Priorities

I died laughing yesterday reading Bill Maher's piece in Salon about Christian opposition to the HPV vaccine on the grounds that it will encourage kids to start having sex. Maher's critique is solid gold:

People don't get the vaccine for typhoid and say, "Great, now I can drink the sewer water in Bombay." It's like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot she'll want to jab rusty nails in her feet. It's like being against a cure for blindness because it'll encourage masturbation.

And here's the kicker:

These Christian groups aren't just against the HPV shot; they're against family planning and condoms and morning after pills -- they want to make sure sex is as dangerous as possible, so that kids know, if they sleep around and get an STD, that's God teaching them a lesson.

I read a lot of lefty publications online and a recurring them is that a lot of social liberals think that Christians only care about foetuses. If you're actually post-birth, then you can go to Hell.

Now I've read the Bible a few times. And there aren't a lot of references to foetuses, or pre-marital sex, or anything like that. Yet a lot of people act like these issues are the sole determinant of whether a society is going to the dogs or not.

I feel that a re-prioritisation is urgently in order.

Categories: Gospel
Tags: hpv-vaccine; conservatives; priorities