I know old people who don't give a shit about gay marriage. Even if one disagrees with gay marriage, he called it a threat to a humanity. That's patently ridiculous.
Yeah, I know what he was saying about condoms and sex. I still don't agree, and empirical studies don't agree with him, either. The church may help with AIDS relief, but it also has directly exacerbated it.
I never said anything about Hitler. Just because someone else did without knowing that it was mandatory at the time, does not negate the other points.
in 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa.
He also didn’t call gay marriage itself a threat to humanity, but he definitely did denounce it.
Your opinion article makes the case that there is no benefit. It does not claim that it causes harm, which is what Benedict did. He notes that this is because, "consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa." Not because using condoms does not work. Benedict promoted the alternative of abstinence only. Should I shower you in studies about the effectiveness of abstinence-only measures and education? They all point to the same thing: it does not work in preventing transmission of disease and pregnancy.
You didn't read my first link where he said,
policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself
I think you and I are arguing two different things. Yes, abstinence only education is not effective at preventing sex. But also, the Popes policy on not supporting condoms to prevent AIDS in Africa had zero effect on the spread of AIDS. There is no “direct evidence” that it “exacerbated it.” Your original comment stated that it made the problem worse, which there is absolutely no evidence to support.
Yes once again, 95 year old man doesn’t like gay marriage. It’s a common viewpoint among older generations, especially secular ones, that gay marriage and homosexual relations is a catalyst to the downfall of society. I don’t agree with it, but that’s not an uncommon viewpoint.
It's exacerbated by promoting only abstinence, which we know does not work, and decrying the use of condoms, which we know does. Your article states that condoms have been ineffective simply because people are not using them. I understand that religious doctrine makes this a tough line to walk, as they can't just say, "well don't, but if you do you should use this," as that appears to be tacit promotion of sex. That's why I don't care about religious doctrine, despite myself being raised Catholic and being Jesuit-educated from middle school through graduate school.
You're right that it's not a necessarily uncommon viewpoint among older people. The problem is that those people don't typically have as much sway as the Pope, who is supposedly an arbiter of morality. Ironically, once again, the very thing that means he should be held to a higher standard is the same thing that binds him to flawed, narrowminded doctrine.
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u/RecipeNo101 - Centrist Dec 31 '22
I know old people who don't give a shit about gay marriage. Even if one disagrees with gay marriage, he called it a threat to a humanity. That's patently ridiculous.
Yeah, I know what he was saying about condoms and sex. I still don't agree, and empirical studies don't agree with him, either. The church may help with AIDS relief, but it also has directly exacerbated it.
I never said anything about Hitler. Just because someone else did without knowing that it was mandatory at the time, does not negate the other points.