About your condom issue, we have evidence to show that majority of men who have sex with men do not use condoms bec condoms are not available. You may have beliefs contrary to that, but i’d side with evidence. If you think that abstinence and monogamy are the only solutions, sure, you’re free to believe so. You might want to check how things work with priests, but then you might realize that well, even abstinence fails among priests.

I still hold fast in my belief that condoms do not work. Abstinence and monogamy is sufficient to work in and of itself. When people choose not to practice it, the fault is on the person and not the method per se. You should also ask yourself why, despite the availability of information on HIV/AIDS on the web and the relatively cheap price of condom that you can purchase in a convenience store, is the statistics continuing to shoot up. Apparently, something isn’t working right.

And since the primary mode of transmission of HIV/AIDS in the LGBT population is through sexual contact, what makes you think that by promoting condom use and hence the sexual act that the incidence of HIV/AIDS will decline. To put it very bluntly, to totally stop the rising incidence of HIV/AIDS among LGBT people, every single one of them must STOP having sex.

You might argue that this is almost impossible to accomplish in the real world and that it sounds more theoretical than practical. That’s why I personally believe that for anyone who does not want to go through this suffering must in himself learn to abstain from sex, educate himself, redefine one’s view on human sexuality as God intended it to be, and practice fidelity (among heterosexual couples only of course).

Are you up for the challenge?

But among friends, we still wait for those directly affected such as lovers, parents, and siblings to open to us about it. I just wish that they’ll be more open about their pain.

Abstinence and monogamy would work if people would practice them consistently. That’s the inherent weakness of both abstinence and monogamy – and you must admit that even in priesthood, a vocation founded on abstinence, 100% compliance is not possible. Hence, all these sex scandals involving priests. Assuming that for the sake of debate we could disregard the sex negative premises of this proposal, why, then, assume that LGBTs could do better?

The family planning policy of the GMA administration was based on abstinence. Did it work? Clearly not, since Our population is nearing 1999, and if it is not working as a family planning option, why privilege it as a strategy to combat HIV?

Thanks for the reply. I just want to ask why you said that abstinence and monogamy alone don’t work and can you cite me evidence to support your claim. In the context of HIV/AIDS prevention, of all the methods available out there, abstinence when taken seriously makes HIV/AIDS virtually irrelevant. An man who abstain from sex and practice chastity in the truest sense of that word has nothing to fear about HIV/AIDS or any STDs for that matter. It simply is irrelevant to him given that he is also well informed that HIV can also be acquired through other means outside of sex such as IV drug use, transfusion of infected blood, etc.

My question now is – why do LGBT people in general look down on chastity and abstinence? Does the LGBT community feel somehow alienated from the Gospel message of purity of heart?

you see, my concern about integrating faith is this: where do we draw the line between faith as part of a self-esteem concern and faith as a tool of religion? in a stigmatized situation, it’s quite easy to conflate both, and that can be dangerous.

(and also, i’d stop here. my next post would be about LGBTs and faith. so, erm, pak!)

This is exactly where it’s tricky, Jeff. How do you exactly combine sex positive messages, religion, and HIV, without making stigmatizing judgements about, say, ‘casual’ sex? Kaya i’d rather we stick to the evidence and not equate risky sex with casual sex.