Religion and HIV/AIDS

It was my first time in a church in South Africa. I didn't know what to expect.

A trangendered woman stepped up to the pulpit and read an opening scripture from the Bible.

The worship leader walked to the front and said "If you're a lesbian,if you're gay, if you're bisexual, if you're transgender, you're welcome here! If you have HIV or AIDS you are welcome here! Everyone is welcome here."

That was when I began to start feeling like I could make this my home church.

I've already illustrated the damage that extremist and right-wing Christianity can do to when highly funded (and often foreign) religious groups attempt to influence state policies. But the fact remains that in the Majority world, religion-- whether Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism-- is adhered to at least in name by the majority of the population. In other words, interventions to combat HIV/AIDS will not be succesful if they are running contrary to widely held and respected religious norms of the country in which they are operating.

In fact, in the majority world it may well be that the broad-based popularity of religious institutions, the social and physical infrastructure, and the capability for both mass education and mass health outreaches make religious institutions uniquely capable of comnatting HIV/AIDS in locations where the road ends and hospitals, clinics, and educated social workers don't exist.

Examples of such alliances do exist. In Papua New Guinea, non profit initiatives educate and work with pastors and other church leaders to spread the word on HIV prevention through the social networks that only the church has. And they have been succesful in spreading accurate information and stemming the spread of the virus through this method. While unusual, this example may be one that can pave the road for using the extensive networks that religion have in order to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.

I found in my time at Metro Evangelical Services in Johannesburg that religion is capable of expanding into non-traditional roles to help prevent HIV. M.E.S. might be one of the only organisations I know of where you can get preached to on the street about Christianity on one hand, and about the importance of wearing condoms on the other-- and all under the umbrella of one organisation, M.E.S. The pastors that were sent to buildings and networks in churches knew where they could refer people who were concerned about their status and to get accurate information.

There is much to learn about religious-health alliances. But without using the networks that already exist in countries to combat HIV/AIDS, and assuming their moral authority, it will be much more costly, expensive, and ineffective to try and combat HIV/AIDS.

Uganda's anti homosexuality bill

It's hard to describe to people who have never lived anywhere other than Canada what it means not to have human rights. It's hard to describe what it means when I say "I liked living in Africa, but I'm glad to be back in Canada because I really appreciate having rights as a woman." It's hard for others to understand what I mean when I say "the laws were there but the culture was against women's and LGBTQ rights."

Maybe it isn't fair to refer to these things as cultural. After all, lesbian woman in South Africa before colonisation used to be able to pay dowry and marry a woman, so long as they did so inside of certain specific cultural norms. It was assumed these marriages weren't sexual in nature-- but looking back can we really be sure of that?

Maybe instead of culture, I have to pin the blame on homophobia squarely on the history of colonisation and Christianity.

Living under a colonial dictatorship for more than a hundred years has given many places in the world a complex relationship to authority and power that is less apparent in Canadian society. When I asked one of my friends if South Africa would ever have a woman president he laughed and said,
“No. I can’t have a woman above me. No man in this country wants to have a woman above him!”

This viewpoint on power and relationships between people as essentially unequal- either you have it and I don't, or I have it and you don't- fuels the continuing lack of women's empowerment in countries suffering from a history of colonisation and dictatorship.

A more recent and stinging trend is taking place in the halls of religion, particularly Christianity. Right wing advocacy groups, having been discredited in Canada (less so in the United States) find themselves turning to other countries in the world to try and shape political policies. This, according to Dr. Robert Carr, are the highly funded powers behind Uganda's so called anti-homosexuality bill; not traditional cultures or beliefs, but powerful Christian groups from Canada and the United States.

This bill would imprison LGBTQ people for life, or kill them. It would send parents to prison for not reporting their children for three years; and the same to teachers. A landlord who gives housing to suspected LGBTQ people could face 7 years of imprisonment.

These are the laws that right wing groups from Canada and the United States have imposed on other soverign countries. While human rights are seen as a Western imposition on other cultures, in this case isn’t lack of human rights an imposition as well?

People, if you feel the way I do about these proposals you will support the movement against these laws in Uganda.

.....
Contacts to protest... (from facebook group)

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=198541255168&v=info

Read the bill: http://wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/anti-homosexuality-bill-2009.pdf


President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
State House Nakasero
email: info@statehouse.go.ug

Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi
email: ps@opm.go.ug

Speaker of the Parliament
Edward Ssekandi Kiwanuka
email: speaker@parliament.go.ug

Minister of Gender, Labour, and Social Affairs Honorable Opio Gabriel
email: ps@mglsd.go.ug

Chair of the Uganda Human Rights Commission
Med Kaggwa
email: uhrc@uhrc.ug

Directorate for Ethics and Integrity
email: info@dei.go.ug

Chair of the Uganda Diplomatic Human Rights Working Groups
Mathisen Gørild
email: gorild.mathisen@mfa.no

Please also send a copy to:
Ambassador to the Republic of Uganda Embassy of the United States of America
Jerry P. Lanier
email: kampalawebcontact@state.gov

Christian pastors in Uganda:
Martin Ssempa
ssempam@gmail.com

Stephen Langa
stephenlanga@yahoo.com

You may contact Watato Church (formerly Kampala Pentecostal Church and closely associated with both Ssempa and Langa) at connect@watotochurch.com.

OHTN conference 2009

The Ontario HIV Treatment Network conference on "research at the front lines" served up more new possibilities for moving forward and hope against the many interrelated oppressions surrounding the virus than I had imagined. I don't know if I can quite properly describe the feeling of seeing a man dressed in a suit, introduced as a PhD, presenting a plenary piece on the latest research in HIV/AIDS and referring to the gay community as "we" and "ours". It was one of those moments that sends a beautiful wave of shock through your body, as you realise that suddenly the margins aren't quite as marginalised as you always deeply felt.

That was Dr. Ron Stall, and his work was a beautiful breakthrough into the interconnected psycho-social health issues gay men face. His research outlined how childhood abuse, depression, substance abuse, and intimate partner violence all increase the likelihood of acquiring HIV. More, if one of those problems is present in a man's life, there is a greater chance that any of the other problems will also occur; which is common sense when you think about it. Basically it means if you've been abused as a child you may end up in an abusive relationship; and an abusive partner is not one who is willing to be faithful and wear condoms if you ask him to. Sorting out exactly why each of these connections occur is complex; but each vulnerability factor serves to increase the likelihood that at least one other will be present.

Listening to Dr. Stall was one of those light-bulb moments for me. Not only because he tied together the deep wounds of homophobia so many of us have experienced as children, but also because it inspired me in what I want to do for my master's thesis. I had been interested in looking at refugee women from conflict zones, how service providers are treating them for trauma (or not), and intimate partner violence. Now I realise it is obvious I have to add HIV to that and see what connections arise. Many presenters at the conference illustrated that immigrants tend to seroconvert after arriving in Canada; I want to know if the same trend exists for refugees, and what role conflict and violence play into HIV. More importantly, I want to emphasise what service providers can do to meet refugees' needs, and how to prevent intimate partner violence and HIV acquisition.

I had to book two days off work to go to the conference, and I did so over the phone. My Mom, sitting next to me overheard me as I explained to my employer that I was going to a conference on HIV.

"They might think you have it, Mary Ann" my Mom worried.

"Then I just made one small step towards destroying that stigma" I replied.

And indeed, the research and the community surrounding this conference proved to do that in more ways than just my own small and inadvertent action.