As for the "AIDS" activists, do these people actually believe that if the Pope said it was okay to use condoms, that would stop or even slow the spread of AIDS? The people out there fornicating and sharing needles won't suddenly seek strict religous counsel when it comes to using birth control. Does anyone think that just before going into a bathhouse to participate in a homosexual orgy in a bathhouse, a gay guy says to himself "Oh should I use a condom? Well the Pope says 'no'. Okay, 'no' it is then." Come on, get real.
PARIS (AFP) - AIDS campaigners sounded a jarring note over the papacy of John Paul II, describing his ban on condom use, abhorrence of homosexuality and conservatism on women's rights as bleak failures in the fight against HIV.
The pope's tenure straddled the emergence of the first cases of AIDS to its spread
as a global pandemic that by last year had claimed more than 20 million lives and left nearly 40 million others infected with HIV.
As the catastrophe unfolded, the pontiff repeatedly called for support for people sickened with the human immunodeficiency virus and always pleaded for the cause of AIDS orphans.
"At a time of mourning, it's important to note that whatever else can be said, he did help to ease AIDS stigma," an official with an international health agency, involved in the fight against HIV, told AFP.
Set against that, though, the pope took a deeply conservative line when it came to the causes of infection and preventing its spread. In his edicts, he fought indefatigably against condoms, branded homosexuality immoral and emphasised a passive role for women as family anchor and child bearer....
Radical AIDS campaigners said Monday that, in their view, by stigmatising homosexuality, denying condoms and hampering female empowerment, the pope may even have helped propagate HIV."Millions of people in developing countries are orphans, having lost their parents to AIDS because of the pope's anti-condom dogma," said British gay campaigner Peter Tatchell of the group OutRage.
"We mourn for the eight million Catholics who have died of AIDS, and worry for the more than 10 million Catholics who are infected," said Khalil Elouardighi of the French branch of the lobby group Act Up.
"It should not be forgotten that millions have died in Africa as a result of this theological rigidity," said the British centrist daily The Independent. "Blindess in the face of AIDS," was the headline in France's left-of-centre daily Liberation.
A pro-reform Catholic group, We Are Church, founded in 1996, said John Paul II's pontificate "was full of contradictions."
"Among the human rights still crying out for recognition in the church are gender equality... and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS," it said....
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