Bush gives America Finger

A couple of decades ago Ayn Rand wrote an essay on the Catholic Church and it’s opposition to birth control. She contended that the Church wanted every sexual act to be connected to the fear of possible unwanted pregnancy. No doubt some thought her extreme. I thought she was right.

Now here is a different example of the same principle. But this time the culprits are the ignorant masses who call themselves “born again” Christians. And the issue is not abortion but a vaccine against a sexually transmitted virus. Conservatives don’t like the vaccine.

That army of Jesus besotted troglodytes that put Bush into the White House are unhappy that a vaccine has been introduced which protects against human papilloma virus. The virus can sometimes cause cancer of the cervix which kills almost 4,000 women per year. And the vaccine appears to be almost 100 percent effective, at least against two strains of the virus.

The problem is that the best time to take the vaccine is before young people become sexually active. That would mean inoculating children. Reginald Finger is now a Bush appointed bureaucrat for the government’s Advisory committee on Immunization Practices. He thinks inoculating children against this virus will encourage them to be sinners.

Before Bush gave America this Finger the man was an employee of the fundamentalist outfit called Focus on the Family. They are one of the most extreme of the fundamentalist lobbies around.

Finger says that this vaccine “could cause people to feel like sexual behaviours are safer if they are vaccinated and my lead to more sexual behaviors because they feel safe. Finger says he is is not saying this is his view just the view of some concern people. Concern religious nutters is what he means.

The problem, as fundies see it, is that people ought to punished for being sinners. God wants people to suffer for their sin. And when man intervenes to make life better they are undercutting the misery that God wants people to endure.

Andrew Sullivan asked why it was in the interest of society to deny marriage to gay men and women. He got one answer reflecting this fundamentalist view of life. The response he got said: “As long as God says it is a sin you must be punished, banished and not allowed to prosper. And we have to make the old adage true that homosexuals live and die alone. Otherwise our children will think it’s okay to be gay.”

Rand wasn’t that far off.