Wait for sex and marriage? Evangelicals conflicted
By ERIC GORSKI
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 9, 2009 6:09 PM
-- When Margie and Stephen Zumbrun were battling the urge to have premarital sex, a pastor counseled them to control themselves. The couple signed a purity covenant.
Then, when the two got engaged and Margie went wedding dress shopping, a salesperson called her "the bride who looks like she's 12." Nonchurch friends said that, at 22, she was rushing things.
The agonizing message to a young Christian couple in love: Sex can wait, but so can marriage.
"It's unreasonable to say, 'Don't do anything ... and wait until you have degrees and you're in your 30s to get married,'" said Margie Zumbrun, who did wait for sex, and married Stephen fresh out of Purdue University. "I think that's just inviting people to have sex and feel like they're bad people for doing it."
Against that backdrop, a number of evangelicals are promoting marrying earlier, nudging young adults toward the altar even as many of their peers and parents are holding them back.
Couples like the Zumbruns are caught between two powerful forces - evangelical Christianity's abstinence culture, with its chastity balls and virginity pledges, and societal forces pushing average marriage ages deeper into the 20s.
The call for young marriage raises questions: How young is too young? What if marriage is viewed as a ticket to guilt-free sex? What about the fact that marrying young is the No. 1 predictor of divorce?
The conversation is spreading from what pastors say is a relatively small number of churches and ministries that promote early marriage to the broader evangelical community, with the latest development being a Christianity Today magazine cover story this month titled "The Case for Young Marriage."
The article's author, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, argues that evangelicals "have made much ado about sex" but are damaging the institution of marriage by discouraging and delaying it.
Regnerus is not saying that premarital sex is OK. But he does suggest that abstinence has its limits, and that intensifying the message won't work. When people wait until their mid- to late 20s to marry, he writes, it's unrealistic and "battling our creator's reproductive designs" to expect them to wait that long for sex.
Statistics show that few Americans wait. More than 93 percent of adults 18 to 23 who are in romantic relationships are having sex, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. For conservative Protestants in relationships and active in their faith, it's almost 80 percent.
Regnerus, a conservative Presbyterian, knocks the "abstinence industry" for perpetuating "a blissful myth" that great sex awaits just beyond the wedding reception. He advises against teen marriage, but argues that early 20s marriages are not as risky as advertised.
"I'll probably get framed as I want people to marry because I don't want them to have premarital sex," said Regnerus, author of "Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers."
"I think marriage is just a fantastic institution for people who think rightly about it, have realistic ideas about it and put the requisite work into it."
The median age for first marriages in the U.S. is about 26 for women and 28 for men, the highest figures since the Census Bureau began counting. Solid data on evangelicals is not readily available, but research suggests they marry only slightly younger, Regnerus said.
High-school sweethearts Megan and Jay Mkrtschjan planned to marry at 20. But the suburban Chicago couple waited an extra year to finish college under pressure from Megan's parents.
There were few doubts in their minds about marrying young. They had found each other. Why wait?
"For me, it was really a trust issue," Megan said. "Marrying right out of college was showing our friends, showing the people we were acquainted with, that we trusted our lives with God."
For Jay, a songwriter and guitarist, "the sex issue" was the best argument for early marriage. "By getting married young and dating for a shorter period of time, it leaves less room to sin sexually," he said.
Now four years married, the Mkrtschjans say their relative youth helped them through early trials, which at one point took them down to $26 in the checking account.
"We were going through these hardships together," said Megan, a fifth-grade teacher who owns a cake-decorating business. "It made things easier because we weren't stuck in our ways. We were open to what each other had to say."
Many young adults today view their 20s as a time for fun, travel, career-building or finding themselves - not for settling down.
Among evangelicals, there's a tendency to wait because many believe God "is going to deliver me a spouse right to my door," so they don't actively seek one, said Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, a young marriage promoter.
Then there's what Stanton calls the "eHarmony philosophy" - the belief God will deliver someone perfect.
Stanton doesn't blame the abstinence movement. "I don't think that it's so much to much focus on abstinence, but the silence on marriage makes the abstinence message sound so much louder," he said.
At Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., associate pastor Michael Lawrence emphasizes that marriage is a covenant, not a convenient arrangement, and offers advice to young couples on overcoming arguments over money, sex and family.
"We probably haven't served our young people well by on the one hand emphasizing abstinence, but on the other hand telling them to wait to get married," Lawrence said. "It seems to be setting them up to fail."
Like most proponents of young marriage, Lawrence does not set an arbitrary "right" age for marriage. Waiting until after college might be advisable if the alternative is crushing debt or dropping out, he said.
Supporters of abstinence programs promote them as both marriage-preparation tools and longer-term support systems for those who don't marry.
Jimmy Hester, co-founder of True Love Waits, part of the Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay Christian Resources, disagreed with the argument that abstinence past a certain age is too much to ask.
"There are too many examples of people who have done it," he said. "And not out of their own strength, even, but out of a relationship with God who gives them strength."
Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin, who studies families and public policy, said young marriage is a tough sell. A half-century ago, when people married earlier, fewer people attended college, high school graduates could get good-paying factory jobs, women became mothers right after school and families were larger, he said.
"Most evangelicals, as well as most Americans, realize how expensive it is to raise children these days," Cherlin said. "The most important rationale for early marriage - having a larger family - has disappeared."
Some single evangelical women want to marry young, but the numbers are against them: single women outnumber single men in churches 3 to 2, and the available men are postponing growing up, Regnerus and others say.
Skeptics, meanwhile, suspect early marriage backers want to turn back the clock on gender roles.
"There is some rolling of the eyes, especially among women ... 'Why are you giving up your 20s and going back to the 1950s and June Cleaver?'" said Jay Thomas, college pastor at College Church in Wheaton, Ill.
Other evangelicals simply want to wait and cite their faith as motivation. Valerie Strattan, 24, of Chicago, has a serious boyfriend of 2 1/2 years. She believes that for now, God has called them to focus on separate pursuits: he's a musician, she works in refugee resettlement.
"We don't feel the rush to marry," Strattan said. "If I am listening to God, and he is listening to God, then God isn't going to lead us in separate places if he does truly want us to get married."
Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts The culture war will never end if judges invalidate the choices of voters By ROBERT P. GEORGE We are in the midst of a showdown over the legal definition of marriage. Though some state courts have interfered, the battle is mainly being fought in referenda around the country, where “same-sex marriage” has uniformly been rejected, and in legislatures, where some states have adopted it. It’s a raucous battle, but democracy is working. Now the fight may head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Following California’s Proposition 8, which restored the historic definition of marriage in that state as the union of husband and wife, a federal lawsuit has been filed to invalidate traditional marriage laws. It would be disastrous for the justices to do so. They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights. Even many supporters of legal abortion now consider Roe a mistake. Lacking any basis in the text, logic or original understanding of the Constitution, the decision became a symbol of the judicial usurpation of authority vested in the people and their representatives. It sent the message that judges need not be impartial umpires—as both John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor say they should be—but that judges can impose their policy preferences under the pretext of enforcing constitutional guarantees. By short-circuiting the democratic process, Roe inflamed the culture war that has divided our nation and polarized our politics. Abortion, which the Court purported to settle in 1973, remains the most unsettled issue in American politics—and the most unsettling. Another Roe would deepen the culture war and prolong it indefinitely. David Klein Some insist that the Supreme Court must invalidate traditional marriage laws because “rights” are at stake. But as in Roe, they are forced to peddle a strained and contentious reading of the Constitution—one whose dubiousness would undermine any ruling’s legitimacy.
Lawyers challenging traditional marriage laws liken their cause to Loving v. Virginia (which invalidated laws against interracial marriages), insinuating that conjugal-marriage supporters are bigots. This is ludicrous and offensive, and no one should hesitate to say so.
The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.
Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.
Of course, marital intercourse often does produce babies, and marriage is the form of relationship that is uniquely apt for childrearing (which is why, unlike baptisms and bar mitzvahs, it is a matter of vital public concern). But as a comprehensive sharing of life—an emotional and biological union—marriage has value in itself and not merely as a means to procreation. This explains why our law has historically permitted annulment of marriage for non-consummation, but not for infertility; and why acts of sodomy, even between legally wed spouses, have never been recognized as consummating marriages.
Only this understanding makes sense of all the norms—annulability for non-consummation, the pledge of permanence, monogamy, sexual exclusivity—that shape marriage as we know it and that our law reflects. And only this view can explain why the state should regulate marriage (as opposed to ordinary friendships) at all—to make it more likely that, wherever possible, children are reared in the context of the bond between the parents whose sexual union gave them life.
If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union—and thus to procreation—will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play. But there is no reason that primarily emotional unions like friendships should be permanent, exclusive, limited to two, or legally regulated at all. Thus, there will remain no principled basis for upholding marital norms like monogamy.
A veneer of sentiment may prevent these norms from collapsing—but only temporarily. The marriage culture, already wounded by widespread divorce, nonmarital cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing will fare no better than it has in those European societies that were in the vanguard of sexual “enlightenment.” And the primary victims of a weakened marriage culture are always children and those in the poorest, most vulnerable sectors of society.
Candid and clear-thinking advocates of redefining marriage recognize that doing so entails abandoning norms such as monogamy. In a 2006 statement entitled “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” over 300 lesbian, gay, and allied activists, educators, lawyers, and community organizers—including Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, and prominent Yale, Columbia and Georgetown professors—call for legally recognizing multiple sex partner (“polyamorous”) relationships. Their logic is unassailable once the historic definition of marriage is overthrown.
Is this a red herring? This week’s Newsweek reports more than 500,000 polyamorous households in the U.S.
So, before judging whether traditional marriage laws should be junked, we must decide what marriage is. It is this crucial and logically prior question that some want to shuffle off stage.
Because marriage has already been deeply wounded, some say that redefining it will do no additional harm. I disagree. We should strengthen, not redefine, marriage. But whatever one’s view, surely it is the people, not the courts, who should debate and decide. For reasons of both principle and prudence, the issue should be settled by democratic means, not by what Justice Byron White, in his dissent in Roe, called an “act of raw judicial power.”
Mr. George is professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and founder of the American Principles Project (www.americanprinciplesproject.org).
The Community Levee Association agrees with Mr. Cooper's opinion below, first published as a letter to the editor in the July 29th edition of the Wall Street Journal. California Has the Right to Ban Same-Sex Marriage, July 29, 2009 In his July 20 op-ed “Gay Marriage and the Constitution,” attorney David Boies explains why he and his co-counsel, Ted Olson, are attempting to take the controversial public policy issue of same-sex marriage out of the hands of California’s voters and place it in the hands of federal judges. A majority of Californians recently amended their state constitution to restore the age-old definition of marriage, which the California Supreme Court had discarded in an activist, four-to-three decision recognizing same-sex marriage. Mr. Boies argues that defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman—the definition common to 44 states, the federal government, nearly every other country in the world, and nearly every civilization in history—reflects nothing but “the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing.” Indeed, he likens the traditional understanding of marriage to the racist Jim Crow laws which prohibited interracial marriages. Mr. Boies’s divisive rhetoric defames as bigoted not only the majority of Californians, but also the overwhelming majority of Americans—decent people from all walks of life, all political parties, and all races and creeds. Indeed, President Barack Obama supports giving gay couples the legal protections of domestic partnerships, but opposes same-sex marriage—precisely what California has done. Mr. Boies denounces all those who hold this view as gay-bashers. Surely he does not really believe this. The traditional definition of marriage has nothing in common with antimiscegenation laws. From their inception, those laws were designed to serve the hateful causes of white supremacy and racial oppression; they were rooted in bigotry and furthered no legitimate governmental interests whatsoever. The overriding purpose of marriage, in nearly every civilization throughout history, has always been to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into stable and binding unions that will provide for the care and upbringing of the offspring of those unions. It is an undeniable biological fact that only opposite sex relationships naturally, and often inadvertently, produce children. Accordingly, traditional opposite-sex marriages further the fundamental purpose of marriage in a way that same-sex relationships do not. This purpose of marriage goes to the very survival of civilization; it has nothing to do with literal or figurative gay-bashing. The Supreme Court cases recognizing the fundamental right to marry contain not a scrap of support for redefining marriage to include same-sex unions. On the contrary, these cases have uniformly recognized the connection between the right to marry and society’s existential interest in creating, nurturing and educating the next generation. The court specifically rejected Mr. Boies’s constitutional arguments many years ago, and it specifically said that its recent decision invalidating criminal antisodomy laws did not imply a right to same-sex marriage. The people of each state are free to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions, and a handful of states have begun experiments of this kind. Innovation and change are the hallmarks of a democratic and pluralistic society. Maybe these experiments will succeed and be imitated by other states. Or maybe not. But if the federal courts yield to Mr. Boies’s demands, that will be the end of the debate, and there will be no going back—not for California nor for any other state. A majority of California’s voters, with malice toward none, have decided not to try this experiment, at least for now. Nothing in our Constitution gives the courts the extraordinary and dangerous power to force it upon them. Charles J. Cooper Washington Mr. Cooper represents Proposition 8 Official Proponents in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Why Ted Olson and I are working to overturn California's Proposition 8. By DAVID BOIES
When I got married in California in 1959 there were almost 20 states where marriage was limited to two people of different sexes and the same race. Eight years later the Supreme Court unanimously declared state bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional.
Recently, Ted Olson and I brought a lawsuit asking the courts to now declare unconstitutional California's Proposition 8 limitation of marriage to people of the opposite sex. We acted together because of our mutual commitment to the importance of this cause, and to emphasize that this is not a Republican or Democratic issue, not a liberal or conservative issue, but an issue of enforcing our Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and due process to all citizens.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental that states cannot abridge it. In 1978 the Court (8 to 1, Zablocki v. Redhail) overturned as unconstitutional a Wisconsin law preventing child-support scofflaws from getting married. The Court emphasized, "decisions of this Court confirm that the right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals." In 1987 the Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional a Missouri law preventing imprisoned felons from marrying.
There were legitimate state policies that supported the Wisconsin and Missouri restrictions held unconstitutional. By contrast, there is no legitimate state policy underlying Proposition 8. The occasional suggestion that marriages between people of different sexes may somehow be threatened by marriages of people of the same sex does not withstand discussion. It is difficult to the point of impossibility to envision two love-struck heterosexuals contemplating marriage to decide against it because gays and lesbians also have the right to marry; it is equally hard to envision a couple whose marriage is troubled basing the decision of whether to divorce on whether their gay neighbors are married or living in a domestic partnership. And even if depriving lesbians of the right to marry each other could force them into marrying someone they do not love but who happens to be of the opposite sex, it is impossible to see how that could be thought to be as likely to lead to a stable, loving relationship as a marriage to the person they do love.
Moreover, there is no longer any credible contention that depriving gays and lesbians of basic rights will cause them to change their sexual orientation. Even if there was, the attempt would be constitutionally defective. But, in fact, the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians is as much a God-given characteristic as the color of their skin or the sexual orientation of their straight brothers and sisters. It is also a condition that, like race, has historically been subject to abusive and often violent discrimination. It is precisely where a minority's basic human rights are abridged that our Constitution's promise of due process and equal protection is most vital.
Countries as Catholic as Spain, as different as Sweden and South Africa, and as near as Canada have embraced gay and lesbian marriage without any noticeable effect -- except the increase in human happiness and social stability that comes from permitting people to marry for love. Several states -- including Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- have individually repealed their bans on same-sex marriage as inconsistent with a decent respect for human rights and a rational view of the communal value of marriage for all individuals. But basic constitutional rights cannot depend on the willingness of the electorate in any given state to end discrimination. If we were prepared to consign minority rights to a majority vote, there would be no need for a constitution.
The ban on same-sex marriages written into the California Constitution by a 52% vote in favor of Proposition 8 is the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing. California allows same-sex domestic partnerships that, as interpreted by the California Supreme Court, provide virtually all of the economic rights of marriage. So the ban on permitting gay and lesbian couples to actually marry is simply an attempt by the state to stigmatize a segment of its population that commits no offense other than falling in love with a disapproved partner, and asks no more of the state than to be treated equally with all other citizens. In 2003 the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas held that states could not constitutionally outlaw consensual homosexual activity. As Justice Anthony Kennedy elegantly wrote rejecting the notion that a history of discrimination might trump constitutional rights, "Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."
There are those who sincerely believe that homosexuality is inconsistent with their religion -- and the First Amendment guarantees their freedom of belief. However, the same First Amendment, as well as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, preclude the enshrinement of their religious-based disapproval in state law.
Gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters, our teachers and doctors, our friends and neighbors, our parents and children. It is time, indeed past time, that we accord them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It is time, indeed past time, that our Constitution fulfill its promise of equal protection and due process for all citizens by now eliminating the last remnant of centuries of misguided state discrimination against gays and lesbians.
The argument in favor of Proposition 8 ultimately comes down to no more than the tautological assertion that a marriage is between a man and a woman. But a slogan is not a substitute for constitutional analysis. Law is about justice, not bumper stickers.
Mr. Boies is the chairman of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.
from 5
The Real Pregnancy Crisis
By W. BRADFORD WILCOX Earlier this month, Bristol Palin turned herself into a poster child for the nation's continuing effort to prevent teenage pregnancies. She made the rounds on the morning TV show circuit and spoke at town hall meetings to drive home the point that other teens shouldn't make the same mistake she did. Ms. Palin's campaign could not have come at a better time. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. -- after witnessing a 14-year decline in teenage childbearing from 1991 to 2005 -- saw the number rise from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, the latest year for which data are available, about 450,000 adolescents gave birth.
The recent uptick in teenage childbearing has public-health experts, scholars and government leaders concerned. "Let's hope this sobering news on teen births serves as a wake-up call to policymakers, parents and practitioners," said Sarah Brown, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, "that all our efforts to convince young people to delay pregnancy and parenthood need to be more intense, more creative and based more on what we know works."
But the nation's intense focus on teenage childbearing has obscured a more fundamental problem in childbearing trends. Last week, the CDC reported that about 40% of American children were born out of wedlock in 2007, more than triple the 11% who were in 1970. This means that more than 1.7 million children were born outside of marriage in 2007. Moreover, the vast majority of these babies -- 60%, to be precise -- were born not to teenagers but to women in their 20s (only 23% of nonmarital births were to teens). Furthermore, the CDC reports that nonmarital childbearing has been rising much faster among adults than among teenagers.
None of this should come as a surprise, given that a 2003 Gallup Survey found that 64% of young adults age 18 to 29 thought that having a baby out of wedlock was "morally acceptable."
But a number of academics and advocates who track family issues are more than willing to provide intellectual cover to contemporary young adults' laissez-faire approach to childbearing and marriage. For instance, Stephanie Coontz, the director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, wrote on the New York Times "Room for Debate" blog that "policymakers and researchers need to discard one-size-fits-all generalizations about the causes, consequences, risks and benefits of different family forms. Average outcomes from married and single parenting hide huge variations" in child well-being. Likewise, Silvia Henriquez, the executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, urged readers to resist the temptation to "present single motherhood as a problem in itself."
Ultimately, though, the arguments put forward by Ms. Coontz, Ms. Henriquez and other academics and advocates do not have science on their side. For instance, Sara McLanahan at Princeton University and her colleagues have found that boys who are raised by single mothers are twice as likely to end up in prison by age 32, that girls who are born outside of marriage are three times as likely to have a teenage pregnancy, and that teens born outside of marriage are about twice as likely to drop out of high school, compared with their peers who are raised in intact, married families.
Moreover, we should take cold comfort from the fact that many of these nonmarital births are, in Ms. Henriquez's words, to "women [who] may be living with a partner." It is true that most of the recent growth in nonmarital childbearing has been driven by births to cohabiting couples. But cohabiting couples are notoriously unstable, in large part because their relationships are not anchored by the legal, social and moral commitments associated with marriage. One study by Pamela Smock at the University of Michigan and Wendy Manning at Bowling Green State University found that 50% of children born to cohabiting parents saw their parents part by age 5, compared with only 15% of children born to married parents.
And as both parents and scholars know, such instability is hard on young children. Not surprisingly, a growing body of research on cohabitation and child well-being indicates that kids who spend time in cohabiting unions are significantly more likely to experience emotional problems, school failure and physical and sexual abuse than children in intact, married homes -- in part because they are much more likely to be exposed to a revolving series of romantic partners, usually unrelated adult males, who do not have their best interests at heart.
So what is driving the upward spike in nonmarital childbearing? Some groups, such as the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, have been focusing on contraceptive failures among young adults. It is true that most nonmarital pregnancies are unintended. But the percentage of unmarried, sexually active women who have been using contraception has increased significantly over the past four decades, according to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Here are three more likely explanations: First, young Americans have been postponing marriage, but they are not postponing sex and cohabitation. Indeed, my own research indicates that cohabiting couples are much more likely to get pregnant than couples who do not live together. Second, working-class and poor men have seen their real wages fall since the early 1970s, which makes them less attractive as husbands to their girlfriends and to the mothers of their children. This also helps explain why nonmarital childbearing is concentrated among blacks, Latinos, and working-class and poor whites.
Third, the meaning of marriage in the U. S. has changed over the past 40 years. As sociologist Andrew Cherlin has noted, marriage used to be the "foundation" for adulthood, sex, intimacy and childbearing. Now, marriage is viewed by many Americans as a "capstone" that signals that a couple has arrived -- financially, professionally and emotionally.
This also helps to explain why college-educated mothers are bucking the trend toward having children out of wedlock. It is easier for these women to attain the level of achievement that the newer, luxury model of marriage before childbearing requires. Only 7% of college-educated women are having children out of wedlock, compared with more than 50% of women with a high-school degree or less, according to a recent Child Trends study.
So the next time you hear a college-educated academic or advocate talking about marriage and motherhood, do as they do, not as they say.
Mr. Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, is a senior fellow at the Institute for American Values .
Note in the last paragraph of the article, how Archbishop Timothy Dolan talks of being challenged to "heroic virtue". It is a wonderful concept.
Wall Street Journal
MAY 11, 2009
Proudly Pro-Choice on Education New York's archbishop on schools and the challenges facing the Catholic Church.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY New York
For thousands of lower-income New York children caught in the city's failing public school system, any high-profile advocate for choice in education might seem to be heaven-sent. Perhaps this one is. His name is Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the newly appointed spiritual leader of New York's 2.5 million Catholics.
When I went to see Archbishop Dolan early on a midweek morning last month at the New York Catholic Center in Manhattan, his warm and gregarious personality had already been widely reported on. His beaming -- and may I say prominently Irish -- face had been plastered all over the front pages of local newspapers and on the evening news. We had learned early on that he believes in being a joyful shepherd, that he is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage and abortion, and that he likes baseball -- though he told me, with a roaring laugh, that he is "pro-choice when it comes to Mets or Yankees."
Yet the early press coverage leaves a lot of unanswered questions about what to expect from this 59-year-old St. Louis native, who inherits not only substantial political, cultural and religious influence in the largest city in the nation but also a lot of challenges. The Roman Catholic Church has long been an important part of the civic fabric of New York. But in recent decades the trends have not been good. Catholic schools have been closing down, young people have been drifting from the faith, and fewer young men and women are entering Catholic Church vocations. What does this optimistic archbishop have up his sleeve?
The issue that most New Yorkers, Catholic or not, may be interested in is whether the diocese's 279 Catholic schools -- an educational lifeline to over 88,000 children -- can survive. More than 50 have closed down in the past 25 years, and those that are left often struggle to get by. Surely they would have a better chance if New York had an education voucher program like Milwaukee does? So I began our conversation by asking the archbishop to talk about the Milwaukee experience. His already radiant face brightened even more.
"We called it Choice in Education and it was a genuine blessing," he says, sitting up in his chair and leaning forward. "It began under Gov. Tommy Thompson, and the idea was that parents would have a choice as to where they would send their children. It was restricted in that it was just the city of Milwaukee, and the parents had to be under a certain income level. But it was so successful" he explains, that demand soon exceeded the cap of 15,000 students.
When that happened, Milwaukeeans wanted to go further. Archbishop Dolan says he was "part of a coalition, two years ago, that worked with Gov. [Jim] Doyle to expand the cap to 22,000 students." As of now it serves about 20,000 children of families that meet strict income limits. "It's been a tremendous boost," he says, smiling enthusiastically.
The archbishop says that "philosophically," as much as practically, the Milwaukee diocese celebrated the voucher program. "The Catholic Church has always been an ardent advocate for parental rights in education," he points out. "The experiment is now about 15 years old, and it is applauded by all sides . . . except," he notes in a more somber tone, "there [are] some who would attack it, particularly those associated with the public-school teachers lobby, which is very strong in Wisconsin. They still apparently believe that the government should have a monopoly on education."
Despite the power of that lobby, the archbishop says "the parents and the wider community appreciate [the voucher program]," and he stresses that it is popular with more than just Catholics. "The coalition that supports it is made up of, yes, Catholics, but also many Jewish leaders, civic leaders, many politicians, people who just love and support the community with no religious background at all. There seemed to be a widespread appreciation that this was a tremendous boost to the Milwaukee community, and of course we're always hoping to expand it."
Yet what has been possible in Milwaukee may not be in New York. "The challenge of keeping our wonderful Catholic schools strong, affordable, accessible and available," the archbishop says, is "all the more pressing here in New York because we don't have the blessing of vouchers." His next comment suggests that he doesn't expect them here anytime soon. "I know that the state of New York likes to consider itself kind of on the vanguard of enlightened progressive initiatives, but in this regard Wisconsin is way ahead."
Still, the archbishop is not deterred. After all, he reminds me, one of the greatest New York archbishops of all time, John Hughes, had a similar problem. "He got into a battle in the 1840s with what was called then the New York Public School Society, saying 'I'd like a portion of those [government] funds to educate our children.'" He lost that fight but went on to build the city's Catholic school system, which educated masses of Irish immigrants previously considered impossibly ignorant and unruly.
Hughes was continually short of funds, as the diocese is today, but Archbishop Dolan says this too can be kind of a blessing. "It's why the Catholic schools are scrappy," he says. "And in a way that's part of the genius of our schools: We are not rolling in dough. We have to fight for every dime; it becomes a communal endeavor. There is a sense of pride and ownership among the people because, darn it, we fought for this school, we love it, we scraped for it, we have mopped floors and painted classrooms, and we do not take this for granted."
When I rattle off the some of the dropping enrollment statistics in the diocese, the archbishop admits that the "schools can really cause us to go for the Maalox and Tylenol. But," he says, "what we have to ask ourselves is 'Are they worth it?' And we say you bet they are. They're worth it because nobody does it better than the [Catholic] Church when it comes to education."
The archbishop admits that at times others in the Catholic Church don't share his enthusiasm. "Some priests and some bishops have lost their nerve when it comes to Catholic schools. [They've] almost said, 'boy they were nice and we'll do our best to keep the ones that we got but more or less they are on life support and I guess in 50 years they're going to fade away.'" The archbishop says his predecessor Cardinal Egan rejected this line of thinking and he does too. "Its time for us bishops to say: these . . . are . . . worth . . . fighting . . . for," he says, emphasizing each word slowly. "These are worth putting at the top of our agenda, and these are worth something not only internally for us as a church as we pass on the faith for our kids and grandkids, but it is also a highly regarded public service that we do for the wider community. And darn it we do it well, we have a great tradition of it and we're not going to stand by and see it collapse."
So what's the plan? The archbishop, who seems to me part theologian, part historian, and part marketing guru, is already thinking about ways to explore and expand private funding initiatives such as the successful Inner City Scholarship Fund.
He is sure that there can be "wider participation from New York's philanthropic, business and civic community." There are many "who so love the New York community" and see education as "one of the finest investments we can make in the future of our community." Often, he says, givers are not Catholic. "I met someone a week or so ago who said if you ask me my religion I'd probably say I am an atheist, but I love Catholic schools because they do such a sterling job and I am going to support them."
If Archbishop Dolan can save and perhaps even revive the city's Catholic school system, he will be a hero to all of New York. But while he's working on that, he has two other problems that are troubling for the Catholic Church. The first is the growing number of 20- and 30-somethings, raised in the faith, who are not attending Mass or getting married in the Catholic Church. The second is the sharp drop in people choosing Catholic Church vocations.
I asked him what he thinks has gone wrong. For starters, he says, the Catholic Church for too long took for granted the Catholic culture, "when it was presumed that you would go to Sunday Mass, that you would marry a Catholic and be married in the Catholic Church, when it was presumed that you would always remain in the faith, with tons of priests and nuns and Catholic schools to serve you."
Those days are gone, and now he says its time to "recover the evangelizing muscle that characterized the early church." This means putting an end to the "wavering" that has too often characterized the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council and a return to a clear and confident message.
"Very often even the word Catholic even the word church has had a question mark behind it," he says. "Does it know where it's going? Does it know what its teaching? Is it going to be around? There was a big question mark. A young person will not give his or her life for a question mark. A young person will give his or her life for an exclamation point."
This "recovery" in confidence, he says, began under John Paul II and continues under Pope Benedict XVI. In his new role, Archbishop Dolan intends to keep it going. Being a Catholic is an "adventure in fidelity," he insists. The Catholic Church, he says, has "a very compelling moral message. She calls us to what is most noble in our human makeup, dares us to become saints, challenges us to heroic virtue."
Ms. O'Grady writes the Journal's Americas column.
The Community Levee Association disagrees with the arguments calling for drug decriminalization.
Drugs: To Legalize or Not
April 25-26, 2009 Wall Street Journal
Decriminalizing the possession and use of marijuana would raise billions in taxes and eliminate much of the profits that fuel bloodshed and violence in Mexico.
By STEVEN B. DUKE The drug-fueled murders and mayhem in Mexico bring to mind the Prohibition-era killings in Chicago. Although the Mexican violence dwarfs the bloodshed of the old bootleggers, both share a common motivation: profits. These are turf wars, fought between rival gangs trying to increase their share of the market for illegal drugs. Seventy-five years ago, we sensibly quelled the bootleggers' violence by repealing the prohibition of alcohol. The only long-term solution to the cartel-related murders in Mexico is to legalize the other illegal drugs we overlooked when we repealed Prohibition in 1933.
In 2000, the Mexican government disturbed a hornets' nest when it began arresting and prosecuting major distributors of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Previously, the cartels had relied largely on bribery and corruption to maintain their peaceful co-existence with the Mexican government. Once this pax Mexicana ended, however, they began to fight not only the government but among themselves. The ensuing violence has claimed the lives of at least 10,000 in Mexico since 2005, and the carnage has even spilled north to the United States and south to Central and South America.
Some say that this killing spree -- about 400 murders a month currently -- threatens the survival of the Mexican government. Whether or not that is the exaggeration that Mexican President Felipe Calderón insists it is, Mexico is in crisis. The Mexicans have asked the Obama administration for help, and the president has obliged, offering material support and praising the integrity and courage of the Mexican government in taking on the cartels.
The U.S. should enforce its laws against murder and other atrocious crimes and we should cooperate with Mexican authorities in helping them arrest and prosecute drug traffickers hiding out here. But what more can and should we do?
Is gun control the answer? President Calderón asserts that the cartels get most of their guns from the U.S. We could virtually disarm the cartels, he implies, if we made it harder to buy guns here and smuggle them into Mexico. President Obama has bought into this claim and has made noises about reducing the availability of guns. However, even if the Obama administration were able to circumvent the political and constitutional impediments to restricting Americans' access to handguns, the effect on Mexican drug violence would be negligible. The cartels are heavily armed now, and handguns wear out very slowly.
Even if the Mexican gangsters lost their American supply line, they would probably not feel the loss for years. And when they did, they would simply turn to other suppliers. There is a world-wide black market in military weapons. If the Mexicans could not buy pistols and rifles, they might buy more bazookas, machine guns and bombs from the black market, thus escalating the violence.
Also hopeless is the notion -- now believed by almost no one -- that we can keep the drugs from coming into this country and thereby cut off the traffickers' major market. If we could effectively interdict smuggling through any of our 300-plus official border crossing points across the country and if we eventually build that fence along our entire border with Mexico -- 1,933 miles long -- experience strongly suggests that the smugglers will get through it or over it. If not, they will tunnel under or fly over it. And there is always our 12,383 miles of virtually unguarded coastline.
Several proposals have been submitted in the Mexican congress to decriminalize illegal drugs. One was even passed in 2006 but, under pressure from the U.S., President Vicente Fox refused to sign it. The proposals rest on the notion that by eliminating the profit from illegal drug distribution, the cartels will die from the dearth of profits. A major weakness in such proposals, however, is that the main source of the cartels' profits is not Mexican but American. Mexican drug consumption is a mere trickle compared to the river that flows north. However laudable, proposals to decriminalize drugs in Mexico would have little impact on the current drug warfare.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized the heart of the matter when she told the Mexicans last month that the "insatiable demand for illegal drugs" in the U.S. is fueling the Mexican drug wars. Without that demand, there would be few illegal drug traffickers in Mexico.
Once we have recognized this root cause, we have few options. We can try to eliminate demand, we can attack the suppliers or we can attempt a combination of both. Thus far, the Obama administration, like every other U.S. administration since drug prohibition went into effect in 1914, seems bent on trying to defeat the drug traffickers militarily. Hopefully, President Obama will soon realize, if he does not already, that this approach will not work.
Suppose the U.S. were to "bail out" the Mexican government with tens of billions of dollars, including the provision of military personnel, expertise and equipment in an all-out concerted attack on the drug traffickers. After first escalating, the level of cartel-related violence would ultimately subside. Thousands more lives would be lost in the process, but Mexico could thereby be made less hospitable to the traffickers, as other areas, such as Colombia, Peru and Panama, were made less hospitable in the past. That, after all, is how the Mexicans got their start in the grisly business. Eventually, the traffic would simply move to another country in Latin America or in the Caribbean and the entire process would begin anew. This push-down, pop-up effect has been demonstrated time and again in efforts to curb black markets. It produces an illusion of success, but only an illusion.
An administration really open to "change" would consider a long-term solution to the problem -- ending the market for illegal drugs by eliminating their illegality. We cannot destroy the appetite for psychotropic drugs. Both animals and humans have an innate desire for the altered consciousness obtainable through drugs. What we can and should do is eliminate the black market for the drugs by regulating and taxing them as we do our two most harmful recreational drugs, tobacco and alcohol.
Marijuana presents the strongest case for this approach. According to some estimates, marijuana comprises about 70% of the illegal product distributed by the Mexican cartels. Marijuana will grow anywhere. If the threat of criminal prosecution and forfeitures did not deter American marijuana farmers, America's entire supply of that drug would be home-grown. If we taxed the marijuana agribusiness at rates similar to that for tobacco and alcohol, we would raise about $10 billion in taxes per year and would save another $10 billion we now spend on law enforcement and imprisoning marijuana users and distributors.
Even with popular support, legalizing and regulating the distribution of marijuana in the U.S. would be neither easy nor quick. While imposing its prohibitionist will on the rest of the world for nearly a century, the U.S. has created a network of treaties and international agreements requiring drug prohibition. Those agreements would have to be revised. A sensible intermediate step would be to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana and to exercise benign neglect of American marijuana growers. Doing both would puncture the market for imports from Mexico and elsewhere and would eliminate much of the profit that fuels the internecine warfare in Mexico.
After we reap the rewards from decriminalizing marijuana, we should move on to hard drugs. This will encounter strong resistance. Marijuana is a relatively safe drug. No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose nor has anyone gone on a violent rampage as a result of a marijuana high. Cocaine, heroin and amphetamines, on the other hand, can be highly addictive and harmful, both physically and psychologically. But prohibition makes those dangers worse, unleashing on vulnerable users chemicals of unknown content and potency, and deterring addicts from seeking help with their dependency. There is burgeoning recognition, in the U.S. and elsewhere, that the health benefits and the myriad social and economic advantages of substituting regulation of hard drugs for their prohibition deserves serious consideration.
A most impressive experiment has been underway in Portugal since 2001, when that country decriminalized the possession and personal use of all psychotropic drugs. According to a study just published by the Cato Institute, "judged by virtually every metric," the Portuguese decriminalization "has been a resounding success." Contrary to the prognostications of prohibitionists, the numbers of Portuguese drug users has not increased since decriminalization. Indeed, the percentage of the population who has ever used these drugs is lower in Portugal than virtually anywhere else in the European Union and is far below the percentage of users in the U.S.. One explanation for this startling fact is that decriminalization has both freed up funds for drug treatment and, by lifting the threat of criminal charges, encouraged drug abusers to seek that treatment.
We can try to deal with the Mexican murderers as we first dealt with Al Capone and his minions, or we can apply the lessons we learned from alcohol prohibition and finish dismantling the destructive prohibition experiment. We should begin by decriminalizing marijuana now.
Steven B. Duke is a professor of law at Yale Law School.
The Community Levee Association agrees with Mr. Walters' arguments defending current laws that criminalize possession, use, and distribution of harmful drugs.
Drugs: To Legalize or Not
April 25-26, 2009 Wall Street Journal
Progress in Colombia provides clear evidence that the war on drugs is winnable, while history repeatedly shows that relaxed restrictions lead to more abuse and addiction.
By JOHN P. WALTERS
Justified alarm over drug-related Mexican border violence has led to the predictable spate of drug legalization proposals. The most prominent was a call by three former Latin American presidents -- from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico -- to end what they claimed was the drug war. While there are many "end the drug war" plans, all of them, as even their advocates admit, result in more drug use and addiction. Their response? We should emasculate prevention and law enforcement and just spend more on treatment.
What would America look like with twice or three times as many drug users and addicts? To answer, consider what America was like in the recent past, during the frightening epidemic of methamphetamine, so similar to the crack outbreak of the 1980s. Each was a nightmare, fueled by ready drug availability.
Americans can't forget the meth epidemic hitting the heartland earlier this decade. In 2004, 1.4 million people said they had used methamphetamine in the past year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The powerful, long-lasting stimulant began growing rapidly as the make-it-yourself drug, using a precursor in over-the-counter cold medicine. It later was produced in large quantities by Mexican traffickers and smuggled into the U.S. Drugs weren't just an urban problem anymore.
Addiction, violence and drug poison hammered middle America. The addiction epidemic shattered families and created a staggering toll of family violence. Effective laws got the addicted into treatment through the courts, and thereby saved lives. In parallel, we deployed targeted prevention measures and, importantly, used law enforcement and regulation to cut meth production dramatically. As a result, use (as measured by workplace drug testing and youth surveys) and supply (as measured by the Drug Enforcement Administration) dropped sharply: by 60% or more between 2002 and 2008.
Cocaine and crack present a comparable case study. Urban policy experts on the left and right -- who agree about little else -- have a united view of what cocaine and crack did to our urban poor. Pushing back against crack made urban life better for all Americans.
The violence essential to drug trafficking is meant to be shocking -- from the marijuana traffickers who brutally murdered DEA special agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico in 1985 to the viciousness of rolling heads across a dance floor -- calculated to frighten decent citizens and government authorities into silence.
The violence of traffickers, which has harmed tens of thousands, is dwarfed by the millions harmed by another violence, that done daily by those in our own communities under the influence of drugs. Roughly 80% of child abuse and neglect cases are tied to the use and abuse of drugs. It is not that drug abuse causes all crime and violence, it just makes it much worse by impairing judgment, weakening impulse control and at some levels of pathology, with some drugs, causing paranoia and psychosis. Well more than 50% of those arrested today for violent and property crimes test positive for illegal drug use when arrested. Legalized access to drugs would increase drug-related suffering dramatically.
The origins of federal drug laws were a response to disastrous drug and violence epidemics when virtually every family had access to opiate- and cocaine-based remedies around the end of the 19th century. Drugs were available without penalty. Addiction was rampant, with an estimated 250,000 opiate addicts in the U.S. population of 76 million.
Or if you really think that prohibition causes the problem, remember that ancient China was brought to its knees by easy access to opium. Today, even highly traditional and regulated societies like Thailand, Malaysia, Iran and Afghanistan are suffering terrible addiction problems -- because heroin is addictive and easily accessible. Making highly addictive drugs easier to get and use is what makes this harm greater.
Although cynics on the left and right assert the drug problem is as big or bigger than ever, it is simply not true. Illegal drug use is still a problem, but by any fair assessment it is a smaller problem. Half as many teens are using drugs than 30 years ago and a quarter fewer than seven years ago, according to the Monitoring the Future, an ongoing study conducted by the University of Michigan under grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Cocaine and meth use are less than half what they were at their peak. Even drug offenders are a smaller percentage of the prison population than they were 15 or even seven years ago.
What are the indelible lessons? In the process of making the drug problem much smaller, we learned the importance of education -- not principally teaching the young about the health dangers of specific drugs, but teaching young and old about the disease of addiction. We know that the disease begins with the use of addictive drugs and that those drugs change the brain -- they create craving, impair judgment and lead to withdrawal or a feeling of illness in absence of the drug. Science has helped us see that we need to help those who are addicted particularly when they do not want our help -- every family of an addict or alcoholic knows that denial is a terrible part of this disease.
When I became the drug policy director in 2001, we faced an inherent weakness in prevention programs for youth. Teens told us they had been taught the dangers of drugs, but if their boyfriend or girlfriend used they did not want to be judgmental or estranged, so they were likely to join in. We put treatment specialists together with some of best creative minds in advertising to fashion prevention messages directly presenting drug abuse as a sickness that places an obligation on friends to help stop it. We enlisted the idealism and caring of the young to reverse the force of peer pressure. The ads were an important contributor to our progress that needs to continue and grow. With this knowledge of addiction, how do we choose to make more victims?
We have learned to apply public health tools that have been proven effective against other diseases. We have learned that addiction is a treatable disease. We are increasing the pathways to treatment -- through routine health care, the workplace, places of worship and schools. Drug courts leading to referral for treatment by the criminal justice system are now the major pathway through which the dependent are getting the help they need. Do we want to end all this by taking the courts out of the equation? Supervised, court-sanctioned treatment works best. Legalization robs us of this tool.
We have also learned how to join law enforcement and national security resources to break down trafficking groups and narcoterrorists. One of the greatest international policy success stories of the last decade has been the transformation of Colombia from a state dominated by narcoterrorism, violence and corruption to a thriving liberal democracy.
Between 2001 and 2007, the U.S. government's estimate of the maximum potential production of cocaine in Colombia dropped 24%. There is no certain method of translating that into drug profits, but even conservative estimates show that a 24% reduction equaled hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. There is now evidence that the combined effect of reduced production and increased seizures dropped the available Colombian cocaine supply to the U.S. from 2001 to 2007.
Colombia is the genuine backdrop for understanding the threat in Mexico today. The criminal gangs in Mexico go back decades. Many are drawn from generations in the same extended families. They have become wealthier and better armed, but the border areas they seek to control are an old battleground. The corruption they use to protect themselves has deep roots. They have become more dangerous as they have lost profits from the cocaine and meth trade over the last two years. Those who think legalizing drugs will stop the violence by cutting off the money to these groups seem unaware that they not only smuggle drugs and people across the border for profit, but that they also kidnap, hijack, manage large auto-theft operations and have extensive protection rackets.
Moreover, some of us remember that Bobby Kennedy was leading organized-crime strike forces against extremely dangerous mafia families, decades after the end of Prohibition. Just as ending Prohibition did not destroy organized crime in the U.S., legalizing drugs will not break the terrorist criminal groups in Mexico. In fact, the real pattern of violence from the mafia families in the U.S. to the cartels in Colombia suggests it is when they are threatened and destabilized that violence skyrockets. It is the violence focused on the threat of violent takeover by rival criminal groups that is an unfortunate but perhaps necessary first step in restoring the rule of law.
Legalizing drugs is the worst thing we could do for President Felipe Calderón and our Mexican allies. It would weaken the moral authority of his fight and the Mexicans would immediately realize that we have no intention of reducing consumption. Who do we think would take the profits from a legal drug trade? U.S. suppliers would certainly spring up, but that wouldn't preclude Mexican supplies as well -- or Mexican production for consumption in other countries. The Mexicans know that they too have a dangerous use and addiction problem. They have already learned that it is wrong and dangerous to make abuse and addiction worse.
We can make progress faster when more of us learn that drug use and addiction can not be an expression of individual liberty in a free society. Drug abuse is, by nature and the laws of organic chemistry that govern this disease, incompatible with freedom and civil society. Drug abuse makes human life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (a special version of Hobbes's hell in our own families). In the deepest sense, this is why failure is not an option.
John P. Walters is executive vice president of Hudson Institute and was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush.
NOTE: The Community Levee Association disagrees with the Post editorial below. We believe their rejection of morality's necessity and power harms our Loudoun County youth because it assumes (and thus contributes to their perception of self) they cannot control their physical appetites. Not only can they, but they must. Historian Will Durrant wrote "[a] youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group" (Durrant, Will and Ariel. The Lessons of History. New York: Simon and Schuster, p.35, 1968).
MARCH 19, 2009 WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL:
THE LATE New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts." This holds true even for the pope.
While on a flight to Cameroon on Tuesday to begin a weeklong journey through Africa, Pope Benedict XVI said, "You can't resolve [the AIDS epidemic] with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem." In a perfect world, people would abstain from having sex until they were married or would be monogamous in committed relationships. But the world isn't perfect -- and neither is Pope Benedict's pronouncement on the effectiveness of condoms in the battle against HIV/AIDS. The evidence says so.
Are condoms foolproof protection against infection by HIV, which causes AIDS? No. Sometimes they break, and sometimes people put them on incorrectly. Still, doctors on the front lines of the fight against the AIDS epidemic established long ago that the use of condoms greatly diminishes the transmission of HIV, the cause of a disease that has no cure. That the pope chose to question the value of condoms in fighting the nearly 28-year-old scourge while heading to the continent whose people are most affected by it is troubling. According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is the epidemic's center, with 67 percent of the world's 32.9 million people with HIV and with 75 percent of all AIDS deaths. Heterosexual intercourse is the "driving force" of the epidemic.
The pope's comment was so alarming that a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said, "We consider that these statements endanger public health policies and the imperative to protect human life." What the pontiff said was especially discordant to us coming a day after the District's HIV/AIDS Administration released its startling survey showing that 3 percent of this city's residents are living with HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define a "severe" epidemic in a specific area as at least 1 percent of the population being infected. To halt the march of HIV/AIDS, those who have the infection must be treated. Those who do not have it need all the information and tools possible to remain HIV-negative. The pope's denunciation of condoms is of no help.
The Community Levee Association agrees with the Pope that fidelity in marriage and abstinence before is the best way to fight HIV. On the other hand, we believe emphasizing condom use belittles humankind, assuming that one cannot control one's self, and that the better angels of our nature don't even exist at all.
Pope Says Condoms Worsen HIV Problem
In His First Papal Trip to Africa, Benedict Brings a Message of Sexual Morality
By Victor L. Simpson
Associated Press
Wednesday, March 18, 2009; A09
YAOUNDE, Cameroon, March 17 -- Condoms are not the answer to Africa's fight against HIV, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday as he began a week-long trip to the continent. It was the pope's first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.
Benedict arrived in Yaounde, Cameroon's capital, on Tuesday afternoon, greeted by a crowd of flag-waving faithful and snapping cameras. The visit is his first pilgrimage as pontiff to Africa.
In his four years as pope, Benedict had never directly addressed condom use, although his position is not new. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, often said that sexual abstinence -- not condoms -- was the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.
Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.
"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.
The Roman Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight against AIDS.
About 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS. In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there, as well as two-thirds of all people living with HIV.
Rebecca Hodes with the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said if the pope was serious about preventing new HIV infections, he would focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how best to use them.
"Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans," said Hodes, head of policy, communication and research for the organization.
Even some priests and nuns working with those living with HIV/AIDS question the church's opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa. Many Africans do, as well.
"Talking about the non-use of condoms is out of place. We need condoms to protect ourselves against diseases and AIDS," teacher Narcisse Takou said Tuesday in Yaounde.
On his arrival in Yaounde, the pope was greeted by Cameroon's President Paul Biya, who has ruled since 1982 and whose government has been accused of abuses in crushing political opponents.
The pope made no specific reference to the situation in Cameroon but said in general remarks on Africa that "a Christian can never remain silent" in the face of violence, poverty, hunger, corruption or abuse of power.
"The saving message of the Gospel needs to be proclaimed loud and clear so that the light of Christ can shine into the darkness of people's lives," Benedict said as the president and other political leaders looked on.
Benedict's African trip this week will also take him to Angola.
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