Dr. Frank Page is President of the Southern Baptist Convention. This is his reflection on the answer Senator Obama gave to his question at Sunday night’s Compassion Forum for the presidential candidates. The full exchange between Dr. Page and Senator Obama is below.

Barack Obama was grateful for the work Southern Baptists have been doing in sub-Sahara, Africa. Senator Obama agreed that there is a need for personal responsibility in regards to the HIV/Aides issues and seemed to concur with me that faith and personal responsibility are important in the fighting of this epidemic. While I certainly did not agree with several of Senator Obama’s responses, I did feel that the Senator answered fairly and satisfactorily on the particular question I asked.

The Compassion Forum exchange:
Frank Page: Southern Baptists have been very active for years in sub-Saharan Africa in the HIV/AIDS relief ministries. Sometimes orphan care, sometimes educational activities.
But we also are involved in a ministry called True Love Waits, which has been credited by the government of Uganda from lowering the AIDS infection rate there dramatically from 30 percent to 6 percent. But we also teach a part of that, that faith has a role in the issue of HIV/AIDS. Do you concur with that and would you elaborate on that, please.
Senator Obama: Well first of all, congratulations to those who have been involved in that work. I think it’s important work. And I think you may know my father came from this part of the world. I visited Kenya multiple times. I have been working with a group of grandmas who were helping AIDS orphans in Kenya.
Michelle and I, when we were traveling there, took an AIDS test before thousands of people to encourage the importance of them getting clear on what their status was and hopefully reducing infections.
And, by the way, this is an area where — this doesn’t happen very often, so everybody should take note — where I compliment George Bush. I actually think that… I actually think that the PEPFAR program is one of the success stories of this administration. We’ve seen a drastic increase in funding. And terrific work is being done between the CDC, the NIH, local AIDS organizations, NGOs.

My view is, is that we should use whatever the best approaches are, the scientifically sound approaches are, to reduce this devastating disease all across the world.
And part of that, I think, should be a strong education component and I think abstinence education is important. I also think that contraception is important; I also think that treatment is important; I also think that we have to do more to make antiviral drugs available to
people who are in extreme poverty.
So I don’t want to pluck out one facet of it. Now, that doesn’t mean that non-for-profit groups can’t focus on one thing while the government focuses on other things. I think we want to have a comprehensive approach.
I do think that — and I’ve said this when I was in Kenya — that there is a behavioral element to AIDS that has to be addressed. And if there is — if there’s promiscuity and we are pretending that that’s not an issue in spreading AIDS, then we’re missing part of the answer.
But I also think that — keep in mind, women are far more likely to be infected now between the ages of 18 and 25 than are men. And that’s why focusing, for example, on the status of women, empowering women, giving them microbicides, or other strategies that would allow them to protect themselves when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex, all those things are going to be just as important, as well.