More on the Republican Theocracy at War

(Thank you, for the inspiration of this post!)

There is no doubt that Republican Theocracy is at war against women, but their ultimate goal doesn't stop with abortion and contraception. They really seem to be guided by Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, a novel that when I first read it 20 years ago was considered a dark science fiction, but has now become a social condemnation of the Radical Religious Right who have adopted it as doctrine to use in their war against all sexuality other than their own mandate of forced matrimonial sex for Christian procreation only.

This extends to their opposition of the HPV vaccine, which “appears to be virtually 100 percent effective against two of the most common cancer-causing HPV strains” to opposition of research and funding for a cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS to their attack against science (here also) to asserting the right to everyone’s privacy so they can know exactly what your doing with who anywhere, especially in your own bedroom.

From a New Yorker article not available online (by the author in the interview linked here and above):

Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available.

"We would have to look at that closely," Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. "With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition" -- a medical term for the absence of fear -- "would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care."

Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control's Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations.

Why not vaccinate the Right against wrong? (via the Chicago Sun-Times):

From quashing stem cell research to promoting the teaching of Christian creation myth in public schools, from gagging government scientists to stifling anti-global warming efforts, the Bush administration is leading a theocratic assault on rationality that we would snicker at in another country but barely notice unfolding here.

The really jaw-dropping part is the administration's view of any medical advance that might lessen the wages of sin. Merck is trying to get FDA approval for a vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer and is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country. Lives would be saved by the vaccine, but the politicized Bush FDA will probably deny approval, as the disease -- like all VD -- is a handy ally to the Religious Right in its battle against sex.

I knew that the moral mullahs of this country point obsessively to disease and pregnancy in their campaign for sexual inhibition. But I didn't quite realize -- and it embarrasses me to admit this -- that they are also against curing such diseases, so as not to encourage sin. An anti-HIV vaccine, rather than being celebrated, might actually be denied FDA approval -- in this country, of course. The rest of the modern world, unencumbered, moves steadily into the future without us.

Clicking through to read the articles and reading the books is frightening and depressing, but reveals more of the Radical Religious Right's extreme agenda.