Brian Alexander wrote in Glamour:
Dr. Shaber tries hard to separate fact from fiction because, she says, “rumor and hearsay can start to seem real.” In the past, she’d sometimes refer patients to government websites and printed fact sheets, or rely on those outlets to help create her own materials. Not anymore. “As a physician, I can no longer trust government sources,” says Dr. Shaber. She is not a political activist or a conspiracy theorist; in addition to her own practice, she’s Kaiser Permanente’s director of women’s health services for northern California and head of the HMO’s Women’s Health Research Institute.
Yet this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, “I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]. Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don’t feel comfortable giving it to my patients.“ [emphasis added]
When medical professionals believe that health information provided by the government cannot be trusted, we should all be worried. The sad fact is that the Christian Right has successfully subverted the missions of both the government and public health care by getting their ideological biases placed ahead of facts, reality, and people’s health. This means that the Christian Right is, quite literally, bad for people’s health — but I don’t think that we’ll be seeing any government health warning stickers for them any time soon.
Glamour has also discovered that blatantly false anticondom information has been incorporated into several federal and state health websites. One, an official Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) site designed for families seeking health information for teens, 4parents.gov, suggests that there is no evidence that condom use reduces the risk of HPV infection and downplays its effectiveness against chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis.
Similarly, several states, including Louisiana, Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina, have online abstinence programs that link to a site called abstinencedu.com, which warns that HIV might be able to penetrate a latex condom (patently false), that “condoms offer no protection against HPV infection” (not true) and that “there is no scientific evidence that condoms reduce the risk of becoming infected with the other 23 major STDs” (also false). It even claims that “the Federal Drug Administration [sic] allows up to 4 percent of a batch of condoms to be defective before the batch is rejected!” (Actually, the FDA rejects a batch of condoms if even one-tenth that number are defective.)
How do lies like these become official government health information? Both abstinencedu.com and 4parents.gov get some of their information from yet another outfit, called the Medical Institute for Sexual Health (MISH), which opposes premarital sex and has become a leading provider of the kind of “scientific” data now appearing on government sites. [emphasis added]
In many ways, the Christian Right has created a parallel society — it looks and functions like the real world, but it exists solely to promote their ideological and religious agenda, regardless of the facts or the truth. They have their own publishing houses, their own think tanks, their own medical organizations, everything. By creating perverted facsimiles of reality, it is easier for them to seduce politicians and public organization to work with them while still appearing to be acting in an objective or reasonable manner. We elect the politicians to rule over us, then they take money from the Christian Right to feed all of us misinformation about sex.
In a meta-analysis of abstinence programs published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Dr. Santelli found that such curricula “do not seem to be well designed and have incomplete information, misinformation and questionable information.” And last year, the office of Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) examined the most popular federally funded abstinence-only sex-education programs and found that nearly 70 percent of them include “serious medical or scientific errors.”
Among the wholly inaccurate claims: that up to 10 percent of women become sterile after an abortion and that “premature birth, a major cause of mental retardation, is increased following the abortion of a first pregnancy.” Says Princeton’s Trussell, “It’s an outrage. This is clearly another ideological distortion of what the real evidence shows.” Yet such erroneous facts continue to be taught in public school districts in Montana, California, Washington, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. [emphasis added]
In Lubbock, Texas, for example, girls under 18 have 3 and 4 times the rate of chlamydia as the national average. Guess what sort of sex education program has been put in place in Lubbock public schools? If you guessed abstinence-only, you’d be right. Evidence indicates that being taught only about abstinence and not about contraception or other aspects of sexual health leads to more girls contracting a sexually transmitted disease what puts them at an increased rate of infertility later on.
To date, abortion-breast cancer laws, called “Women’s Right to Know,” have been passed in Texas, Kansas, Montana and Mississippi. Texas State Representative Dawnna Dukes (D-Austin) vociferously opposed such a law, pointing to the scientific evidence that abortion does not raise the risk of breast cancer. But, she says, legislators who “pushed this law, supported this law, were terrified by right-wing Christian organizations. Some of my colleagues said, in confidence, ‘I agree with you, but we are told that if we vote with you on this, we are supporting abortion.’ They knew this information was invalid. They were frightened. These folks are afraid of this Christian coalition.” Why?
She says legislators were worried that the groups would mobilize against them in upcoming primaries. Herb Brown, M.D., an ob-gyn and faculty member at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, says these laws “put doctors in a terrible position. You have to show a pamphlet produced by the state to the patient and explain that it is part of the regulation. The conversation I have is that, ‘This is what is written in the pamphlet. I disagree with it ethically and scientifically, but this is what the legislation has forced upon me.’ That’s all I can say… If I want to be consistent with the law, I have to lie.“ [emphasis added]
Politicians can always find reasons to deceive their constituents; what we are seeing here, though, is almost unprecedented: politicians who are being forced to lie even though they don’t want to. Conservative Republicans would be willing to oppose a law they know is wrong and which mandates deceiving the public, but they cannot do so without facing the wrath of those who care more about their religious ideology than reality.
It’s unfortunate that Republicans are put in this position, but I can’t feel too sorry for them because they helped create this Beast and if they had any backbone they’d stand up to their Beast in situations like this where they know unequivocally that it would be right — morally and scientifically — to do so. By going along in order to preserve their seat of power they are in some ways worse than the Beast they have created because at least their Beast is a sincere zealot; they are just pandering to it in order to maintain what little power it allows them.
Who wears the collar now? Who holds the leash?
Christian Nationalism & Dominion Theology:
- Dominionism & Dominion Theology
- Christian Reconstructionism
- Leading Christian Reconstructionists
- Reconstructionism & Christian Right: Common Goals, Beliefs
Christian Right & Abortion:
Unbelieveable! That this type of twisted religion should have such a hold in this country in this day and age. All religions are twisted but these born agains are the worst.
Ok. Wow. Scary.
I think my last vestige of respect for the republican party has just been shattered by your article Austin.
In the 1950′s it was paranoia about communism taking over the world. Now its the religious right, even in the face of absolutely no evidence that they have much political power. Prayer was taken out of schools with little protest from Christians. There is little or no organization of Christians politically. People are absolutely terrified of losing Abortion rights, yet in the 30+ years since Roe V. Wade aside from a few nuts bombing abortion clinics or protesting there has been little if any organized protest. The religious right is accused of harrassing homosexuals, but the gay movement shows no signs of being driven underground. In San Fransico Gay Movement is pretty darn strong–much stronger than any religious right movement! And what has religious right done to fight the drug war? The information the public gets regarding drugs, especially marijuana, is that not only is pot harmless–its good for you!! How can the relgious right fight that kind of information? Oh, poor politicians that get pressure from the religious right! How hard for them to stand up against all that! They must have their mamas and the southern Baptist preacher voting against them! Good grief! Do you watch TV? MTV? Listen to rap music? Read any current literature? Do you see Leave it To Beaver becoming popular again? I don’t think that anyone under 50 years old even knows the definition of the word abstinence, let alone practice it. And most don’t have the sense to use a condom to prevent pregnancy, let alone prevent disease spread. Believe me, these young people do not think one minute ahead. Thinking that the religious right has any political power is delusional and paranoid. The religious right has very little power to pressure people sitting in church on Sunday mornings—its a tough sell, and its getting tougher. Again–turn on the radio, the TV or the internet and tell me what’s on there. Any relgious right is counteracted many times over by sex and believe me, the liberal agenda is much more attractive to most people. The few celibates out there are not people that others want to be like!!! Believe me, there is no danger that Donny Osmond will ever be more popular than Ozzy Osbourne!!!!
They have tremendous influence with the current administration and Republican Party.
Prayer was never taken out of schools. Christians protested massively and if you don’t know this, it’s because you haven’t looked at the historical record. Christians continue to protest this, despite it not happening.
Moral Majority. Christian Coalition. Focus on the Family. True Values Coalition. Need I go on?
There are protests outside abortion clinics all the time. Over 80% of all counties in America have no abortion services and some states have just one abortion clinic.
Non sequitur. Being harassed doesn’t mean that you are driven underground.
Well, they do a good job fighting the facts of evolution or that emergency contraception doesn’t cause abortions.
Yes, they do. Sometimes they will even vote the opposite of what they know is correct precisely to avoid that pressure.
Yes. Modern culture is the one area where the Christian Right has little influence. Fortunately.
They might, if the Christian Right didn’t work so hard to keep information about how to properly use condoms out of sex education classes.
They can – just look at teen pregnancy rates in Europe.
No, it’s just a product of looking around and noticing reality.
But they do have the power to pressure local governments into prohibiting park permits on Sunday mornings in order to encourage people to go to church.
Modern Culture is the area that has more influence over our young people than anything else! How much time do kids spend hearing anything religious as opposed to TV, Music, Internet? Most of the population in general doesn’t listen to religious right programming or gospel music, let alone our young people!! Its not exactly equal time!!!
The administration IS supposedly influenced by Christian values and ideas, but, afraid as everyone is, that the president is going to get his Christian agenda to be law of the land– what’s changed? Pot is all but legal in California. You can get a government issued card that identifies you as a medical marijuana user. With all the paranoia that abortion rights are in jeopardy because of the Republicans, over the years the courts have upheld the abortion laws as a right. In California’s last election the voters passed a proposition that minors need not inform parents of their abortion. Yet if my kid breaks his arm–they won’t treat him until I come to sign the consent form!
If you go into an elementary school classroom in inner city LA most of the children are street smart. They have been taught what homosexuality is and that it is a alternative lifestyle and are taught tolerance for that lifestyle. AIDS awareness is taught in the health curriculum, along with condoms and “safe sex”. Most elementary school kids have been to more R rated movies a lot more often than they have been to church.
And the protest about taking prayer from schools? If 80% of the population of the country believed that prayer should not be removed from school, there wasn’t much of a ruckus considering the majority. Pretty passive bunch–there is no danger of the Christian right taking over the world.
Yeah, those parking permits to encourage church going really makes those guys with hangovers jump up and get their butts to worship on time!
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The administration is heavily influenced by the Christian Right, no “supposedly” about it. Whether the Christian Right advances “Christian values and ideas” depends upon whom you ask.
A right that you cannot exercise is not much of a right at all; for significant numbers of women in America — especially the poor — abortion is not a right they can easily or readily exercise.
One school system does not define America.
Prayer was not removed from schools. Read up on American history, though, and learn about what many Christians did and protested in the wake of the decision which removed state-sponsored and state-written prayers from schoools.
I didn’t say anything about parking permits. I said park permits — permits to use public parks for little league games and other activities. Churches don’t like the competition and have gotten local governments to eliminate such permits on Sunday mornings so that people don’t have anything place else to go but church.