This started popping up the other day, apparently started by an X posting by Skeptic Michael Shermer, citing a 2023 Heritage Foundation video that I haven’t seen, and no one has linked to. I’d like to see that or a transcript as confirmation. If true, this is outrageous:
Bolding mine
This lead to comments elsewhere, like this:
If there’s really a Heritage Foundation video saying what is claimed, it ought to be proclaimed loud and clear. Can you think of a more mobilizing isue than “they want to take your right to sex away!”
Even with hard-right conservatives being fine with that, this strikes me as a sure vote-loser issue.
So if some barely-known activist at a right-wing think tank proposes the same insane idea, unfortunately, I don’t see it making the slightest difference in an election.
Only it’s not some barely-known activist – it’s arguably one of the most important Right wing Think Tanks around – the Heritage Foundation, which does a lot of steering of Conservative views and actions, and the statement emerged with their imprimatur. Publicizing this won’t change the minds of True Believers, but it’ll certainly get the attention of and motivate independents and fence-sitters.
The conservative mindset thrives on the concept of “I’m like this, and so should everyone else be. And if they can’t, they should just accept their lot in life.”
I thought that this meant things like “wear madras slacks and do insider deals on the golf course,” but I see it also extends to dyspareunia in the bedroom.
Non-practicing Catholic here. This sounds to me to be more like Catholic doctrine. Sex needn’t be for the purpose of procreating, but it must be open to procreation. So sexy times for jollies is fine if it ends with PiV and the only contraception used is the rhythm method. No pregnancy occurs? Not a problem as long as you didn’t stack the deck in opposition to what is proper and godly.
No masturbation, no gay sex, no finishing anywhere but in her hoo-ha. You damned well better not deny God the opportunity to make a baby if he feels like it.
Anyway, I think this “movement” would likely clarify it thusly, and this is pretty standard and long-expressed orthodoxy for the “can’t just mind their own goddam business regarding religious stuff” chapter of the right wing. Prolly doesn’t gain or lose them many votes.
No. God made the woman infertile. The couple did nothing to prevent pregnancy.
Also, wasn’t there something about God making a barren woman have a baby?
I take it more as the now-normalized POV of certain “traditional” Christian Conservatives. The sort that extoll “tradwives,” and would work quite well in various dystopian post-apocalypse screeds. Basically, it’s more that women shouldn’t have recreational sex. Instead, women should be married to men, and spend their entire lives supporting the man in the home. If the man needs sex, well, he has needs, it isn’t recreational for them - and certainly not for any disgusting (their words, absolutely not MINE) and if she should be pregnant, should enjoy it as God’s will.
Thus ruling out anyone who doesn’t fit this rigid defintion of sex and gender roles from expressing themselves, or their God forbid, having chilcren or adopting.
Meanwhile, men will be off doing manly things, war, deep thought, piety now that they’ve been relieved of the burden of needing to do anything more that expell their seed to unleash their obviously superior intellect and will to dominate.
(metric ton of sarcasm in my analysis in case it wasn’t obvious again)
So more about reinforcing the roles they want rather than any actual attack on recreational sex FOR THEM.
Sex should only be for procreation, not recreation they say. Yet in the same breath they castigate women who actually did what they wanted, had a baby after sex, but then the other partner in the sex act subsequently abandoned them. Make up your mind, I say. Applaud the single mothers for procreating after sex.
It’s almost like they are giving the absent fathers a pass on this whole thing… (ya think?)
