The answer to AIDS is values
Star Parker

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/sp20041221.shtml

A recent Newsweek cover story has helped bring national attention to the
HIV/AIDS epidemic among African-American women. Unfortunately, its
superficial and biased coverage is itself evidence of the scope of the
crisis on which it reports.

Newsweek leaves the impression that traditional values, rather than being
part of the solution to this problem, contribute to its cause; that men are
helpless victims and responsibility lies exclusively with women; that choice
and responsibility play a minimal role in sexual behavior, and that we can
think about this problem independently of the general cultural state of
affairs of the country.

HIV/AIDS has migrated into the heterosexual community, and women now account
for 26 percent of newly diagnosed AIDS cases, quadruple the incidence among
women since the 1980s. Black women account for well over 70 percent of these
cases. Last October, Gwen Ifill jolted listeners to the debate between Vice
President Cheney and John Edwards when she pointed out that "black women
between 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their
counterparts."

AIDS is now the No. 1 cause of death among African-Americans between the
ages of 25 and 44.

Joseph Lowery, the former president of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, once said, "When America gets a cold, black America gets
pneumonia."

The "cold" that America has in this case is the ongoing politicization of
our society and the breakdown of the traditional values that have been the
glue that has held together the American family and our society. The
symptoms of this "cold" are obvious: skyrocketing divorce rates and
illegitimacy rates, declining test scores that result from a politicized and
bureaucratized public-school system and politicization of our legal system
that reflects the detachment of law from its moral foundations.

Whether we are talking about breakdown in family, education or law, the
symptoms of this cold are more intense and protracted in the black community
than in other communities. But it's important to retain perspective that
black social problems are symptomatic of a national problem. Irresponsible
sexual behavior has no racial boundaries. The rate of out-of-wedlock births
among whites today exceeds the rate among blacks 40 years ago.

Health professionals are trying to get a handle on the precise channels
through which the HIV virus is being transmitted to black women, and the
picture that is emerging is complex. But the themes, drug use and sexual
promiscuity, are clear.

It is also clear that in a world of abstinence, monogamy and sex exclusively
within the framework of marriage, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in
general would be rare.

Yet, such a world is such a remote possibility and so irrelevant to the
Newsweek reporters that it does not receive a word of mention in the
article.

The only attention these reporters give to traditional values is to the
claim that they make women submissive and therefore, supposedly, more prone
to predatory male behavior. And, according to these reporters, traditional
values intimidate men from admitting their homosexual behavior to the women
with whom they have sex.

One significant source of the transmission of HIV to black women traces back
to the appallingly high percentage of black men who have done time in
prison. Prisons are a breeding ground for homosexual behavior and HIV
transmission. These men then return home and engage in heterosexual sex.

Yet, the Newsweek reporters never raise the relevance of prison outreach
programs such as Chuck Colson's nor do they broach the sensitive area of
screening of prisoners for HIV before they are released.

The AIDS epidemic is symptomatic of a society spinning out of control. There
is only one answer, and that is to re-establish our mooring rooted in
personal responsibility and the traditional sense of right and wrong
behavior. What can be the future for a society in which love and personal
responsibility are displaced by sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility?
What type of society will we be living in when we get to the point where few
American adults will have grown up in a traditional family?

Despite what the liberal elite in the media would have us believe,
self-esteem programs among black women do not provide the answer to this
social crisis. It is these same liberal elite that brought us the welfare
state that accelerated the breakdown of the black family.

Our efforts must focus on restoration of values and families in white and
black communities. It's not an easy task. But if we lose sight that this is
the only solution, we truly will be lost.

Star Parker is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education and
author of the newly released book 'Uncle Sam's Plantation.'