Washington Blade - June 08, 2007
Ryan Lee

Bush announced last month that he would ask Congress to double the $15 billion anti-AIDS initiative known as the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, which Bush first unveiled in his 2003 State of the Union address. The re-authorization of the PEPFAR initiative calls for $15 billion to be spent over a five-year period on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in needy countries.

"This is really a story of the human spirit and the goodness of human hearts - once again, the generosity of the American people is one of the great untold stories of our time," Bush said in announcing the proposed expansion of PEPFAR. "Our citizens are offering comfort to millions who suffer and restoring hope to those who feel forsaken.

"Villages in Africa now talk of the Lazarus effect - dying communities coming back to life, thanks to the compassion of the American people," Bush added. "This is the impact that has made our emergency plan and the modern-day good Samaritans who are implementing it so effective, [and] it's important that we continue the work we have begun."

LAUDED BY MANY AIDS ACTIVISTS across the globe when it was first announced in 2003, PEPFAR has nonetheless been criticized for promising to deliver funding to those in need, but implementing countless bureaucratic requirements that delay money being dispersed.

Most notably, the PEPFAR guidelines require one-third of all HIV prevention funding to be spent on abstinence-only education, with any organization that teaches about condom use ineligible to receive American dollars.

"We're pleased to see that the Bush administration has seen the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and that there will be more funding available for non-profit agencies, but especially for the clientele we see, we think we need to have a comprehensive approach to HIV prevention, including abstinence," said Chip Lewis, a spokesperson for the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a gay health agency in Washington.

Citing several government reports that cast serious doubts about the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said he hoped the Democrat-led Congress will halt Bush's unwavering promotion of abstinence-only.

"Our nation's experts agree that the abstinence earmark only exacerbates the challenges in providing effective and culturally appropriate prevention messages to stem the transmission of the epidemic," Solmonese said. "We urge Congress to lift these restrictions based purely on ideology, and instead fund proven, science-based prevention strategies."

MANY CRITICS ARGUE THAT abstinence-until-marriage education is inherently inapplicable to young gay Americans who are also told by the U.S. government that they will never be allowed to marry; but abstinence education is equally ineffective in other parts in the world, particularly in places where women have little say in whether they have sex, or if protection is used, Lewis said.

"They may not have the power to stay abstinent," Lewis said.

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