Sex, religion, and AIDS.(Forward Observer)

You would think the country that contributes twice as much money to fight AIDS globally as the rest of the world combined, and whose drug companies developed the medicines that stopped the progression of HIV, would get a little applause, or at least respect, at a giant conference on AIDS like the one held in Bangkok in July.

But you would be wrong. The country in question, of course, is the United States, and instead of praise, it got vilification. Why? The reason that resonated most was that "the Bush Administration panders to the religious Right," in the words of Sebastian Mallaby, a Brit and Washington Post columnist who otherwise admires Bush's AIDS policy.

Specifically, as Bill Bowtell, president of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organizations, put it, "The money was to be spent as the United States wished--to promote abstinence from sexual activity" even though "there is simply no scientific or evidence-based research to support the claim that abstinence works to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS."

Rupert Everett, the movie actor, condemned the U.S. at the Bangkok conference for "its judgmental attitude toward this subject we are dealing with--sex." And Pep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said "an abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane."

All of these criticisms fit the stereo-type promoted by Europeans and fellow American sophisticates: that the President and his supporters are religious nuts who think sex is bad and are imposing their pious values in a dangerous way on public policy.

In fact, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief will spend less than 7 percent of its budget on abstinence programs. Abstinence is "A" in the U.S. Agency for International Development's balanced "ABC" approach to prevention ("B" is "be faithful," and "C" is "condoms"). And it clearly works. Just ask Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, where the national prevalence of HIV infection dropped from 15 percent of the population in the early 1990s to 5 percent in 2001.

Museveni told the Bangkok conference that "AIDS is mainly a moral, social, ...