Clinton Urges Religious Community To Fight AIDS

LAKE FOREST, Calif. — Calling AIDS "a plague of biblical proportions," Senator Clinton is urging the religious community not to let moral judgment about behaviors associated with the disease stand in the way of getting medicine and treatment to the afflicted.

Speaking to a conference organized by one of America's most popular authors and evangelical ministers, Rick Warren, Mrs. Clinton declared that showing compassion for those with AIDS is what Jesus Christ would do.

"He never asked why someone was sick. He just healed and ministered to those in need," Mrs. Clinton told about 1700 activists, ministers, churchgoers, and relief workers gathered for the Global Summit on AIDS and the Church. The senator and Democratic presidential candidate opened her half-hour speech by trying to convince the religious audience that she is one of them. Mrs. Clinton, who was raised a Methodist, noted that her mother taught Sunday school and her father prayed nightly before going to bed. "It's wonderful to know that the sustaining power of prayer is there for so many of us," she said.

In a something of a snub to secular humanitarians, Mrs. Clinton suggested that deep commitment to improving society can only be fueled by religious conviction. "I have concluded that works without faith is just too hard. It cannot be sustained over one's life or over the generations," she said.

Mrs. Clinton's rhetoric was at its most powerful yesterday when she discussed how prostitution and the second-class status of women in many societies contribute to the spread of HIV and AIDS. "They are women who are abused and mistreated, who have no say in their own lives," the senator said, speaking with conviction and occasional flash of anger. "Girls denied their human rights are girls at risk of AIDS."

The senator vowed, if elected, to double the number of people worldwide receiving American-funded HIV treatment. She also vowed to eradicate malaria, arguing that AIDS will not be vanquished until medical systems in poor countries are relieved of the burdens caused by the mosquito-borne illness. "It is appalling that more than one million people die every year from a bug bite and nearly all of them are children," the former first lady said.

From a political perspective, the content of Mrs. Clinton's comments was far less important than the warm embrace she got from the blue-jeans-wearing preacher, whose book, "The Purpose Driven Life," has sold more than 25 million copies. Photos of Pastor Warren and Mrs. Clinton together could signal to evangelical voters that the senator is an acceptable choice for president, despite her liberal positions on contentious social issues.

Some conservative religious leaders have objected to giving a platform to Mrs. Clinton and other political leaders who differ with most evangelicals on issues such as abortion.

Just before Mrs. Clinton took the stage, the pastor suggested that his followers should embrace all those who share the goal of eradicating AIDS. "Hear me on this. I don't care why you do good as long as you do good," Pastor Warren said. "Some people do good out of a political motivation. It's not my motivation, but it's not a bad one." Mrs. Clinton told the audience she supported programs that urge abstinence, faithfulness, and using condoms "if necessary." She did not mention directly her opposition to abstinence-only programs favored by the Bush administration. The senator's malaria proposal could irk environmentalists because she backs "indoor residual spraying where appropriate," a phrase health workers use to allude to an insecticide banned decades ago in America, DDT.

One of Mrs. Clinton's rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama, got a rousing reception at the same AIDS conference last year. During his visit, he also submitted to an HIV test. Such tests were on offer yesterday, but Mrs. Clinton chose instead to visit a traveling exhibit run by a relief group, World Vision, depicting the odyssey of an African child infected with HIV.

Pastor Warren said all the leading presidential candidates were invited to speak at the summit, but only Mrs. Clinton chose to attend in person. Three Republican presidential hopefuls, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, sent videotaped messages to the conference, as did two Democrats, Mr. Obama and John Edwards.

Mr. Edwards got a rousing cheer when he struck a populist chord by railing against greed on the part of pharmaceutical firms. "We have to stop protecting the profits of the big drug companies by paying three times more for medicine than we need to," the former senator said.

In Mr. Obama's video, he called for an additional $1 billion in funding for AIDS relief in Africa and Asia. The Illinois senator also called for changes to patent laws in order to make AIDS drugs more available, but he used less confrontational language than Mr. Edwards.