Mortalizing Morality and Immortalizing Immorality in the Campaign Against HIV/AIDS Scourge: The Fate of the Contemporary Christians

Abstract

Caught in the web of some kind of psychological trauma, emotional dislocation, social fracture and cultural disfigurement resulting from the health mutilation of the scourge of HIV/AIDS, science is receiving the greatest challenge in history in its attempts to provide a cure for this deadly disease. Governments in their tiers and Non-Governmental Organizations and the media as well as religious institutions are doing their best to enlighten men on the deplorable state of man's vulnerability to the trap of this disease. Anti-retroviral drugs which have been discovered to this effect are not a complete cure. Besides, they are expensive and scarce. The best preventive measure of HIV/AIDS with regard to sex as a means of contracting the disease is abstinence for the unmarried and faithfulness for the married. However, the high level of sexual liberty (be it homosexual or heterosexual), has degenerated into promiscuity and abuse, a deplorably embarrassing situation. The recourse is the use of condom to check the disease at sex liberty for both the married and (even) the unmarried. Thus, morality is being mortalized and immorality immortalized. How then does the Christian reconcile his or her faith with the use of condom as a preventive measure of HIV/AIDS? This paper seeks to answer this question, among others.

SOPHIA: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 9 (1) 2006: pp. 77-84