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You are here: Home / Really- Religion Should Have a Role In Policy Making

Really- Religion Should Have a Role In Policy Making

by John Cole|  April 29, 20054:33 pm| 24 Comments

This post is in: Outrage

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More nonsense from the idiots:

Bad news: deaths from cervical cancer are on the increase.

Good news: there’s a new vaccine that stops the virus that causes the cancer.

Unfortunate news: the virus in question, human papilloma virus (HPV), is sexually transmitted.

Obvious news: you simply have to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active.

Unbelievable news: “religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters.” Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group says, “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.”

Fucking idiots. We are just lucky polio and cancer and Alzheimers and who knows what else aren’t sexually transmitted. Then the God squad would really have us in a bind. Morons.

I don’t care what you say- anyone who leaves their child unvaccinated so they don’t think they have a ‘license to engage in premarital sex’ not only needs their head examined but needs to be publicly shunned and refused entry into public policy debates.

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Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    over it

    April 29, 2005 at 4:40 pm

    Also, do NOT take your daughter to a gynocologist….she’ll find out she has a vagina and she will run out to use it!!

    Who are these people?

    I am still a big ‘V’ but I would most def go get it.

    People can be such morons. It is sad.

  2. 2.

    Pudentilla

    April 29, 2005 at 5:29 pm

    You know what happens to a patriarchy when women start controlling their own bodies? When they can have sex without fear of unwanted pregnancy or death? These alta cockers are afraid, and they don’t mind a few (thousand?) women dying in order to placate their fears.

  3. 3.

    ppgaz

    April 29, 2005 at 5:50 pm

    Well spoken, John. When did the neo-theo-conservatives decide that they were the Sex Police?

    They remind me of the feminazi (yes, I, the Blue Dog Dem called them that) womenlib types who are obsessive about the slightest crack in their rigid ideology.

    Ideology is crap, no matter where it comes from. Responsible advocacy of reasonable policy is welcome no matter where it comes from.

  4. 4.

    JG

    April 29, 2005 at 6:01 pm

    ‘Who are these people?’

    I think its the same people who outlawed dancing. I apologize up front to anyone who now has the theme to Footloose running through their heads.

  5. 5.

    Glen

    April 29, 2005 at 6:05 pm

    Thanks for the link, John. “Skull explosion” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

    I’m not sure how many mutual readers we have, but I’m cross-posting it soon.

    I keep imploring St. Scotty to beam me up, but…

  6. 6.

    Jon H

    April 29, 2005 at 6:13 pm

    I’m surprised they haven’t demanded that tampons be kept behind the counter.

  7. 7.

    Jay

    April 29, 2005 at 6:27 pm

    Ahhh, the New Puritans….

    Can’t wait for the first druggist who decides to convert to Christian Science, and insists on his right to deny ALL medications.

  8. 8.

    Matt

    April 29, 2005 at 8:10 pm

    bla bla bla God Squad bla outrage..bla..bla… sorry for the sarcasm but I do not see the need to get so upset over a small portion of convervatives. The theocracy concern underlying this post, is just the same old lame Cassandra/Malthus/Chicken Little type argument that pumps up a small portion of information beyond reasonable belief.

    I was raised in one of the most conservative areas of NC and very few would agree with whatever “religious groups,” and most would think that refusing vaccination is beyond the pale.

    As with anything people have a right to argue for their beliefs. The argument made by the “religous groups” is less persuasive than most. And while people may need to have their head examined, let Darwin take his course. There no need to get upset and while purging can feel good, hyperbolic reactions never help anything.

  9. 9.

    ppgaz

    April 29, 2005 at 9:36 pm

    “I do not see any reason to get upset over a small portion of conservatives.”

    Uh, for one thing, they have a large segment of the Republican party by the nuts. That’s the party that, uh, has control of Congress and the White House.

    And they aren’t conservatives. They are extremist idealogues.

  10. 10.

    Compuglobalhypermeganet

    April 29, 2005 at 10:39 pm

    OK, we get it — you hate people who have the audacity to use their moral principles to attempt to make law. So will you keep pretending that law hasn’t been made in exactly that fashion for thousands of years everywhere in the world?

    Of course, religious groups will oppose what they see as giving a green-light to promiscuity, and of course, they will lose the big vote, just as they have on abortion, condoms in schools, gay rights, etc.

    What’s so wrong about letting them have their opinion? They aren’t hurting you, and they aren’t going to win.

    More anti-religious fake outrage, day after day. It’s getting boring. This blog is starting to sound like those idiots in the anti-Reagan marches with signs saying “Reagan ’80, Nuclear War ’81” (which four years later became, ironically, “Reagan ’84, Nuclear War ’85”). You throw the big fear of theocracy out there, while ignoring the factors that make theocracy impossible in the US.

    Look, we know how stupid it is to say that the Schiavo affair was the first step toward Nazism, right? Well, it’s just exactly that stupid to pick out a few social conservatives and say this is the first step to theocracy.

    And if this wing of the party had “the Republican Party by the nuts,” we PROBABLY would’ve seen some hard right turns in the two major “moral issues,” abortion and gay rights. Hell, the Democrats told me that by this time, if Bush were elected in 2000, abortions would be illegal, gays would be burned at the stake, and there’d be a camera in my bedroom (OK, that part’s true, but that camera is only intended for its proper purpose: to make amateur porn…ok, you may stop cringing now, please).

    Now this blog sounds just like those “sky-is-falling” Democrat idiots.

  11. 11.

    Kimmitt

    April 29, 2005 at 10:52 pm

    you hate people who have the audacity to use their moral principles to attempt to make law.

    Yes, when those principles are incompatible with human decency.

  12. 12.

    John Cole

    April 29, 2005 at 10:53 pm

    OK, we get it — you hate people who have the audacity to use their moral principles to attempt to make law.

    No, I hate idiots who use some bizarre concept of morality to trump wise decision making. We are not talking about a certainty of pre-marital sex. We are talking abut a chance they might negage in pre-marital sex. And they won’t be teens forever. Some people actually get laid in college, outside of marriage, and it is not the end of the world or the sure sign of the moral decline of the west.

    More anti-religious fake outrage, day after day. It’s getting boring.

    Actually, the outrage is pretty genuine. Bored- go read Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh. They will tell you exactly what you want to hear. Christians are just being persecuted left and right, and their radical agenda has nothing to do with it. Why, who says they can’t use their morality to influence public policy!

    Well, it’s just exactly that stupid to pick out a few social conservatives and say this is the first step to theocracy.

    I am not picking out a few conservatives- I am showing you large enough part of the party to have the Senate Majority Leader on speed dial. I have given example after example, and each time you give the same pat response- it is no big deal, I am hysterical, and I hate people voting their conscience. All three are absurd.

    Now this blog sounds just like those “sky-is-falling” Democrat idiots.

    Go away, then. Or start a blog. Or come up with some response to this nonsense these bigots are peddling other than “It’s no big deal and you are over-reacting.” And I thought your free market absolutism was tedious.

  13. 13.

    Christie S.

    April 29, 2005 at 11:26 pm

    “Hell, the Democrats told me that by this time, if Bush were elected in 2000, abortions would be illegal, ”

    Compu..net, for your reading pleasure… legislature.state.oh.us/BillText126/126_HB_228_I_Y.pdf

    Ohio is trying to do just that.

  14. 14.

    Jon H

    April 30, 2005 at 12:36 am

    Hm.

    If environmentalists get jobs at gas stations, could they refuse to turn the pumps on?

    And not be fired?

  15. 15.

    ppgaz

    April 30, 2005 at 7:57 am

    No, I don’t “hate people who have the audacity … to make law …”

    I reject the current Republican leadership, at all levels, for pandering to an extremist and irreponsible, immoral, dishonest bunch of ideologues who practice “ends justify means” politics and who use religious browbeating as a tool to coerce the political process.

    It isn’t the crazy pseudo-christians you need to worry about. They have always been around. It’s politicans who pander to them in order to gain power for themselves, who are the real danger. The Frists, the Bushes, the DeLays. These people are evil and dangerous people.

    The crazy wingnuts? The world is always full of crazy people, of all stripes. The question is whether they, or we, will govern and make the decisions. It’s a contest between us, and them. I will fight them just as assiduously as I would fight the Taliban, or the American terrorists who blew up the Murrah Federal Building. They are all the same: Sociopaths who want their own way and care nothing for the rights and well being of other people.

  16. 16.

    Thomas

    April 30, 2005 at 2:46 pm

    I see: in the name of “tolerance” and in opposition to “theocracy” we should chase out of public life anyone who disagrees with you on the relative merits of anything.

    Thank god we won’t have to deal with those crazy theocrats and their dastardly certainty!

    (But forgive me for using the word “god”! I slip up sometimes–please don’t send me to the reeducation camps, or wherever you plan to send those who need to be taught the merits of your brand of tolerance!)

  17. 17.

    ppgaz

    April 30, 2005 at 10:39 pm

    “Tolerance” is your deliberately misleading spin word, pal. Just like claiming that “people of faith” all want the Senate to vote a certain way.

    Fuck you and horse you rode in on. I have full tolerance for any non-violent belief system … but I have very limited tolerance for the kind of crap I’ll take from government. I will not tolerate rightwing religious intolerance in my government. I mean that exactly the way it sounds: I will not put up with it.

    You can believe what you want, and worship snakes if you like, makes not a whit of difference to me.

    But the day you run for office and start pandering to snake handlers, you have a fight with me.

    Of the people and by the people and for the people. Well guess what, I’m the people, and I’ll fight you tooth and nail if you try to drag your snake handling friends into the government to start telling me how to live my life.

    “Snake handling” here, of course, is just a metaphor. Plug in your favorite nutty religious ideology.

  18. 18.

    shark

    April 30, 2005 at 11:27 pm

    I don’t care what you say- anyone who leaves their child unvaccinated so they don’t think they have a ‘license to engage in premarital sex’ not only needs their head examined but needs to be publicly shunned and refused entry into public policy debates.

    Would you deny Christian Scientists entry into public debate also?

  19. 19.

    Kimmitt

    May 1, 2005 at 5:00 am

    I see: in the name of “tolerance” and in opposition to “theocracy” we should chase out of public life anyone who disagrees with you on the relative merits of anything.

    That’s the fundamental contradiction of tolerance — it can handle everything except for the explicit rejection of tolerance.

  20. 20.

    ppgaz

    May 1, 2005 at 9:56 am

    One of the (many) problems with you, kimmit, is that you don’t know how to make distinctions.

    “Tolerance” is not the equivalent of “submission”. I can tolerate a lot, but I won’t submit to things that are wrong, in the name of tolerance.

    “Democracy depends entirely on the submission of the minority.”
    William F. Buckley.

    Read that out loud a thousand times, and get a clue.

  21. 21.

    Kimmitt

    May 1, 2005 at 11:30 am

    Um, I was arguing on your side.

  22. 22.

    ppgaz

    May 1, 2005 at 12:00 pm

    I stand corrected and embarassed. Hurriedly operating in between other activities, I dropped my depth charges on the wrong submarine.

    Please color me red and consider this an abject apology.

  23. 23.

    Kimmitt

    May 1, 2005 at 7:18 pm

    Quite all right, glad we got it cleared up.

  24. 24.

    Compuglobalhypermeganet

    May 1, 2005 at 10:51 pm

    I am not picking out a few conservatives- I am showing you large enough part of the party to have the Senate Majority Leader on speed dial.

    I’m guessing that it doesn’t take much to get on a pol’s speed-dial, but…

    If you’re trying to show me that the religious right is so powerful that we risk THEOCRACY, you’re going to have to show me a more powerful group than these rather impotent Christian PACs.

    What you are actually doing is showing me a SMALL enough part of the party to have lost almost every major policy result (on gay rights, abortion, contraception) for the last 25 years, EVEN WHILE “THEIR PARTY” HAS WON ELECTION AFTER ELECTION! They are so small that they have been unable to move public opinion to any meaningful extent. I can’t think of a social issue where these folks have made any headway at all in 25 years in the Big Leagues.

    By the way, who do you think is on Harry Reid’s speed-dial?

    I have given example after example, and each time you give the same pat response- it is no big deal, I am hysterical, and I hate people voting their conscience. All three are absurd.

    My responses are not pat — for instance, on this cervical cancer vaccine, I think you are largely correct in your assessment (although “not only needs their head examined but needs to be publicly shunned and refused entry into public policy debates” sounds a bit, ummmm, hysterical to me — have you chosen the scarlet letter they’ll wear, yet?). If parents haven’t taught their daughters that teenage sex can f*** up their lives in forty different ways if they aren’t careful, then I don’t think a cancer vaccine is going to give these girls the green light to get their collective freak on. It may be a silly issue to us, but religious groups who are pushing abstinence (not for their own good, but for what they perceive as the good of society) are likely to warn against such a vaccine.

    The GOP tent includes some religious conservatives (of course, the Dem’s tent includes some, too, esp. in the African-American community, but the Dems are a bit better at ignoring them except during years divisible by 4). Your bent these days seems to be to convince the GOP that it would be a good thing to silence this group by raising the spectre of theocracy.

    But given my points 1) that on almost every major issue, the religious activists have lost, 2) they’ve been unable to swing public opinion in their direction, and no matter how much money they spend and 3) they have not hurt the GOP in elections, then attempts to silence them just seem mean-spirited, intolerant, and totally unnecessary.

    So for the fear the religious right would suddenly gain law-making power (while providing no evidence that they are able to do so), much less enough to start a THEOCRACY, for Allah’s sake, you are repeatedly bashing some honest people who are acting according to their beliefs (and, no doubt, some snake oil salesmen, as well).

    There are far bigger evils in Washington. Maybe this is a sign that the GOP feels the Democratic Party is electorally irrelevant, so some Republicans feel free to thin the herd through cannibalization.

    And I thought your free market absolutism was tedious.

    Tedius, maybe… absolutist, NOT… but it is proving to be correct (market changes NOT involving the a-hole governor’s fiat are taking place in Illinois as we speak to distribute Plan B). I’ll take it.

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