Dearly Bigoted: Anglican Church requires pre-marital HIV test

I believe the article said that the Church did not prevent folks with HIV from being married to each other, nor did it stigmatize those who are HIV+. They are merely insisting that the parties make an informed decision. Many states require blood tests before marriage, for the same purpose (sickle cell anemia, typhoid, etc.) I had to take a blood test in order to get married - by the law of the state. What is the difference - because it is HIV? Yours seems like a knee-jerk reaction to the Nigerian Church, rather than a reading of the facts as stated in the article.

Maybe you should read the article again and see whether it is clinically making informed decisions or propagating prejudice.

The experts in this field have called this unfair especially where this should be a voluntary decision of the partners and not be enforced by some authority especially one that is not civil.

Knee-jerk as my reaction might be, the church has not been the best bastion for support in these matters and this issue is not as innocent as it seems.

Where do you see "propagating prejudice"? Perhaps I'm being obtuse, but I don't see it. I also see that there is a correction to the original article - the reporter substituted "require" for "advise", which is the original word used. The church "advises" people to get tested. Is there a problem with THAT?

Dear Gillian,

Thanks for your comments, However, when you leave comments on my blog, I do not expect to be addressed discourteously with shouting. Everyone is free to comment with decorum.

To your point, the issue here is not some isolated event in Nigeria but taken in context of the animosity of the Anglican Church to homosexuality and the way that is related to the HIV/AIDS scourge especially in the kind of understanding Africans perceive of HIV/AIDS.

It comes in the same time that a Christian university was going to refuse graduation to those who test positive, an assault of feminine expression by chauvinistic clamp-downs by the police, the ill-informed Genevieve magazine article on HIV/AIDS and where the church has not necessarily been the place to seek comfort or succour when people are afflicted with the disease.

Indeed, there is a need to know through blood tests a whole set of things about partners, one being sickle cell anaemia which could have been bunched together with this with a less PR disaster announcement.

In fact, I feel the gathering storm of protest from professionals and lawyers and that which the Covenant University has suffered might have lead the church to temper their message after the initial release.

I am sorry, the Anglican Church in Nigeria as not in recent times placed itself in a position that offers the benefit of doubt for a mistaken press release, that is no fault of its critics, they created that situation and would have to work to right it.