Topic of paper: "A Utopian Solution to End HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa"

"A program using the idea of safety instead of pleasure needs to be injected into society."
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This is definitely the beginning of the problem, but I think I disagree with you about the safety aspect being the root of the dilemma. Education about "safe sex" only counters, not solves, the deeper philosophical outlook in Africa. If you don't change the philosophy of someone, you can't change his actions. So convincing someone to have sex in only one relationship and only after marriage is impossible for many tribal cultures because of what they believe. Many Africans--even those who live in "civilization" (e.g., cities instead of the bush)--still believe that having sex with as many women as possible proves one to be a man. They also believe that a man needs to practice so that he's "good" when he gets married. Having many children and many partners are prizes that show what a man is worth, and since having children is so pressured in their society, women will do anything, and at very young ages, to secure a husband. Promiscuity is encouraged by this outlook. You are right in this aspect, though: women are chattel and rarely have a say in anything.

This leads me to the idea of the sanctity of life. If you don't believe a person is made in the image of God, then you don't find man to be a sacred creature. If he is not a sacred creature, then it means nothing to treat him as chattel, nothing more than the cow you slaughter for food or the stinging wasp you crush in annoyance. Not believing in the sacredness of a human life gives a person the liberty to do as he pleases--killing for land, raping for revenge, sleeping with prostitutes and passing the sickness to his unsuspecting wife and children.

The Catholic Church, though flawed, has attempted to pass on that idea of sacredness to the African culture, but the basic philosophy of personal pleasure in that land holds fast. That's why the church's teachings of abstinence don't work in Africa--not because there is no law to hold people to a standard of safe sex, but because there is no moral code to begin with. Even in America you see this problem. We are definitely more educated--birth control and condoms are used; safe sex is practiced by millions. But then why are there sill millions of babies killed by abortions? Because human life is no longer sacred in this land. And we have gangs roving the streets, students ripping apart their high schools with shotguns and rifles, families dividing and divorcing, brother fighting brother, babies dying before they've even had a chance to make themselves heard in the world--all because the only sacred life is one's own.

Oh, yes. We Americans are so educated. But our education has only enabled the strife and selfishness: it has NOT changed our philosophy, only worsened it.

So, I ask you this: how then are we better off than the Africans?

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