Nearly 30 years in, people still don't get it

Female sexuality isn't sinful. Sin doesn't cause AIDS. But some people don't get it. And now the one of the groups of people least likely to spread HIV are the sole target of a policy proposed by South Africa's deputy president for slowing the transmission of the disease--teenage girls.

Like huge segments of our population, it seems that conservative Africans are also under the impression that if good girls didn't have sex before marriage and homosexuality went back into the closet, then AIDS would just go away. Of course, when sexuality is repressed it just becomes more furitive and thereby more dangerous. When women are forced to stay virgins until marriage, especially in societies that are indulgent of male sexuality, prostitution rises dramatically to fill the gap. This protects no one from disease--more men going to more prostitutes means that disease rises for men and for prostitutes. Oh yeah, and for those "good" women who waited until marriage to have sex, often with a man who has gotten a disease from a prostitute. Same story with homosexuality--the deeper the closet, the more promiscuity as people are pushed towards random encounters in dark places with strangers instead of forming long-term relationships with sexual partners.

Nothing has done as much in this country to slow the spread of HIV than open discussion of sexuality and acceptance of the fact that most people have extra-marital sex at some points in their lives. Abstinence is a totally unrealistic goal, but condom usage and monogamy have worked out well enough. But monogamy doesn't work unless it's accompanied by a good dose of realism--in this case, we accept that most people will have more than one partner over a lifetime and that gay men do in fact exist.

But realism, acceptance, and thorough discussions are just not as satisfying, it seems, as dumping all the blame on the homos and the sluts. Testing girls' virginity will do absolutely nothing to stop men from being promiscious; in fact, it will encourage it as you don't stick to the same hooker every weekend. It will do absolutely nothing to address unsafe sex. But what it will do is provide a convienent scapegoat for when the rate of HIV doesn't slow--just blame it on girls who sneak past the tests and have sex anyway.