PDA

View Full Version : AIDS as a Security Threat



Tom Odom
11-30-2006, 06:22 PM
But what was once seen as a humanitarian catastrophe is viewed increasingly as a security threat—an important reason behind the $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that President Bush announced in January 2003. A study of 112 countries by Susan Peterson, a political scientist at the College of William and Mary, and Stephen Shellman, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, found that countries with severe AIDS epidemics had correspondingly high levels of human-rights abuse and civil conflict. “Does AIDS make war or civil strife more likely?” asks Peterson. “The answer is yes.”

Even in countries that don’t collapse, AIDS deaths can threaten security in the form of AIDS orphans, who are desperate, disenfranchised, vulnerable to radicalization, and projected to reach 25 million worldwide by 2010. “Where do you think the breeding ground for terrorism will be?” asks General Charles Wald, the former operational head of European Command, which also oversees U.S. military operations in most of Africa. At a recent conference, Wald listed the biggest threats to U.S. security. After terrorism and weapons of mass destruction came AIDS.

High on the list of the Pentagon’s concerns about AIDS is its impact on African militaries; for many, it has become the biggest killer. Young, often far from home, and with cash in their pockets, soldiers who must live under fire cultivate a sense of invulnerability that can kill them when they come back to the barracks. The epidemic accounts for seven out of ten military deaths in South Africa and kills more Ugandan soldiers than any other cause, including a brutal twenty-year insurgency and two wars in Congo. AIDS deaths have reduced Malawi’s forces by 40 percent. Mozambique can’t train police officers fast enough to replace those dying of the disease. “As we fight the enemy, the HIV is also fighting us,” John Amosa, a forty-five-year-old AIDS-afflicted Ugandan sergeant, told me. “We have two front lines.”

More at Containment Strategy (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200612/faris-aids)

good piece on why AIDs is not simply a health or social problem

best

Tom

slapout9
11-30-2006, 06:35 PM
Tom,outstanding article and there are wider implications to the whole idea of disease as a national threat. Hospital ER's are seeing cases of disease thought to have been wiped out in the US years ago, the source of which are usually illegal immigrants coming across the border to receive free health care. All this paid for by the US taxpayer, so it is a double hit re-emergence of the disease plus the economic cost (attack)!

Tom, I was getting worried about you again when I read the part about a "dildo" being used as a weapon against disease??

Tom Odom
11-30-2006, 07:42 PM
hmmm

ya know my wife watched Broke Back Mountain on Showtime the other night. I did not--I swear--as HBO ran all episodes on Band of Brothers continuously beginning at noon and there was no doubt as to what I would watch.

But from that particular movie, the later recounted a scene where Heath Ledger's character is taken to task by his wife about years of fishing trips with the other cowboy that never produced any fish. The wife told me about this and said, "Next time you go to Oklahoma to deer hunt, you better bring a deer home..."

No pressure there...

best

Tom

selil
11-30-2006, 11:12 PM
The wife told me about this and said, "Next time you go to Oklahoma to deer hunt, you better bring a deer home..."


My nephew just took a nice 8 pointer down near Hugo with his bow.

Tom Odom
12-01-2006, 02:49 PM
My nephew just took a nice 8 pointer down near Hugo with his bow.

Our farm is up the toll road from hugo south of Muskogee; so far no joy although I have let spikes and yearlings walk. I watched Bambi's dad at 500 yards chasing does for 2 hours but with a bow I could only watch. One more effort is coming up before the end of the season.

that's why its called hunting--especially with stick and string..

best

Tom

Strickland
12-01-2006, 09:54 PM
In Kenya, there are 100,000 AIDS orphans that the state cannot support. They become targets for radical islamic HA groups that indoctrinate these individuals, while simultaneously providing for their basic needs. The Saudis continue to pour A LOT of money into Wahabbi schools in east Africa that are full of AIDS orphans.

Tom Odom
12-01-2006, 10:12 PM
and it compounds Adam as many of those AIDS orphans were born infected

in the case of Rwanda, the rape of some 250,000 women in the genocide is still killing those survivors and their offspring. I know of several RPA officers who have passed due to AIDS

It is more than a medical problem; it is a social, educational, and security problem. Behavior modification on use of condoms runs full tilt into local mores, compounded by statements/pronouncements against condom use by the Catholic Church and other bodies. USAID is hamstrung in its efforts because condom use has to be sold as disease prevention versus birth control; if the persons involved don't know (or care) if they are infected, they don't care about disease prevention. And venereal diseases of more traditional forms have historically run at 95+ percent in some African countries.

Best
Tom

Tom Odom
12-05-2006, 02:10 PM
There is a pretty good documentary on Showtime on AIDS in Africa looking at the primary, secondary, and tertiary effects of AIDS on the continent. It is not a pleasant view and it will get much worse. The number of AIDS orphans already runs in the millions as a sub-component of the 30 million infected.

I recommend it to this audience.

Best

Tom

Tom Odom
03-12-2007, 02:41 PM
A friend sent me a short note on the subject of AIDS in the Repulblic of South Africa's military. According to a knowledgeable person, the widespread of the disease has made it impossible to to assemble a force of 1600 men who are AIDS free.

There is no way to evaluate the tip but consider the effects on operations, ability to project power, and just sustaining a force under these circumstances.

Best

Tom

Stan
03-12-2007, 03:07 PM
Estonia continues to register one of the highest HIV infection rates in Europe. The Estonian Health Protection Inspectorate said 109 new cases of HIV infection have been registered already this year. Tragically, among them are two girls aged under four years old. The majority of cases, 38, were registered in Narva, while 35 came from Tallinn and 23 from East Viru county. Most people who were found to have the virus were aged between 20 and 24. In total, Estonia is now home to 5,840 HIV carriers and 139 AIDS patients.

The numbers seem small, but then there's only 1.5 million living here and less than 8,000 in the military!

goesh
03-29-2007, 11:11 AM
From the Washington Post:


Uganda's early gains against HIV eroding
Message of fear, fidelity diluted by array of other remedies

By Craig Timberg

Updated: 1:56 a.m. ET March 29, 2007
New generation, new attitude
Even in Uganda, these key ingredients have been lost as a new generation coming of age years after Lutaaya's death indulges in the same reckless behavior that first spread the disease so widely.

"We saw him. We saw him die. We abandoned the girlfriends," said Swizen Kyomuhendo, a social scientist at Makerere, who was an undergraduate when Lutaaya spoke there. "When you look at the university students now, they are not as terrified as we were then."

The percentage of sexually active men with multiple partners has more than doubled in recent years, undoing earlier declines, surveys show. Reports of sexually transmitted diseases among women, another indicator of dangerous behavior, have risen sharply as well.

120mm
05-04-2007, 06:30 AM
I recently "defunded" one of the non-profit groups I've contributed to for years. They are currently engaged in supplying and administering AIDS suppression drugs in continental Africa, which I think is a destructive practice. I will, like Babe Ruth "calling his shot", say right now, that suppressing AIDS symptoms and development without changing sexual mores will produce a worse, more virulent AIDS epidemic.

I suspect giving AIDS drugs to a prostitute or to a man who frequents prostitutes so they can live longer and spread more HIV cannot be justified no matter what set of morals and ethics you can name.

Tom Odom
03-05-2008, 01:42 PM
Good column this AM from the LA Times by way of the SWJ Editorial round up.

It brings up the social mores issue as part of the puzzle.


Africa's AIDS puzzle (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-steinberg5mar05,0,6364078.story)

The key to combating a disease still killing millions is to take a human approach.
By Jonny Steinberg March 5, 2008

Even though it is hardly fashionable today to regard plagues as God-sent, the African AIDS pandemic is a catastrophe of such massive proportions that we have to struggle not to think about it in a religious way. More than 2 million people are perishing each year; millions more will die if they do not receive treatment. Out of this colossal theft of human beings, we have a great need to tell a story about this epidemic that ends with redemption.

In our secular age, though, the agent of the redemption we conjure is not a god but Science with a capital S. In this case, Science's lodestar is antiretroviral treatment, or ART, which, if made accessible across the continent, has the potential to save millions of lives.

Great redemptive hope has been invested in ART. The distinguished African historian John Iliffe, for instance, has suggested that the drugs will inspire Africans to challenge the dire leadership that has afflicted the continent since independence in the 1960s, thus heralding an era of renewal in African public life. We watch with keen interest as social movements rally around treatment, in the hope that they will elevate African countries to new heights.

Tom Odom
03-18-2009, 07:14 AM
I cannot understand how the Pope and the Church continue to hold to dogma when it is destructive. The arrogance in this is stunning, a 21st Century religious equivalent of "let them eat cake."

Tom



Pope visits Africa, reaffirms ban on condoms (http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/17/cameroon.pope/index.html)

CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI refused Wednesday to soften the Vatican's ban on condom use as he arrived in Africa for his first visit to the continent as pope.

He landed in Cameroon, the first stop on a trip that will also take him to Angola.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been hit harder by AIDS and HIV than any other region of the world, according to the United Nations and World Health Organization. There has been fierce debate between those who advocate the use of condoms to help stop the spread of the epidemic and those who oppose it.

The pontiff reiterated the Vatican's policy on condom use as he flew from Rome to Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, CNN Vatican analyst John Allen said.

Schmedlap
03-18-2009, 11:04 AM
I'm not a Catholic, but I do not view this as arrogance. I view it as quite the opposite. If one believes that God is sovereign and that something violates His word, then it is arrogant to think that "well, he obviously didn't consider this circumstance - God must have made a mistake." I understand the concern about the current suffering of many and the potential spread of that suffering to others, but if one takes the eternal view, as the Pope apparently does, and views current events in that light, then it is a difference of priorities, not arrogance. Ask him his rationale and I suspect he would say that he would prefer that they suffer from HIV, but go to heaven, rather than use condoms and go to Hell. Again, I'm not a Catholic.

Tom Odom
03-18-2009, 11:22 AM
I'm not a Catholic, but I do not view this as arrogance. I view it as quite the opposite. If one believes that God is sovereign and that something violates His word, then it is arrogant to think that "well, he obviously didn't consider this circumstance - God must have made a mistake." I understand the concern about the current suffering of many and the potential spread of that suffering to others, but if one takes the eternal view, as the Pope apparently does, and views current events in that light, then it is a difference of priorities, not arrogance. Ask him his rationale and I suspect he would say that he would prefer that they suffer from HIV, but go to heaven, rather than use condoms and go to Hell. Again, I'm not a Catholic.

Perhaps, but somehow I doubt that God said don't use condoms. Rather the Church did. Eternal views aside, the close view is very different.

Tom

marct
03-18-2009, 12:13 PM
Ask him his rationale and I suspect he would say that he would prefer that they suffer from HIV, but go to heaven, rather than use condoms and go to Hell. Again, I'm not a Catholic.


Perhaps, but somehow I doubt that God said don't use condoms. Rather the Church did. Eternal views aside, the close view is very different.

I'm not sure I even want to think about the theological implications here :wry:!

Tom Odom
03-18-2009, 12:24 PM
I'm not sure I even want to think about the theological implications here :wry:!

No kidding. But I do care about the real effects on the ground. HIV education has been struggle even w/o theology due to cultural parameters. Africa is considered the Catholic Church's best avenue for expansion. This would be one way to self-limit that expansion.

Tom

marct
03-18-2009, 12:38 PM
Hi Tom,


No kidding. But I do care about the real effects on the ground. HIV education has been struggle even w/o theology due to cultural parameters. Africa is considered the Catholic Church's best avenue for expansion. This would be one way to self-limit that expansion.

I know :wry:. The truly nasty thing about it is that a lot of it goes back to Vatican internal politics and the dangers to the established factions of having a strong African church. About 3 years ago, one of my students, who had been doing HIV awareness education in Africa, came up with a really great teaching tool. Do you remember the old game of Life? Well, she used that as the basis, set the game parameters around infection vectors, and produced a really accurate board game simulation to teach kids with. The goal was to live until 60 :(.

Steve Blair
03-18-2009, 01:43 PM
I'd actually hazard a guess that the majority of it goes back to internal Church politics. Funny that the Pope can come out so strongly against something like this yet remain relatively silent about the abuse scandals that did so much damage to the Church's reputation in the US.

marct
03-18-2009, 01:47 PM
I'd actually hazard a guess that the majority of it goes back to internal Church politics. Funny that the Pope can come out so strongly against something like this yet remain relatively silent about the abuse scandals that did so much damage to the Church's reputation in the US.

Well, that's "accepted" :eek:! Seriously, though, the condom / birth control issue is a key fracture line between the liberal wing (mainly US and parts of Western Europe) and the conservative wing. They've been using a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on it for quite a while now to avoid an open split with the more extreme conservatives.

Steve Blair
03-18-2009, 01:51 PM
Well, that's "accepted" :eek:! Seriously, though, the condom / birth control issue is a key fracture line between the liberal wing (mainly US and parts of Western Europe) and the conservative wing. They've been using a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on it for quite a while now to avoid an open split with the more extreme conservatives.

Yeah, I know. I'm sure they want to avoid some of the issues that have popped up in the past few years within the Anglican church. Still...at times I think the Church and universities have more in common than they'd care to admit. It's mostly about politics and power structures, and neither group can seem to understand how those on the outside hear what they're saying or see what they're doing.

marct
03-18-2009, 02:04 PM
Yeah, I know. I'm sure they want to avoid some of the issues that have popped up in the past few years within the Anglican church.

Not quite sure which "issues" you're referring to: ordination of women? ordination of open homosexuals? complete lack of basic Christian theology and inclusion of Buddhist meditation in some churches?:eek::D


Still...at times I think the Church and universities have more in common than they'd care to admit. It's mostly about politics and power structures, and neither group can seem to understand how those on the outside hear what they're saying or see what they're doing.

Actually, that's really not surprising. The Western academic structures of universities come out of Church sponsored / supported education systems. There's a good, solid, historical / cultural reason why i call some of my colleagues (http://marctyrrell.com/2008/08/09/how-to-make-a-theologian-weep/) "theologians" :cool:.

Schmedlap
03-18-2009, 10:07 PM
I suspect that, in addition to opposing condoms, the Catholic Church endorses abstinence outside of marriage and monogamous relations within marriage. I also may be wrong here, but I don't think they have any objection to HIV medication/treatment, education about how it is spread, compassion towards the infected, etc, etc.

If this were just a policy of "keep screwing everything in sight and don't use protection" then that would be one thing. Their no-condom stance is one part of a significant lifestyle change that they advocate. I don't think there is any argument about how effective that lifestyle change would be IF achieved. But, that "IF" on the other hand...:(

Tom Odom
03-19-2009, 07:25 AM
I suspect that, in addition to opposing condoms, the Catholic Church endorses abstinence outside of marriage and monogamous relations within marriage. I also may be wrong here, but I don't think they have any objection to HIV medication/treatment, education about how it is spread, compassion towards the infected, etc, etc.

If this were just a policy of "keep screwing everything in sight and don't use protection" then that would be one thing. Their no-condom stance is one part of a significant lifestyle change that they advocate. I don't think there is any argument about how effective that lifestyle change would be IF achieved. But, that "IF" on the other hand...:(

Somewhat true but keep in mind that policies and lifestyle programs change overtime under the influence of many factors , many of which have nothing to do with health.

In a way the policy is a defacto "keep screwing everything in sight and don't use protection" because it does not address African cultural values regarding sex. Also keep in mind that it was at one time Church policy to allow priests to take local wives as an offset for the burden of service in Africa.

As for education about how HIV is spread the policy certainly does liit education to how to prevent HIV's spread. In that regard, we the US are in the same boat as we follow a political policy that emphasizes disease but is forbidden to advocate birth control. USAID can hand out condoms but only as a disease control measure. :rolleyes:

Tom

marct
03-19-2009, 01:23 PM
Good points, Tom. As an add-on comment, there is also a fairly serious problem emerging about what defines "sex" (that problem is also rampant in the US teen cultures). When you also add in the fact that the infection vectors operate outside of sexual transmission as well, you have a real problem.

Tom Odom
03-19-2009, 01:48 PM
Good points, Tom. As an add-on comment, there is also a fairly serious problem emerging about what defines "sex" (that problem is also rampant in the US teen cultures). When you also add in the fact that the infection vectors operate outside of sexual transmission as well, you have a real problem.

Wait a minute--didn't Bill Clinton settle that? :wry:

marct
03-19-2009, 02:02 PM
Wait a minute--didn't Bill Clinton settle that? :wry:

Don't know :eek:. maybe some current USG (cabinet level) official could comment :cool:

Tom Odom
03-19-2009, 04:28 PM
Don't know :eek:. maybe some current USG (cabinet level) official could comment :cool:

Who Gates? :D

Schmedlap
03-19-2009, 05:10 PM
In a way the policy is a defacto "keep screwing everything in sight and don't use protection" because it does not address African cultural values regarding sex.

I think it's the exact opposite. This is not a single policy advocated separately from the lifestyle changes advocated and expected to function well within the current cultures in Africa. It is part of a larger call to change the culture. But I suspect we're in agreement regarding the likelihood of that occurring.


In that regard, we the US are in the same boat as we follow a political policy that emphasizes disease but is forbidden to advocate birth control. USAID can hand out condoms but only as a disease control measure. :rolleyes:

I wonder if that is related to calls from the Catholic Church or if it is simply a division of efforts. For example, PEPFAR has a focus on treatment of pregnant mothers to prevent transmission of HIV to their children, efforts to safeguard the blood supply, etc. It seems like a medical approach. The USAID disease prevention seems more akin to a field sanitation or social work type of effort that can occur with significantly less (or different) specialized skills.

The taboo on advocating birth control might also be part of an image adjustment. Condoms as a birth control measure can fairly easily be construed as, "America doesn't want black people to have kids." It sounds dumb, but some people would believe it. Some people (in this country!) believe that we created HIV to kill black people. When I was an undergrad in 2002, taking an upper-level course in immunology, a student actually gave a presentation that assumed we were using HIV and various birth control drugs as weapons to kill or sterilize black people. Thankfully the professor had some words to say in response - the rest of us were speechless.

Tom Odom
03-20-2009, 05:52 AM
I think it's the exact opposite. This is not a single policy advocated separately from the lifestyle changes advocated and expected to function well within the current cultures in Africa. It is part of a larger call to change the culture. But I suspect we're in agreement regarding the likelihood of that occurring.

We will have to agree to disagree on the first part in that it does not call for a cultural change; it merely ignores the cultures at work altogether and in doing so defines cultural arrogance.

I agree changing the culture is unlikely or at least slow. The Church in Afica has always tended to dictate and the Africans have tended to follow, albeit in unorthodox ways. The classic statement about the Church in Rwanda was that Rwanda had many Catholics but not many Christians. The same could be said about the Anglicans, by the way.

As for the US taboo on birth control, it is a political issue tied to religious influences across the board as they influence Congress which controls the pusre strings. My ex once got in hot water because a CODEL was touring a packaged research center in Egypt that was in her USAID portfoilio when one member saw that there was a condom machine installed in the restroom (sideways).

Tom

120mm
03-20-2009, 12:30 PM
Has condom use in Africa been demonstrated to decrease AIDS rates of transmission? I'd like to see some good numbers on that from someone who's budget doesn't depend on showing that metric.

Since the Pope believes the soul is immortal, it is not in his interest to throw out a central issue within the church (monogamic sex within marriage) to satisfy people who ignore him and what he stands for anyway....

If he did, he would be analogous to the moronic doctor's organizations who decry the private ownership of guns every year. Like the doctors, it's really not his bailiwick.

marct
03-20-2009, 12:38 PM
Hi 120,


Has condom use in Africa been demonstrated to decrease AIDS rates of transmission? I'd like to see some good numbers on that from someone who's budget doesn't depend on showing that metric.

I saw some fairly decent numbers for it, but they were from 5 years back and extremely limited in their geographic spread (i.e. one small township) and, also, hadn't been published since they didn't meet the political correctness rule (the program included a kickback to prostitutes for condom use).


Since the Pope believes the soul is immortal, it is not in his interest to throw out a central issue within the church (monogamic sex within marriage) to satisfy people who ignore him and what he stands for anyway....

That's certainly a good point, 120. At the same time, it also ignores large amounts of Catholic and Christian traditions of working with local cultures.

Tom Odom
03-20-2009, 12:46 PM
Has condom use in Africa been demonstrated to decrease AIDS rates of transmission? I'd like to see some good numbers on that from someone who's budget doesn't depend on showing that metric.

Answer: Yes condom use reduces HIV transmission.

Is condom use a tough sell in Africa? Yes due to cultural mores

Does condom use vary according to religion? Yes


Since the Pope believes the soul is immortal, it is not in his interest to throw out a central issue within the church (monogamic sex within marriage) to satisfy people who ignore him and what he stands for anyway....

The point being they as African Catholics do not ignore him when it comes to condom use. Many males use the pronouncement as a reason not to use condoms.


If he did, he would be analogous to the moronic doctor's organizations who decry the private ownership of guns every year. Like the doctors, it's really not his bailiwick.

Agreed. He probably should NOT be addressing health issues as a matter of faith but he did make the pronouncement.

Tom

Schmedlap
03-20-2009, 05:17 PM
I think the church puts itself wide open for criticism on the feasibility of its goals. But as for the motivations, I think it's not productive to spin that as arrogance or ignorance. I think it is more productive to recognize that the Catholic church is big, influential, and not amenable to compromising on what it sees as the word of God, and then attempt to work with or around the church from there. I suspect that the Catholic church, USAID, and others have more goals in common than at cross purposes.

Uboat509
03-20-2009, 08:09 PM
Bottom line is that the Catholic Church is not a social welfare organization. They want to make the world better for everyone but not at the expense of their core beliefs. As Schmedlap already noted, they believe that the consequences of compromising their beiliefs in order to accomidate what they see as sinful behavior is worse than the consequnces of the behavior itself. This is not arrogance, it's faith, whether you agree with it or not.

SFC W

Tom Odom
03-21-2009, 05:01 AM
Bottom line is that the Catholic Church is not a social welfare organization. They want to make the world better for everyone but not at the expense of their core beliefs. As Schmedlap already noted, they believe that the consequences of compromising their beiliefs in order to accomidate what they see as sinful behavior is worse than the consequnces of the behavior itself. This is not arrogance, it's faith, whether you agree with it or not.

SFC W

Whle it is true the Chuch is not a welfare organization, it does sell itself as such, especially in Africa. As for uncompromising beliefs the Church has made repeated moral compromises over the years. If you consider Africa and rwanda in particular, the Church closed ranks around priests and nuns who were involved in genocide.

A stance based on faith with regards to the nature of condoms as a form of birth control in the face of a pandemic that is spread in Africa's case through largely heterosexual contact is to me arrogance, whether faith based or not.

We will have to agree to disagree

Tom

120mm
03-21-2009, 10:33 AM
The point being they as African Catholics do not ignore him when it comes to condom use. Many males use the pronouncement as a reason not to use condoms.


Yet they have no compunction whatsoever to ignore the church's stance on sexual immorality.

Which is not surprising, as humans routinely shoot themselves in the foot and then bitch and moan because of all the blood on the floor.

Tom Odom
03-21-2009, 11:09 AM
Yet they have no compunction whatsoever to ignore the church's stance on sexual immorality.

Which is not surprising, as humans routinely shoot themselves in the foot and then bitch and moan because of all the blood on the floor.

Partly true in applying that to the males....

Different matter when it comes to their wives.

Looks different when one realizes that as much as third of a population depending on the country is in the process of dying and many --HIV infected children--ignored nothing.

George L. Singleton
03-21-2009, 01:55 PM
And how many angels can stand on the point of a pin?

Of course birth control, be it condums, the pill is a sound and necessary practice, and yes, of course it reduces the spreading of AIDS which happens today we all know between men and women, not just men and men.

We all know in our own families and among our friends good folks who happen to be Catholic who limit and control by use of the condum or the birth control pill the number of children they believe they can afford to raise and educate in today's complex world.

No, I do not support widespread abortion, but I do believe it is up to the woman involved to decide if they can afford mentally, physically, and fiscally to have a child or not. No, I do not support partial birth abortion, but I do support use of the morning after pill for women to be sure that they don't get pregnant when their life plan at that time does not yet include having children, yet.

Yes, President Obama, who I did not vote for, is moving to knock down constraints on stem cell research where fertilization to create life has not occurred. No, I don't support use of fertilized eggs for the sole and specific purpose of doing medical research.

Yes, as one who suffers from diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and other annoying diseases I do support the vast range of possibilities being researched by use of stem cells in medical research. Too, I have family members who suffer from Crohn's Disease and it is possible that stem cell research can help them, too, and I am all for that.

In the Dark Ages "religion" [and I am a conservative Christian Protestant] was used both to help and to control and manage for hierarchial benefit the superstructure of the old Catholic Church. Competititon in religion, as in any other "business" is good and religious competition has helped bring an end to some absurd and false Protestant & Roman dogma while it has also helped enlighten and improve the use of more in common dogma which is sound and Biblically based and justifiable.

Many of us Protesants and Catholics prefer to live religious values by our personal witness and allow others their witness be it the same or different. We are all still Christians. Grace is the operative term in being a Christian, not "law" as was the process in the Old Testament.

The same cannot be said for Islam where the extremists will kill those who they "judge" to be wrong in their belief, understanding, and practice of Islam. Yes, I know, you can point to ancient Christian wars, but I am talking about today, 2009, and don't give a tinkers damn about a handful of idiots in Northern Ireland trying to resurrect the worst days of the old now defunct IRA. That was and is peanuts comparedn to today's religious terrorists and the killings and maiming they continue to inflict.

This discussion can go on and on, endlessly.

What works for one Christian may not always work for another, so we have freedom of religion, and the important feature of our culture, separate of church and state, which I heartily support. I oppose on religious grounds same sex marriages and in the military I oppose homosexuality as a security, health, and in the interests of good discipline threat. I am a qualfied as in limited proponent of abortion "to save the life of the mother" but in general I would like to see abotion avoided where and when possible. But still in the final analysis my belief it that the choice of abortion or not should be left up in the final analysis to the woman involved, not to any cleric or special interest group trying to impose their dogma on all others.

So AIDS is a real threat to the military, abortion while not a wholesale answer to life's problems has a place that I find best determined by the woman involved, but allowing my reservation in that I do oppose 100% partial birth abortions.

Finally, regarding celebacy and ancient church history. One of our family lines is Gillis, and descends from an early 1400s Irish Catholic priest sent from Ireland to the highlands of Scotland, where he married and had 12 children. Priests in ancient history in outlying parishes and nations often married and had families, there was and is nothing wrong with that. Celebacy is a dogma, it is not a scriptual edict. Early Popes were married. Economic considerations to keep the early church going were claimed as an excuse to start the practice of celebacy, together with misinterpretations and/or misunderstandings of the fact that St. Paul seemingly had a miserable marriage and thus advocated celebacy as his reaction to his own miserable marriage.

End of "pontifications" from a separation of church and state advocate who neverthleless is anti-homosexual as such practice is anti-Scriptual but who finds God's williness to grant his grace in circumstances where birth control (condums, the pill, etc.) are a good measure of manage one's own family finances.

120mm
03-22-2009, 03:04 AM
Economic considerations to keep the early church going were claimed as an excuse to start the practice of celebacy, together with misinterpretations and/or misunderstandings of the fact that St. Paul seemingly had a miserable marriage and thus advocated celebacy as his reaction to his own miserable marriage.


Celibacy in the priesthood is generally understood by the historians that I hang around with as a way to keep church lands and titles monolithic and to prevent issues (pardon the pun) of inheritance of lands and churchly titles.

Paul himself did not advocate celibacy, despite his own celibate nature. In fact, he warned against it, unless the individual involved just didn't have sexual hunger.

The Bible is pretty clear on what it takes to be a church leader. Married to one wife, with children, and a demonstrated easy temperment and knowledge of the law.

And, Christ did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. All the commandments (but not the dogma or ceremonial law) are still in full effect. But being that even the truest believer sins by their nature, you really can't judge another. Having said that, you also aren't called to be blind to right or wrong.

George L. Singleton
03-22-2009, 09:02 AM
Thanks for your opinions on religion.

I am sure you like as I do the great Hymn, AMAZING GRACE.

Have a good weekend.