Controversial or com…

Controversial or common sense? You make the call.

A controversy erupted at a global AIDS conference on Monday over whether abstaining from sex or using condoms was more effective to prevent the disease.

Question: Which is more effective in preventing injury from moving vehicles: staying out of the road, or wearing armor while playing in the street?

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni brought the issue, which has set many AIDS activists at odds with Washington, into the open at the first full day of the AIDS conference by saying abstinence was the best way to stem the spread of the killer virus.

The remarks by Museveni, whose country is a rare success story in Africa’s war on AIDS, were at odds with health experts who back condoms as a frontline defense against the incurable disease.

Why in the world would groups intent on reducing AIDS worldwide even create a hint of controversy over what is obviously working quite well? Makes you wonder if they’re more intent on pushing the envelope on sexual mores while trying to reduce the consequences rather than actually fulfilling their stated mission.

Abstinence, of course, works 100% of the time every time it’s tried. Condoms are good, but they aren’t 100%. So by the common sense standard, which is better? Hmmm, tough choice.

“I look at condoms as an improvisation, not a solution,” Museveni told delegates on the second day of the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.

Instead, he called for “optimal relationships based on love and trust instead of institutionalized mistrust which is what the condom is all about.”

Museveni added fuel to a debate within the AIDS community over the best way to halt the spread of a disease that has killed 20 million people and infected 38 million. Uganda’s “ABC” method (Abstinence, Being faithful and Condoms) is a model for the AIDS policies of the administration of President Bush and which are under fire at the conference for advocating sexual abstinence to stem infection.

But that obvious effectiveness rate and Uganda’s “rare success story” aren’t enough to convince these condom shills conferencees. There’s an agenda here, no doubt about it.

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