458-2500) and request a written explanation as to why they employ an activist professor who undermines the Bible's clear teachings on homosexuality as a changeable sin (and not a natural "orientation").]

Challenge to Accommodationists: I stand corrected if Prof. Throckmorton or any Grove City prof — indeed, any homosexual activist or pro-”gay” apologist — can show me anything resembling “sexual orientation” in the Bible as this concept is currently understood and posited in academia, the media and society.

Nope. What we’re seeing here is sheer Western activist arrogance. (Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media calls it “Homosexual Imperialism.”) I haven’t yet studied the proposed Ugandan legislation but I agree with Bob Knight’s analysis below — and AFTAH is clearly on record opposing draconian penalties for homosexuality like those imposed by jihadist Islamic radicals. But I do know this: Uganda would do well to avoid the example set by America of a cultural-elite-driven society that celebrates homosexuality (along with other sexual immoralities) — and then reaps the whirlwind that results, including the following:

• devastating (public) health crises that are prolonged by the politically correct protection of the very sexual misbehaviors that helped spread the disease in the first place;
• the proliferation of “gay” activist groups that war against Judeo-Christian values and cruelly smear people of faith who dare to defend those values;
• pro-homosexuality, politically correct indoctrination — even on the job — masquerading as “diversity” — i.e., the gradual replacement of Christian proselytization with the institutional advocacy of sin, disguised as tolerance;
• public immorality and annual “gay pride” parades that subject children to immoral displays including public nudity;
• the undermining of historic Judeo-Christian teachings on sex and marriage; “queer” theological attacks on the Bible and sacred texts due to their unambiguous teachings against homosexual acts;
• the rise of “gay”-sympathetic, anti-religious bigotry and even laws that criminalize the outworking of a biblically-informed conscience against homosexuality; legal and cultural harassment of moral-minded organizations like the Boy Scouts and Salvation Army that refuse to treat homosexuality as a civil right;
• the corruption and victimization of children — including ever younger “coming out” ages for children declaring their supposed “gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender” (“queer”) identity.
• turning the public schools into indoctrination zones for the “GLBT” ideology — all in the name of tolerance and “protecting kids”; the spread of “gay” school clubs, first to high schools, then to middle schools, and ultimately to grade schools.

As you can see, most of America’s “lessons” on homosexuality for Uganda are negative ones. Could it be that the more faith-filled and Bible-trusting African Christians have something to teach jaded Americans like Barack Obama and Warren Throckmorton about homosexuality?  – Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org ; send us your thoughts at americansfortruth@comcast.net

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The following is a column by Bob Knight in World Net Daily:

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All the bile that’s fit to print

Exclusive: Robert Knight hits N.Y. Times for ‘knee-jerk spasms’ targeting Christians

Posted on WND January 13, 2010

You cannot find a better example of selective outrage and character assassination than the Jan. 5 New York Times editorial, “Hate begets hate.”

This humdinger of a self-descriptive screed has it all: wild, unsubstantiated charges; villains; hysterical calls for action; and a smug, holier-than-thou tone that would put “Saturday Night Live”’s Church Lady to shame.

At issue is Uganda’s proposed law criminalizing homosexuality. But the editorial’s real focus is crucifying Christians who had given talks in Uganda and any part of Christendom that has not bowed its knee to the gay gods.

The Times notes that “three evangelical Christians, whose teachings about ‘curing’ gays and lesbians have been widely discredited in the United States, helped feed this hatred.” The editorial names Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, who “gave a series of talks” last March that “claimed that gays and lesbians are a threat to Bible-based family values.”

I don’t know Mr. Brundidge, but I do know Mr. Lively and Mr. Schmierer. Both are honest and courageous men who, out of Christian compassion, dare to tell the truth about homosexuality. For this, the Times brands them as hatemongers.

While Mr. Lively has written perceptively and passionately about countering the homosexual activists’ political and cultural agenda, there is no evidence of “hate.” Trying to steer someone away from destructive, immoral, changeable behavior is an act of love, not hate. And it is beyond absurd to label as a bigot a man like Don Schmierer, who supports AIDS ministries and reaches out to sexually conflicted people with the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. Casting the gentle, soft spoken Mr. Schmierer as a “hater” is like calling Mother Teresa a foul-mouthed harpy.

These men discuss sexual behavior and its consequences for individuals, families and societies, and the blessings of God-given hope. As is typical for a fully owned subsidiary of the homosexual activist movement, the Times falsely claims that the Christian leaders oppose the people themselves. The Times has bought into and promoted the media-fed fiction that people are born gay, cannot change and therefore their volitional sexual behavior is synonymous with identity. In gay parlance, it’s “who they are,” not what they do.

This is nonsense. If we are defined by our sexual behavior, then men addicted to pornography are nothing more than “pornophiles.” It is homosexual activists who have insisted on making sexual desire the be-all and end-all of personal identity. They did this to hijack the moral capital of the black civil-rights movement, equating “sexual orientation” with immutable characteristics like skin color or ethnicity. One big problem remains for them, though. Skin color and ethnicity are morally neutral. Sexual behavior is fraught with moral, social and physical consequences and has been regulated by every society since time began.

The Times ignores the Christian men’s pointed criticisms of the proposed Uganda law and says, “We don’t have much hope that they will atone for their acts.”

Well, we don’t have a whole lot of hope that the Times will atone for its many portrayals of Christians as hate-filled bigots whenever the “gay” issue surfaces. They are following the playbook of “After the Ball,” a gay strategy manual from 1989 that instructs activists to “jam” opponents into silence through threats of guilt by association, outright smears and phony “scientific” claims that go unexamined. The strategy has worked brilliantly, as even conservative voices have been frightened into silence or into steadily ceding moral ground, circling the wagons only around the word “marriage.”

The Times is not alone, of course, in its relentless pursuit of homosexual orthodoxy. On Jan. 7, the Washington Post ran an editorial about Uganda entitled, “A barbaric proposal.” The Post editors, at least, did not engage in Christian bashing, and stuck to very real problems with the proposed law. They did repeat a gay mantra, however: “Being gay is not a choice.”

Science has by no means settled the issue. None of the highly publicized studies by gay researchers in the 1990s has been replicated, and several have been discredited. Then, too, there is the inconvenient existence of many people who engage in homosexuality for years and later embrace the straight life. The “ex-gay” movement is large and growing, but the media are keeping it one of the best-kept secrets out of deference to militant gay activists in the newsrooms.

Uganda has been in the cultural elites’ hot water before by bucking the U.S.-backed condom crusade in Africa and slashing its AIDS rate with campaigns for abstinence and fidelity. The current homosexuality bill is seriously flawed. It contains such overreaches as jail terms for people who do not report homosexual activity and life imprisonment for people who engage in the behavior. But the Times and the Post go beyond criticizing the harsher aspects of the law and attack the underlying concern of Ugandans to defend marriage and family, avoid the corruption of their children and put the brakes on AIDS and other diseases.

The Times and the Post warn that Uganda will become a “pariah” nation “shunned globally” if the law is passed. That may be so. But it might behoove the press to take a closer look at some other countries in Africa whose governments, in the grip of Muslim extremism, routinely cut off people’s heads merely for changing religions. Some nations, such as Egypt, have governments that look the other way as young Christian girls are abducted, raped and forced into Muslim marriages. Do these nations qualify as “pariahs”?

The Times’ editors need to come to terms with their knee-jerk spasms against evangelical Christians and others who defend family values. They routinely depict pro-marriage Americans as motivated solely by hatred and prejudice, never by genuine, heartfelt concerns.

In their editorial’s own words: “You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.”

If this is so, the next equipment the Times should order for its newsroom is … a mirror.

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Robert Knight is senior writer and correspondent for Coral Ridge Ministries and the author of “Fighting for America’s Soul” (Coral Ridge 2009) and the upcoming book “Radical Rulers.”

We presume based on the Times‘ summary that the Lancet article is rife with pro-homosexual political correctness, as Western elites generally yearn to bring their decadent “First World” attitudes to economically underdeveloped countries that still regard homosexuality as deviant. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.com

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The New York Times reports (emphasis added):

Aids: Role of Gay Men in Spreading Virus Is Ignored in Africa, Study Finds

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times, July 20, 2009

The role of gay sex in the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS in Africa has been long ignored, say the authors of a new study in the medical journal Lancet.

While most transmission of the virus in Africa is heterosexual, 19 recent studies of African men who have sex with men show that they have “considerably higher” infection rates than other adult men in their respective countries, said the authors, who were from Oxford University and research institutions in Ghana and Kenya.

These men also have less access to prevention and care; most African countries have allocated no money to gay men, and homosexual sex is illegal in 31 African countries, in four of which men risk the death penalty.

African male sexual networks overlap with male-female ones, the authors found, since many of the men also report recent sex with women or are married. In three genetic studies the authors compared, gay white men in South Africa had a virus from a type common among gay European and American men, while gay black men in Kenya and Senegal had the type circulating in their country’s black populations.

Gay men face ridicule from their families and health care workers and harassment by the police, the study reported. And because African governments and media aimed very little safe-sex information at gay men, false rumors were common — including rumors that gay sex or anal sex were safer than heterosexual sex.

The Ugandans are a thousand times better off inviting Scott Lively (left) to their country than pro-homosexuality, Christian-hating activists like Wayne (“Anything but Straight”) Besen.

DefendTheFamily.com Alert

The following was sent out March 10 by Scott Lively, founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and its affiliated website, www.defendthefamily.com. It has been fascinating to watch the homosexual activists — and their new, unexpected ally, Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College — seek to make a huge controversy over the illegality of homosexual acts in Uganda and the call at this conference to substitute reparative (ex-”gay”) therapy for incarceration. (Note in bold below how Lively says they distorted his advice to the Ugandans.) Perhaps the “queer” ideologues and their misguided fellow travelers ought to reflect on the massive crisis that legal and celebrated homosexuality has caused here in the United States of America — including hundreds of thousands of premature deaths linked to deviant sexual behavior — before lecturing the poor Ugandans, who are attempting to maintain a pro-Christian-morality public policy (what a concept).

At AFTAH, we preach Christian mercy and have denounced Talibanesque capital punishment for homosexuals in countries like Iran. But we also believe that if states and localities here in America (and governments abroad) wish to ban sodomy, they have every right to do so — notwithstanding polemical U.S. Supreme Court decisions inventing newfangled “constitutional rights” and influenced by inaccurate homosexual activist amicus briefs. We’ll have more on the Throckmorton controversy (see his Christianity-defying, pro-homosexuality 2007 interview quotes HERE) in the coming days, including Lively’s public call on Throckmorton to repent. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.com

P.S. I wish Warren would cease his gossipy, online correspondence with activists committed to aberrant, ungodly sexuality and think about the answer to this: How many American men would still be alive today had they never practiced the sin of sodomy?
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Defendthefamily.com Report from Kampala

By Scott Lively

I’m writing from Kampala, Uganda where I am teaching about the “gay” agenda in churches, schools colleges, community groups and in Parliament. My visit here is being treated as an international crisis by the “gay” activists and their media toadies, who are spinning lies in their usual manner, but the Ugandan response has been resoundingly positive.

My week began with a meeting with about fifty members of the Ugandan Christian Lawyers Association on the evening of my arrival, then an address to members of the Parliament on the following morning. There were from fifty to one hundred persons in attendance, including numerous legislators and the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, with whom I enjoyed a personal chat for more than half and hour leading to the event. The centerpiece event was a three-day conference featuring myself, Don Schmierer, author of An Ounce of Prevention and several other books designed to help the families of homosexuals, and Caleb Lee Brundidge of International Healing Foundation, a formerly “gay” African-American man who now leads recovery workshops. It was a paid event, very well attended, mostly by professionals in various fields including education, counseling, government and medicine. Their feedback was extremely favorable.

My part of the conference was a series of three lectures on the final day, lasting most of the day. We gave two seminars at Kampala Pentecostal Church, to a combined total of about 2,000. I shared the platform with the other men the first night, then gave what I think was one of my best motivational sermons ever as the main presenter on the following night. Caleb and I were joint presenters at one of the biggest universities in the city to a crowd of up to 5,000 college students (which began by learning some traditional Ugandan dance moves on stage — to some uproarious laughter from the youths). We spoke to three large groups of secondary school students, a total of maybe 4,000, and did two radio shows, one Christian, one secular, and a one-hour television program on live national television. I did interviews with several newspapers during the week, and had private conversations with several influential leaders. I ended the week with a strategy and brainstorming session with a small group of key Christian activist leaders. All in all it was a highly successful and satisfying campaign.

The Ugandan people are strongly pro-family, and there is a large Christian population which is much more activist minded than that of most western countries. However, the international “gay” movement has devoted a lot of resources to transforming the moral culture from a marriage-based one to one that embraces sexual anarchy. Just as in the U.S. many years ago they are leading with pornography to weaken the moral fiber of the people, and propagandizing the children behind the parents’ backs. On the TV show we exposed a book distributed to schools by UNICEF that normalizes homosexuality to teenagers. (We expect a massive protest by parents, who are mostly not aware that such materials even exist in their country, let alone in their childrens’ classrooms.)

And remember that homosexuality is literally illegal in this country. Imagine how bad things would be if the criminal law were abandoned. By the way, the false accusation against me, now circulating in the US, is that I called on the Ugandan government to force homosexuals into therapy. What I actually said is that the law against homosexuality should be liberalized to give arrestees the choice of therapy instead of imprisonment, similar to the therapy option I chose after being arrested for drunk driving in 1985 (during which time I accepted the Lord and was healed and transformed into a Christian activist).

Uganda is an important target for the “gays” because of it’s internationally-renowned victory over AIDS through abstinence campaigns. It went from having the highest to the lowest disease rates in Africa.

Sadly. there are numerous indications that the “gay” efforts are working. We heard testimonies in our meetings from teachers, pastors and counselors that incidents of homosexuality are on the raise among the youth, including male-on-male rapes in boys boarding schools, and increasing lesbianism in several public schools. It was reported that in at least one of the schools two girls had actually been hired by the underground “gay” movement to recruit other girls at school, resulting in a total of thirteen girls self-identifying as lesbians by the end of the year. There is also a very high incidence of “cross-generational relationships” (i.e. pederasty), so much so that during my stay there was a public-service radio campaign urging young people not to give in to “sugar-daddies.” What happens, according to reports from the youths, is that wealthy white “gays” are coming to Uganda from Europe and America using cash and gifts to lure teenage boys into homosexual relationshi! ps. These “rent boys” then brag to their friends that they too can have money and material things if they offer the same services. Unfortunately, in a poor country like Uganda where many people live on less than $5 per day, it isn’t very expensive to corrupt the young.

On the positive side, my host and ministry partner in Kampala, Stephen Langa, was overjoyed with the results of our efforts and predicted confidently that the coming weeks would see significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation, and a massive increase in pro-family activism in every social sphere. He said that a respected observer of society in Kampala had told him that our campaign was like a nuclear bomb against the “gay” agenda in Uganda. I pray that this, and the predictions, are true.

Now my attention is turned to equipping the activists in Uganda with helpful materials. I have given them permission to make unlimited use of Defeating “Gay” Arguments With Simple Logic, and Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child (a much-esteemed book among the Africans). I still want to send them my remaining stock of about 100 or so copies of Seven Steps, but I didn’t raise any money toward this in my last appeal. If you would like to help, please make a donation at www.defendthefamily.com/help/donate.php.

Please also pray for my ministry (which has come under withering attack in recent weeks) and the Ugandan people.

Your Fellow Servant,

Dr. Scott Lively

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.”

Even today, the Centers for Disease Control’s HIV/AIDS Web site refuses to acknowledge any difference in the risks of AIDS between anal, vaginal or oral sex.

Peter Piot, now executive director of UNAIDS, warned as late as 1997 that “HIV will cut through Asian populations like a hot knife through cold butter.” UNAIDS’s 2001 estimate had 30 million infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last year, the UN had to cut that Africa figure by almost half — and drop its Asia number by 38 percent from just the year before. Dr. James Chin, a former top AIDS epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, has long declared the UN figures to be to too high and insists they still are.

In fact, there was never any indication AIDS had or would “break out” from the well-defined risk-behavior groups, as I was writing as far back as 1987 and in my 1990 book “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.”

I’m no Nostradamus. I merely analyzed public data and studies showing how terribly difficult the disease is to transmit vaginally or orally. But the myths are still the basis for AIDS policy.

The group Fair Allocations in Research compiles statistics on federal spending to fight various diseases, compared to how many Americans each disease kills. Measured that way, we spend 21 times as much on AIDS as cancer — and 78 times what we spend on coronary artery disease, 97 times anti-stroke spending.

Plus, the Ryan White Act mandates taxpayer handouts to HIV/AIDS victims of about $1.2 billion a year. We have no remotely similar program for victims of any other disease.

The same official grotesque distortion holds internationally. Chin charges that the United Nations puts HIV/AIDS victims on a pedestal while other disease victims stay submerged in deadly muck.

Robert England (who heads the charity Health Systems Workshop) recently made the same point in the British Medical Journal: “Although HIV causes 3.7 percent of [worldwide] mortality, it receives 25 percent of international health-care aid.” …

Consider: A 2008 WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF report demands AIDS drugs for every victim worldwide, requiring spending hikes from $8.1 billion now to $35 billion by 2010. Yet AIDS remains incurable. Conversely, an African with non-resistant tuberculosis is curable with merely $25 of drugs.

“Easily preventable diseases are still killing millions of children each year, while billions of dollars are being squandered annually by AIDS programs . . . who are not at risk,” says Chin. (Yes, the Senate bill funds anti-TB and -malaria programs – but not anything like its anti-AIDS spending.)….

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. Says England: “We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake.”

CLICK HERE to read Fumento’s entire New York Post column.

Michael Fumento is director of Education and Research for the American Security Council Foundation in Washington, DC.

…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…

…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.

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%.

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…“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.

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“Those who forsake the Law praise the wicked,
but those who keep the Law resist them.
Evil men do not understand justice,
but those who seek the Lord understand it fully.”
–Proverbs 28:4-5

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.”

The lawsuit was brought by five homosexual couples who were “married” in other countries and wanted to have their licenses recognized in Israel. One of the couples was Sefi Bar-Lev, 40, and Yaron Lahav, 29, the Toronto Star reported.

“This is a great step forward. But we are still at the beginning,” Bar-Lev told the Star. “The law in Israel is opening up, but whether you are gay or heterosexual, the rule here is still that unless you want to marry the religious Orthodox way, you must still leave the country to get married. So there is more struggle ahead to win the right to have civil ceremonies in Israel. But today we can see there is momentum in the right direction.”

The United States has a law known as the Defense of Marriage Act preventing the federal government from recognizing “gay marriages.” Homosexual activists hope to see it overturned in court someday, but the major homosexual groups have yet to file suit, saying the legal timing isn’t right.

In Britain, a court ruled in July that the government isn’t required to recognize “gay marriages” from Canada.

The Israeli court ruling was issued nearly two weeks after a “gay pride” parade in Jerusalem was cancelled following pressure from Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders and concern over Islamic terrorist violence. Despite the cancellation, in recent years homosexual activists in Israel have won legal and political battles that activists in America have not. For instance, homosexuals in Israel can serve openly in the military. America’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prevents such open service, with U.S. military leaders saying open service would harm morale and cohesion.

“[The decision] shows that the homosexual agenda is global,” Peter LaBarbera, president of the conservative organization Americans for Truth, told Baptist Press. “America may have to stand alone, but we stand alone in a lot of things.”

The Israel ruling, LaBarbera said, is another example of how “gay marriage” laws in one locality can have a broad impact.

“It is essential to do everything you can to protect marriage wherever you are — in a state or a nation. You have to take precautionary measures. Here in Illinois, [marriage amendment opponents] would tell us, ‘We already have a law [prohibiting gay marriage],’” said LaBarbera, whose organization is based in the state. “Well, you know full well that they want to change the law or get some sort of court edict to change the law.”

South Africa’s cabinet has approved a bill that would make South Africa the first nation on the African continent to legalize same-sex “marriage”.

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