According to Christianity Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that government cannot furnish grant of money to fight AIDS on the condition that the money it provides will not be used to promote the legalization of prostitution:
The U.S. government cannot require organizations fighting AIDS with USAID grant money to oppose prostitution, according to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling may lead to a Supreme Court case about First Amendment rights.That can't be right. I can see a court striking down a rule that conditions the receipt of money on the recipient never taking a particular position, but the notion that the government can't condition that the money it grants will be used for the purpose of the grant can't be unconstitutional. That would mean that anyone who gets government money for a particular purpose could pretty much use it any way they want, which is just fargin' nuts.
Evangelical NGOs say the ruling is unlikely to affect their operations, although the case does touch on important principles.
The 2003 Leadership Act, which authorized PEPFAR in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, states that grantees cannot use government money to promote legalizing prostitution. It also requires "a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking." The second requirement has been the controversial one.
The Second Circuit split 2-1 in its July 6 ruling. It said the requirement amounted to discrimination against organizations that do not embrace the government's viewpoint. The dissenting judge defended the clause as constitutional. He said that it "allows the government to subsidize the transmittal of a message it has concluded is part of its preferred method of fighting HIV/AIDS."
Either the Second Circuit is fargin' nuts, or Christianity Today misunderstood the holding of the case.
Sadly, either option is equally likely.
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Such organizations think that a good way to fight AIDs and other STI's is to promote legalized prostitution. Legal prostitutes can get checked, licensed, monitored, treated, etc., and they really do have fewer STIs than "regular" prostitutes. (As if that were the main consideration in whether to legalize prostitution...)
You have to start calling them "sex workers," or "sex industry professionals" though, and allowing them to unionize, and stuff like that.
Such organizations, if they used Federal government money to promote the legalization of prostitution, and were confronted about not using the money to prevent AIDS, would say, "But we are! This is how we are trying to prevent AIDS."
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