What does it means to fight for a culture of life? Conservatives often direct the sentiment toward the unborn, but what about actionable compassion for folks facing the other side of life? Two recent cases have thrown this issue into sharp relief – one concerning the extension of pension benefits to a dying police officer’s domestic partner and the second regarding a conservative Christian group’s opposition to a cervical cancer vaccine on the grounds that it might promote promiscuity. In the holiday season, where we pay lip service to the values of compassion and caring for neighbors as ourselves, a look at these political skirmishes might help open our minds and hearts a bit further.

Lieutenant Laurel Hester is dying. The 23-year veteran of the Ocean County, New Jersey, prosecutor’s office can speak barely above a whisper because of the lung cancer that has spread across her body. “It’s very difficult to realize that the end of your career is near,” she says. “Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a police officer – I’ve always been very committed to change in the form of righting something that’s wrong.”

Now Laurel is in a final fight to right a wrong, working against the clock for the right to pass her $30,000-a-year pension on to her longtime partner Stacie Andree, so she can keep making the mortgage payments on their house. State workers in New Jersey are protected by domestic partner laws that ensure equal rights, but county workers are not covered – which leaves Laurel and Stacie out in the cold.

Ocean County elected official John Kelly told the Asbury Park Press that Ms. Hester’s dying request was not granted because it violated “the sanctity of marriage.” But this isn’t about the bogeyman of gay marriage in Laurel Hester’s eyes – she doesn’t even especially believe in marriage: “I think there’s something wrong with an institution that fails 50% of the time,” she says. “My own personal point of view is that gay marriage is not necessary, but gay rights are.”

When asked about the opposition she’s facing, Lieutenant Hester reflects and then says, “I think it’s fear – I think that most people who are bigoted have a fear that whatever it is they are fighting against is somehow going to rub off on them. I think that if people would spend the time to get to know each other, more often than not they would find that there are basic elements of truth and that people really aren’t that different … we should all be treated equally.”

Laurel Hester’s case throws the real issue into sharp relief – put aside distracting debates about gay marriage and focus instead on the season-lauded virtues of kindness and compassion. Her fellow officers are standing by her request – not because of culture wars or identity politics, but because they care about her as a person. This is an issue of equal rights under law and individual freedom, bedrock American values. Add to that the virtue of respecting a dying police officer’s wish, and you should have a civic no-brainer. But rigidly-partisan politics have a way of clouding people’s judgment.

Also across the river, the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company of Merck and the U.K’s Glaxo-Smithkline recently announced the development of vaccines for cervical cancer that have proven effective in preventing 70% of cases. This is cause for celebration. Cancer vaccines have been worked toward and dreamed about since Richard Nixon’s War on Cancer began more than 30 years ago, but the Christian conservative Family Research Council raised eyebrows when it recently drew a political line in the sand over the vaccine.

In a recent article in Fortune Magazine titled “The Coming Storm over a Cancer Vaccine,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins was quoted as saying that the vaccine “sends the wrong message,” because it could encourage promiscuity. (The HPV virus that causes cervical cancer is sexually transmitted.) Mr. Perkins explained in the article, “Our concern is that this vaccine will be marketed to a segment of the population that should be getting a message about abstinence.” This supposedly principled ideological opposition will not offer much comfort to the 270,000 women who die each year from the disease worldwide.

The vaccines are still pending FDA approval, but last week the non-profit, non-partisan Medical Institute for Sexual Health – a Texas-based organization that promotes abstinence, decided to support the vaccine after extensive study. “If there were a vaccine that prevented 70% cases of lung cancer, would I be against it? No.” said the Institute’s president, Dr. Gary Rose. “That still doesn’t mean I would be encouraging people to smoke or that it eliminates the dangers of smoking.” True, doctors’ Hippocratic Oath says “First, Do No Harm,” but Christian activists should be no less concerned about alleviating human suffering.

When President Bush ran in 2000 as a “compassionate conservative” it was an implicit acknowledgement that conservatives in the past had not been seen to care about the concerns of the poor, downtrodden, and disadvantaged. Bush understood that perception was holding his party back. The underlying issue did not end there, however, and clashes over stem-cell research have added to the perception that some conservatives are anti-science. But when culture wars start affecting people with cancer, it’s time to call foul. Too often, conservatives become liberal on issues when it affects them directly. We should not become a culture of victims, but we should have the common sense compassion and imagination that allows us to identify with people enduring hard times enough to want to alleviate their pain, provide them some comfort, and take preventive action if possible. That’s the spirit of the season, values that should guide us beyond politics, all year round.