AFRO-NETS> Accuracy of religious document against condoms (2)

["Christopher L. Byrne" <info@idn.org>]

Accuracy of religious document against condoms (2)
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I cannot comment on the correctness of the details, but I forward the 
following which my sister-in-law, a woman of strong conviction in 
Trinidad wrote after a sexuality conference held there. While her be-
liefs may not be popular, she stands by her convictions and I admire 
her for that.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why abstinence should not be a part of 
any sexual education programme.


Christopher L. Byrne
Director International Development Network 
mailto:info@idn.org


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Report of Sexual Pleasure / Sexual Health Conference /Workshop held at 
the Hilton Feb 2 - 6, 1998 and co-sponsored by The European Union and 
Caribbean Foundation for Reproductive and Sexual Health.

The conference began on Monday with Dr. Everold Hosein welcoming par-
ticipants and inviting several persons to bring greetings from their 
respective organisations. Groups represented were: The University of 
the West Indies, St. Augustine, School of Continuing Studies; European 
Union; Carec/Paho; UNAIDS; and UN Development Programme;

Health Minister Hamza Rafeeq, opened the conference and gave us the un-
fortunate (to me, though Dr. Hosein was delighted as were many others 
at the conference) news that condoms would soon be sold in shops all 
around Trinidad and Tobago since he had deregulated the sale of condoms 
in order to make them widely available to the public. Dr. Hosein later 
would give a talk entitled marketing of condoms in which he would rec-
ommend that they be advertised properly and not just in 2 inch classi-
fied ads in the newspapers. Mr. Seunarine Jokhoo of Sun crest Interna-
tional Ltd. the distributor of the condoms was pleased to give us de-
tails about the manufacture of the condoms, how they are of a very high 
quality with special attention paid to inspection of every condom etc.

An interesting presentation on sex in calypso was given by Hollis Liv-
erpool. "Chalkdust" traced the development of calypso and the 'art' of 
using the double entendre, and similes and metaphors to bring across 
subtle messages which were aimed at showing the prowess of the male 
while keeping women in their place. He made the point that the good 
mother was always esteemed by the calypsonian but that the prostitute 
was ridiculed and shunned.

After lunch we were exposed to a supposedly comedy sketch "Potty Train-
ing 101" by Nikki Crosby which was a piece of the lewdest bit of thea-
ter that I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. (Later I was 
disappointed in myself that I had not walked out or make some objection 
to it afterwards.)

Dr. Michel de Groulard, of CAREC gave an analysis of the situation on 
HIV/AIDS in CAREC member countries. He said that "the first AIDS case 
in the Caribbean was described in Jamaica in 1982. Since that date a 
total of more than 10,000 cases have been reported to CAREC. The Carib-
bean region is the first in terms of reported AIDS incidence on the 
American continent and the second in the World." 

Godfrey Sealy spoke about Men who have sex with Men and lamented that 
there was as yet no open face to gays in the Caribbean where there is 
still much prejudice and hostility. He claimed that this accounts for 
the gay community not being properly educated as to safe sex practices 
and thus they were being discriminated against. Later I discovered that 
Mr. Sealy has the HIV virus and those who know him said how ill he has 
been and how poorly he looked. 

Dr. O'Neil Parris, Adolescent Health Specialist spoke about the differ-
ent stages of development of the human person, focusing on adolescence. 

Ms. Hetty Sarjeant, Executive Director, Family Planning Association of 
T&T spoke about the programmes the FPA have in place in Trinidad and 
ended her presentation with a strong plea to have sex education intro-
duced into schools and said that family life education was not enough. 
She insisted that the schools need factual and specific sex education 
and two text books "Your Reproductive Health", book one and book two 
were handed out as texts which can be used in schools. (I find them to 
be extremely inappropriate since book 1 is aimed at age 10 and book 2 
which deals with contraception is aimed at age 12 or 13.)

I intended only to attend the Conference on Monday, but that night when 
I thought about all that we had been exposed to I was disturbed enough 
to decide to go back on Tuesday morning in order to see what else would 
be covered at the Workshop which lasted from Tuesday to Friday. 

First thing on Tuesday was an exercise in which a piece of paper with 
the name of a body part was stuck on the back of one participant "A" 
and his/her partner "B" had to answer yes or no to any question "A" 
might ask in order to guess what part of the body it was. The first 
round focused on parts such as leg, foot, arm, chin etc. The second 
round when roles were reversed focused on a sexual organ and this 
caused much laughter and giggling as participants had their first expe-
rience of having their inhibitions broken down. Next we were given a 
handout in which we were asked to indicate whether we Strongly Agree, 
Agree, Not Sure, Disagree, Strongly Disagree on about 20 questions 
which dealt with masturbation. Afterwards the workshop co-ordinators 
extolled the joys of this pleasurable act and one said that he person-
ally practices it.

Previously we were given a handout entitled Rules for confidentiality 
and discussion. Rule 1. What is said in this workshop is CONFIDENTIAL. 
You may share ideas and experiences with people outside the workshop 
but no information referring to personal identities should be shared.

I again attended the Workshop on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday morn-
ing Dr. Hosein was again extolling the marvels of the condom and read 
from a newspaper article which criticised the conference. He started to 
say that he could not understand people who condemn the use of condoms 
and I said that I had a film called 'Safe Sex? No' which showed the un-
reliability of the condom and would he like to play it on the video for 
us all to see. He became angry and said no he would not show it, be-
cause he had seen it himself and that it was no good. I reminded him 
that he had said we must be honest and that the film was only four min-
utes long. Again he said he would not show it at which point some of 
the other participants said they would like to see it and he said that 
we could show it at 5.00 p.m. (after the workshop). A couple of the 
other moderators approached him and they had a quiet discussion and 
then he came over to me and said he was going to apologise publicly and 
show the film, which he did. Dr. Parris then said something to the ef-
fect that the film was entirely false and that this kind of film does 
so much damage since it takes away from people the one thing that can 
save them from STDs and AIDS, the condom. He said that studies done 
proved how effective the condom was in preventing STDs and AIDS. He 
also noticed that the film had no credentials and said that was further 
proof that it was bogus. I said that my concern was for the youth and I 
made another plea not to give out condoms to adolescents since this 
gives them a double message. 

One of the FPA nurses asked in an irate voice what would my advice be 
if a woman whose husband had AIDS came to me to ask about the condom. I 
said I would recommend she use it and she said OH! (I had only found 
out the day before that the church does not condemn the use of condoms 
in such cases.) Later this same nurse spoke to Annette Dopwell and me 
outside of the Workshop and asked further questions about the Church's 
position. She herself had a great concern for her four young sons, be-
ing well aware that the condom does not offer full protection. She also 
asked what we would suggest as a method of birth control. We briefly 
explained the advantages of the Billings Method of Natural Family Plan-
ning and she listened attentively. Then she said what to me was the 
most striking thing I heard at the conference. "You mean you all have 
all these answers and why aren't you telling the population at large 
about it?" She said it angrily and I felt for her and experienced my 
own frustration at the way the Church has been dragging its feet with 
this all important matter, this matter of life and death and still we 
do nothing. I am still very agitated at this. Dr. Hosein continued to 
apologise to me throughout the day which I thought was rather amusing.

Twice on Thursday I left the workshop to sit outside in the passage be-
cause they were showing films which I thought would be erotic in nature 
and I did not want to be left with these images in my mind, having to 
deal with this later. The first dealt with showing how to achieve sex-
ual pleasure, using a naked man and woman in erotic positions to demon-
strate the point. The second dealt with homosexual men. From later re-
ports this film did not show them in erotic positions, but rather 
sought to show them in loving and caring relationships, helping and 
serving one another.

Dr. Hessed then presented a talk in which he taught the participants 
how to help persons with sexual dysfunctions such as frigidity to 
achieve sexual pleasure. Among other things he recommended teaching 
them how to stimulate their bodies to achieve pleasure, first on their 
own and later their partner could be invited to join in. Later when he 
invited the participants to form pairs to simulate an interview with 
such a client and the advice they would give, I again left the room 
since my work is with adolescents, reinforcing chastity and abstinence. 

On Friday we were given a handout entitled "Draft Proposal/Terms of 
Reference to the EU for follow-up action to the February 1998 Sexuality 
Counselling Conference/ Workshop." Each table was asked to examine the 
document and come up with added suggestions to improve or change it. 
Our table made a strong plea for abstinence programmes for our adoles-
cents. 

All the other tables approved the document adding suggestions such as 
careful screening be done in selecting the 50 to be trained from each 
country and inviting clergy to a workshop similar to this one. They all 
said how much they had gained from the Conference/Workshop and wanted 
similar C/W in their own countries. They said they were grateful to the 
co-ordinators and that they would be taking back what they had learnt 
in order to set up changes, ever at government level in their respec-
tive countries. They also wanted fully trained professional sex coun-
sellors in their countries to refer cases that were beyond their compe-
tence. 

After this exercise Dr. Hosein spoke again about the 'wonders' of sex-
ual pleasure and said that when his 15 year old son came and asked him 
what was the right age for beginning sex he was stumped as to what to 
answer him, since he could not think of a legitimate reason for him not 
to engage in sexual intercourse, (once he used his condom of course.) 
In retrospect I think he may have said this as a trap for me, but was I 
ready for him! He allowed me to answer the question after my hand was 
in the air for a few minutes. By now all my fears had disappeared and I 
knew this was the moment I had been waiting for during the whole con-
ference to make some worthwhile contribution. I began by saying that I 
was a widow and had been for the past eight years, my husband having 
died after we had enjoyed a marvellous married life for 20 years. I 
said that I have lived a chaste life since he died because I believed 
in the teachings of the church and that I was no less of a person be-
cause of this and in fact my life was fine and good. I said that I was 
not against pleasure in sex, in fact I had had a marvellous sexual re-
lationship with my husband and we had really enjoyed a great deal of 
sexual pleasure during our married life. I admitted that it had not al-
ways been so. There was a time when I had felt uncomfortable with our 
sex life. I thought that maybe my husband was over sexed since he al-
ways seemed to want to have sex and I wished that he would leave me 
alone and let me just go to sleep. I said that this was an area in my 
life that I had had to work through. I loved my husband and I could not 
just ignore this since it seemed so important to him and so I had had 
to face my own fears and hang-ups and taboos and work through them and 
come to a new place where I could be more open and giving and receiving 
and how this had drawn us so much closer together and the depth of in-
timacy we shared and how rich our lives were. I said that he came to 
realise too that I could not just give myself unless he first listened 
to me. He used to complain that I always wanted to talk whenever he 
wanted to make love, but I made him understand that in order to give 
myself fully he had to accept all of me, my fears, my hopes and dreams 
and these had to be communicated verbally. Once he had listened to me 
though we could then engage in the most lovely sexual encounter and all 
this had made us truly love one another. And then came that most amaz-
ing moment of all, the moment when he came to die and the privilege of 
being there with him and sending him home to his father. I said that I 
had received a most amazing grace to let him go and that though this 
was painful it was not a devastation in my life. In fact it was a 
strength that I carried around inside me that I had been so loved and 
this rich experience and memory I recognise as a gift from God, that I 
had been given the great privilege to have been married to such an ex-
traordinary man and for 20 years.

And this I said is the passion that drives me to want the youth to ab-
stain and save themselves for marriage. I said that I am convinced that 
God made men and women to love and care for one another but that all 
this promiscuity is what is making it impossible for men and women to-
day to enter into permanent and life giving relationships; that when 
they engage in sexual intercourse too early, before marriage they do 
enormous harm and damage to themselves. Introducing them to condoms 
leads to promiscuity which leads eventually to pregnancy, unplanned 
pregnancy which must then be terminated in abortion and what does abor-
tion do to them, killing their babies and doing untold damage to their 
own psyches. In this way they heap layer upon layer of bad experiences 
upon themselves and when they come to get married they cannot maintain 
a relationship because they have been too hurt. 

I even gave the example of my own daughter who when she had finished at 
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine came home and said 
that my ideas were old fashioned and that she was going to do what she 
pleased including have sex because she saw nothing wrong with it. I 
said that I had cried the whole night and prayed and begged the Lord 
for us to come up with a plan to help her, and in the morning we had a 
plan. I asked her to give me a last chance to speak my values to her, 
that she could invite her friends and that I would prepare a series of 
talks in an effort to help her to see again the value of chastity. By a 
miracle of grace she agreed. In the talks I spoke about family life, 
the meaning of sex in marriage, how this is the deepest way two persons 
have of giving themselves to each other and needs the permanent bond of 
marriage in order to grow and become all it is meant to be. I said that 
sexual intercourse was supposed to be an act of love, the deepest way 
of giving yourself to another and pleasurable too. It meant I love you, 
not only today when I find you so attractive and desirable, but tomor-
row when you are sick and next year when we have children, I will still 
be here for you, loving you, supporting you, caring for you. We spoke 
also about the marvellous gift of fertility built into our bodies, the 
wonder of being able to conceive a baby and bring forth life, covering 
male reproduction and the female reproductive cycle. I had help too 
from friends who assisted me in presenting some of the talks and at the 
end of it all she had said to me: "I understand again and I am going to 
accept what you have said." And furthermore this daughter of mine has 
recently entered into a relationship with a young man whom she has 
known for many years, and who is now working away and is here for a 
short period and she came to me last week and said: "I am so glad you 
taught me all the things you did."

I think the group broke into spontaneous applause when I was finished. 
And someone asked but do you know if the young man too has been chaste 
all this time? And Dr. Hosein would have the last word when he reminded 
them that he had said how beautiful is the language that the church has 
when she speaks of sex (He had said this at the opening) but that the 
sad reality was that 70% of young people are sexually active and this 
is why we must give them condoms!!!!!

The majority of the 40 or so participants who attended the C/W were 
from neighbouring islands. There were about 5 persons from FPA in 
Trinidad. Emanuel Community sent three participants, CFFL sent Annette 
Dopwell. I had not registered for the Workshop, but only for the Con-
ference, therefore I was not sure if I would be turned out at any 
point, but no one seemed to notice. However I did pay for my own lunch 
on Thursday and left before lunch on Friday. 

My overall impression of the Conference/Workshop was that it was meant 
in the first place to break down our inhibitions and thus make us open 
to accept whatever was thrown at us. Morals were out of the question, 
we were told that we must not impose our morals on anyone. The impor-
tant thing when counselling people was to listen, to be open to what-
ever they had to say, to try not to show any surprise or shock or dis-
taste. We were exposed to homosexuality and masturbation as normal and 
alternative behaviours, as was adolescent sexual activity, the all im-
portant thing was that condoms be used. Marriage and family life were 
never mentioned except by Annette Dopwell and me. Later in the wrap up 
a few of the participants thanked us for adding that dimension because 
they felt that made it more well rounded.

At the end I asked myself did my presence there serve only to endorse 
the non values that were put forward at the C/W? I felt that there was 
so much more I could have or should have said, yet at the time I 
thought that it was better to end on a positive note rather than try to 
point out the errors in the philosophy they presented. 

I would like to conclude by saying that Annette Dopwell had a very pro-
found effect on many of the participants at the C/W. Several thanked 
her for her position on upholding family life and others who were 
"closet Catholics" came out at the end and told her that they were 
Catholic too, but that working in FPA had caused them to change their 
values. One participant from Dominica invited her to come to Dominica 
and talk to her people.

The urgency now is for the Church to wake up and address these issues 
and to send out teachers who can convincingly speak the Truth about 
love and sex and marriage and family life.


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