Art & Understanding

Left Field

by Patricia Nell Warren

The AIDS epidemic gives religious righters their dream shot at ruling the world. And they?re using taxpayer money to do it. Behind President Bush?s recent commitment of $15 billion to fight African and Caribbean AIDS, the far right is pulling the strings. And ever since our Supreme Court struck down Texas?s sodomy law, anti-gay backlash is injecting fierce new life into the right?s takeover of the AIDS war, not only at home but internationally.

Who, exactly, is the religious right? There are Catholics in the mix, of course, along with Moonies and Mormons. But mostly ?religious righters? are Protestants with close ties to reconstructionist ideology. If we remember our Civil War history, ?reconstruction? was what happened to the South after Sherman burned Atlanta. Today, the religious right wants to burn down American democracy. On the ashes, they aim to reconstruct a Christian republic with law and public health based on the Bible.

Since the late 1970s, the religious right (for brevity I call them the RR) have been quietly building a powerful political machine. The RR?s biggest muscle comes from the shadowy Council for National Policy, whose members include organizations like Christian Coalition, think tanks like Heritage Foundation, moguls like Howard Ahmanson, as well as Congresspeople and anti-feminist women activists. Formed in 1981, the CNP was bankrolled by a few Texas billionaires. Through CNP, the RR works the electoral and appointive process in its favor, quietly getting its people into key jobs throughout the judicial, executive, and legislative sector, as well as the diplomatic corps, the corporate world, and the media.

Right now, with most Americans focused on the economy and the war, with the Catholics focused on managing their child-molester scandals, and gays focused on marriage issues, the RR is busy with its own focus. It?s trying to redistrict Texas so that Republicans, not Democrats, will control most of that state?s congressional seats. This way, the religious right controls Congress even if a Democrat becomes President in 2004.

Why do these American Protestants want to control other countries? public health? After all, they value the idea of national sovereignty. They loathe UN-style meddling, viewing that organization as a satanic expression of the New World Order. But they also believe that the United States is chosen by God to lead the world's billions to Christ. They believe literally in Matthew 28:19, ?Go then and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.? Unlike far-right Catholics, who?d like to restore the Holy Roman Empire, far-right Protestants prefer to work for what reconstructionist thinker David Chilton calls ?the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics.? His meaning couldn?t be clearer.

Why is AIDS so important to this global strategy? Foreign AIDS work by RR personnel makes it possible to convert many ?clients? and their families. Helping sick people makes them look good on TV. Most important, the AIDS war gives them more money, beyond their own vast wealth (from church donations, corporate investment, etc.). Through Bush?s new policy of giving faith-based organizations free access to government funding, AIDS provides church groups with millions of extra dollars?which is funneled to developing countries where far-right Protestantism wants converts, control of indigenous leaders, and access to local resources for rightist American business. The RR is especially interested in AIDS-afflicted countries that could serve as bulwarks against expanding Islamic fundamentalism. (Sound familiar? We used to look for countries that would serve as sandbags against expanding communism.)

As a result, U.S. international AIDS aid is moving outside the old international funding streams. After all, in religious-right eyes, the IMF, World Bank, etc., are tainted by association with the ?evil? UN. More often, American AIDS relief is done directly through our own U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The opportunity is ripest in sub-Saharan Africa, with its huge AIDS epidemic, its history as a lure for missionaries, its strategic position along Islamic borders, and its rich resources, including oil. African leaders are pressured to allow faith-based AIDS groups to operate in their countries, and must consider RR ideology when they launch AIDS programs.

Take Uganda. In this East African country, Catholics and Protestant missionaries have vied with Islam and indigenous religions for the souls of 26 million inhabitants. Around sixty percent of Ugandans say they are Christian. After decades of civil war and human-rights violations, plus economic sanctions by the U.S., Uganda?s left-wing president Yoweri Museveni finally made his peace with Washington and got into a development program with us. USAID funds began flowing into Uganda in 1988?$80 million to date. In the early nineties, when the AIDS epidemic hit, Museveni got the various Ugandan religions to support his prevention program by down-pedaling advocacy of condoms. The program was called ABC: Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms only if necessary.

Today ABC is credited with a drop in Uganda?s extramarital sex and HIV-infection rates. Liberals point out that condoms surely helped make this possible. But the right-wing Washington Times credits abstinence, crowing: ?In 1994, more than 60 percent of Ugandan boys ages 13?16 reported being sexually active, a number that dropped to about 15 percent in 1996 and 5 percent in 2001.? Today the RR point to Uganda as a model for fighting AIDS through ideological correctness, and President Bush rewarded the country with a high-profile state visit in July of this year.

It?s true that some faith-based NGOs who work abroad are moderates with no agenda for global control. They?re just trying to be real Christians. According to the National Council of Churches (long viewed by the far right as a communist organization, the call is being answered by ?the full range of the nation?s churches, from Episcopal to Baptist, from Lutheran to Methodist, from suburban to inner-city?and their jointly supported humanitarian ministries, such as Church World Service.? According to Balm in Gilead, the new Africa HIV/AIDS Faith Initiative is sending black Christian AIDS workers out to six countries; the initiative is funded directly by the CDC. This land rush of liberal Christians into African AIDS work probably doesn?t worry the RR much. They?ll try to leapfrog to power over the liberals? backs.

Programs deemed successful in developing countries are actually imported back into the U.S.! Recently, despite liberal protests, the CDC junked its old prevention message on condoms. The agency now recommends ABC to Americans?the very gimmick that Uganda used. Lingering liberal leverage, especially the gay lobby, means that the CDC hasn?t dared to drop condoms altogether. But religious ideology is powering the new spin.

As Lawrence v. Texas backlash churns the global oceans, gay sex is also an issue. Conventional wisdom holds that ?AIDS in developing countries is heterosexual,? but this simply isn?t true. In many countries?India, for instance?there is a big demographic of HIV-positive men, many married, who have closeted sex with men. These men become a lightning rod for RR policymakers, who view them with the same loathing that far-right Muslims and Hindus do.

Yes, the RR have their eye on world dominion, and they?re using AIDS money to do it. Do I hear Thomas Jefferson turning over in his grave?

Texas Justice 2