Pitting the attitude, not necessarily Evil Captor. Personal Responsibility- extinct?

The BBQ Pit
61

Well, I believe the confusion is in the distinction between doctrinal adherence, and medical truth. A man might be clear on doctrine, and yet choose to disobey it. That’s between him and his church. My problem is with the Church setting itself up as a medical authority, and spreading misinformation in order to seditiously ensure adherence to its doctrine. If a man freely chooses to disobey doctrine and endanger his life in the full knowledge of the medical facts, then that is indeed his own problem. If his church has told him that the condom is useless in any case, then the church becomes culpable, regardless of whether he’s a good Catholic or not. That’s what I’m saying.

Indeed, but the Church’s dissemination of false medical information has far wider repercussions than the simple matter of choosing to obey the prohibition of adultery. I confess I am far from an expert on sub-Saharan epidemiology, but I maintain that the state of education and communication in the continent at large means that any organisation as large as the Catholic Church which takes it upon itself to deliberately misinform the population to which it has access is acting with almost complete moral bankruptcy.

As for your interesting not-really-a-hijack on the wider causes of AIDS in Africa, I’ll try and dig up a good Economist survey I saw on this a while back. An interesting point the article noted was that large employers (diamond mines and so forth) in the continent were taking it upon themselves to supply workers with treatment and condoms to their workers as a result of the painful failure of the relevant governments to take action. Like I say, Thabo Mbeki has a lot to answer for, and again I believe this comes back to deliberate misinformation. The greatest weapon you and I have against AIDS is knowing what causes it and how to prevent it. The Catholic Church have, IMO, observed that this information is detrimental to their doctrine, and have taken active steps to suppress it. I sincerely hope that the new Pope will try and rectify this position, and I’m moderately hopeful that he will.

Sorry again for the loooooong sentences…

62

Dead Badger -

If you are talking about the “condoms are infected with AIDS”, I agree that this is scandalously wrong and harmful. If it has been reliably cited, I would join you in condemning it, as I would the “sex with a virgin cures AIDS” myth said to be circulating in Africa.

If you are talking about the notion that “condoms don’t always work”, that is somewhat more of a gray area. Because, ISTM, that the Church would be framing it as “condoms don’t work as well as chastity”, which I would say is almost undeniably true. In other words, if the Church is saying “condoms don’t work, and nothing else does”, that is false and harmful. If the Church is saying, “condoms don’t always work, but chastity as we have been teaching it for the last few thousand years does”, that is debateably true. As long as they are offering a consistent message, and ISTM that they are, their message is not necessarily wrong on its face.

Not that the Church or anyone else is alone in spreading misinformation in Africa about AIDS, unfortunately. Is Mbeki the South African president?

Regards,
Shodan

63

Teaching “chastity” is a total waste of time and is irresponsible to boot. “Chastity” is a fucking fantasy with no application to the real world. It’s more important - and morally more imperative - to teach people how to protect themselves than it is for the Church to try to bog them down in its own sexual hangups.

Do you want to know how effective teaching abstnence really is. Take a look at [url=http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=21606]this. Teenagers who take abstinence pledges are six times more likely to have oral sex and four times more likely to have anal.

They’re also less likely to use condoms or get tested for STDs, so preaching bullshit abstinence at people actually makes them engage in more risky behavior than just giving them the fucking condoms and shutting the fuck up.

The Church has been irresponsible on this issue and it’s not ok.

64

Says you and your hedonistic sinning mentality.
What does any of this have to do with the crux of the argument?

65

And let me reiterate that “says you and your hedonistic sinning mentality” is the position consistent with the beliefs of the Catholic Church and not the position consistent with my beliefs, but we’re talking about blaming the church for AIDS when those who spread it are playing pick-and-choose with which teachings they follow.

66

I didn’t blame the Church for AIDS, I said they it was behaving irresponsibly. If it’s going to hold itself out as a moral authority then the least it can do is give morally responsible advice.

67

I’d disagree strenuously. You have to factor in the likelihood of any particular approach being followed, and if there is one thing that history has taught us, it is surely that people will fuck around. Yes, the Church may prefer chastity to contraception, and I have no problem with that, but to deliberately downplay the efficacy of condoms in order to promote your own preference is to my mind dishonest, and I have no doubt whatsoever that the Church has made severely misleading statements about condoms. Condoms are an extremely efficient way of ensuring that you don’t get infected - not perfect of course, but nothing is. Yet we have Cardinals insisting that warning labels be placed on condoms saying that they are hazardous to health, and South African bishops even blaming the spread of HIV/AIDS on condoms (cite). The Panorama program referred to earlier in this thread showed primary footage of a Catholic nun advising a parishioner who she knew to be infected with AIDS not to use a condom during sex with his wife, as it would be a sin.

I think the Church is being systematically dishonest about condoms, and there are notable Catholics who agree with me (check out the page I just cited - it’s a campaign funded by a Catholic group which speaks out against the Vatican’s condom policy). If the Church restricted itself to extolling the virtues of celibacy, I would have no problem with it - there are other people who can promote condom usage. When they deliberately misrepresent condom safety, they place in jeopardy everyone who is going to have extramarital sex and doesn’t really give two hoots what the Church thinks. This is the key thing - not everyone who hears the Catholic Church’s lies about condoms will be Catholic; they may not be concerned about hell. They will hear what sounds like medical advice, and they may take it to heart.

Yup, that’s him. He’s taken a huge amount of stick from Mandela over his approach to the AIDS epidemic, since it has consisted largely of fingers-in-ears, LALALALA-style stuff. There are signs even he might be beginning to acknowledge the problem, however, not least because his nation’s army is so heavily infected that he risks not having one to speak of, should he continue to ignore the state of affairs.

68

Certainly the Church is not solely to blame for the AIDS problem in Africa but they certainly aren’t helping it. In fact the are doing the opposite by disseminating misleading information and inneffective teaching. The Catholic church has a bit over 1 billion members world wide. A large number of these catholics look towards church leadership for guidance. When the church leadership says that stopping Africans from fornicating is more important than their health most Catholics will believe that.

This affects which charitable orginizations get the money that Catholics donate world wide. By teaching what they do the Catholic Church is diverting money into largely ineffective abstinence teaching instead of more effective safe sex programs. It is a fact that safe sex education is more effective at reducing AIDS than abstinence education. The Catholic Church is responsible for the increase in death it causes from the people that would have given to safe-sex education but didn’t becuase it went against their religion.

Unfortunately most religions are more concerned about imposing their morals and religion on people than helping them. If these religous orginizations spent the effort they did on saving Terry Schaivo on feeding Africans or supplying them condoms they could have easily saved many people.

Think of the effort and money spent on keeping gay marriage illegal in America. How many starving people could have been fed with that? How many sick people could have been treated with that? How many children innoculated against disease? Consider this next time when you decide where your charitable money and volunteer time goes.

69

http://www.blackwomenshealth.com/HIV_AIDS.htm

Actualy this in the interests of fighting ignorance and all, this is not quite true. The largest growth in new cases today is among heterosexual minority women, particularly African American women

70

While we’re tossing cites around, would you mind pointing out the bible passage that says “don’t wear condoms”? Because I seem to recall encountering a Christian fringe group or two that thinks birth control is A-OK. And some of them even sounded sounded pretty insistent on literal interpretation of the bible.

Anyway, the Catholic Church also used to be pretty big on the idea that the sun and planets went around the earth, and that idea has more of a biblical foundation than prohibiting birth control. So there’s definitely precedent for the church reversing old traditions.

71

For
example, the South African Catholic Bishops Conference said:

“Widespread and indiscriminate promotion of condoms [is] an immoral and
misguided weapon in our battle against HIV-AIDS. … Condoms may even be one of the main reasons for the spread of HIV-AIDS.”

http://www.we-are-church.org/it/attual/condom.htm

Oh yes. I hold the catholic church responsable for thousands of AIDS baby’s.

72

What the hell do conservatives mean by “personal responsibiity”?

Most of the time when they use the phrase, they’re attempting to shift blame from something done by corporations or large, conservative groups to that of regular folks. I’ll give you three examples:

  1. This thread. Happy Scrappy Hero Pup attempts to shift the blame for the Catholic Church’s absolutely disgraceful conduct wrt to the African aids epidemic by claiming the Africans should take personal responsibility for their sexual conduct.

  2. In the thread entitled “The Triumphant March of the Bankruptcy Bill,” various conservatives have tried to shift attention away from the credit card companies’ usuious rates and bad lending practices by saying that people who are guilty of poor financial decision-making should take personal responsibility for their financial affairs.

  3. In the case of abortion, social conservatives say that women should take personal responsibility for their sexual behavior, ignoring the fact that having an abortion might be one form of taking personal responsibility.

In each and every case the implication seems to be that if you take any consideration of the influence of social, political or economic forces on a person, you’re absolving them of all personal responsibility for their situation.

And the implicaition ALSO seems to be that, having assigned personal responsibility for a problem to people, we need no longer be concerned with their welfare, and can leave them at the mercy of predatory corporations, large, uncaring organizations and religious zealots with a clear conscience.

Now, my concept of personal responsibility is somewhat different, so I thought I’d explain it, since I don’t get ANY of that shit out of “personal responsibility” that conservatives do.

Let’s say I overeat and sit around a lot and get overweight (weight is another topic that brings out the “personal responsibility” birds). It’s my personal responsibility to do what I have to do to get that weight off if I want to enjoy the health benefits associated with weight loss. No one else can do it for me.

Or let’s say I have money problems. It’s my responsibility to deal with them, to the extent that I am able. (Obviously if I am having money problems because I am paralyzed from the neck down, my responsibility to deal with those problems is not there because of diminished capacity.) But if I’m having problems because I’ve lost my job, it’s my responsibility to go out and knock over a few convenience stores (or, alternatively, find another job). If I’m having problems because I don’t know how to manage my money, it’s my responsibility to get better at managing my money.

If I go out and have sex with lots of people, it’s my responsibility to make sure that I don’t get or give anybody any sexually-transmitted diseases. And that I don’t make anyone pregnant unintentionally. If I DO get a disease, it’s my responsibility to deal with it as best I can. Same with pregnancy.

I suspect that most conservatives are with me on these views, but here is where I believe I part company with them.

I do NOT believe that just because people have to be personally responsible for taking care of themselves, that every scum-sucking corporate greedhead, every fiery-eyed religious zealot, every uncaring plutocrat is therefore absolved of all responsibility for the actions of their organizations, corporations and minions on society.

I think it is perfectly acceptable and all right to examine ways in which society can be organized so that human suffering is minimized and human growth and opportunity are maximized.

I don’t think letting greedy credit card corporations make it harder for regular folks to declare bankruptcy in a time when the credit card companies are making record profits is a good idea. Negotiating the economic minefield is your personal responsibility, but that doesn’t mean we should go crazy in letting corporations lay out the mines.

I don’t think restricting a woman’s freedom to choose how to deal with pregnancy is society’s provenance. It’s a woman’s personal responsibility to deal with pregnancy, let her be the ones to choose the options, not religious zealots.

I think it is an overweight person’s responsiblity to lose weight or deal with the consequences of being overweight, but I have no problem with considering the factors that might make them overweight, other than overeating and lack of exercise. I have no problem with looking at things that might make it easier for them to lose weight, other than condemning them as lazy and piggish. If there were a pill that could allow people to lose weight without effort, I’d have no problem with it.

(In fact, I think the main reasons Americans are overweight as a group is not some tremendous lack of energy and self-control, but the fact that we all drive to work rather than walking or cycling there, and while we’re there we park our butts in chairs all day, and we have lots of food. We COULD exercise at the end of the workday, and some of us do, but asking people to put in a hard workout at the end of the workday is actually a pretty extraordinary thing to ask people to do, especially people with families, and most don’t do it.)

I think conservatives and libertarians don’t share these notions, otherwise they wouldn’t be constantly crying “personal responsibility” whenever some attempt is made to curtail the efforts of some vile corporation or group, or when people otherwise try to make society work better for people.

I could be wrong, though. For example, I think many conservatives and libertarians think I don’t believe in any concept of personal responsibility. I hope I have made it clear that I do. I just think there’s such a thing as social responsibility, and organizational responsibility, too.

73

WRT all this stuff about Catholics and condoms – the cites are there, the logic is clear, let’s stop all the pinhead-dancing, boys. The Catholic Church has been fucking EVIL wrt AIDS in Africa.

74

No offense, but your cite doesn’t exactly say what you think it does.

I was talking about heterosexually transmitted AIDS - people who became HIV positive by having sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex who was HIV positive. I was not talking about children who got it at birth from their mothers, IV drug abusers who shared needles, and other, non-sexual ways of contracting HIV. I was speaking specifically of HIV transfers that happened thru heterosexual intercourse.

Your cite mentions AIDS cases based on race, without addressing the specific transmission modes under discussion, and also presents A-A as a changing proportion of total new AIDS cases, not as an increase in total cases.

If the total decreases (AIDS diagnoses in the US has declined recently - that is, fewer people are contracting AIDS), but group A decreases more than group B, then “group B as a proportion of total cases” will increase even if the total number decreases. If you have a hundred cases this year, 50 from A and 50 from B, and next year you have fifty cases, 20 from A and 30 from B, then group B’s percent of total cases has increased even though their totals have decreased.

It depends on how the figures are presented. In my hypothetical, is it bad news that group B’s percentage of the total is increasing, or good news because fewer members of group B are getting the disease?

AIDS in America is still mostly a disease of gay or bisexual men, and/or IV drug abusers. Cite.

This is not to minimize the suffering of anyone with AIDS. But it remains relatively rare for the AIDS virus to pass from a female to a male thru heterosexual intercourse, and this tends to break the cycle of transmission among heterosexuals.

Regards,
Shodan

75

I’m referring to the Church’s position that it is guided by the Bible in drafting Humanae Vitae. More to the point, I’m saying that Anaamika’s opinion, while medically more valid than the Bible, carries less weight than the Bible in shaping Church policy.

I do WHAT? Have you been reading? I mean, have you?

I’ve stated my point quite clearly THREE TIMES in this thread now. In the OP, in post # 14, and again in post # 23. Is that enough direction for my point, or do you need me to spell it out for you again?

76

Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, I know this is likely to get me flamed, but I think that if you don’t get the point of what people are saying now, you never will. While it may be against their stance, the moral thing to do with such a large organization that claims to want to help people is to provide free condom giveaways, and education. Furthermore, I never liked the show Sooby-Doo, but it was the only thing to watch when it was too dark outside to play, and I had finished reading my library books. Once you joined the cast, I finally gave up any hopes for being amused by the show.

77

IIRC, his name comes from the movie Clerks, and not the scooby doo character.

And I hate to kind of post and run here, but this has to be one of the dumbest arguments I have ever seen on this board, and I’ve been here for a little while.

Bricker, you asked for cites on the "condoms do not prevent HIV/AIDS. When given, you doubted. When clarified, you moved the goal line and said that since condoms don’t have a 100% success rate then the quote from the cardinal is true. There just aren’t enough roll eyes smileys for that one. Are you honestly trying to say that the risk of getting AIDS is the same with or without a condom or was this just a “lalala I can’t hear you” sort of denial?

As far as the catholic church goes, they have to bear some responsiblity in this. They may not be actively creating ignorance in Africa, but they certainly are fostering it.

78

That’s a very flawed and inaccurate recounting of the events above.

We bagn this thread with a claim that the Church lied. I asked for the specifics of the lie. Once I got the specific quote, I pointed out it wasn’t a lie. That wasn’t “moving the goalposts” – that was the next logical step in the argument.

Now, you’re recharacterized my responses as something completely different. Nowhere did I claim that the risks of AIDS are the same with or without a condom.

Again:

  1. OP claims Church lied.
  2. I asked what, specifically, the lie was
  3. I was referred to the BBC program “Panorama” and a separate quote
  4. I pointed out that the quote was not a lie

And, I explicitly conceded:

Right? I said that, yes?

SPECIFICALLY, how? (Unless you contend that religious faith is itself a form of ignorance, in which case I see your point, but we’ll simply have to agree to disagree).

79

Ignoring whether it’s good or bad, it certainly indicates that prevention measures are having less effect in group B for some reason. Given that both groups are heterosexual, this in turn indicates that there is some factor other than sexuality which strongly affects the spread of AIDS. I would argue that it’s prevalence of condom use and decent sex-ed, and that the problem observed with group B is that the reach of education in that community is poor.

Sure, but this is in a society where we’ve been having it drummed in to us for years that condoms should be used, are told we should practise safe sex always, etc. and so forth. We know how to use condoms, we have easy access to them, and even on the SDMB if someone mentions having sex you tend to see at least one or two people pop up with “well I hope you used a condom”. Compare and contrast this with Africa, or communities within the USA in which education is not what it should be, and it becomes far from obvious that heterosexuals are just intrinsically safer (or rather, that their lower risk is primarily due to the simple mechanics of hetero sex).

Here’s an interesting if slightly elderly article on the reasons why infection patterns in southern Africa differ from those in western societies, incidentally. Makes for some unpleasant reading in places.

80

When you are right, you’re right. Both on the comment about the dumbness of this arguement, and on Clerks. You know, I’ve seen most of the the View Askewniverse movies, including Coyote Ugly, and the animated show, except I’ve never seen Clerks.