Why did the US decide to not work on the HPV vaccine?

I'm listening to a podcast about the HPV vaccine and the development of it. One of the things that was mentioned was that the US was going to work on the HPV vaccine, but a decision was made not to. This was around 1974 or 1976, I think. The reasoning was that the American public, politicians, and the churches would not like the development of a vaccine against a sexually transmitted infection. So the job of developing and distributing the HPV vaccine fell on other countries like Australia and the UK. Does anyone know why they made this decision? And is this true?