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UUs Prepare to Observe World AIDS Day

Green Gaia

Green Gaia

Veteran Member
http://www.uua.org/news/2006/061128_aids.html

On December 1, 2006, bells in religious institutions across the United States will be ringing, not in celebration, but in solemn remembrance for those around the world who have died of AIDS. December 1 is World AIDS Day, and while bells toll to mark the occasion, the Rev. William G. Sinkford, UUA President, will join advocates from the religious and secular community in gathering at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC, to publicly call attention to the fact that the United States has not acted responsibly in helping to eradicate global AIDS and HIV.

Sinkford will join Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and representatives of secular and religious institutions in calling for passage of the PATHWAY Act of 2006 and encouraging people of faith to responsibly advocate for human sexuality education and condom availability worldwide. Sinkford, who visited Chad in 2005 along with UU Service Committee President Charlie Clements, will also address the lack of economic, safety, and health services in Africa where AIDS is a health calamity, and the ways in which rape is being used as a weapon of war. The Washington, DC, event is being co-sponsored by Advocates for Youth, Catholics for a Free Choice, Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), General Board of Church & Society of The United Methodist Church, Health GAP (Global Access Project), National Council of Jewish Women, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and the UUA.

The interfaith public witness event marking the devastation of global AIDS, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," asks congregations to ring their church's bell every five seconds because an individual is newly infected with HIV or dies of AIDS every five seconds. Congregations participating in this event will also be helping to lobby for passage of the Protection Against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth (PATHWAY) Act, which, among other things, would remove the requirement that the U.S. spend one-third of its international HIV prevention dollars on abstinence-until-marriage programs. It would also require the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator to establish a comprehensive and integrated HIV prevention strategy to address the vulnerabilities of women and girls in each country receiving U.S. assistance to combat HIV/AIDS, including efforts to address such factors as sexual violence and coercion and early marriage as an integral component of prevention efforts.

Domestically, abstinence-only education is under even greater scrutiny following the November 16 release of a General Accounting Office study which found that, for the two largest federal abstinence-only programs, the Department of Health and Human Services "does not review its grantees' education materials for scientific accuracy and does not require grantees of either program to review their own materials for scientific accuracy." The UUA is hopeful that this report will help generate support for the REAL (Real Education About Life) Act, which would require medical accuracy in federally-funded sex education programs. Interested UUs can email their Members of Congress to support the PATHWAY Act and/or the REAL Act, and join the UU advocacy networks for these issues, on the Washington Office website.

 World AIDS Day was first declared by the World Health Organization and the United Nations General Assembly in 1988. Sadly, many people around the world have no idea that such a day exists, despite the fact that 4.1 million people were newly infected with HIV and 3 million people died of AIDS in 2005 according to UNAIDS.
The UUA's UU-UNO Office has also been engaged in this effort and has developed a worship packet in concert with the UUA's Washington Office of Advocacy and the UU Global AIDS Coalition.
A number of Unitarian Universalist congregations and organizations are active in AIDS/HIV advocacy. They include the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Universalist ChurchCarbondale, Illinois, Unitarian Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalists of the Cumberland Valley in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania; Juneau Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Juneau, Alaska; the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene, Oregon; and First Unitarian Church in Portland, Oregon, where the UU Global Aids Coalition originated. in Charlottesville, Virginia; the

Marking another milestone in Unitarian Universalist engagement with the fight against AIDS, the UU Global AIDS Coalition will present its first Red Ribbon Award on December 3 to First Parish in Lexington , Massachusetts, for their ongoing support of Communities Without Borders , a Zambian program helping that country's AIDS orphans through education and housing.

 For further information:
 
Tigress

Tigress

Working-Class W*nch.
Maize said:
The UUA is hopeful that this report will help generate support for the REAL (Real Education About Life) Act, which would require medical accuracy in federally-funded sex education programs. Interested UUs can email their Members of Congress to support the PATHWAY Act and/or the REAL Act, and join the UU advocacy networks for these issues, on the Washington Office website.
Click to expand...

Real Education About Life--I like that. Very clever. I hope that enough support is shown for these acts, and that they will take effect. How sad that these children are being taught material not even checked for scientific accuracy. It shouldn't even be legal for that to happen, especially with a subject so vitally important as sex education.
 
Green Gaia

Green Gaia

Veteran Member
Sinkford Speaks at Washington DC World AIDS Day Event; Urges Congressional Action

William G. Sinkford's remarks:

World AIDS Day gives us an opportunity to educate ourselves about how we can fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A problem so large and so devastating compels us to work together for political and scientific solutions, but it also calls on us to offer a spiritual response, a response that goes beyond sectarian doctrines and embraces our shared humanity. All of the world's great religions exhort us to love our neighbors. What we religious people now must ask ourselves is, "Who is my neighbor?" The global AIDS epidemic has taught us that we are all connected—black, white, and brown; young and old; male and female; gay and straight. Our neighbors live in tiny African villages, in Russian brothels, and in forgotten places all over the world where hope grows dim. We must remember them when the bells toll.

We know now that the populations suffering the highest rate of new infections are youths aged fifteen to twenty-four and young married women. Our neighbors with AIDS are trapped in abusive marriages, and they are victims of civil war and genocide. The bells will toll for them today.

Some of our neighbors with AIDS live in relatively peaceful regions, but they are unable to protect themselves from sexual violence and coercion within their homes. We have learned that most women with HIV are infected by their husbands or intimate partners. And because of this alarming fact, we also know that some of our neighbors with AIDS are struggling for life in neo-natal care units. We mock their sufferings when we offer international AIDS relief with strings attached, such as the "abstinence until marriage" conditions on sexuality education and disease prevention funding. Marriage is no protection against HIV, and abstinence is a luxury available only to those who have complete control over their own bodies and wills . When there is no ability to give or withhold consent, what protection does the choice of "abstinence" offer?

And even in situations where consent can be given freely, abstinence education is failing to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. Our policies must reflect the realities of people's lives. We know that " just say No" didn't work in the Garden of Eden, and it isn't stopping the spread of HIV today, either in the US or abroad. The bells will toll for many of our neighbors right here in the United States.

So what can religious people and organizations do to help end HIV/AIDS? The Unitarian Universalist Global AIDS Coalition is working with seventy-five other religious and secular groups to support the PATHWAY Act and to repeal legislative earmarks such as the "Abstinence until Marriage" condition currently attached to US HIV prevention funding. The UU Global Aids Coalition is educating congregations so that they can work locally to fight the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. To share just a few examples, the UU congregation in Carbondale, Illinois, has established an ongoing relationship with a Zambian Hospice Center for people with AIDS. And a UU church in Louisville, Kentucky, has formed a partnership with children's home in western Kenya. They are providing the funding for schooling, healthcare and other necessities for ninety children who were orphaned by AIDS. The bells will toll for their parents and families today, too.

The work done by churches and NGO's is absolutely vital, and we are committed to carrying it out. But let me be very clear—the efforts of private organizations—no matter how noble or how successful—are no substitute for an adequately-funded, scientifically-grounded, and ideology-free commitment on the part of the US government to end the threat of this disease. Our nation's response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic should not, and must not, be privatized.

As we confront the human tragedy that is global AIDS, we urge our leaders not to let their private commitments to specific doctrines stand in the way of saving lives. We often hear politicians invoking "moral values." As a person of faith, I'm obligated to say that it is immoral to abdicate our responsibility for the spread of AIDS. There has been a lot of talk about the "right to life." Well, the men and women and children suffering from AIDS also have a right to life. We know how to ameliorate this epidemic. We have the medical means; we can muster the economic means. The question we must ask ourselves now is whether we have the will to do it. And that becomes a moral—a religious—question.

I pray that as our leaders struggle with this question they will hear a call to compassion, that clear voice of truth that lies at the heart of all the world's sacred teachings. As we listen to the tolling of the bells, let us all hear this call. If we, and our leaders, have the courage to answer, then together we can end the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

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