HPV is the Kitty Pryde of STDs. Like the only member of the X-Men who can pass through walls, the human papillomavirus is the only sexually transmitted infection against which condoms are powerless. Actually a group of more than 100 viruses, HPV is also the most common STD: about fifty to seventy-five percent of men and women contract it at some point in their lives. While many strains of the virus are fairly harmless — if you call having to add the phrase "genital warts" to your pillow talk "harmless" — certain HPV subspecies are the major cause of cervical cancer, which kills nearly 4,000 women a year.

   And that is why the religious right loves HPV. Oh, they adore HPV. They need it. They crave it. They want to marry it, they want to give it a parade. Why? Because when it comes to condoms, HPV is their nuclear option. As long as HPV is around, anytime anyone says "condoms promote safer sex," they get to pipe up, like the dorky classmate you want to smack: "Nuh-uh! HPV!"

   Wouldn't it be awesome if we could foil them with some sort of . . . HPV vaccine? Oh, wait! Pharma-giants Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced they're thisclose. In clinical trials, their proposed vaccine has reduced persistent HPV infection by ninety percent. The British magazine New Scientist reports that most parents would want this vaccine for their kids.

   So, naturally, the American Taliban has vowed to fight it. One Family Research Council analyst says the vaccine will encourage young women to have sex, which is kind of like saying plus-size clothes make kids fat. The best way to prevent HPV, they say, is to inoculate oneself against reality — you know, to promote abstinence-only education. These are the geniuses who brought us the health textbook, approved last fall in Texas, that cites "get plenty of rest" as one of the top eight ways to avoid STDs. Condoms are mentioned only in the teachers' edition. Talk about throwing the baby in with the bathwater.

   These people are not just clueless — they are cynical, even cruel. They are saying, "We support a culture of life, except for your slutty daughters who deserve to get cancer." They are the people who hack off giant chunks of reproductive freedom by forcing girls to get a parent or judge's permission for an abortion and trying to criminalize the act of spiriting a pregnant kid into a more welcoming state. Surely they're in the war room right now, scheming up similar roadblocks for this vaccine. They are fiddling with the very lives of teenagers — who, hello, don't vote.

   The Family Research Council's Bridget Maher mentioned only "young women" as potential victims — that is, abusers — of this sex serum. It's a paternalistic nod that cleverly also alludes to a terrifying threat: the Horny Girl. She, after all, is even scarier than the Male Predator, who'd fancy the vaccine a source of total sexual immunity.

   That's what this is about: fear. Exploiting it, manufacturing it where necessary. Why else — where else? — would a curb against cancer be cast as a scourge? The more power the religious right gains, the more they have to trump up the threats against them, the menaces to society that only they can beat back. In reality, of course, "Christians" have never been less "under attack." The President is their bitch, for chrissake. So whenever they need to keep their constituents from becoming complacent, they unleash a new boogeyman: science, same-sex marriage, stem cells, Sadaam.

    But the power-drunk right is the real monster, and it's coming for our kids.