Today is a day to celebrate achievements of reason and science! So I'm going to complain about things that have been upsetting me recently because of a lack of reason and science. Warning: Political.
1) I recently had to fill out and submit my semi annual report on what I do as a volunteer. That's not what I'm complaining about, though it's complaint worthy (seriously, why does Peace Corps think a Java program is a good option for volunteers? Java is a huge download that most volunteers have no experience dealing with. One of the staff looked me in the eye and told me Java was the only option for a platform independent report system. Which is just plain wrong.). I'm complaining about HIV/AIDS activities, that we all have to report because a lot of Peace Corps Africa is now funded through AIDS relief because the government is too busy spending money on being the most heavily armed nation on earth to invest in a world more prosperous and educated and less likely to war. Grr. Anyway, this is the first time I've said I did anything with an HIV/AIDS focus (I'm a computer teacher. The topic doesn't lend itself to integrating sexual health talks, so unless my students ask about pornography, it doesn't really come up.) and the questions I am supposed to answer are just about whether or not I had a focus on abstinence or being faithful. Despite all evidence and reason, we are technically just supposed to talk about abstinence mostly. Condom education was a grudging addition to what Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to do, and we really aren't supposed to go into it on official forms. We know that abstinence-only education is ineffective and we know that condoms used correctly are effective barriers against transmission of bodily fluids (we know the properties of latex). Policy, however, is made by people who believe religious disapproval is more important than giving known information to people so that they won't die of terminal diseases.
2) And speaking of religious disapproval being more important then people's lives, abortion here needs to be legal (currently illegal with no exceptions whatsoever) and non stigmatized so that I never again have to see headlines like "Miracle Baby Delivered," and read the article to find out that a baby that had implanted in a fallopian tube had been successfully delivered via cesarean section while the mother died. (Of course she died, there's really no survival chance from that.) Her demise was one sentence in an article talking about the wonderfulness of the baby living, and she wasn't even important enough for her name to be mentioned. The uterus-the only organ people can legally be forced to donate even if it kills them, because too many people think a woman's heartbeat is less important than a fetal heartbeat, and don't see why the state can't hand a woman a death sentence for not being good enough at making babies.
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