If it wasn’t for all the death he’s caused, you might be inclined to think that George Bush isn’t just another power-mad autocrat, but a brilliant and misunderstood Swiftian satirist. His HIV/AIDS funding policies certainly speak to a similarly morbid absurdity. And his peerless self-mockery! Can you think of a leader more disposed to giving alphabetized acronyms to his demands than one who displays such wildly amusing grammar?

But it’s not a joke, not a lick of it, as I learned at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Though Bush seems to favour the same gallows pragmatism that Swift employed in A Modest Proposal when he suggested the starving Irish eat their babies, unlike Swift, Bush’s solution to crisis—that to combat AIDS people practise Abstinence, that they Be faithful and only if they are unrestrained reprobates should they use Condoms— is not black humour.

PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), places ideologically based restrictions on organizations receiving U.S. HIV/AIDS funding—one of which is a policy stating they must oppose prostitution, another of which earmarks 66 per cent of funds for abstinence and faithfulness programs. In Nigeria, celibacy and monogamy lectures from conservative religious groups have replaced condom availability for hookers.

Nearly 300 years after Swift’s famous story was published, people are still jammed between the timeless rock and hard place—religion and colonialism, where simple, lifesaving solutions are treated as ineffective or viewed as blasphemous. In honouring his faith, Bush has unleashed dogma upon the world that is confusing and killing people. As the organization Stella reports, with condoms being presented as a last resort only for the dissolute like philanderers and sex workers, “HIV is being re-stigmatized as a moral failure.”

Seeing as how a good bit of this business represents a violation of the First Amendment, some American organizations that do HIV/AIDS prevention work took the United States government to court and won. This means that Bush cannot enforce his will on his own soil and on his own citizens working abroad, most particularly on those who filed the lawsuit, but can still enforce it Guantanamo Bay-style, on everyone else who wants PEPFAR dollars (of which there are 15 billion).

Sex worker organizations in developing countries that worked for years to establish ties with labour and women’s movements now find themselves twisting in the wind, ineligible despite accolades and successes, though some of their colleagues simply pay lip service to PEPFAR and continue to support sex workers. DKT International was one organization that sued. Based in Washington, D.C., DKT manages contraceptive social marketing programs for family planning and AIDS prevention in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The press release announcing their lawsuit contains a comically expansive paragraph: “The policy harms America’s image and interests abroad. An anti-prostitution ‘policy’ is a hollow gesture. No one pretends that such a policy will contain or ameliorate the darker aspects of the world’s oldest profession. Rather it represents posturing by U.S. politicians who are increasingly seen around the world as patronizing, bullying and obsessed with sex.”

We don’t let pious sex maniacs set the terms by which condoms and AIDS prevention money are doled out because these terms are based on irrational beliefs, not evidence—the cornerstone of proper healthcare. There are so many disturbing things about PEPFAR policies, but one thing that really pisses me off is what I perceive to be its absolute foundation: the insistence that the entire world have sex exactly the same way under exactly the same conditions. By prioritizing straight, monogamous sexual expression, Bush makes clear his contempt, fear and ignorance of all other forms, effectively disregarding the incredible nuances each culture, and its subcultures, brings to their particular sexual outlook.

Here’s a big problem: there has never been a universal sexual philosophy. All cultures have vastly different approaches, and many already contain their own bigoted attitudes towards sex workers. They don’t need more incentive to scapegoat and degrade them.

If you’re interested in keeping informed of PEPFAR action, go to www.pepfarwatch.org. Stella’s Web site (www.chezstella.org) will lead you to international sex worker organizations where you can get down to some grassroots activism. Seriously, if some kids in rural Tennessee can collect six million paper clips to honour Jews killed during the Holocaust, we can get some condoms to people in Africa dealing with their own.

Got any questions for Sasha? Email: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM