Bush's Foreign Sex Policy - Imperialism's Second Front

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/

It didn't garner much media play, but shortly before the 109th Congress ended, Democratic lawmakers successfully foiled a Republican effort to push through one more anti-abortion bill. In keeping with the Christian fervor that has driven regressive sexual politics over the last six years, this bill would have required medical personnel to inform women that a fetus could feel pain and to offer anesthesia to the fetus. This modest victory may signal the first shot across the bow in the battle to halt ­ reverse? ­ the Bush administration's horrendous sex policies, especially its foreign sex programs.

The release of the Iraq Study Group report has focused public attention on one of the gravest failures of the Bush administration's foreign policy, the invasion and occupation of Iraq. However, little attention has been paid to an equally pernicious Bush-administration foreign policy effort, its campaign to control the private sex live of people throughout the world. The centerpiece of this campaign is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

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Not since Prohibition, those "Roaring '20s," has America's modern Puritans gained such power over the most intimate aspects of private, personal life. While Christian conservatives have pushed many initiatives to contain sexual life (especially at the local and state level), individual sexual freedom in the U.S. remains relatively protected due to three key Supreme Court decisions: Loving, Roe and Lawrence, which, respectively, protect an American adult's freedom to engage in miscegenation, pregnancy control and sodomy, and, therefore, all consensual and noncommercial perversions. Internationally, and fully exploiting the power of the American empire, Christian conservatives have been far freer to inflict sexual tyranny.

-snip-

According to Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, a Washington-based AIDS advocacy group, PEPFAR "is failing to stop the global spread of AIDS and failing to help lead the world to stop this deadly disease." Zeitz and many others identify the source of PEPFAR's failure in two policy features backed by the Christian fundamentalists who control the program: the systematic discouragement of condom use and a prohibition against providing HIV/AIDS prevention services to commercial female sex workers.

-long snip-

In all likelihood, the Democrats will be complicit in the prolongation of Iraq war until Bush's presidency ends, if not longer. However, they could redeem themselves, if only modestly, by reorganizing PEPFAR to be more compassionate and intelligent in fulfilling its mission. Two immediate changes should involve: (i) the dispersing of condoms and other birth control services to all people in need and (ii) the providing of all services to female sex workers, thus removing the shame of prostitution, of being a woman having to sell her body, her being, to survive. If nothing else, the Democrats could show that they were helping these desperate women, perhaps the most exploited in the world.
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just how much will the dems do or get done

time will tell but let's not hold our breathes

[valerief]

1. Yeah, they don't care about armor for the troops but they fuss over

this nonsense. Gee, I'm sure glad they get paid so well and will continue to get paid by our tax dollars until their deaths, which probably won't be until their old age, because they get such good medical care paid for by our tax dollars.