"I think we would be better off if that sector of the Christian community would stay out of prevention and do what they do best—treatment and care," Jacobson says.
Ted Green, the Harvard researcher, believes that abstinence promotion is just as taboo in the secular world as condom promotion is in the religious world. He notes that when Bill Gates said a few good words about "ABC"—the policy of abstinence, being faithful, and condoms endorsed by the Bush administration—at the International AIDS conference in Toronto this August, he was booed. Green contends that a condom-only approach, widely practiced over decades, has failed to stem the tide of AIDS in Africa. He's a strong proponent of ABC.
Kevin P. Casey
A former corporate CEO, Rich Stearns took a 75 percent pay cut to become head of World Visions American division.
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Green's research in Uganda, cited by World Vision, found that a campaign to change sexual behavior and promote use of condoms resulted in a big decline in AIDS incidence.
Bearing that in mind, as well as World Vision's Christian audience, Haas says: "It was critical for us to stay resolute that abstinence and faithfulness in marriage are the best ways to prevent HIV." Its prevention efforts, largely aimed at children, stress these values—an approach that Stearns, in a World Vision brochure, refers to as "scripturally based."
"But," Haas goes on to say, "where people are involved in at-risk behaviors, and they're either unwilling or unable to stop, we want 'em alive." World Vision tells these people that condoms "will keep you 85 percent safe," he says. The organization participates in a project in Zambia that distributes condoms to truck drivers and prostitutes along what Haas refers to as "the AIDS Highway," near the Zimbabwe border.
Bwalya Melu, who oversees the Zambia project, says the debate over AIDS and condoms among churches in Africa has "ceased to be an issue," as pastors are eager to do whatever it takes. "They are saying, 'We're tired of burying our young people.'" Their message to the general populace, according to Melu, is a very qualified endorsement of condoms: "We have no problem with that rubber thing as long as it is used appropriately—within the context of some moral guidelines of marriage." He believes that's the safest kind of sex on a continent that, unlike the West, does not have ready access to AIDS drugs.
Haas formulates World Vision's ABC approach this way:"We're saying, 'Big A, Big B, and in some cases, where the situation mandates, condoms.'"
Even that limited support of condoms separates World Vision from the Christian groups that signed the letter against the Global Fund. In fact, World Vision lobbyists have been vocal supporters of the Global Fund, appearing at a press conference last year on its behalf. It has been in World Vision's interests to do so, since the organization has won millions of dollars from the Swiss institution for its AIDS work.
World Vision has consequently been the subject of some disapproval by Christian groups. "I've been critical at times," says Smith, of the Institute for Youth Development, who adds that he's visited World Vision's headquarters to discuss its approach. He brought up a billboard he once took a picture of in Zambia that had World Vision's logo on it, along with that of a few other organizations. The message, according to Smith: "Be Safe, Use a Condom." (World Vision acknowledges co-sponsoring a billboard with a similar message.) "I don't base our organization on scripture," Smith says, "but if you're a ministry, you have an added responsibility."
World Vision's billboarding also drew fire in a column last year in the Christian magazine World, which lamented the "boldness of the condom-promotion campaign" by the organization and others in Africa.
World Vision has tried to stay clear of this debate. It has not spoken for or against a controversial 33 percent earmark in the president's AIDS fund for abstinence programs. As that five-year plan winds down and health groups are debating the details of renewed funding, World Vision's senior policy adviser in D.C., Robert Zachritz, says the organization is focused on trying to pass a 10 percent earmark for orphans and vulnerable children—relatively neutral territory.
World Vision's constant message is that AIDS is too big a problem to bicker over approaches. Every approach, it says, is needed.
As Haas prepares to board his plane at Sea-Tac, dressed more casually than usual in jeans and a Seafair T-shirt, and carrying a couple soccer balls in his luggage that he uses to connect with African kids, he looks to the year ahead and World Vision's new education campaign.
"The goal is that, in 2008, the church does not have an excuse for stigma or bias," he says. "The church can't say, 'I didn't know.' No, no, no. Stop that!
"If we could just raise the temperature so that we could realize this is something we all need to deal with. Frankly, for us at World Vision, we're going to die trying."
nshapirio@seattleweekly.com
