AIDS: Exposes Realities of Human Sexuality & Indiscretions

Posted August 25, 2006 in News

There are clear patterns emerging in the AIDS pandemic that throw light on human sexuality and promiscuity. Because AIDS is such an honest mirror into human activity (you can only catch it through the exchange of bodily fluids and not from sneezing) it is as effective as pregnancy for proving something happened.

Now that the Toronto 16th International AIDS conference is over, souls are contemplating the bigger picture and implications from the conference. There is is still a lot of excellent material being published (e.g. All Africa has a series of articles this week with many hyperlinked).

Seeing the bigger patterns is also important for understanding what has happened, what is working, where the next risk factors are and to hypothesize strategies that will help into the future. A number of authors have already commented that one of the great achievements of this pandemic is that we have (so far) managed to avoid the the repression and control that normally follows a new pandemic (there are exceptions, of course).

One contemplation was that there might be a tendency for those to say that it is because we failed to do the normal crackdown on civil liberties that the outbreak has gotten out of control. But as the Mennonites have pointed out, the global economy has actually fuelled the pandemic. The global economy has seen many workers become dislocated from their families for long periods (e.g. one partner working in the city while the other tends the family farm, or extended military excursions, or corporate high fliers on overseas postings).

Thus it has become impossible for many souls to fulfill their sexual desires with their married spouse and they have then released their tension elsewhere. Simlarly, the AIDS pandemic has exposed the amount of indiscretion that occurs - especially with down low men who seek out other males for sex - either before marriage or within the marriage.

Thus we see patterns where AIDS is brought into a community by dislocated workers (soldiers on R&R, returning to the farm to spend time with the family). We are now seeing the feminisation of AIDS as the wives of the men who have committed extramarital sex are being infected. We are also seeing that AIDS hits the poorest the hardest, they are more likely to be unable to access their spouse, more likely to have sex with someone is infected (who has a higher level of the HIV in their blood because it is being untreated) and thus have a more serious condition earlier.

Repression will not help, for the horse had bolted long before the cart was even contemplated - how many people are infected and don't even know it? The solution is to accept that humans have sexual drives and that we need to provide mechanisms for them to be able to safely satisfy these needs. For those who are capable of being celibate, well and good, but that is no insurance as souls are raped, or in war and violence blood is exchanged, and then there is the intravenous route of infection - which is fuelling the fastest growth of AIDS in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Repression, and staying in denial of reality actually feeds the disease as people are ignorant of the risks or react irrationally and thus exacerbate the pandemic.

SOURCES: Ekklessia All Africa Bostondotcom Open Democracy

 

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