By Hilary WhiteÂ
LAS VEGAS, August 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Hatred of motherhood and the family, a pathological fear of fidelity and sexual continence and loathing of traditional Christian values are the defining forces in the international fight against AIDS according to a long-time Ugandan AIDS activist.Â
Speaking to LifeSiteNews.com from Las Vegas where he is giving talks, Martin Sempa, a Ugandan pastor and the “brains” behind the Ugandan effort against the spread of AIDS, says he avoided the Toronto AIDS conference because of the seething hostility to his message he was likely to find there. The only trouble is, he says, that the delegates in Toronto are missing the one thing that will save the lives of millions.Â
Throughout the 1980’s, the rate of HIV/AIDS climbed to a staggering 30% of the Ugandan population in line with most other countries of Africa. But since their establishment in 1987, the country’s home-grown programs of abstinence and marital fidelity brought the rate down as low as 6.2 per cent. The Christian churches, Catholic, Anglican and Evangelical, worked successfully with the government developing policies to promote marital fidelity and a “no grazing” message to “stay with your husband, stay with your wife.”Â
But, says Sempa, “all hell broke loose” in 1994 when the news got out that a program based on sexual self-control, one rejecting the condom-plus-promiscuity approach of the international organizations, had succeeded so dramatically.Â
AIDS groups began their own counter campaigns. The country is flooding with condoms and pornography and since 1994, the HIV/AIDS rate has begun to climb incrementally. In some areas HIV/AIDS is up to 6.7 per cent.Â
Sempa says that a dual “pathology” of hatred for abstinence and motherhood is driving the international AIDS campaign. What he calls “abstinophobia – fear of sexual abstinence and fidelity as a way of fighting HIV AIDS – and “matriphobia”–” irrational paranoid fear of programs that promote marriage and motherhood – are “the last gasp of life for a sexual revolution that has gone stale in the west is using the AIDS crisis as a means of keeping itself going.”
“They’re afraid to mention it,” Sempa told LifeSiteNews.com. “They are looking for any other way to combat the disease. The real problem is right in front of them, but they say, ‘Don’t tell me my promiscuity is wrong.’”
The grassroots abstinence and fidelity programs, however, are deeply rooted in Uganda’s mainly Christian culture, he says. “People are very observant Christians in Uganda. There is 80 per cent adherence to Christianity in its various forms and our approach resonates with the culture, with public health and is economically viable.”
Sempa says there is a gulf in the basic understanding of the nature of the problem. “Western experts, Bill Clinton, the UN, and the World Health Organization, look upon the AIDS problem as ‘not enough condoms.’ We on the ground, those who actually live in the country, see that the problem is too much promiscuity.” This gulf sets home-based Ugandan AIDS activists against those attempting to impose a western-style culture of “free sex” with condoms at odds with traditional Ugandan culture.
The Ugandan success story is not over yet, however. While the AIDS rate has climbed, it is still among the lowest in Africa and the abstinence and fidelity program is being spread to other countries.Â
Four other countries are importing the Ugandan program in the last year and are seeing some success already. HIV/AIDS rates are starting to fall in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Swaziland since the beginnings of implementation.
If Sempa had a message for Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, who has used the Toronto International AIDS Conference to promote the condoms approach to combating the disease, he says it would be to point to his own long and happy marriage as an inspiration.Â
He said, “The best thing Bill Gates can do for Africa is to speak about how his own marriage to one wife has helped him be successful in life.”
“Bill Gates’ best story is not his money, but his marriage to Melinda. He has had the experience of being faithful to one wife. He need to bring that story to all those who have come from divorce and broken homes. We don’t need more condoms from Bill and Melinda, but more hope and fidelity in marriage is a message of hope.”