Sex and the State Dept.
FRIDAY'S HASTY resignation of Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias, prompted by revelations that he was a regular customer of services provided by the "D.C. Madam," is a lesson in the perils of mixing moralizing with foreign policy.
It is easy to judge the Tobias case as an example of being hoisted on one's own petard. He endorsed -- indeed, designed -- foreign policy positions that blended so-called Judeo-Christian sexual morals with U.S. foreign aid.
Tobias, a former pharmaceutical industry chief executive, gave up considerable wealth and private-sector options in 2003 to take on leadership of the Bush administration's Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a.k.a. PEPFAR, a five-year, $15-billion program to provide treatment and HIV prevention to millions of Africans, Vietnamese, Haitians and Guyanese. PEPFAR is the most ambitious and best-funded global health campaign ever attempted by the U.S., and it has served as a beacon for similarly ambitious efforts by other wealthy countries.
But, from the outset, PEPFAR was controversial because of key moral principles underlying its grants to needy nations. In order to receive funding, countries and aid organizations had to officially denounce or oppose prostitution, which, when it equates with unsafe sex, is a vector for the spread of HIV. However, this denunciation had no caveats, such as "except where legally practiced under supervision, as in Amsterdam." Nor did it have a caveat covering the use of "escort services and massage," as offered by "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey's company.
In comments to ABC News after the release of his terse resignation letter, Tobias, who is married, said that he liked "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." He insisted the massages were not sexual. But the State Department's call for abolition of prostitution is an absolutist moral declaration, which, in principle at least, Tobias appears to have violated. Tobias also spearheaded efforts to prevent AIDS primarily through other faith-based values programs that seek to delay first sexual experiences in teenagers, encourage sexual abstinence except for married couples and encourage faithfulness within marriage.
