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US Gov’t Fights Court Ruling Allowing AIDS Groups to Sidestep Anti-Prostitution Policies

Group that won court action involved in large scale porn and sex merchandise business

By Gudrun Schultz

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The US Justice Department filed an appeal last Tuesday to overturn a court decision allowing AIDS organizations seeking federal funding to refuse to sign a pledge of opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking, the Associated Press reported October 10.

DKT International, a non-profit organization that aggressively promotes population control in developing countries through condom use and abortion, sued the U.S. Agency for International Development last year over a 2003 law that requires organizations to make a written commitment of opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking before qualifying for funding under the $15 billion AIDS program.

The founder of DKT, Philip D. Harvey, also founded one of the world‘s largest mail-order pornography and sex merchandise businesses. As part of their international “AIDS prevention” program, DKT distributes condoms to prostitutes and other sex workers. “We accept what they do as part of the reality of today’s world,” Harvey said in defense of the practice, “and we do our best to empower them so they can adopt practices that will minimize the risk of HIV transmission.”

DKT won the case last May, when U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that the funding conditions violated the organization’s free speech rights by requiring that they “parrot” the U.S. government’s policy on prostitution.

The U.S. government defended the funding condition as “highly germane” to the goal of diminishing the spread of the disease in its appeal Tuesday.

“Congress could reasonab[ly] determine that the government’s efforts to stamp out prostitution and sex trafficking would be most successful if HIV/AIDS services are provided by organizations that affirmatively oppose two underlying causes of the disease,” the Justice Department said .

Condom promotion in African nations has had little to no impact on slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS infections, supporters of the U.S. policy point out, with AIDS rates continuing to rise despite increasing access to condom use. Further, the World Health Organization has warned that condom use fails to protect against the disease 20 percent of the time, despite condom advocates claims of 100 percent effectiveness.

Read the Bush administration’s five year plan for HIV/AIDS intervention:
http://www.state.gov/s/gac/plan/c11652.htm

See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

Pornographer Sues Bush over Anti-Prostitution Measure
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/aug/05082505.html

Philippine AIDS Rate Has Doubled Coinciding with Increase of Condom Use
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06020308.html

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