Only because you social liberals were sex-obsessed first. It was only because you lobbied–hard, and ultimately successfully–for the normalization and legalization of (in roughly chronological order) divorce, contraception, cohabitation, abortion, pornography, and homosexuality that we’ve then had to lobby against these things. In this way, “you social conservatives are so sex-obsessed” is the moral and political equivalent of “stop hitting yourself.”
The Orthosphere 
Um, presumably they had to be outlawed before they were legalized, so I would say that your side started the hitting.
Oh, my. How awful that degrading, destructive, and anti-human practices were outlawed. What an awful society our ancestors must have had, and how fortunate we are to live in such enlightened times, when one can easily abandon one’s family without cause or reason, when children can be murdered in their mother’s womb, and when we can instantly access terabyte upon terabyte of photos and videos of every nightmarish perversion known.
Right, oh Formless One?
You presume wrongly. Many of those vices listed were never legally outlawed anyway.
Well, not nationally anyway. On the heels of the Mortal Combat ruling a couple years ago Cal Thomas wrote in his syndicated column that it is simply unbelievable that Thomas Jefferson, in his advocacy for freedom of speech and of press, intended the protection of violent, sadistic and sexually explicit imagery (that is a paraphrase). Thomas was right in principle, wrong in fact.
What Jefferson and others intended by the first amendment was to protect the states in their right to impose moral constraints within their own jurisdictions, upon their own citizens and residents. Or not. The federal government has no business, nor authority, to enforce the moral standards, such as they are, of, say, Massachusetts upon the citizens of Oklahoma, et al. But this is nevertheless the tool by which Statist agitators for licenteousness have overthrown one of this nation’s fundamental founding principles – local self-government. Hell even states now pit themselves against their own communities, and communities against their own residents, as they align themselves with our federal taskmasters: Of the government, by the government, for the government.
Point is, virtually all of the above were at one time outlawed by state, and/or, local authorities (as is constitutionally permitted). amorphous is right in that. Where he is wrong is in his assertion that, ahem, therefore(!), our side started it. No, our side finished it when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted as the supreme and fundamental law. The fight we’re engaged in now was started by the progressive agitators who, over the course of time and things, managed to wriggle their own into positions of power and influence within the government. The aggressors in the fight are clearly the progressives. That is why we look, from their perspective, so pitifully disoriented and unorganized; because we’re on the defensive side of the fight still trying to get our bearings back having been blindsided by their initial barrage of heavy punches.
Without the restraints imposed by the federal Constitution, the sky is the limit for progressives. Those restraints must be enforced by the states and the people because the government certainly isn’t going to restrain itself. In short, one answer to our situation is for states to simply nullify unauthorized federal laws.
@a.morphous we outlawed those things before liberalism existed, so we cannot be said to have started anything. How could we have started a war with something which did not yet exist?
To a liberal, liberalism is the “state of nature”. Every civilization is comprised on people who, even unknown to themselves, desire “freedom” from moral constraint. To a liberal, this has always been.
For the time being, social liberals call the shots, while social conservatives merely react. The boot used to be on the other foot and we don’t know for how long ‘the time being’ will last.
Meanwhile:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Another point in support of the main post and against a.morphous is that normalization is not the same thing as legalization, tho’ the two are of course related. However, the left will not be satisfied until everyone approves of all the listed items, and it wishes to outlaw (yes, outlaw) disapproval and refusal to get with the program. ‘Twould be tedious to list all the recent marriage service providers who have been sued and/or driven out of business because they would not say that two men or two women can be married. That’s what “non-discrimination” ordinances that include “sexual orientation” are all about. Or what about laws concerning renting. Who inserted “family or marital status” as a protected class into laws governing whom a property owner must rent to? Hint: It wasn’t the sex-obsessed conservatives. That could have been left to vary with, you know, private decision making about whether you wanted to rent your apartment to a guy who was shacking up with his girlfriend. And we could go on to list the attempts to outlaw “hate speech” (successful in Europe, England, and Canada, even without some other “underlying crime”) on these subjects, laws that say you have to continue to employ a man who wears drag and insists that you refer to him by a female name, and so on and so forth.
The libertarian posture of the libertine left is always just that–a posture, a pose. The end-game is totalitarian, and that becomes clearer with every passing day. Sometimes I’m bemused by the question of how many on the left really believe that freedom is what they stand for and how many realize that it’s a lie.
As for abortion, of course there is the whole issue of aggression against the child there. Is our current society sex-obsessed because it still retains laws against killing five-year-olds, and five-year-olds are the result of sex? Guess not.
Zero-sum Game
I would say, rather, that we conservatives are family-obsessed, as it is the bedrock of civilzation; and, that our understanding of proper sexuality and advocacy for sexual morality only flows from our love of family and commitment to preserving it.
Let’s not argue here about whether contraception etc is good or not. I was addressing only the original point, which was that somehow liberals started the conflict over them. The bans on contraception, homosexuality, etc obviously had to be in place before liberals could rebel against them, and the bans presumably indicate a concern if not obsession with sex on the part of the traditional powers that tried to regulate it. Presumably the ban on (eg) sodomy in the Old Testament wouldn’t be there if there weren’t a lot of people enjoying sodomy. They, I would assume, were sex-obsessed, but so equally are the powers who tried to put a stop to all that.
Presumably the ban on (eg) sodomy in the Old Testament wouldn’t be there if there weren’t a lot of people enjoying sodomy
As a matter of fact, I don’t know that this is true. Doubtless at times there were many people participating in sodomy (Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.). But there are a lot of laws in the Old Testament, and I don’t think they were all handed down by God in direct reaction to specific events as much as they were meant as a general guide to show people what a healthy society is supposed to look like.
They, I would assume, were sex-obsessed, but so equally are the powers who tried to put a stop to all that.
No way, unless you want to say that anyone trying to criminalize anything is “obsessed”. If a killer is trying to murder my family, and I want laws against that, it’s pretty misleading to call me “obsessed” with the issue of murder. You used the word “concerned” earlier, and I agree that that’s a more appropriate term.
Overall the OP is great. Another way of saying it is to make it clear that conservatives are not the aggressors in the culture wars. We had a nice, stable way of life, and it was Leftists that aggressed, not us.
Let’s just admit that sex (more accurately, family structure) is really important, so neither liberals nor conservatives are being silly to devote a lot of attention and passion on it.
I can agree with that. But it goes against the spirit of the original post.
Presumably the ban on (eg) sodomy in the Old Testament wouldn’t be there if there weren’t a lot of people enjoying sodomy.
The ban wouldn’t be necessary if people weren’t. So the sodomites started it.
Moving forward in time:
The bans on contraception, homosexuality, etc obviously had to be in place before liberals could rebel against them, and the bans presumably indicate a concern if not obsession with sex on the part of the traditional powers that tried to regulate it.
Yes, but it was the rebellion that caused the backlash, not vice-versa. If you want to call it an obsession, fine. People tend to get testy when the beating heart of society is under mortal assault.
Imagine a conversation like this about money. Some people are obsessed about money. Some are not. But all just and advanced societies have imposed rules, norms, and reasonable expectations about money and the financial system, some dating back to the most ancient times, and we abolish all those standards at our peril. The alternative is a world where money can buy anything and the only crime is not having any money, as in the Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny). That story ends badly.
Yes, but people didn’t keep the same rules for money in 20th century America as they did in the ancient world. Usury, for instance, used to be a crime, now it’s a business. Similarly, the rules for sexual behavior (never uniform across culture anyway) are changing, not disappearing. Homosexuality is in, spousal rape is out. Seems like an improvement to me, but whether you agree or not, the point is that there are still rules, because that’s just the kind of creatures we are.
Others elsewhere have contended that the sin of usury and the failure of Christians but especially Catholics to zealously combat it is directly linked to the general breakdown of the social order. After all both Sandra Fluke and Loyd Blankfein want us to subsidize their individual choices. In fact it seems that the social libertines have been pretty late to the game. Capitalists have always enjoyed social welfare in this country, yes even during that gilded age of capitalism in the late 19th century, when for the “common good” the taxpayers were called upon to subsidize the railroads.
Also be sure to recall in the Inferno that the usurers and the sodomites were condemned to the same level of hell.
Usury, for instance, used to be a crime, now it’s a business.
But usury actually should still be a crime, and the fact that it is not is terrifically socially destructive. It is no accident that usury and sodomy are close cousins in the Christian tradition.
> Yes, but people didn’t keep the same rules for money in 20th century
> America as they did in the ancient world.
> Usury, for instance, used to be a crime, now it’s a business.
You mean that in some countries in the middle ages only jews could practice usury. In the ancient world (Rome for example), usury was allowed, althought negatively viewed (source: “De Agricultura”, ancient roman text)
> Seems like an improvement to me, but whether you agree or not,
> the point is that there are still rules, because that’s just the kind of creatures we are.
Yes, that’s right. We had the rules of God for a perfectly ordered society. And now we have your satanic rules, and I’ll be happy when your satanic world collapses. I’m pretty excited about the prospects of, for example, Belgian liberals having to live under Sharia. It’s a deserving punishment to have a far stricter code for people that rebelled against God.
“… Seems like an improvement to me.”
Yes, we all know by now what your vision of the good is. And according to the popularity-seeking Pope you should be encouraged to follow that goodness while fighting against the evil that is its opposite … as you yourself conceive them, of course. Congratulations!; you and Francis seem to be in agreement on the point. And yet …
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
I can’t recall any society, certainly not any society worthy of the name Christian, not any society worthy of the name of any of the world’s great religions, where usury and spousal rape were viewed as praiseworthy, where criticism of them was considered a mark of rank bigotry, or where florists or bakers were forced out of business for refusing to join in the celebration those activities.
Spousal “rape”? There’s no such thing. Intercourse is part of marriage. Through marriage, a man and a woman become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). How can one flesh rape itself?
Having said that, I will certainly agree that it is possible for a man to engage in rape-like behavior with his wife; a good husband will not unreasonably force himself upon his wife. By the same token, a good wife will not unreasonably restrict her husband’s access to her.
The introduction of spousal “rape” into the legal canon is yet another indicator of how bad things have gotten.
Thanks for supporting my point. This used to be the model of marriage, and now it isn’t — the partners in a marriage retain their individuality and autonomy and thus the capability to have that violated. To my mind, the newer model is a better fit to a reality that the old model tried to hide, causing much harm.
The “newer model is a better fit to reality,” you say? I guess that’s why the percentage of people getting married in the first place continues to decline as the percentage of divorces has risen to unprecedented highs.
What a lovely reality you prefer: the ability to one-sidedly dissolve a marriage and destroy the lives of both spouses and their children, all while doing untold harm to family formation and therefore to society. Radical personal autonomy is an abject failure that has done nothing but increase misery.
When are you and your fellow travelers going to wake up to the nightmare your policies have wrought? Feminism—and while we’re at it, Civil Rights—have been unmitigated disasters. Both have introduced suffering far in excess of that generated by the systems they replaced, with worse results all around.
The formless one’s (idiotic) introduction of spousal rape into the discussion was, on its face, unworthy of comment acknowledging its (pre-modern) existence as a widespread problem. Hence my ignoring it as such. Formless-one is duped, by his dependency on the narrative his dumb_ss education has taught him, into believing he is an “independent thinker.” Here again I contend that he is a juvenile delinquent posing as someone “old enough.” …