God's country prefers what?

Last week or so, James Dobson expressed anger at conservatives. Not, of course, for their tax cuts for the wealthy, or opposition to meaningful healthcare reform that might provide care to the poorest Americans. Nor, was it a threat to withdraw support if conservatives didn't do something to raise America from second to last in infant mortality--something that we can clearly do with better healthcare. Of course, it wasn't to threaten conservatives to tend to God's creation.

No, Dr. Dobson is threatening to withhold support unless "Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion."

That's right. No poverty. No environment.

And if that doesn't make you feel a vomit coming on, there is this story from the Nation about the religious right's opposition to a vaccine that could cut cervical cancer by 70%. They oppose it because they think it will make young girls promiscuous. As Katha Pollitt puts it: "Just as it's better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it's better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage."

Unbelievable. This mindless adherence should not be called "faith."

But if you think this is an aberation, check out Michelle Goldberg's discussion of an abstinence only activist who speaks regularly for the religious right. she was asked if abstinence only programs "worked." In other words, is it effective? Does it stop kids from having sex and protect them from disease and unplanned pregnancy. Answer? She doesn't care.

"Later in the same talk, she explained further why what "works" isn't what's important--and gave some insight into what she means by "truth." "Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here," she said. "AIDS is not the enemy. HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not teach my child that they can sin safely.""

You get that? She doesn't care that kids in abstinence only programs don't actually abstain and are simply less likely to use protection or practice sex safely--thereby making themselves more vulnerable to STDs and pregnancy. She doesn't care. Let them die if they refuse to follow her interpretation of God.

So we should not be surprised that people like her would be willing to allow women to get cancer. Pollitt again:

"What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time. No sex ed or contraception for teens, no sex for the unwed, no condoms for gays, no abortion for anyone--even for that poor 13-year-old pregnant girl in a group home in Florida. I would really like to hear the persuasive argument that this middle-schooler with no home and no family would have been better off giving birth against her will, and that the State of Florida, which totally failed to keep her safe, should have been allowed, against its own laws, to compel this child to bear a child. She was too young to have sex, too young to know her own mind about abortion--but not too young to be forced onto the delivery table for one of the most painful experiences human beings endure, in which the risk of death for her was three times as great as in abortion.
Ah, Christian compassion! Christian sadism, more likely. It was the courts that showed humanity when they let the girl terminate her pregnancy."

Sigh.