Yet another reason to despise MTV
MTV chief says Bush AIDS policies will not halt condom adverts
BANGKOK (AFP) - The president of cable music giant MTV vowed not to stop the channel's hard-hitting AIDS (news - web sites) and condom messages despite the US government promoting a sexual abstinence programme to counter the pandemic.
Meanwhile,
An adviser on women's issues to the United Nations (news - web sites) on Friday partially blamed a rising AIDS rate among women in the US on popular media such as MTV.
"Among young people in America, there is a feeling that sex is cool, that it's okay to be growing up and to be sexually experienced," said Stephanie Urdang.
The number of American women with HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS leapt from 180,000 in 2001 to 240,000 two years later, she said.
Abstinence, naah that'll NEVER work.
(Hat tip World Mag Blog)
In other news from the Washington Post (registration required):
Uganda has waged one of the world's most successful battles against the spread of HIV in a rare success story for sub-Saharan Africa.
It has enlisted religious groups to help spread information, and pioneered a strategy that later became known as "ABC" or "Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condoms" - in that order - a policy backed by Bush. Critics have said promoting condoms should be the first priority.
It has brought the infection rate down from more than 30 percent in the early 1990s to about 6 percent of the country's 25 million people last year.
I guess Uganda is just a fluke.
Other Asian countries where the proportion of men who visit prostitutes is lower will face the same problem - but more slowly, said Brown, a UNAIDS coordinator at Honolulu's East-West Center.
So doesn't it make sense that the best way to stem the spread of AIDS would be to encourage these men to stay home with their wives? Or are these experts claiming that men can't be expected to be faithful to their wives?
"In an age where 5 million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane," said U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
And if men and women were taught that sex was not something to be sold or taken whenever they feel like it but rather something to be treasured between a husband and wife this wouldn't be as much of a problem now would it?
Insisting that condoms be the front line of the defense against the spread of AIDS is setting people up for failure and discriminates against women. They (and their children) are the ones who will suffer at the hands of unfaithful men who are infected when the condoms fail.
I suppose it is too much to ask to expect men and women the world over to treat each other with love and respect rather than as mere objects of desire.
BANGKOK (AFP) - The president of cable music giant MTV vowed not to stop the channel's hard-hitting AIDS (news - web sites) and condom messages despite the US government promoting a sexual abstinence programme to counter the pandemic.
Meanwhile,
An adviser on women's issues to the United Nations (news - web sites) on Friday partially blamed a rising AIDS rate among women in the US on popular media such as MTV.
"Among young people in America, there is a feeling that sex is cool, that it's okay to be growing up and to be sexually experienced," said Stephanie Urdang.
The number of American women with HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS leapt from 180,000 in 2001 to 240,000 two years later, she said.
Abstinence, naah that'll NEVER work.
(Hat tip World Mag Blog)
In other news from the Washington Post (registration required):
Uganda has waged one of the world's most successful battles against the spread of HIV in a rare success story for sub-Saharan Africa.
It has enlisted religious groups to help spread information, and pioneered a strategy that later became known as "ABC" or "Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condoms" - in that order - a policy backed by Bush. Critics have said promoting condoms should be the first priority.
It has brought the infection rate down from more than 30 percent in the early 1990s to about 6 percent of the country's 25 million people last year.
I guess Uganda is just a fluke.
Other Asian countries where the proportion of men who visit prostitutes is lower will face the same problem - but more slowly, said Brown, a UNAIDS coordinator at Honolulu's East-West Center.
So doesn't it make sense that the best way to stem the spread of AIDS would be to encourage these men to stay home with their wives? Or are these experts claiming that men can't be expected to be faithful to their wives?
"In an age where 5 million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane," said U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
And if men and women were taught that sex was not something to be sold or taken whenever they feel like it but rather something to be treasured between a husband and wife this wouldn't be as much of a problem now would it?
Insisting that condoms be the front line of the defense against the spread of AIDS is setting people up for failure and discriminates against women. They (and their children) are the ones who will suffer at the hands of unfaithful men who are infected when the condoms fail.
I suppose it is too much to ask to expect men and women the world over to treat each other with love and respect rather than as mere objects of desire.
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