Sarah Price Brown: Health activists and “social conservatives” are fighting over the new cervical cancer vaccine, writes Rob Stein in The Washington Post. Stein presents both sides of the conflict while managing to leave out one relevant piece in the puzzle: religion. The “social conservatives” who fear immunizing teenage girls against a sexually transmitted virus would encourage promiscuity are, after all, Christians. And they object to the vaccine not because they are Republicans, but because they hold religious beliefs that say sex outside marriage is immoral — an obvious point that’s masked by Stein’s euphemistic use of “conservative” for “Christian” throughout his piece, as though groups such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council aren’t religious organizations, but merely politcal conservatives. Fortune magazine knew better in its piece on the subject, and its reporter, Janet Guyon, named those who object to the vaccine on moral grounds for what they are: “Christian conservatives,” “Christian organization(s),” and the “Christian right.” Why did Stein leave religion out of his piece?
