Morality Gets a Massage---The Nation

Morality Gets a Massage

[from the May 28, 2007 issue of The Nation]

So far, the most significant player to show up on Washington madam Deborah
Jeane Palfrey's much-discussed client list is USAID chief Randall Tobias,
the former pharmaceutical company CEO who ran Bush's global AIDS initiative
for its first three years. His ignominious tenure as AIDS ambassador was marked by a preference for pricey brand-name HIV drugs over cheap generics, which sharply reduced the number of people who could be treated. Ironically, given his regular "massages" from call girls, when we can surmise he ignored the abstinence-only instruction to "keep all of your clothes all the way on all of the time," Tobias was also an avid defender of the President's puritanical approach to HIV prevention.

Tobias was the hatchet man who forced every US grant recipient to publicly
condemn prostitution--even struggling outfits doing the sensitive work of
persuading destitute sex workers to use condoms. A forthcoming study from
the Center for Health and Gender Equity of five Asian countries where
commercial sex is driving the AIDS epidemic found that the policy has
resulted in the closure of drop-in centers for street prostitutes and a
scaling back of other successful prevention efforts.

It was Tom DeLay's ethically challenged Congress that slapped the global
AIDS initiative with a one-third abstinence earmark on prevention. Tobias
promoted this approach so zealously that in some countries, like Nigeria,
nearly 70 percent of all US dollars granted to prevent the sexual
transmission of HIV were channeled toward abstinence.

Tobias is not the first abstinence czar to leave his job after running afoul
of the moral agenda he promoted. Claude Allen, once the leading White House
abstinence advocate, stepped down as domestic policy adviser last year after
he was caught stealing. Ted Haggard, once head of the National Association
of Evangelicals--powerful boosters of abstinence-only spending--resigned
last fall after a gay hustler named him as a client. But Tobias's fall comes
as momentum is finally building against the $2.5 billion-and-counting
abstinence boondoggle.

Though the Institute of Medicine called for the elimination of
abstinence-only programs in 2000, Bush set about doubling their budget
instead. Last month the Administration's own study--mandated by Congress a
decade ago but delayed while ideological spinmeisters handicapped the
criteria to help produce favorable results--was finally released. Posted
quietly on the web without even a press release, it affirmed what every
academic study had found before: Preaching abstinence doesn't produce it.
Numerous studies show that contraceptive access cuts teen pregnancy rates
and condom education dramatically reduces HIV transmission.

As with opposition to the war, the American people are ahead of Congress on
this issue. A recent study found that 82 percent of Americans want
comprehensive sex education for their kids. Nine states have now turned down
the tempting pot of abstinence money, including "red state" Montana.
Abstinence funding should go the way of Randall Tobias. Legislation like the
Pathway Act, which would revoke the abstinence earmark on global AIDS
spending, and the Real Act, which would allocate funds for comprehensive sex
ed, both introduced by Barbara Lee, need muscle from Democratic leaders.
When the President's AIDS initiative comes up for reauthorization in two
years, Congress should strike the prostitution pledge and the ban on needle
exchange.

The moral contradictions of the abstinence-mongers speak eloquently to the
folly of basing public health decisions on religious injunctions and
fantasies of social control. It's time for Congress to stop this dangerous
crusade, both here and abroad.