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[Kagus]

Oh, I figured it all out earlier:

Better nutrition improves educational results.
Better education improves overall health and financial outlook.
Better health and financial outlook greatly reduces the likelihood of miscarriage or deliberate abortion.
NOT supporting better access to food, school, and medical care means you don't care about unborn babies therefore all republicans should be in favor of those things!

Checkmate!

They only care til they're born.

But that's just it, by not taking the steps outlined above, they're raising the rates of miscarriage and abortion, which kills the unborn babies they're supposed to be protecting!

Also, Max™'s major failing in that argument is taking scientific study results as given. You're going to need a much more solid connection between nutrition and education, and education and abortion, before trying to argue that people should pay attention to those things.

And you're also making a rather gross assumption that American nutrition and education aren't already the best in the world. At the moment, the only thing known for certain is that institutes of higher learning are breeding grounds for liberals, and liberals only make things worse. You've got a lot more work ahead of you than a snappy little summary like that one.

[Hanslanda]

That's all liberal mainstream media lies! I'm going to go watch the word of god Fox news! Which is definitely not operated by the same exact companies that run CNN and all the liberal news outlets.

[Max™]

Oh, I figured it all out earlier:

Better nutrition improves educational results.
Better education improves overall health and financial outlook.
Better health and financial outlook greatly reduces the likelihood of miscarriage or deliberate abortion.
NOT supporting better access to food, school, and medical care means you don't care about unborn babies therefore all republicans should be in favor of those things!

Checkmate!

They only care til they're born.

But that's just it, by not taking the steps outlined above, they're raising the rates of miscarriage and abortion, which kills the unborn babies they're supposed to be protecting!

Also, Max™'s major failing in that argument is taking scientific study results as given. You're going to need a much more solid connection between nutrition and education, and education and abortion, before trying to argue that people should pay attention to those things.

And you're also making a rather gross assumption that American nutrition and education aren't already the best in the world. At the moment, the only thing known for certain is that institutes of higher learning are breeding grounds for liberals, and liberals only make things worse. You've got a lot more work ahead of you than a snappy little summary like that one.

Nah, if I think too much and smarten it up then it will be sure to fail, gotta make it a blunt appeal to emotion: stress and poor nutrition and lack of education and healthcare kills babies, if women are only vessels to birth children then you want the best goddamn vessels possible right?

[wierd]

Missing an important part of the conservative ethos:

Pregnancy is both essential for new beautiful babies to be born, and also a punishment for having sex.  This is why non-procreative sex is bad, and why all babies should be carried to term, even if the mother cannot afford the child. (Should have thought of that BEFORE going out and screwing like a WHORE! --- et al.)

Couple to that, "We dont want to make it EASY on wayward women and their lustful, selfish ways!" (EG, "welfare qeens", et al.) and you end up needing JUST enough suffering that it is immensely undesirable from the woman's point of view, AND sufficiently care giving that the baby is always born happy and healthy (and then adopted to a "GODLY, UPRIGHT CHRISTIAN HOME!")


Granted, that is a bombastic caricature of the real ethos, but all the parts are there all the same.   In my defense, I raise the dread spectre of Poe's Law.

[Lord Shonus]

That's one hell of a strawman, there.

[Kagus]

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/19/trump-greg-gianforte-guardian-reporter-assault

It's not really that surprising, honestly. With any luck, this marks the beginning of the transformation of American politics into a subdivision of the WWE, with politicians trading in their unassuming business suits for skin-tight leotards in intense primary colors. If you don't have a signature move that represents your family values, are you really even a patriot?

[Dunamisdeos]

*Weird's bit about conservative ethos and pregnancy*

TAKING A PAGE FROM EARLIER IN THE THREAD HERE, I AM DESCRIBING A VIEW, NOT ENDORSING MY OWN.

It's generally considered less of a "punishment" aka being taught a lesson for doing something bad, and more of a natural consequence for committing the act of reproduction. And it's less that all non-procreative sex is bad (and let me tell you sexy funtime is 100% not prohibited by the bible no matter what uncomfortable old people want to tell you) and more that sex can produce a baby and often does because while contraceptives exist people are still people and make irresponsible mistakes.
 
To these people their motivation is that irresponsible sex results in babies that may not deserve to be brought into the world under those conditions, and also all fetuses are babies. Therefore the only practical consideration is that you are avoiding the consequences of your own irresponsibility by ending human life. Ergo, if you are not responsible enough to prevent this scenario from occurring, you are not responsible enough to have sex. If you are married, you can relax because you are financially and emotionally stable enough to support a child.

This mode of thought naturally assumes that everyone's life is a stable, physically healthy journey towards happy lifelong marriage and a nuclear family with financial stability. This of course flies in the face of reality for quite a few people.

[Rolan7]

I'm glad it's not generally considered a punishment now.  I'd say that 10 years ago it was. 

How else does one justify abstinence-only sex education, a complete ban on abortions up to day-after pills (life at conception), then blaming teenage mothers as "welfare queens" when they try to survive the resulting situation?  The Moral Majority and others in Congress were almost explicitly judgemental of "impure" women.  It even plays into Prosperity Gospel, that idea that fortunate people must be pious to be so blessed (and unfortunate people must have angered Him).

It was just so hypocritical and gross, but I'm glad we're moving past all that...
*Kavenaugh confirmed*

[Dunamisdeos]

Oh geez the prosperity thing. Geez I hated that. I'm so glad it's lost prevalence as time went on. That specific movement, anyway, there are still enough holier-than-thous who think their life is better because God thinks they are more special than you.

If we are being completely honest, abstinence only was about parents who were uncomfortable with the idea of their children reaching sexual maturity and wanted to avoid addressing it at all costs. MOST of my friends from that time who went through that in their family had children out of wedlock and are in a worse place for it. Though they do as well as any other single parent and certainly live their lives with decency and dignity, it's feels like they were given a less than fair chance by having that education withheld from them.

I think there are plenty of people on the conservative side to whom it is about avoiding responsibility for that decision. It meets up with the whole you-can't-criticize-my-parenting-choices to make a perfect storm of obstinacy.

[Lord Shonus]

Abstinence-only sex education was pushed in the (false) belief that anything else would make young people think sex was consequence-free, thus encouraging them to sleep around and make babies that they were not equipped to care for. This was coupled with a belief that contraception is much less effective than it really is.

A total ban on all forms of abortion is fueled by a belief that there is no difference between a just-fertilized embryo and a squalling infant - both of them are people, and destroying either is straight-up murder.

"Welfare Queens" is not a term I've ever heard used against teenage mothers as a class. The term was originally coined to describe Linda Taylor, who actually was defrauding the system. There was later expansion of the term to cover any woman who swindled the system, and was heavily invested with situations that never existed (the most relevant here being a popular belief that some women were deliberately having as many children as they could to increase their benefits, which wouldn't even work), but this was always applied to a subset. The term has major unfortunate overtones, but those are racial rather than sexual - almost every time a specific woman was labeled a welfare queen, that woman was black.

[Trekkin]

I think there are plenty of people on the conservative side to whom it is about avoiding responsibility for that decision. It meets up with the whole you-can't-criticize-my-parenting-choices to make a perfect storm of obstinacy.

That raises an interesting question: who defines conservatism now? By the numbers, if there's one man who can be said to dictate its tenets it's probably Trump, but even avoiding that there's still the question of to what degree the True Conservative Gospel of Burke and Buckley to which apparatchiks and statesmen like to point is representative of how actual conservatives think, vote, and legislate.

[EnigmaticHat]

I don't know about nowadays*, but in the past religious fundamentalists have specifically tried to characterize recreational sex as bad.  The idea seems to that anything other than procreative sex between married couples is bad.  The goal is to set up a situation where if people want to get off they have to have babies at the same time.

There's a really weird subgroup of religious conservatives in the US that thinks Christians are in a religious war with other religions and the battlefield is reproduction rates.  The argument here is, "if we don't have enough babies we'll all be speaking arabic."  I think prior to 9/11 it was more about atheism, or protestants and Catholics competing, but after 9/11 muslims are the justification.  Not saying that's what all Christians believe but you know, around 1990-2010 the most zealous Christians had the loudest voices.

There's a more sinister effect to all this, although I don't know if its on purpose.  Basically pregnancy has serious physiological effects both before and after.  So if women are responsible for pleasing their husbands sexually (which AFAIK is the common fundamentalist interpretation of the bible) and birth control is prohibited, you get women who have like 10+ kids at the age of 30-40.  What does that mean?  It means that they've experiencing the physical consequences of pregnancy pretty much constantly for over a decade.  There's no way in hell someone like that is working, so combine the physical problems with financial dependency and a culture that frowns on divorce, and you have a group of women who are essentially helpless.  Its a situation that gives men control over women and is ripe for marital abuse.

*specifically I don't know what the alt-right/trump supporters think about sex.  So far they've had very little to say about consensual sex, it mostly seems to be rape apologists speaking up.  Which I guess is what happens when you try to make a functioning political movement out of online edgelords.

[Lord Shonus]

I don't know about nowadays*, but in the past religious fundamentalists have specifically tried to characterize recreational sex as bad.  The idea seems to that anything other than procreative sex between married couples is bad.  The goal is to set up a situation where if people want to get off they have to have babies at the same time.

Fundamentalist authors and clergy have been condemning this for decades. Not the married part, but the "procreation-only" part. It is notable that "those prudes don't enjoy sex" has been an attack on the "wrong" religion/sect for literal centuries.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah don't get me wrong, sex outside of marriage is still seen as taboo. But doin' it for funsies? The book of the bible "Song of Solomon" is seriously softcore porn. The guy is like "I want you, right now, and here's a specific itinerary" and she is like "No we are going to go to the garden to get up on some mandrake and go nuts in the flower beds". Presumably this occurs.

They are married is the only difference. The bible is super clear that you two are seriously allowed to enjoy each other, and creatively. Christians who say that only procreative sex is allowed are projecting their own problems.

[EnigmaticHat]

Then why the opposition to condoms?