Religious groups getting more AIDS funding

Accusations of a distortion campaign
But Smith believes the administration is wrongly supporting some nonprofit groups. He and several other congressional conservatives wrote to Bush and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, contending that several large grant recipients were pro-prostitution, pro-abortion and not committed enough to abstinence priorities.

The letters followed a briefing last year by Focus on the Family, run by Christian commentator James Dobson. The group’s sexual health analyst, Linda Klepacki, said even some religious groups emphasize condoms over abstinence.

“We have to be careful that the president’s original intent is being followed where A and B (abstinence and faithfulness) are the emphasized areas of the ABC methodology,” she said.

Six congressional Democrats, in a letter last week to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, accused the conservatives of a distortion campaign that undermines a balanced approach to fighting AIDS.

“Their attack is based on a narrow, ideological viewpoint that condemns condoms and frames any attempt to reach out to high-risk populations as an endorsement of behaviors that these critics oppose,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

USAID has declined to renew funding for two major AIDS-fighting consortiums, CORE and IMPACT, headed by organizations the conservatives targeted.

CORE, whose lead partner is CARE, is losing its central source of money, meaning its work survives only if it can win grants from individual USAID missions in target countries.

Political motivation denied
Family Health International, the lead organization of IMPACT, brought hundreds of local and religious groups into its $441 million project, but was told the administration wants new partners, said Sheila Mitchell, senior vice president of FHI’s Institute for HIV/AIDS.

Dybul said the changes are in keeping with the shift to local groups. Any suggestion of political motivation is “inaccurate and offensive to people doing this work,” he said. Millions of grant dollars still go to the groups that were criticized.

One grant was delayed when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., complained last year about renewing $14 million to Population Services International, a leading nonprofit condom distributor.

The group’s bingo-style games that teach Guatemalan prostitutes about safe sex misused funds “to exploit victims of the sex trade,” Coburn said. But Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, then wrote to praise PSI’s work as “provably effective and efficient.”

USAID divided the grant; condom distribution was separated into the smaller part so that religious groups could apply for the other part. PSI eventually won the larger grant. The second is outstanding.

Although administration critics frequently cite PSI as a group that fell from favor under the new initiative, “we have not been eviscerated,” said Stewart Parkinson, a senior program analyst.

The group lost U.S. grants in Uganda and Tanzania but retained others. And Parkinson said he had no indication of political motivation.

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