Strange thing, when I end up throwing something up over here it is usually when I have no intention of doing it. That is exactly what is happening today. I have absolutely zero first hand knowledge of the issues at hand, but I am an American, therefore I have a pretty strong opinion about it. If you don’t agree with me you are simply wrong.
This first link was stolen directly from The Washington Monthly, where the blogger (Kevin) opined that not vaccinating women against a virus for which there is a vaccine “left him speechless”. I then went to read the article that he had linked to. My panties got all bunched up over this one.
The article, in short terms, says that about half of all women in the U.S., between the ages of 18 and 22, have this HPV thing which can lead to cervical cancer. There is now a vaccine that can make you immune to it. Religious groups in the U.S. are staunchly opposed to the vaccine since that will give women license to have sex before they are married. While the site also notes that most of the cases of HPV clear up on their own having no lasting effects, some do result in cancer. If it is in your power to prevent the spread of a potentially fatal condition, shouldn’t you do it?
I really don’t have anything against religious crackpots, but when they decide that the best way to prevent disease is through abstinence I gotta make an exception. The core values of westernized religion seem to be pretty good; If you do good you will be rewarded in heaven, if you do bad you will be punished. Those are pretty sound values (with the exception of being rewarded or punished after death) that a lot of kids today lack. But, when GOD decides to invent a vaccine that can save hundreds of lives, the religious folks want to back out.
Honestly, if you are actually religious don’t you have to believe that every new invention is the work of God? If God invents a vaccine that can save lives, you should use it, right? Or do you question God’s will and let hundreds or thousands of people die? I guess I better leave that question for the religious crackpots to answer.
For some reason when I searched for ‘abstinence only’, after I had read the previous story, the number one link was to a post at DazeReader.com, a site that I do visit from time to time. I figured what the hell and went to look at the post regarding the subject, which turned out to only be a link to a different site.
The site is called AbstinenceOnly.org, and is possibly the most humorous website I have seen in years. Yet, it is informative. You can learn how to do oral, anal, gay, group and vaginal sex while still being abstinent. It turns out that as long as there is underwear between you/your member and the female it is not actually sex. Same for any other form of sex, as long as there is underwear in the way it is not sex. Bodily fluids may be exchanged, but there was never sex of any sort (not even letting a big woman in a blue dress go down on you). Where was this website when I was sixteen, trying to tell my girlfriend that anal sex didn’t really count against her virginity?
On a (possibly) more serious note. I really think that if it is possible to vaccinate women against the cervical cancer that comes from touching dirty men’s junk, we really should give the vaccine to all women in the U.S. (the entire world in my opinion, since most of the deaths occur in developing countries, Africa, for instance). There are plenty of other S.T.D.’s out there that we can not cure, A.I.D.S. is only one of them.
I am sure that in a perfect, Christian, world there would be no sex unless you were married, but that doesn’t translate well into the 2005 world where everyone is fucking everyone. Don’t those religious types understand that the more they condemn something the more the people want it? It is not brain surgery, you can make a few mistakes, but don’t let people die for your archaic, pseudo cause.
I have never put any photos on my site that weren’t either myself, my wife, or our animals. This is going to be the exception. Here you see a photo of one or my brothers, doing his best to look like Kid Rock, while he holds his son D.J.. I dunno if I will get many more chances to see either of them before D.J. starts stealing cars and being a neighborhood menace. There might be a precedent for my thinking the small child will go that way….