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The powerful Christian Right in the USA has taken control of the government's flagship program to combat AIDS worldwide. Under their influence, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that commands a five-year budget of $ 15 billion, is being misused for a crusade for conservative Christian values instead for fighting the disease.
The PEPFAR was launched in January 2003. Initially, the reputed world help organisation CARE was the government's contract partner for the fight against AIDS in Africa and Asia. CARE was to distribute $ 50 million over two years in competitive grants to suitable subcontractors and to oversee their work. But the CARE-contract was a thorn in the flesh of the Christian Right. In their eyes, CARE committed two cardinal sins: Though they tried to cooperate with President Bush's "faith-based initiative" and distributed a major part of the grants to religious organisations, they insisted that all grantees - secular or religious - should technically qualify for the entrusted work. The Christian Right would have preferred to see that the grant money was exclusively and unconditionally distributed within their ideological and political circles. CARE's second sin was to promote the use of condoms to prevent AIDS infection. This was in accordance with the earlier policy of the US government, but against the agenda of the Christian crusaders for sexual abstinence as the only way of AIDS prevention. Under their pressure, the official government policy shifted with the launching of the PEPFAR in 2003 from recommending condom use to promoting "abstinence, faithfulness, and, when appropriate, condoms". But this was still not enough of a concession. Meantime, condoms are - unofficially - banned and everybody considering them useful is eliminated from the program.
This year, the propagandists of Christian morality launched a furious campaign against CARE, accusing the organisation of being "anti-American" and "promoting prostitution and drug use". The US government obliged. After all, the smear campaign was led by President Bush's strongest supporters. Among them is James Dobsen, one of the commanders of the Christian Right and head of the organisation Focus on the Family that sent out 5 million letters and e-mails to support Bush's reelection in 2004.
The CARE contract was discontinued and replaced by a $ 200 million program that aims at Christian groups subscribing to the abstinence-line. The new program is overseen by the government agency USAID. Under the guidance of the White House' "Faith-based office", USAID had been cleansed from "secular elements" and put under a politically reliable and strongly evangelical administration that obeys the directives of their political bosses and distributed grants to all the politically correct recipients.
In 2003, Congress passed and President Bush signed a law that has meantime been declared unconstitutional by several courts, but still stands. It makes it obligatory for any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to sign a pledge that binds them to adopt an anti-prostitution policy. Several recipients of USAID grants are successfully educating prostitutes and seeking their cooperation in preventing HIV infection. Some of them refused to sign the pledge and lost their grants. Victim of the pledge is for example the American Jewish World Service, one of a very few faith-based, but non-Christian recipients, included under the CARE program. The AJWS tries to stop the spread of AIDS by providing education opportunities for children of prostitutes in Kenya, which can help mothers leave the brothels. The Brazilian government lost a $ 40 million grant. Brazil is running a very successful anti-AIDS program that has kept the infection rate among young adults under 1 percent. Pedro Chequer, national director of the program, gives the credit to the fact that the program includes prostitutes as essential partners in its HIV prevention efforts. In an affidavit in a lawsuit over the matter, he said his country strived to adhere to "the established principles of the scientific method and not allow theological beliefs and dogma to interfere."
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