What's not being said

The Pope was all over the French newspapers this morning. The reason: He's in Africa (Cameroon) for the first time, and the message he's spreading is one which condems condom usage as an effective way to combat the AIDS pandemic on the continent. He says, "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms"...."on the contrary, it increases the problem."
This is not a surprising stance, despite the fact that it's the first time he has directly discussed condom usage. Right. The Catholic position is clear: premarital sex is a sin; contraception is not to be used. The Church seems to not talk about the latter very often anymore, and most Catholics have (at least in the US) chosen contraception as a family planning method.
But condom usage (or lack thereof) in the fight against AIDS is a new stance. And one that, in my opinion, carries with it a lot of assumptions. Harmful sexist and racist assumtions.
The first assumption is this: that everyone getting AIDS is having sex outside of marriage. The second: that AIDS would not spread if people were, in his words, adapting a "responsible and moral attitude towards sex."
Let me say that IF everybody was having sex within and only within marraige, there would be a sharp decrease in the number of people infected with HIV. But isn't that the case in EVERY society!? But that's obvious. What I want to look at is what's between the lines, what's being said in the absence of words.
To address both of these assumptions, I'm going to draw upon my own experience in Zimbabwe. Just less than 10 years ago, Zimbabwean women didn't have the right to demand that their husbands wear a condom when HE was HIV-positive. So within the marraige--therefore sanctioned sex, according to the Catholic Church--women could not protect themselves against infection. How are the husbands contracting the virus? From an economic, exploitative situation brought on directly by imperialism. Men were first drawn into labor via the colonial government (often forced labor), which today has taken the form of multinational corporations. This means that men are working in mines, on oil fields, on farms, and extracting every possible natural resrouce from their country for the benefit of a multinational corporation which sends not only the raw goods, but also the profits abraod. They work for months on end away from their wives and families, coming home only for a weekend here and there. No doubt there are "sex workers" (as they've been called in Zimbabwe) who work the bunk-houses where the male workers are housed. Then the men carry whatever infection or virus they might have contracted back to their wives. (I don't want to indicate that all men are behaving this way, though certainly some are!) The problem here is two-fold: economic exploitation has disrupted the family unit; and, without condoms, nobody is protected. Would the absence of all sex solve the proble? Sure. But unless eradicating prostitution and keeping sex strictly within the confines of marriage is truly possible (and when, in ANY society, has that been achieved!??), then condoms are, quite frankly, the best way to keep people safe. And that includes people who have sex WITHIN their marraiges.
What also lies in the unspoken is the age-old stereotype that African people have lascivous sexual appetites. That their societies also lack the necessary structure for curbing such sexuality...which makes Christianity and Islam (besides capitalism) the strongest forces moving throughout the continent. What's not being discussed, however, is the history: the way in which those two religions in particular completely disrupted the social structures in which sexual relations WERE governed within African societies. Premarital sex was outlawed among some African peoples, while it was not among others. No matter what the case was, African societies quite effectively managed the sexual affairs within their groups, and sexual promiscuity, sexual devience, and sexual violence were highly punishable. Missionaries were colonialism's "cultural" arm, and their responsibility (their "burden") was to change societies (which in the case of Christianity, meant bringing them into compliance with Victorian values). I won't go further into THAT (though I could, as I wrote over 100 pages about it last year!), except to say that religious conversion imposed different family models and thereby put enormous strains or eradicated completely the communal living that characterized, organized, and managed all aspects of life--including sexual relations and expectations. And contrary to other misrepresentations which have been perpetuated, the vast majority of African societies--pre-colonial invasion--were quite balanced. Because they had to be for survival.
I want to conclude with a Yoruba saying: "O n pami, o lo n gbami" (You are killing me but you insist that you are saving me).