It is always exciting to see Churches become involved in the social issues of our time. In the Philippines there are many, and to see the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) engage in HIV is truly heartening. For me, it is however not all good news. What I refer to is a slightly distorted view of the current situation around HIV in the Philippines.
Are HIV cases in the Philippines “booming”? YES! The recorded 646 new cases for February 2015 are truly alarming. Last year, 2014, saw a monthly average of 421 by end of February. In other words, year on year there is a more than 150% increase in people newly tested as being HIV positive. That in itself is frightening enough, but when you consider that only 8% of MSM and a mere 0.76% of the general populace in the Philippines actually know their HIV status this figure then holds the potential of being anywhere between 10 and 100 times higher. So yes, HIV cases are BOOMING in the Philippines.
Is there a correlation between “Distorted concept of sexuality” and risk of being infected with HIV? ABSOLUTELY, but not for the reasons highlighted by Fr. Dan Vicente Cancino MI. The distorted concept of sexuality is one which maintains that sex is purely for procreation and not for pleasure, and that the only legitimate expression of human sexuality is heterosexual. And here the blame has to rest not only with families but also with the church herself. If we teach negatively about human sexuality then we must expect people to develop negative self-images relating to human sexuality, particularly if their own natural sexual expression is not heterosexual.
I was blessed to be raised in a very stable family. My mother and father met at University, and they then got married two years after both finishing University. I never heard them quarrel, not once, and they remained happily married until my mother died of cancer after they had been married for almost 40 years. We all went to church every Sunday, and never did we eat without praying first. But this is not the whole story. I was raised in a church which made it quite clear that sex was dirty, not to be spoken of, and that homosexuality must surely be the greatest of all sins. Having remained a virgin till I was 30 (yes it is possible!) I got married to a young lady from the church. I met her while finishing my studies in seminary. Somehow I thought that by getting married I could “fix” what was not broken. By getting married to a woman I could change who I was. I knew HIV was about promiscuity and sex work and drugs – that’s what I had been taught! And the only prevention messages I had heard were related to heterosexual sex – abstain till you get married (tick); if you can’t abstain then be faithful in a marriage (tick); if you can’t be faithful (didn’t apply to me) then use a condom. Well, it didn’t work! I’m living positively with HIV, even though I am in a faithful relationship.
- If you are taught that your sexuality is wrong, and experience rejection from your faith community because of your sexual orientation or gender identity then your risk factor is already heightened.
- If, in addition, you are rejected by your family the risk factor is more than doubled. This negative self-image can frequently lead to behavior which then further increased vulnerability to HIV, like using drugs or abusing alcohol; doing sex work, having abusive relationships or even attempting suicide. The study found that the more negative self-image factors a person encountered the higher the chance that they considered themselves unworthy of protection. If you combine with that the negative teaching about using condoms which comes from some faith communities then it is faith communities which are significantly contributing to the vulnerabilities experienced by people in relation to HIV.
Please don’t get me wrong, I agree with Fr. Cancino that we should go back to basics, but we may well differ on what the basics are. For me they are:
- Respond to people with the love of God – treat people living with HIV (PLHIV) first and foremost as brothers and sisters in Christ, and not as patients or clients. Make sure PLHIV know they are loved by God for who they are, and make sure they are supported in getting necessary medication, good nutrition and strong spiritual and social support;
- Tell the truth – HIV is about vulnerability and we can teach people how to protect themselves from HIV through wholistic prevention strategies like SAVE (Safer practices; Access to treatment and good nutrition; Voluntary counseling and testing; Empowerment). Moralizing about HIV creates stigma, and in the life and death challenge of HIV stigma simply increases risk exponentially;
- Affirm people for who God created them to be – when God creates any individual, gay, straight, transgender, intersex, God celebrates. We too need to celebrate the rich diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression which God has gifted us with;
- Family values – yes I believe in family values, but families are many and varied. The child headed household of siblings who have lost their parents due to HIV is a family; the two men in a loving relationship raising children is a family; the grandmother raising her grandchildren because the parents can’t is a family; the single mother working by day and caring for children by night is a family, the monks or nuns living together in community sharing everything in common is a family; and the heterosexual couple married with or without children is a family. And all these families together, cherished and loved become the family of God, the Church. And the rich tapestry of difference is a strength not a weakness, and reflects the glorious diversity of creation.
Rev. Fr. Johannes Petrus (JP) Heath was born in Windhoek, Namibia in 1964, the middle son of three children. He experienced his call to the priesthood while working in a bank. He moved to St George's Home for Boys as part of his formation. After two years of study at St. John the Baptist Seminary in Johannesburg, he was moved to St. Paul's Seminary in Grahamstown where he first finished his Diploma in Theology (with Merit), and then moved to complete a B.Th. (Honors) at Rhodes University. Fr. JP was ordained in the Diocese of Johannesburg in 1994 and served his curacy at St. Michael's, Bryanston. While serving at the Cathedral Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Johannesburg, he started a ministry for streetchildren – an outreach to people on the margins of society that continued when he was appointed as Rector of Christ Church, Mayfair, a parish placed in the middle of a predominantly Muslim and Hindu suburb of Johannesburg. In 2000, after testing HIV-positive, JP started exploring ways of initiating a ministry on HIV within the diocese of Johannesburg. Eventually, he confounded the International Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV (INERELA+) in 2001. He was the founding coordinator and then executive director of INERELA+ until December 2012. Fr. JP helped grow the network from an initial membership of eight, to a global network with more than 10,000 members from all faiths. In January 2013, he moved to Sweden, where he is now actively working as Policy Advisor on HIV, Human Sexuality and Theology for the International Department of the Church of Sweden. He continues to serve internationally on a number of Boards and advisory bodies, including the UNAIDS HIV and Human Rights Reference Group, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance HIV strategy group, the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Action International Reference Group, and the Global Interfaith Network on All Sexes, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (GIN-SSOGIE) steering committee.
