Cranking The Randt-O-Meter Up To 11

I see red, purple, fuschia and all of the other colours of the frustration rainbow when religion pokes its nosy head into the area of sex and health.

Catholic School Boards are currently taking it upon themselves to decide whether it’s appropriate to vaccinate Grade 8 girls against HPV at the schools, under a provincial government plan. HPV is a sexually transmitted virus that causes – among other things – cervical cancer. The vaccination is given to girls when they’re quite young and in three stages, so that they’re protected by the time they reach maturity. Some self-righteous eggheads within the church have decided that the vaccination sends a message that promiscuity is alright.

These are the same dinosaurs who thought the advent of the pill was going to be the end of the world and that medication actually DID lead to promiscuity. Last time I looked, we were all still here. In fact, because of the pill, there aren’t as many of us as there would have been otherwise.

The province is planning to pay the $400 dollars for each girl to get the vaccine. Until there’s a change in provincial leadership (with faith-based school funding a major issue in this campaign) Catholic Schools are publicly funded. How dare they start acting like a private entity! For once, a government is thinking about prevention instead of chemo and surgeries and everything else that comes up once the diseases take hold.

If the vaccination was for boys, who actually spread the virus, would the Church still be raising such a stink? Is this – my inner small f feminist asks – deeply rooted church-based sexism rising up once again? This is an issue of health and saving lives, not of spreading a message about having sex at a young age. Kids don’t need the church or the schools to tell them about that when they’ve got the internet, TV, movies, their friends, magazines, video games….