AIDS​—‘Beginning of a New Morality’?

AFTER pointing out that a medical doctor had said that “a completely monogamous relationship” is the only way to avoid contracting AIDS sexually, a Canadian editorial writer asks: “Could the dreaded AIDS be the beginning of a whole new morality in our world?” The writer wondered, too, as to whether it is not “strange” that what the Bible has taught for years, namely, monogamy, “could now be a matter of survival for mankind.” Referring also to today’s world of “drugs, tobacco, alcohol and not least, sexual overdrive,” the editorial says: “We are now paying the price for the pornographic, promiscuous, polluting world we have created.”

While it is good to hope for improvement in conduct and for survival, is it merely the fear of an early death or of the end of mankind that will produce “a whole new morality”? No, for despite warnings from doctors and researchers, most smokers and heavy drinkers of alcohol foolishly continue to abuse their health, bringing their lives to a premature end. And some homosexuals have stated that they will carry on with multiple partners even at the risk of contracting AIDS.​—Proverbs 10:21, 23.

What, then, will properly restrain wrongdoing? Surely, a healthy fear of and respect for Jehovah, seen in obedience to his laws on morality. “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge.” And this kind of knowledge produces the wisdom that truly “preserves alive its owners.”​—Proverbs 1:7; Ecclesiastes 7:12.

Significantly, the editor, noting that AIDS may be contracted through a blood transfusion, also asked: “Isn’t [it] ironic that we who have roundly condemned the Jehovah[’s] Witnesses for refusing blood transfusions . . . may now be doing the same thing for other reasons?”