Pope Benedict XVI made his comments on condoms in Africa more than a week ago,
but the outrage they sparked shows no sign of abating. Blasted by pundits from
New York to New Zealand and politicians from Berlin to Brussels, the pope has
been labeled "dangerous," "insulting," "a threat to public health" and "a
preacher of death."

For all their fury, few of the pope's critics have bothered to engage the main
point of his remarks — a point focused not on the scientific properties of
condoms but on the social policy of condom promotion. Responding to a
journalist who characterized the Catholic Church's approach to fighting AIDS as
"unrealistic and ineffective," Benedict argued that the Church's emphasis on
sexual responsibility and behavioral change, as well as solidarity with the
suffering, is "most effective." Africa's AIDS epidemic "cannot be overcome by
money alone," he said, and "cannot be overcome with the distribution of
condoms, which even aggravates the problem."

Blasphemous as such claims may be to Western ears, they are backed up by solid
evidence. Just ask Edward C. Green, a director of the Harvard AIDS Prevention
Research Project and self-proclaimed liberal who says that Benedict has the
facts in his favor.

As Green explained last year in an article for First Things, "In every African
country in which HIV infections have declined, this decline has been associated
with a decrease in the proportion of men and women reporting more than one sex
partner over the course of a year — which is exactly what fidelity programs
promote. The same association with HIV decline cannot be said for condom use,
coverage of HIV testing, treatment for curable sexually transmitted infections,
provision of antiretroviral drugs, or any other intervention or behavior."

The only other behavior often associated with a drop in HIV rates, Green said,
is "a decline in premarital sex among young people." He concluded: "What the
churches are inclined to do anyway" — promote sexual abstinence before marriage
and fidelity afterward — "turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention."

The poster child for this approach is Uganda, an African nation that has seen
tremendous success in lowering HIV rates by using the "ABC" approach — defined
as, "Abstain, Be faithful or use Condoms." Peer-reviewed literature shows that
the key to Uganda's success "was not increased condom use but reductions in the
number of sexual partners," Green wrote.

A 2004 study by British anthropologists Tim Allen and Suzette Heald in the
Journal of International Development made a similar observation. Citing the
disparity between declining HIV rates in Uganda and skyrocketing rates in
Botswana, they noted that "the promotion of condoms at an early stage proved to
be counter-productive in Botswana, whereas the lack of condom promotion during
the 1980s and early 1990s contributed to the relative success of behavior
change strategies in Uganda."

That trend makes sense, Green argued, because while "risk-reduction" strategies
focused on condom promotion show some success with high-risk groups such as
prostitutes and their patrons, similar campaigns aimed at the general public
often only encourage more sexual risk-taking "out of a false sense of personal
safety that comes with using condoms some of the time."

Such campaigns also stir resentment among many Africans, who chafe at the sight
of Western-funded aid workers driving trucks through their neighborhoods and
tossing condoms at their children. The contrast between such myopic, culturally
insensitive maneuvers and the grass-roots, faith-based work of churches that
labor to strengthen marriages and protect the sexual innocence of children
could hardly be starker. Benedict's critics should consider that contrast — and
the facts about AIDS-prevention successes in Africa — before accusing him of
disregarding the dignity and value of African lives.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.