Radley Balko:

I ask you, which is worse?

The American left won’t let agri-firms develop biotech products that could save millions of lives in the developing world because it upsets their delicate notions of what’s “natural” (never mind how many of the world’s poor have succumbed to malaria because of the green left’s objections to DDT).

or,

The American right is ready to oppose distribution of a cancer vaccine to the developing (and developed, for that matter) world because it might lead to marginal increases in premarital sex (never mind how many of the world’s poor have succumbed to AIDS because of the relious right’s objections to condom distribution).

The answer is that they’re two sides of the same coin.

More thoughts from MD of G-O:

Ok, so you have cervical cancer spreading in Africa. And girls can get a vaccine that will prevent the virus that usually causes it. And you have the RELIGIOUS WINGNUTS in this country OPPOSING THE VACCINE because ABSTINENCE IS BEST!!

I think the “RELIGIOUS WINGNUTS” in this country have severely lost their way in terms of faith (see previous post) in more ways than one—which I guess warrants the term “wingnut” for them—and this is no different. However, in all fairness to MD, “abstinence education” actually works if the reasons for abstaining are actually ingrained and well-elucidated to our children. They’re not horny animals that need to get off when they get a boner or something.

Abstinence without an understanding of chastity is merely deprivation, and offers the “soul” no fulfillment. Extreme fundamentalist Christianity—the kind getting the most press, maybe because it provides the intellectual elite so much entertainment—isn’t going to be the best source for a concept of chastity, not after most of them whoring themselves—losing all the trappings of humility, temperance and charity—in their quest to get what they want.

[Here is the article discussed by Balko and Michael Demmons.]