Via Unfogged comes the depressing news that oral sex, through the transmission of HPV, can cause mouth cancer. Nasty stuff. But this should be a near-moot issue. We have developed a fully effective, perfectly safe vaccine for HPV -- unless it mutates, this should be an extinct affliction. Actually, let me qualify that, unless it mutates, or unless the Christian Right gets their way. Because James Dobson and Jerry Falwell and all the other knuckle-dragging soul savers (just send $$$) have launched a crusade to keep the medicine from market. The rationale? A lower likelihood of cervical cancer will transform their sweet, demure, submissive girl children into raging sex maniacs. I'm not kidding. So where most doctors would like to include the injection in the standard raft of shots girls get before puberty, the Christian Right would like to use cancer to control female behavior once girls hit puberty.
Of course, under Robertson's rubric, all God-fearing cheeseburger lovers should swear off cardiovascular surgeries. Gluttony, after all, is a sin. And judging from Falwell's jowls, he's got some repenting to do. But if we just hand out statins and angioplasties to all these culinary transgressors, what sort of message are we sending? Heart attacks, after all, are the punishment for gluttony, and we shouldn't let modern medicine get in the way of that. But what do you want to bet that when the first bolt of lightning lances across Falwell's chest, he'll be enjoying the world's best medical care quicker than you can say the Lord's Prayer?
This isn't, of course, the first time the Christian Right has decided health disasters or unwanted bodily outcomes are god's way of telling women to keep their sinful legs crossed. The debate over perfectly safe, next-day contraception was won by conservatives despite science's bitter protestations, as yesterday's GAO report detailed. And that's over a medication that's merely an increased dose of currently available birth control pills (hell, Planned Parenthood has a list of how to judge the dosage when using the birth control pills you already have -- Plan B is simply easier).
The Christian Right has shown no ability to end intercourse, oral sex, or pregnancy. All they've been able to do is make the consequences more punitive and the involved more miserable. Meanwhile, a thousand other sinful health choices ravage the religious community all day every day, but not a word, not an utterance, not a dollar is spent to ensure the gluttons and daredevils and Type A personalities have to endure the biological consequences of their transgressions. Somehow, that hypocrisy strikes me as much more sinful than a high school seniors sexual dalliance.
