The terrible Malaysian airline disaster has focused attention on the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia. After reports that over a hundred activists were on the tragic plane bound for the Conference, it turns out that there were just six.
But what of the conference, which is running as we go to press? Is it merely a symposium for good-hearted people who want to develop medicines to combat HIV and AIDS? Well, no, it isn’t. It is also a grindingly right-on campaigning forum advancing special rights for homosexuals, drug abusers and prostitutes.
It issued a declaration, even before it started, supported by Richard Branson, Bob Geldof, fanatical Australian gay agitator Michael Kirby and, depressingly, by Aung San Suu Kyi who endured so many years of house-arrest in Burma.
The Declaration opens with a pretentious nod to the Animist Australian Aborigines:
‘We gather in Melbourne, the traditional meeting place of the Wurundjeri, Boonerwrung, Taungurong, Djajawurrung and the Wathaurung people, the original and enduring custodians of the lands that make up the Kulin Nation, to assess progress on the global HIV response and its future direction, at the 20th International AIDS Conference, AIDS 2014.’
The Declaration begins by claiming ‘that non-discrimination is fundamental to an evidence-based, rights-based and gender transformative response to HIV and effective public health programmes’. If it going to be ‘rights-based’ and to mess around with gender roles, one supposes that the elimination of discrimination, or of making any moral judgments at all, must be fundamental.
It then states that ‘nobody should be criminalized or discriminated against because of their gender, age, race, ethnicity, disability, religious or spiritual beliefs, country of origin, national status, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a sex worker, prisoner or detainee, because they use or have used illicit drugs or because they are living with HIV.’
So Governments should not pass laws against prostitution or using illicit drugs? ‘Illicit’ means ‘forbidden by law, rules, or custom’. Drugs are ‘illicit’ because they are illegal. If you do something illegal you are criminalised.
The Declaration affirms everyone’s right to treatment, but spoils it by clothing it in terms of ‘social justice, equality, human rights’ which can mean anything.
In fact, for the International AIDS Conference, it means a sexual and – taken with the call to decriminalise currently illicit drugs – a drug-crazed free-for-all:
‘In over 80 countries’, it moans, ‘there are unacceptable laws that criminalize people on the basis of sexual orientation. All people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people are entitled to the same rights as everyone else. All people are born free and equal and are equal members of the human family’.
Yes, they are, but if they break the law they need to be brought to justice. Would the Melbourne signatories complain about laws that criminalise people on the basis that they steal, or murder, or bear false witness, or deliberately infect others, or have sexual relations with children? It is hard not to wonder whether they might.
‘Governments must repeal repressive laws and end policies that reinforce discriminatory and stigmatizing practices that increase the vulnerability to HIV, while also passing laws that actively promote equality’, they say. No, they must keep in place and enforce laws which protect children from predatory homosexuals, particularly, in the developing world, from those from rich Western nations on the look-out for exotic children to corrupt for a couple of dollars.
The Melbourne signatories want to shut up politicians like Uganda’s President Museveni and Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan who speak about decency and Biblical morality:
‘Decision makers must not use international health meetings or conferences as a platform to promote discriminatory laws and policies that undermine health and wellbeing.’ Perish the thought that any challenging view should ruffle the feathers of AIDS activists.
And they are very keen to keep as much project funding as they can in the hands of politically- correct people like them:
‘The exclusion of organisations that promote intolerance and discrimination including sexism, homophobia, and transphobia against individuals or groups, from donor funding for HIV programmes.’
Church-based programmes may find it difficult in future to offer their care and expertise to those in need because the Melbourne Declaration, so keen on non-discrimination, wants to discriminate against them:
‘All healthcare providers must demonstrate the implementation of non-discriminatory policies as a prerequisite for future HIV programme funding.
‘Restrictions on funding, such as the anti-prostitution pledge and the ban on purchasing needles and syringes, must be removed as they actively impede the struggle to combat HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and hepatitis C among sex workers and people who inject drugs.’
The Melbourne people refuse to concede that those who would crack down on prostitution, refuse to distribute condoms and ban the sale of needles to drug addicts are doing it out of good-hearted concern for society at large and trying to protect those who might get caught up in destructive practices.
There is only one way of looking at the world in the Melbourne Declaration and it is an amoral, Western liberal godless way, with avarice clothed in a veneer of altruism. The Melbourne Declaration is not just a recipe for moral degeneration, it is an anti-Christian, self-righteous, self-serving and self-absorbed recipe for moral degeneration.
It is a pity that it has taken an air disaster and the loss of so many lives to bring it to light.
Find out how to join Christian Voice and stand up for the King of kings (clicking on the link below does not commit you to join)
Please note that persons wishing to comment on this story must enter a valid email address. Comments from persons leaving fictitious email addresses will be trashed.
way to go liberal secular western world! Promote every kind of perversion and ammoral behavior you can think of. Why not chuck in bestiality and paedophilia for universal legality and rights for the practioners. You could actually do away with the whole justice system and save millions.
Paul said : “….. your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” 1Cor 2:5
believe it or not but judgement is coming!
I think the policy you are objecting to is called “harm minimisation.” In the control of AIDS, Australia pioneered the concept of working with affected groups, who were anxious to avoid infection. This involved campaigns to get homosexual men and prostitutes to use condoms and to avoid sexual practices that were particularly dangerous and to make clean needles available to injecting drug users. There was a great emphasis on testing and to stop unfair discrimination against those who were infected with HIV.
Harm minimisation worked well in slowing the spread of the virus. Remember that Jesus was denounced as being a friend of sinners, (Matthew 11:18-20), so I don’t think that the policy of harm minimisation is necessarily against Christian beliefs. Also see Spurgeon’s sermon on Jesus being a friend of sinners: http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0556.htm
Obviously, it would be quite out of the question to ask “homosexual man and prostitutes” etc to actually abstain.
and yes, Jesus is a friend of sinners, but He never encouraged or condoned someone in their sin, He expected them to renounce it and repent.
Jesus, according to John 7, did ask the woman not to sin any more, but first he shamed her accusers into dropping their stones. We never found out whether the people who slunk away or the woman whose life he saved actually turned away from their sins. Harm minimisation isn’t a matter of condoning sin but of minimising harm. The fact that harm needs to be minimised acknowledges the fact that the act has dangers.
John 8. Jesus did not say, ‘When you commit adultery, make sure you use a condom’.
nice Stephen. You see clearly, imo.
ps not trying to “gang up” on you Michael Glass. You sound like you may work in this field, or are you, like me, just a “keyboard warrior”(?). If you do work in this field, it would be almost impossible, I would contend, without compromising one’s Christian beliefs. You certainly won’t get funded unless you do. This applies to any “Christian” organisation taking the government shilling, they WILL, sooner or later, have to compromise their beliefs. I would suggest that what you are doing is justifying it.
you know what will be said to that, don’t you Stephen? “condoms weren’t around in Jesus’day, so we can’t be sure he wouldn’t have”!!!!!
I think my point is that the Lord just said ‘sin no more.’ There was no ‘harm minimisation’ in his statement. In fact all he says is very black and white.
Stephen, Jesus didn’t just say, ‘Sin no more”. First, he stopped the woman’s accusers from stoning her to death. In saving the woman’s life he minimised the harm to her, and the example set in this passage probably saved the life of thousands of women over the centuries. That is harm minimisation on a grand scale.
Harm minimisation isn’t simply a matter of promoting condoms, it’s a matter of minimising harm. In selling of alcohol, for instance, earlier closing hours helps to reduce alcohol fuelled violence. There are also consequences of not employing harm minimising measures. In the case of alcohol, it would mean more alcohol fuelled violence, something that often takes the life of innocent victims. In the case of HIV, it means more infections. I am not asking anyone here to do anything against their consciences. However, I would be concerned about people opposing proven methods of minimising harm.
The Lord Jesus stopped the woman’s accusers from stoning her to death in the interests of justice. They were incompetent witnesses. If justice is done it minimises harm, I’ll grant you that, but it is not what we mean by ‘harm minimisation’.
Stephen, I think we both agree that saving the woman’s life minimised harm. I hope we both agree that limiting the sale of alcohol could minimise the harm of alcohol fuelled violence. In the case of HIV there are measures that have been shown to reduce the spread of the virus. If you find some of these measures are beyond the pale, by all means object. However, the principle of minimising harm appears to me to be in line with Christian teaching.
This has gone about as far as it can.
How long can a society based on lies survive?
I believe that this problem together with the teaching and promotion of sodomy in schools coupled with the ever increasing attempts to undermine Christian convictions, morality, ethics and principles in every strata of society, is all part of the preparation for the new world order.
We are seeing a general trend throughout the world in which people are being brainwashed and bullied into accepting a way of life in which the antichrist will be able to smoothly enter and take charge,
it is after all prophesied In scripture.
Some years ago before the last election, when the Equality and Diversity together with the Children, Schools and Families Bill were being pushed through Parliament, I wrote to my Labour MP objecting to their contents promoting abortion and homosexuality, my objections were passed on to Harriet Harman’s Department where they were summarily dismissed.