Case studies

One of the workshops in today's Global Concerns session was on Religion and AIDS. The students who organised it made a short presentation of the topic and then divided us into groups and presented us with different hypothetical cases for us to discuss. The groups were as diverse as possible, the idea being that we would be coming to these issues from different religious and cultural backgrounds.

The first case was as follows: You're about to get married with a girl. Before you do, however, she's raped by her uncle, who infects her with HIV. What do you do?

The first to speak was Allen, from S., who said he'd quit her immediately, as the rape showed that her family was not a good one. Then Albert, from N., said that this was a topic the answer for which much depended on where one was in the world. In countries with some resources, for instance, the HIV medicines available are so good at diminishing the virus' count in the blood that one may have sex and conceive children with an infected person, without the virus being transmitted to neither the fetus nor the partner. Safar, from P., said she would not shove the woman aside, but would continue to be a close friend and support her, but that the health situation would mean that marriage was out of the question.

In the second case the situation was similar: a committed couple, with one of its members having infective sex with someone else. This time the action had been voluntary, an incidental fling with an unknown person who turned out to be a carrier.

In this instance everybody in the group was very quick to point out that HIV wasn't nearly as central an issue as betrayal. Most agreed that they would break up the romantic aspect of the relationship, but that they would try to get over disappointment and whatever other difficult emotions the incident might have brought up and continue to be of support to this person. Some openly admitted that they wouldn't be able to help breaking off all contact.

Later we got a little bit off-track and went back to the first comment of the whole session, Allen's idea that the crimes of one person cast shadows on all their family. Some of us admitted that we had encountered similar attitudes in our own societies, but pointed out that we considered it quite old-fashioned and inhuman (or irreligious) in its lack of compassion... Allen admitted to this, but also made it very clear that his original reaction reflected the general view in his society. I then privately remembered the accounts of a couple of acquaintances of mine from that country, people who referred to the "good families" of possible romantic interests of theirs.

The unfairness of this view is the strongest impression i've been left with from this workshop.

Anyway, someone else finally took us back to the issue of AIDS, drawing a parallel between "dishonorable" actions of individuals tainting whole families and the social stigma usually attached to people sick with AIDS resulting in the shunning not only of themselves, but of their relations.

Although the consideration of these cases made for interesting ethical exercises, i'm still not sure how they tied to religion. Much more interesting were the arguments about the duplicity of certain religious groups, which with their "Hate-the-sin-and-not-the-sinner" philosophies are happy to set up aid centers to care for infected people, but oppose the use of protection such as condoms, which would help prevent infection in the first place. Most everybody agreed that avoiding promiscuity was better protection yet, but that denying condoms to those who could or would not live by such a rule was equivalent to condemning the supposedly beloved sinners.

At one point in our discussion, Phumi from S. mentioned how in her country the problem was more cultural than religious, as people believed that using condoms was simply a denial of their national identity.

We truly are a mixed (up) species, aren't we?