Angry in the Great White North

From the Ottawa Sun:

Activists from Condoms4Life have a plan to force the Vatican to drop its ban on condoms and help stop the spread of the pandemic.

Force the Vatican? Yeah, good luck with that. And after that, why don't you move Neptune a bit to the left.

Let's be honest. These are Catholics who use condoms. Many do. Those who feel guilty about it admit it to their priest in confession. But it takes a special kind of guilty conscience to demand that doctrine be rewritten to "un-sin" themselves.

Is it a surprise that these people go on the attack? Of course, it helps to wrap it up as a public service:

"A change in Vatican policy is critical. You can't keep talking about a culture of life and turn a blind eye to the suffering and dying. You can't tell people to love and care for one another and deny them the means by which to protect each other," said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice and founder of Condoms4Life.

But the Church rules on loving and caring are specific, and effective. Sex is supposed to be reserved for heterosexual couples committed to a monogamous, exclusive, lifetime commitment called traditional marriage. Had people followed those rules, the scope of the AIDS problem would be smaller by orders of magnitude.

Why should the Vatican change a policy to accommodate people who clearly have no intention of following anything the Vatican has to say, unless it already aligns with what those people are doing anyway?

But the Church's position does have a practical effect that deserves consideration:

St. Mike's in Toronto has the largest HIV/AIDS medical unit in the country. While the hospital has a needle exchange program so addicts can shoot up with clean needles, it doesn't hand out condoms for safe sex practices.

"It's an example of what is going on around the world and it's appalling," Kissling said.

What is appalling is Kissling's absolute inability to think critically or understand what is going on at St. Mike's.

At first glance, Kissling seems to have a point -- why give out free needles but not condoms?

Let's consider the needle exchange program. What is the goal of the program?

Kissling implies that improving the health of addicts is the goal. She suggests that the Church is hypocritical that St. Mike's won't give out condoms to help in that direction as well.

She would be right if clean needles had anything remotely to do with healthier addicts. But it doesn't. Not at all.

It is a needle exchange program. If ten addicts are sharing five needles, exchanging five dirty needles for five clean ones does not help them. They are still sharing needles, and still moving diseases around. If this was about the addict's health, St. Mike's would give out needles, as many as each addict wanted, on demand.

And in any case, these addicts are already sick. So what is a clean needle going to do for them?

So what's the point?

It isn't about the clean needles and the addict. It's about the dirty needles and you and me. The program is trying to get the dirty needles off the street. When a needle becomes unusable, the addict is going to discard it wherever he is standing. We've all heard the horror stories of progressive cities that tolerate drug use in public parks at night, only to find the playgrounds to be unusable during the day for fear of the children becoming fatally ill from handling the dirty needles left behind.

An addict is driven by self-gratification. An addict doesn't care who gets hurt. That's why St. Mike's can't just make it known to addicts that dirty needles can be dropped off for proper disposal, no questions asked. Why make the trip? That takes valuable time away from petty thievery and other activities that addicts engage in to raise money to feed their habits.

So if St. Mike's wants addicts to dispose of needles safely, it has to offer something to entice those addicts who are not inspired by the thought of a safer environment for the rest of us (in other words, all of them).

Why not pay money for dirty needles? Simple -- money enables the addict to buy drugs. St. Mike's and the Church are not in the business of making it easier for an addict to buy drugs.

And so the needle exchange. The drug-addled addict might actually think he is helping himself by using a clean needle. But he comes to St. Mike's with a needle and leaves St. Mike's with a needle. Nothing has really changed, and he is no closer to getting his next fix.

On the other hand, St. Mike's has taken a dirty needle off the streets. The Church has made the city a bit safer for all the innocent people who are forced to share their living space with addicts.

So if the needle exchange is not about the health of addicts, there is no hypocrisy in not offering condoms. The addicts are probably sick already. If an addict leaves St. Mike's with a condom in his pocket, do you think he'll have sex only once, protected, until his next visit? Especially if the addict is using sex as a means to make money to buy drugs?

But an addict's sexual activities don't directly impact the health of the random bystander the way a discarded needle does. So why exactly would the Church compromise its doctrine on condoms? How would that help addicts? How would that help me?

Kissling might not be too appreciative of the Church's approach to public health. She's benefiting from it anyway, even if she is so wrapped up in her guilty conscience for using condoms herself that she can't see it.

Correction: Kissling is a woman. Sorry about that. Names like "Frances" throw me.