# Voting with your Vagina **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 2, 2009, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626 "2009-09-02T12:21:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/81 "2009-09-06T00:09:32Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Okay so, as you should have noticed, whether the Quiverfull movement is or isn’t doing this is irrelevant to the thread. Neither I nor anyone cares. Getting a bit testy, are we? Did you start a thread to advocate addressing an action that no human being on earth is taking, or do you believe that someone on earth is taking this action? If you answer the later and not the former, then it seems the question of whether the Quiverfull movement is doing what you claim they’re doing _is_ relevant. > [@](#): > > Secondly, the Wikipedia states, under the section called **Motivations** : That paragraph you quoted makes no mention of fundamentalists at all, only of conservatives. Perhaps you think that the words conservative and fundamentalist are synonyms. If so, you’re wrong. In any case, I’ve just removed that paragraph from the Wikipedia page, so your evidence that the Quiverfull movement has an express goal of creating a voting bloc is now gone. Of course, if you wanted such evidence, you could retype the paragraph into Wikipedia. For that matter, you could edit the page so as to say that the Quiverfull movement bombed the Capitol Building last Tuesday, or that they’re having sex with kangaroos. That’s the great thing about Wikipedia: anyone can post anything, regardless of whether it’s true of false. That’s why most people view a citation to Wikipedia as being worth less than a bag of dingo droppings. That said, let’s actually discuss your proposal. I disagree with it, because as a Christian my worldview naturally demands maximum human freedom and says that government exists to protect that freedom. You obviously hold a contrary viewpoint in which the government decides what people should do, and where anyone who disobeys the government is “cheating” and can therefore be punished. Of course you don’t say so in as many words. You demand that we “police that sort of activity” is an turn of phrase that would make George Orwell proud. Suppose you instead said, “the government should use forced abortion, infanticide, or forced re-education to eliminate inferior people”. Doesn’t sound so nice any more, does it? Yet the two sentences in quotes mean exactly the same thing. If a woman chooses to have ten children and you deem her unfit to do so, there’s only three ways to ‘police’ her ‘activity’. You can exterminate her children before birth, also known as forced abortion; we could call this the Hitler method. You can exterminate her children after birth, also known as infanticide; we could call this the Hitler II method. Or you could forcibly remove her children and have them be raised in an environment chosen by the government, also known as re-education; we could call this the Stalin/Mao method. So, if after considering what your own position would really entail, you still hold it, please tell whether you advocate Hitler, Hitler II, or Stalin/Mao. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/82 "2009-09-06T21:03:14Z")
Does the issue get more complicated if instead of having children in the regular way (which it seem is important to the Quiverfull movement) they were making clones (à la Star Wars)? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2009, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/83 "2009-09-06T21:47:00Z")
> [@bri1600bv](#): > > I think some are seeing political representation as a racial/groupl spoils system. My group gets this if we outvote that group so we need more and more citizens in our group to get more and more stuff. > > That’s one reason perhaps the gov’t was supposed to be limited and a reason for minority protections in the bill of Rights. > > Once someone has kids, there is no ability of the gov’t to determine “why” they had them. Do they like large families? Or is it something more sinister, perhaps? What should they do? Put them on trial and make the families prove they don’t have ulterior motives? It’s ridiculous. > > Can you imagine if conservatives started railing against large minority families and how they were subverting democracy? Well so what about prosecuting people who endorse mass-breeding for political DOS attacks as treasonous? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/84 "2009-09-07T02:55:21Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Well so what about prosecuting people who endorse mass-breeding for political DOS attacks as treasonous? The phrase “mass-breeding for political DOS attacks” is meaningless, as several people have already pointed out to you. Anyway, having children is not treason, nor is encouraging others to have children. It says so in the [Constitution](http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/constitution/text.html), Article III, section 3. So what about instead addressing the actual objections to your position that have been raised? ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/85 "2009-09-07T06:41:13Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > Does the issue get more complicated if instead of having children in the regular way (which it seem is important to the Quiverfull movement) they were making clones (à la Star Wars)? No need to invent sci-fi scenarios when you can just take adoption. Some of your celebrities are going at it with heart, although none I believe as much as the German man who threatened to adopt thousands of people from Paraguay because he was pissed off at Germany (and once adopted they’d automatically get permission to move to Germany and get full range of benefits). And actually the same goes with immigration, which is sometimes spoken off as a method to engineer a different voting public. Sage Rat. How do you propose that the government should determine peoples’ reason for having children, so it can administer forced sterilisation of undesirably individuals? What if the added voting power is merely one of a number of reasons but not the most important reason for having children? What if they see it merely as an added benefit? What if the mother changes her mind once she sees the child and decide that love after all is the only reason – does she stop being a traitor? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/86 "2009-09-07T15:55:16Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Sage Rat. How do you propose that the government should determine peoples’ reason for having children, so it can administer forced sterilisation of undesirably individuals? In his defense, I think **Rat** has already answered that in another thread where he enthusiastically endorsed torture as a “very effective” way to get perfectly accurate information. So if a woman that he deems inferior starts claiming that she loves her children, he’d presumably say that a bit of waterboarding would fix the problem. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/87 "2009-09-07T17:29:53Z")
We can have opinions about what the Quiverfull movement means to the kids being raised in it (where the kids seem less about love and more about sacrificing autonomy to God), but I don’t think it’s reasonable to view those kids produced as genuine pawns or “ghost voters” as it were for their parents’ interests. Quiverfull parents are rolling the dice. I think it’s generally pretty likely that some of their kids will reject their parents’ angle, maybe even to an extreme degree, so they could be bringing more “opponents” into the world through attempts to bring more “friends” in. I believe I’ve read about the Duggars specifically that the eldest son intends to have a couple of kids, not a marching band. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/88 "2009-09-07T18:19:35Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Sage Rat. How do you propose that the government should determine peoples’ reason for having children, so it can administer forced sterilisation of undesirably individuals? Does China pick out people to force sterilization on? Where did I ever say anything about targeted enforcement? The question in the OP was whether the ability to take advantage of the democratic system would be an argument in favor of capping the US population. That’s the entire US, not just a select group of people. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/89 "2009-09-07T18:55:30Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Quiverfull parents are rolling the dice. I think it’s generally pretty likely that some of their kids will reject their parents’ angle, maybe even to an extreme degree, so they could be bringing more “opponents” into the world through attempts to bring more “friends” in. This is the first statistic I’ve found, but it appears that [80% of children join their parents’ party](http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/8/22/125841.shtml?s=ic). ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/90 "2009-09-07T19:03:55Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > This is the first statistic I’ve found, but it appears that [80% of children join their parents’ party](http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/8/22/125841.shtml?s=ic). It’s not enough for them to join their parents’ party, they need to join and then to start churning out babies who join. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/91 "2009-09-07T19:28:44Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > It’s not enough for them to join their parents’ party, they need to join and then to start churning out babies who join. 99% of people continue in their parents religion. Somewhere between 60-90% continue on in the same denomination. [Data](http://books.google.com/books?id=yX3qTZUfLP4C&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=percent+of+children+same+religious+belief+parents&source=web&ots=y4PC9Sa629&sig=0L6x90JcyLOoqOrYZ6A2zCM-7KQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA50,M1) ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/92 "2009-09-07T19:53:53Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > 99% of people continue in their parents religion. Somewhere between 60-90% continue on in the same denomination. [Data](http://books.google.com/books?id=yX3qTZUfLP4C&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=percent+of+children+same+religious+belief+parents&source=web&ots=y4PC9Sa629&sig=0L6x90JcyLOoqOrYZ6A2zCM-7KQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA50,M1) There’s a big difference between having the same religion and churning out 18+ kids. My brothers are the same religion as my parents (Catholic) but only one of the three has more than 2 kids. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/93 "2009-09-07T19:56:50Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > There’s a big difference between having the same religion and churning out 18+ kids. My brothers are the same religion as my parents (Catholic) but only one of the three has more than 2 kids. Yes, but in the case of the Quiverfull movement (as an example), a high number of children is a specifically large part of the teaching on both a religious and political front. It’s likely that most of their kids will keep to it. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/94 "2009-09-07T20:00:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Yes, but in the case of the Quiverfull movement (as an example), a high number of children is a specifically large part of the teaching on both a religious and political front. It is in Catholicism, too. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/95 "2009-09-07T20:15:07Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > It is in Catholicism, too. I fully admit that it will likely fall off in time (or more specifically with affluence), but I suspect that you could get a good 3-5 generations in there. At 4 generations, each popping out 10 kids per couple, you’re going to get 625X the number of descendants as there currently are in the Quiverfull movement. Most Americans are just barely past the replenishment rate, so the rest of us will still be at however many of us there is. So if, for instance, there’s 100,000 Quiverfulls and 300,000,000 non, we’ll end up at 62,500,000 to 300,000,000. That’s a massively large voting block given that the 300,000,000 are going to still be fairly evenly split between parties. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/96 "2009-09-07T22:00:28Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I fully admit that it will likely fall off in time (or more specifically with affluence), but I suspect that you could get a good 3-5 generations in there. I just doubt it. It’s too hard. The Duggars are “news” because they are so unusual. I’d expect, like American Catholics, next generations of Duggars might have the occasional family with twenty kids, but the rest won’t. There are reasons it’s so unusual. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/97 "2009-09-07T22:14:01Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I just doubt it. It’s too hard. The Duggars are “news” because they are so unusual. > > I’d expect, like American Catholics, next generations of Duggars might have the occasional family with twenty kids, but the rest won’t. There are reasons it’s so unusual. That’s why I used 10 rather than 20. Historically, I believe, 10 children was a fairly common figure per family. Just, usually they all died before reaching maturity. With modern day technology (and UHC on the way!) birthing and raising 10 children shouldn’t be all that difficult a task. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/98 "2009-09-07T22:28:30Z")
Not a difficult task to raise 10 kids? What kind of drugs are you on? Maybe if you just pop out the kids and let the foster care system raise them. But if you’re going to indoctrinate the kids into your cult, you’ve got to actually indoctrinate them. How many kids do you have? How many poopy diapers have you changed at 2:00 in the morning? How many colicy babies have you held? How many PTA meetings have you attended? How many little league games? If all you care about is popping out kids and not letting them die, you don’t have to do any of this stuff. But if you want your kids to continue in your footsteps, then you have to take care of them enough that they’d stop to piss on you if you were on fire. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/99 "2009-09-07T22:33:49Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > That’s why I used 10 rather than 20. Historically, I believe, 10 children was a fairly common figure per family. Just, usually they all died before reaching maturity. With modern day technology (and UHC on the way!) birthing and raising 10 children shouldn’t be all that difficult a task. Then why don’t more people do it? Raising 10 kids is expensive and extremely hard on the woman’s body. No amount of UHC makes that go away. And since the Duggars aren’t marrying one another, they have to find people outside the family who are willing to become brood mares, or stud ponies, for God. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just think it’s unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626/100 "2009-09-08T14:20:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Not a difficult task to raise 10 kids? What kind of drugs are you on? > > Maybe if you just pop out the kids and let the foster care system raise them. But if you’re going to indoctrinate the kids into your cult, you’ve got to actually indoctrinate them. > > How many kids do you have? How many poopy diapers have you changed at 2:00 in the morning? How many colicy babies have you held? How many PTA meetings have you attended? How many little league games? > > If all you care about is popping out kids and not letting them die, you don’t have to do any of this stuff. But if you want your kids to continue in your footsteps, then you have to take care of them enough that they’d stop to piss on you if you were on fire. Figure that during the peak of Chinese population explosion, there was an average of 5 children per family. I would like to think that living in one of the wealthiest nations in the world forty years later would be able to make it manageable for a properly motivated religious nut to be able to double that output. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-with-your-vagina/508626.md?page=6)