Virginity or Death
Dec. 19th, 2006 06:50 am♠
In knocking against a faith-blind Administration's insistence on 'abstinence only' programs and trying to promote the education and use of condoms, one has to become ever creative. Mr. Kristof takes another shot at it:
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In knocking against a faith-blind Administration's insistence on 'abstinence only' programs and trying to promote the education and use of condoms, one has to become ever creative. Mr. Kristof takes another shot at it:
Here in Poipet, I met a 27-year-old woman with AIDS, Tem Phok. She had been a prostitute in a brothel, so I assumed that that was how she contracted AIDS. “Oh, no,” she said. “I got AIDS later, from my husband,” who has already died.But you may as well shout at a river to switch course. It is not about facts - those seductive illusions of the Devil. It is about right and wrong, and Bush is firmly on the side of Right, no matter how many it kills.
“In the brothel, I always used condoms,” she said. “But when I was married, I didn’t use a condom. ... A woman with a husband is in much more danger than a girl in a brothel.”
That’s an exaggeration, but she has a point: It doesn’t do much good for American officials to preach abstinence and fidelity in places where the big risk of contracting H.I.V. comes with marriage. In countries with a high prevalence of AIDS, just about the most dangerous thing a woman can do is to marry.