Saturday, July 01, 2006

The Cervical Cancer Vaccine: A must-have...

"You can't catch the virus, you have to go out and get it with sexual behavior," said Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group based in Colorado Springs. "We can prevent it by having the best public health method, and that's not having sex before marriage."
Ignorance kills...It might be possible to catch the virus by coming into contact with fomites: inanimate objects such as towels and clothing belonging to people who ARE infected. Again science comes dead last when it comes to ideology. As I have pointed out in other posts in livejournal, are we to condemn someone who has touched a towel and contracted the virus as a SLUT even though she was a virgin for example?

The Religious Right refusing to allow their daughters to be vaccinated against a virus that causes a life-threatening cancer just shows how little confidence they have in the raising of their children. Perhaps if they told their children the risks of sexual behavior including AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases, their children would take into mind those things before thinking of engaging in sexual behavior, instead of making it seem like a forbidden fruit or something. For if they truly believed in their ways of teaching their children their standards of morality and ethics or whatever, they would go out in droves to get the vaccination, which would be the ultimate test of their trust in their daughters. Instead, they secretly fear that truly inside, their daughters really ARE sluts because women are not to be trusted with their sexual chastity.

Would not allowing their daughters to get this life-saving vaccine be the ultimate sign of trust? Are we not taught by Jesus about the virtues of trust? I wonder how they feel about their fathers' insinuations that they are sluts whose sexuality has been repressed? Instead the Religious Right and its members have taken the Gospel and perverted it to ensure that they hold power and sway over the lives of their families. Jesus forgave the adulterer but the Religious Right would have much rather stoned her to death without any further thought of compassion and mercy. Mercy is for the weak, rather we should live by the sword. Those who dare to have sex deserve anything they get. By not allowing this boon to their families, all they are doing is attempting through fear to control their daughters' and their wives' lives. I have not researched the literature, but do they hold the same complaint about condoms? Shouldn’t they also come out vehemently against condoms? Of course not, because men have some leeway to be "bad" while women are condemned no matter what. Update: yes, they do because there is some weird science going around that says condoms have holes and "accidents" happen because of the way condoms are manufactured, not through their use.

The ancient way of thinking still pervades through our society and it’s grown outdated. The ancient Greeks believed that women were like animals who could not control their sexual appetites. Marriage was the only way to “tame” them. Lysistrata also shows some of these attitudes in that the women are portrayed as sex-crazed although to be fair, the men are also shown in the same way. I’m reading a book where it makes the case that many of the goddesses of classical mythology dating back to pre-hellenic times were recast in a mold that suited the patriarchal societies that conquered the pre-hellenic societies. For example, the book claims that Hera who symbolized the sacred union between the lunar cow and the solar bull in pre-hellenic times now represented the sacred union between her and Zeus (Spretnak. Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, 21). Pandora as we know her is the cause of all the world’s ills when she released them from her jar, but according to this book, she is the “Giver of all gifts (57).” So too the Religious Right has been taken in with this belief. Women are the cause of all evil, of sin everywhere, of the curse of death while men get off free. Adam is not as condemned as Eve because it’s her damn fault she ate the apple and like the temptress seen throughout literature, she lures Adam into sin according to Genesis. So too today, the Religious Right believes that ALL women are potential Sirens who could entrap virtuous men into a life of sin without for a second considering that it could be the other way around in some cases...

Rape victims, you are not to be spared in the Religious Right's culture of life death. Since rape is obviously your fault, you are a slut who was bound to get the HPV virus anyway.

OK, the thing with Jesus was he healed everyone, no matter who asked for it: the rich, the poor, those whom the Pharisees considered sinners like the blind man. Apparently nowadays, if you're someone who is considered immoral, you are not worthy of life and you are not worthy of life-saving treatment. Life-saving treatment does not suddenly turn off one's sense of right and wrong as they would like you to believe. Getting vaccinated won't mean that you will suddenly go in heat and start screwing everything in sight. It might happen in those twisted fantasy worlds the religious right has conjured up, but not in Earth. Here on Earth, we believe that saving lives is more important than imposing your moral standards on everyone.

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