I’m not sure whether you are describing someone else’s view or your own, but that is a rather weak analogy.

Kicking a cat would be a demonstration of sadistic and psychopathic tendencies. Such a person can be presumed to be a physical danger to others which is why we hold cruelty to animals in such disregard (it wasn’t always that way, mind you). Sex outside of marriage is — let’s face it — a demonstration of a tendency that a sizable chunk of humans of every religion have. It may demonstrate a lack of restraint or willpower but that’s a far cry from sadism.

Second, HIV is a contagious disease so the analogy fails because infecting one person is indirectly infecting potentially many, many more people. Preventing the infection of someone is therefore an unqualified good and a demonstration of genuine moral responsibility.

This is a fallacy. The problem of HIV in many countries has reached the point where it has become an epidemic and where government has to assume a public health role to stop the spread of infection. This includes things like distributing condoms for free to people who are expected to have lots of promiscuous sex in order to reduce rates of infection.

In any given country with a Catholic presence, the Church forms a powerful lobby against precisely these kinds of initiatives. So the question is not one of autonomous individuals deciding things for themselves. It is rather a question of what some elected officials, health workers and NGOs would like to do but cannot in some countries due to lobbying by the Catholic church.

The Philippines provides a useful example (HIV infection rates are still mercifully low there, though). It is a heavily Catholic country but also one where prostitution is out in the open and pre-marital sex is becoming very common. Unfortunately, both of these are far more common than condom usage is and this is having very detrimental effects on society. The public by and large supports the idea of government-subsidized contraceptives despite being religious Catholics but the church actively lobbies elected officials to stall any move toward this.

http://tinyurl.com/2d3jrl8

Best perspective online is from Jimmy Akin at NCRegister.com:

http://tinyurl.com/25dwd8k
http://tinyurl.com/28x6jqx

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/03/002-aids-and-the-churches-getting-the-story-right-27