Thursday, February 22, 2007

The Wages of Sin are Death!

So saith Grand Wizard Ayatollah Executive Director Tom Pritchard of the Minnesota Family Council. Pritchard says that a lot, most recently about the initiative to immunize pre-teen girls with the HPV vaccine. Here are a few grafs from an article in the Pioneer Press:

The [HPV] vaccine itself has proven remarkably effective at protecting against the types of human papilloma virus, or HPV, that are responsible for 70 percent of all cervical cancers and most of the 4,000 U.S. cervical cancer deaths each year.

However, proposed vaccine requirements in Minnesota and more than 20 other states have come under heavy criticism from conservative family groups, which say they send the wrong message to preteen girls about sexual promiscuity. Other critics say a political mandate is an unscientific way to impose medical policy and are upset that the vaccine manufacturer, Merck, has been using substantial lobbying to drive the state proposals.

The Minnesota Family Council says a state vaccine requirement "undermines abstinence and excuses pre-marital sex" and that the decision should be left to parents. Executive director Tom Pritchard said the vaccine doesn't need a state mandate, because HPV isn't like other viruses that can spread through the air or casual contact.

"It's not dealing with a contagious disease that someone can get in public," he said. "It's specifically resulting from a particular behavior."

Pritchard has never been an especially thoughtful individual, boys and girls, nor frankly, a caring one.

Spot can think of scenarios where a girl or woman might become infected with HPV that have nothing to do with even Pritchard's crippled and vicious sense of morality. Date rape, which happens on college campuses all the time. And a virginal bride could be infected by her less-than-virginal new husband. Boys will be boys! Spot says you can probably think of other situations too, boys and girls.

Good old patriarchal Pritchard wants the women, as usual, to bear the risk of the sexual encounter. The penalty for sex outside of marriage? A bastard baby or a dreaded disease. Truly biblical. Truly reptilian.

The Minnesota Family Council's position on the HPV vaccine is different in degree, but not in basic kind, from stoning non-virgin brides on the doorsteps of their fathers.

Oh Tom, this is very much a public health issue, especially when you consider that most teens are sexually active before they graduate from high school. And it's not as if there weren't plenty of other things to catch while having sex.

You can do as Pritchard suggests boys and girls. And maybe you will be the first one on your block or in your church to have a daughter, the mother of your grandchildren, to die of an entirely preventable cancer. Then you can take her emaciated body—it won't be heavy—to the altar of your church and lay it there as a sacrifice to Jesus. Praise God! You'll feel so holy and chosen.

You know, Tom, God told Abraham to stay the knife in the end. Perhaps God is telling you the same thing, but you just aren't listening.

Let Spot close with a little prayer: Dear God, if there is any damnation in you, as people like Tom Pritchard and the Minnesota Family Council believe there is, please save a big scoop for them. Amen.

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