The president's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, is the largest humanitarian effort aimed at one disease in history, with $15 billion dollars in relief funds guaranteed over five years, much of it in Africa. Too bad it requires that one third of the funding go to abstinence-only programs that are required to mention nothing about condoms (other than their failure rates!). This is like being on a boat with crates of life preservers surrounded by people drowning and doing nothing but shouting through a megaphone about the importance of early swimming lessons.
Furthermore, the U.S. gives out $50 million dollars per year in grants to states that institute abstinence-only-until-marriage sex-education programs. I am reminded of a friend's story about substitute teaching at an inner-city school where a sixteen-year-old confided in him that he had had sex with a girl who then got pregnant, but he knew it couldn't be his because he didn't love the girl.
These dreadful programs have been largely absent from the dialogue among the candidates -- I only hope that our next president, Democrat or Republican, is not enough of a dickhead to try to hide condoms from people that are dying of AIDS, and make a real effort to save the dying rather than lecture them.
This week's song is about all that - enjoy "Lectures For The Dying", and for more information please visit pepfarwatch.org.
Max and the Marginalized write and record a new song every week and post them every Thursday on The Huffington Post and their MySpace page, which has all of the songs (there are ten so far) available for download.
Lectures for the Dying
Across the sea, the pledge cards stack up faithfully
This lesson is an elegy in charity's disguise
You must admit, it's hard to play a scientist
When you're handcuffed to a moralist with crosses in his eyes
And I should hope we'd throw this drowning man a rope
But the zealots have the stethoscopes in this pointless exercise
Wagging fingers in their faces as a thousand others die
From a crate of moral exports that no one else will ever care to buy
No lectures for the dying
Who don't do like they should
Don't count on them replying
'Cause they don't hear so good
This murder isn't worth comparing
To a single thing they do
Everyone can hear them screaming, everyone but you
Back here at home
The blackboards and the microphones
They languish in the catacombs of retrograde pursuit
There once were walls between the pulpit and the hospital
But suddenly they stand so small like headstones for the truth
Substitute the information with omission and decree
I guess I use a different metric to measure immorality, so please...
No lectures for the dying
Who don't do like they should
Don't count on them replying
'Cause they don't hear so good
This murder isn't worth comparing
To a single thing they do
Everyone can hear them screaming, everyone but you
From a crate of moral exports that no one will ever buy
From my perch atop these corpses
You and I won't see this eye to eye
No lectures for the dying
Who don't do like they should
Don't count on them replying
'Cause they don't hear so good
This murder isn't worth comparing
To a single thing they do
Everyone can hear them screaming, everyone but you