Blood oath

The final instalment of the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn: Part 2, premiered in Los Angeles last month, and the streets were thronged with its core audience of teenage girls and middle-aged gay men. But as the handsome cast strode up the red carpet, they were greeted by more than just hormonal screams. A group of religious conservatives showed up with placards and loud voices. The head of security rushed over to confront them, assuming they were there to protest against the film’s mix of ‘satanic’ vampires and dark eroticism. But he was wrong. The demonstrators had come to cheer the stars and promote the movie. It turns out that some on America’s religious right think that Twilight is one of the best tools they’ve got in the fight against legalised abortion.

America’s religious conservatives have traditionally disliked fantasy fiction like Twilight, and it’s not hard to see why. The saga is about an everyday girl called Bella who falls in love with a dashing vampire called Edward. After several adventures with a race of hot werewolves who seem contractually obliged to take their tops off every three minutes, the couple finally marry and produce a baby fang of their very own. Some fundamentalists are concerned that all this occult sexuality is a gateway to devilry. Literally. The preacher and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson claims to have met a girl who was possessed by a demon while watching Twilight.

But Robertson’s paranoia is starting to look old-fashioned. Kate Bryan, the young pro-life activist who organised the Breaking Dawn demonstration, told me that Twilight contains ‘elements of chastity’ that encourage more responsible behaviour among teens. Vampirism is a metaphor for sex and at the beginning of their relationship the lovers struggle with an adolescent sexual impulse that could prove fatal — there’s always a risk that Edward will lose control  in flagrante and suck his woman dry.