President Bush’s signature on legislation that will provide $15 billion to fight AIDS globally May 27 was cheered by religious leaders concerned about prevention and treatment of the disease.
“The suffering in Africa is great,” the president said just before signing the bill in a State Department auditorium.
“The suffering in the Caribbean is great. The United States of America has the power and we have the moral duty to help,” Bush said. “And I’m proud that our blessed and generous nation is fulfilling that duty.”
The legislation provides additional financial support to the Global Fund for AIDS Relief. It also will help provide medicine, train doctors and support abstinence-based education on prevention.
Faith-based and community groups will be among those that will be assisted in providing services to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS.
Conservative Christian groups particularly praised the measure’s focus on abstinence.
“We are grateful that President Bush rejected a strategy centered on the distribution of condoms- the same faulty approach that has only increased sexually transmitted diseases here in America,” said Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy for Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based ministry.
In a statement issued the day of the signing, Family Research Council President Ken Connor added: “Simply tossing out condoms and creating the illusion of safe sex does not work. Teaching abstinence and funding fiscally accountable organizations does.”
Bush praised the work of religious and educational groups that are working to address the pandemic, including the Catholic Medical Mission Board, which runs clinics in southern Africa and Haiti.
Before Bush signed the bill, religious leaders hailed the recent passage of the legislation in Congress.
“Congressional passage of a comprehensive U.S. Global AIDS Initiative demonstrates our capacity to respond to the desperate needs of the millions of people worldwide affected by HIV/AIDS,” Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold said in an Episcopal News Service report.
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, also applauded member of Congress. “The lives and health of millions will be protected because of their actions,” he said in a statement.
(RNS)
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