Category: AIDS/HIV

World Vision issues statement about Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill

This comes from Dean Owens at World Vision:

Statement by Rudo Kwaramba

National Director, World Vision Uganda

Regarding the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009

The legislation under consideration by the Ugandan Parliament, commonly referred to as the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” has the potential to stigmatize some individuals in communities targeted by World Vision’s work.  World Vision hopes this legislation will not deter individuals from being tested for HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Knowledge of one’s HIV status – regardless of one’s sexual orientation -enables an individual to take actions to prevent further transmission of HIV, as well as to protect oneself from infection.

World Vision has been working in Uganda since the mid-1980’s and has more than 500 staff members in the country, the majority of whom are Ugandans.  Uganda is one of the first countries in which we started HIV education and prevention programs. One of World Vision ‘s prevention models aims to reduce any stigma which may deter people from seeking to know their HIV status.

As a Christian humanitarian organization, World Vision strives to reach out and bring justice to the poor, vulnerable and marginalized.  We serve all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. We do not require or compel those we serve to adopt our Christian faith.

As a signatory to the Red Cross Code of Conduct, World Vision is committed to providing assistance for children, their families and communities on the basis of need, without discrimination of any kind. As in other nations, World Vision’s work in Uganda is community-based and child-focused; the sexual orientation of those we serve, or those with whom we collaborate, does not arise.

Regardless of whether this legislation is passed, World Vision is committed to serving the poor, vulnerable and marginalized people of Uganda.

    END

I have made this argument before that the bill will stigmatize HIV/AIDS to the point where treatment, testing and education will be significantly compromised for same-sex and opposite sex attracted people.

Newsweek: PEPFAR funds will not be held for Uganda

Katie Paul at Newsweek has an interview with the US PEPFAR coordinator, Eric Goosby, today. She sets up the story by referring to the infamous ex-gay conference in March. 

The thinking behind them [Anti-Homosexuality Bill] is just as disturbing, since this latest round of anti-gay fervor was kicked off at a conference held by by American missionary groups that went to proselytize about the twin evils of Nazism and homosexual behavior in Kampala earlier this year. Just to hammer home how far-out that is, this means the Ugandan government got its advice from the author of a book called The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which claims the Nazi movement was “entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history.” The result has been a vigilante campaign against the country’s LGBT community, whereby gay detainees are tortured and tabloids publish the names, places of employment, addresses, and physical descriptions of gay rights advocates under headlines that scream “TOP HOMOS IN UGANDA NAMED.” It would seem the stuff of Orwellian parody, but it’s real.

To Paul’s question about US funding, Goosby replied:

I’m very concerned about any decision that any country–including our own–would make to target a group that’s in the population, and that’s always been in the population, by excluding them from a service or passes legislation that criminalizes their behavior. Everytime you do that, you push the behavior underground. It never works. Rather than minimizing the spread of the virus, it actually amplifies it.

The U.S. policy is trying to work with governments to say exactly that. I think I would do more harm than good by connecting our resources to respond to the epidemic to making them dependent on a behavior that they’re not willing to engage in on their own. My role is to be supportive and helpful to the patients who need these services. It is not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation.

Goosby goes on to suggest diplomacy will work if he points out the public health argument. Will this work? I don’t have much confidence in this. Go read Katie’s thoughts on the matter and the Obama policy.

Discuss…

How the Anti-Homosexuality Bill could impair AIDS progress in Uganda

This post has the potential to be a more formal article, but for now, I am getting some thoughts together which are in addition to what I wrote at Crosswalk.com and the Christian Post about the topic.

In the earlier article, I noted that the Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard University, Edward Green, said that effective work with marginalized populations (e.g., glbt people) requires that health care workers develop trust with those they want to reach. Dr. Green said that, as law, this bill would drive gays and lesbians into hiding. While that would be tragic and have an impact on AIDS rates, the primary driver of AIDS in Africa is not homosexuality. Because of that, the rates of AIDS may not change much, although any change would not be beneficial. However, what might drive people away from interventions and/or treatment is the threat of being considered homosexual.

In the recent radio interview on Premier Christian Radio, Dr. Martin Ssempa said South Africa had the “highest HIVAIDS in the whole world” and attributed that to legalized homosexuality there. He also said that Uganda does not want another source of HIV. In a recent article, David Bahati, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill co-sponsor, said that homosexuals spread AIDS three times more than straights. Does this public health argument work?

Not so much. I asked Dr. Green about the AIDS rates and he said while South Africa had the largest number of AIDS cases in the world, there AIDS rate is lower than some of their African neighbors where homosexuality is illegal. For instance, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland have higher AIDS prevalence rates than South Africa (over twice as high) but homosexuality is illegal in these countries. The legal status of homosexuality, while important for human rights issues and practically, to fight AIDS in that population, does not seem to play much of a role in the overall AIDS rate in African nations.

Then, what does?

Dr. Green told me that 90% plus of HIV is transmitted by heterosexual behavior. Thus, focusing on gays misses the mark. If an African country does not address multiple concurrent partnerships and fidelity, not much good will happen.

So why do I believe this bill will turn the clock back on AIDS progress?

One, since politicians (e.g., Bahati) and ministers (e.g., Ssempa) are framing this Anti-Homosexuality Bill as a part of the fight against AIDS, I believe straights will shy away from getting educated, tested or treated because of the increased stigma of having AIDS. More than the stigma would be the fear of being reported to the police.

Two, I think straights may assume that HIVAIDS is a gay disease and believe that straight sex will be safer somehow. Given the fact that AIDS is really a straight disease in much of Africa, any movement in that direction could compromise the progress in Uganda. When supporters of this bill say they favor it for public health reasons, they are not working with all the facts, or thinking about possible effects on behavior.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill will create more stigma surrounding AIDS which in my view will prevent people from seeking treatement, education or testing. This cannot be a good thing.

New Danish study reviews mortality among married gays

In April, 2007, I posted a rebuttal to Paul and Kirk Cameron’s claims that gays die 20-plus years sooner than straights. That post was the first of a nine-part series, Only the Gay Die Young? The links will show up if you click here, here and here. Also, I brought them all together in an article with additional commentary in an article presented at a research summit I conducted in 2007.
Participating in that exchange was Morten Frisch, Danish epidemiologist. I initially corresponded with Dr. Frisch concerning his 2006 article on environmental influences in homosexual versus heterosexual marriage decisions. When Paul and Kirk Cameron produced their mortality study at the Eastern Psychological Association, I contacted Dr. Frisch for comment. Dr. Frisch dismissed the Camerons’ methods saying,

Cameron and Cameron’s report on “life expectancy” in homosexuals vs heterosexuals is severely methodologically flawed
It is no wonder why this pseudo-scientific report claiming a drastically shorter life expectancy in homosexuals compared with heterosexuals has been published on the internet without preceding scientific peer-review (http://www.earnedmedia.org/frireport.htm). The authors should know, and as PhDs they presumably do, that this report has little to do with science. It is hard to escape the idea that non-scientific motifs have driven the authors to make this report public. The methodological flaws are of such a grave nature that no decent peer-reviewed scientific journal should let it pass for publication

In this case, Dr. Frisch did more than critique the Camerons. He, along with colleague Henrik Brønnum-Hansen, conducted a study using the data from Denmark regarding married gays and straights. The study will be published in the January, 2009 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, but is being released today via the journal’s website. Dr. Frisch was kind enough to forward a copy which I summarize here.
Frisch and Brønnum-Hansen found that Danish men marrying soon after the Danish same-sex marriage law was enacted had markedly higher death rates than men in the general Danish population. They speculate that these men were ill, ordinarily with AIDS or AIDS related illnesses, but also from other life-threatening diseases, and wanted to marry to establish rights of survivorship or other benefits for a surviving spouse. However, the mortality for homosexual men marrying after 1996 is virtually the same as for heterosexual men in Denmark. Thus, since HIV/AIDS has been more successfully managed, the mortality rates have declined dramatically.
During the height of the AIDS crisis, life expectancies were understandably depressed. This study indicates that mortality has improved substantially.
In the article, Frisch and Brønnum-Hansen directly address the methods of the Camerons.

Flawed Claims of Major Excess Mortality
Authors from the Family Research Institute, a US-based institution fighting to ‘‘restore a world . . . where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level, ’’have produced a series of reports in which they claim homosexuality is incompatible with full health and as dangerous to public health as drug abuse, prostitution, and smoking. In a recent
report, the authors obtained data from Statistics Denmark and Statistics Norway and compared the average age at death among men and women who had ever been in a same-sex marriage with the average age at death among people who had ever been heterosexually married.
Because the age distribution among persons in same-sex marriages was considerably younger than that of people who had ever been heterosexually married, the average age at death among those who actually died during the observation period was, not surprisingly, considerably younger in the population of same-sex married persons. The Family Research Institute presented the lower mean age at death (by 22–25 years) for persons in same-sex versus heterosexual marriages as evidence that persons who married heterosexually ‘‘outlived gays and lesbians by more than 20 years on average.’’ Elementary textbooks in epidemiology warn against such undue comparisons between group averages because they lead to seemingly common-sense yet seriously flawed conclusions.

I am still reviewing the details and will add more as I complete my review. For now, I will say that I appreciate Dr. Frisch’s work and efforts to gain an objective look at this controversial topic.
The study reference is: Frisch, M. & Brønnum-Hansen, H. (2009). Mortality Among Men and Women in Same-Sex Marriage: A National Cohort Study of 8333 Danes. American Journal of Public Health 99,(1), available online at http://www.ajph.org/first_look.shtml.

Let's take a vote: Is this worth your money?

The Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Willamette (OR) has a site called Take Care Down There which apparently receives some Title X money (your money originally).
Goofy, if you ask me. Goofy enough to be chuckled at and ignored, which means I vote no.
Take care