Redefining Morality

September 12, 2006 :: Rolanke Odetoyinbo, ThisDay Colunm,Lagos

At the last International AIDS Conference in Toronto, I was at a session where the issue of us redefining morality came up and the views in that room were so diverse it would have been comical if we weren't talking serious life and death issue like HIV infection and human lives.

At some point I almost got confused as I started getting things mixed up and had to ask myself some core questions like does religion, culture and morality mean the same thing? Are these words interchangeable and can they be substituted when its convenient? I'm aware that there is a lot of clash between religion and culture and a lot of people have been accused of throwing away their cultural values for religious dictates.

In other places, some religions are so entrenched that the people's culture is totally submerged and sometimes you cant tell a person's religious affiliation because the culture of his/her people is totally immersed in a particular religion.

Sounds like the only time religion and culture make good bed fellow is when morality is at stake and even then it is based on partial amnesia and selective viewing. It has been said over and over again that the only way to fight and address the growing HIV epidemic in our community is to wake up to the reality of our times and meet people where they are.

I know I stand the chance of being crucified but I'm a strong believer in the theory that you need to save a man's life before you can save his soul. Dead men don't serve God or do their families any good except you believe in the sprit of the dead watching over the family.

When I started doing developmental work, I had some fixed ideas of right and wrong and my thoughts were straight and narrow but the more I work and grow, I realize that you must meet people where they are if your ultimate aim is to make an impact on your target audience not just throw your beliefs at people and prove that you have superior knowledge or beliefs. We also can't scare people into good behavior, neither can bullying and brow beating achieve sustainable impact.

My religious and cultural beliefs are mine and the only people I can judge by those standards are those who profess my same faith or have the same culture. I am a true Nigerian who was born into and bred in the Yoruba culture, schooled and lived in the Hausa setting and married into the Igbo culture and I can tell you that one man's meat is another's poison.

Our definition of right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate are miles apart. It is easy to say we are all Nigerians or we all serve the same God be it as Pentecostals, Protestants, Catholics or Moslems but when the chips are down and things we consider important are at stake, we all might as well be from different planets with the only thing in common being the color of our skin. Even that comes in different tones and shades.

The new school of thought around HIV and morality is that we need to have a rethink around things like condom use, sexual orientation and sexual experiences.

I have repeatedly said the old ABC model has failed us.

A = Abstain - if you are in marriage or a long term relationship, abstinence is almost impossible so that cuts out a large percentage of people old and young.

You can preach abstinence till you're blue in the face and dig up all the arguments against sex before marriage but the reality of today is that too many people are having sex and will continue to do so in and out of wedlock or even under the locker! Let us remember that not all sexual encounters are consensual, neither is all sex for pleasure or procreation.

 
B = Be Faithful - In an ideal world, this makes perfect sense but because I can only speak for myself, my partner's faithfulness is based on nothing but faith and trust. I refuse to be held accountable for somebody else's faithfulness. In our culture, the women have gotten a very bad deal because they stayed faithful and their partners didn't. If a woman has sex outside her marriage then she is a whore and the scum of the earth but if a man does the same then we ask: "what is missing at home?", we want to know what his wife isn't doing right that makes him stray, as if she is the cause of his infidelity rather than the aggrieved party.

C = Condom Use - I hear you, but tell me how many of us can negotiate condom use in marriage or steady relationships? The advert says "if you no fit hold bodi, abeg use condom" and that means condoms are for the perverts who no fit hold bodi. Socially we haven't marketed condom use well and that's because deep down we don't believe in the rubber but will permit it for the dregs who won't abide.

Now if we are to define immorality as sex before marriage, who shall stand? What percentage of our population (old and young) will have noses if every time you had sex outside of marriage a pimple appeared on your nose and stayed there even after you got married and received the license to do??? If there was a way of telling if you stayed unsexed till your wedding night, I can imagine a lot of people will be less vocal. I'm not making a case for or against pre marital sex but I strongly object to you making sweeping statements about what makes people moral or immoral. If you profess Christianity or Islam, you can and will be judged by the dictates of your religion but you can't extend that to those who aren't of your same faith.

 If your religion says you're permitted one wife, you can't make sweeping statements about polygamous people. If your culture accepts polygamy, you can't scorn polyandry. If my culture permits me to have sex with my husband's kin for the sake of procre ation, don't tell me that is wrong and the only way I'm permitted to have children is by adoption.

If it is culturally appropriate that I give my most valued 'possession', the dearest person to me to a visiting friend for the night to show him that all I have is his and I will hold nothing back from him, what business of yours is it? Neither my self, friend, wife, nor family has complained but you have suddenly brought your opinionated self and declared my culture immoral.

What I learnt from that session is that we need to really ask what morality and immorality means. I can't find my friend Webster but his partner Oxford says moral is concerned with goodness and badness of human character or behavior, or with the distinction between right and wrong.

 Immorality isn't what exposes you to HIV infection. It is not what you do but how you do it that puts you at risk of infection so let's realign and be specific when we talk HIV and morality in the same breadth so we don't pass out the wrong information and cut off a large population of those we need to reach with the right message.

Sex workers don't spread HIV, its having unprotected sex that will expose you to infection so your solution to reduce HIV isn't to kill all the sex workers and homosexuals. A huge chunk of the 4 million Nigerians living with HIV are neither sex workers nor homosexuals so you can't label a group as being the cause for this.

I preach the new ABC which came out at the 2004 International AIDS Conference in Thailand but which I learnt from Dr Ahonsi of Ford Foundation.

A - Accept and acknowledge that sex happens

B - Be realistic

C - Choices must be made available (be it condom, stopping the relationship, whatever is appropriate for your own peculiar situation)

There is the old DEF

D - Delay in sexual debut this means waiting for sex. Wait till the right time, be it when you get married or are physically and emotionally ready to handle it.

D also means decrease your number of sexual partners.

E - Empowerment: get the right information.

F - Financial independence for women and girls.

If we seriously address these issues, then we can begin to attack HIV and not individuals, religions, cultures and groups.