# Why are conservatives so interested in controlling other people's sexuality? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 21, 2018, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950 "2018-03-21T05:47:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/21 "2018-03-21T16:32:46Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > A society where sex outside of marriage is stigmatized would have less poverty, less criminality, and less mental health problems. It would be somewhat repressive of sexual non conformists but everything comes with costs and benefits. “[R]epressive of sexual non-conformists” sounds like a bunch of swingers forced to be discreet. The reality is more like girls and women having to chose between keeping their babies and being allowed to stay in the family, women and girls ending up in sex work because they are unemployable in any other way, families having to shun errant children to provide an example for the others, marriages created in haste that become deeply unhappy and abusive with no real remedy, etc., etc. The cost to society is very, very high, but it’s concentrated into fewer people, people who made mistakes, so it’s possible to frame them as deserving their fate. Whereas the cost of more liberal sexual mores are more diffused. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/22 "2018-03-21T16:39:53Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > If religious people believe in these religious dictates, if they truly believed them, they wouldn’t feel like they could violate them as long as they didnt get caught. That violates what they supposedly live by. Its even more ridiculous when they hypocritically judge their non-religious counterparts for doing the very same thing. Ironically, without twisting their morality into pretzels in order to live with themselves. Never underestimate the ability of people to rationalize things in their favor. Conservatives seems particularly good at it. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/23 "2018-03-21T17:28:08Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > A society where sex outside of marriage is stigmatized would have less poverty, less criminality, and less mental health problems. It would be somewhat repressive of sexual non conformists but everything comes with costs and benefits. I’m in my 40s and have never been married. Can’t say avoiding “fornication”\* for my entire life would have done my mental health much good. The stress might even have turned me toward criminality and, in turn, poverty. But at least I would never have caused conservatives to gasp and clutch their pearls by having sex with another consenting adult. - That word is in quotes because I’m unable to take it seriously. It’s such an outdated concept, and I’m surprised on the vanishingly rare occasions I hear anyone actually use it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/24 "2018-03-21T19:07:38Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > A society where sex outside of marriage is stigmatized would have less poverty, less criminality, and less mental health problems. It would be somewhat repressive of sexual non conformists but everything comes with costs and benefits. Cite? Might be hard to find, since there have been no societies where this is the case. Our society, with increased rates of sex outside of marriage, has reduced crime rates - not that they are connected in anyway. Conservatives real view of this issue is shown by their continued support for the most blatant adulterer ever in the White House. Others have done it - both Republicans and Democrats - but only Trump brags about it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/25 "2018-03-21T19:13:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > You are asking why are conservatives conservative. If you go back 60 years or so, the current conservative views on sexuality were the norm. Sex outside marriage was bad, gay sex was not only bad but a sign of a mental disorder, and abortion was generally condemned. During the 60s and 70s, many of those traditional sexual mores went out the window. But if you were a conservative, i.e., you resit change, that didn’t happen for you. Were they really the norm, or were they just what people expressed through fear of condemnation? Censorship in the media contributed to a lot of this. Real married couples did not sleep in twin beds no matter what was shown on TV. There was plenty of porn circulating (nothing like today, of course, but still plenty,) plenty of adultery, plenty of sex before marriage. Back then nearly everyone but Lenny Bruce was a hypocrite about it, now only conservatives are. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/26 "2018-03-21T19:15:30Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > The fact that their religious moral code coincides with how they would probably choose to behave anyway makes it look like the code is right and they are righteous, but when it comes to the ‘moral code’ rules that are easier to break (adultery, masturbation, etc), the whole thing dissolves into nonsense, because religious people are no better at keeping that part of their moral code than nonreligious people. Yeah, let’s go back to the good old days of 500 years ago when the Pope had 10 children and a mistress or two. Give me that old time religion! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/27 "2018-03-21T19:17:08Z")
> [@George Orwell](#): > > Unlike Winston, [Julia] had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was: > > ‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simpIy sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’ Just picture the flags as red, white and blue. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/28 "2018-03-21T19:30:54Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > …If you go back 60 years or so, the current conservative views on sexuality were the norm… > [@Voyager](#): > > Were they really the norm, or were they just what people expressed through fear of condemnation? Censorship in the media contributed to a lot of this. Real married couples did not sleep in twin beds no matter what was shown on TV. There was plenty of porn circulating (nothing like today, of course, but still plenty,) plenty of adultery, plenty of sex before marriage. Back then nearly everyone but Lenny Bruce was a hypocrite about it, now only conservatives are. Perhaps I should have said “current conservative political views on sexuality”. Remember, it was a remarkable event when Reagan, a divorced man, was elected president. Twenty years early that would not have happened. Sure, there was plenty of extra-marital and pre-marital sex before 1960, but it was generally viewed as scandalous. The idea of gay marriage was unthinkable. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/29 "2018-03-21T19:44:11Z")
If I understand Jonathan Haidt correctly, he seems to say: 1. Morality is not a single unit, but a number of categories. 2. If you give people questionnaires where they have to make moral judgments about things in the various categories, conservatives mostly view all the categories as having about the same importance as each other, while liberals strongly rank the categories, giving much more weight to some categories and much less weight to others. I’m not sure whether that explains the idea of being more concerned and less concerned about specifically other people’s moral behaviour. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/30 "2018-03-21T19:56:40Z")
> [@DLuxN8R-13](#): > > [_ **N.B.** _ I posed this question in the “Ask A Conservative Asshole” thread several months ago, and it went unanswered and un-noticed; since I really am curious about this issue, I’m floating it as a new topic.] > > Why are conservatives so interested in controlling other people’s sexual behaviour? We, as a group, are not. It’s only the religious whackjobs that are. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/31 "2018-03-21T21:06:07Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I think deep in their hearts, conservatives don’t give two shits about any of this. But there is a vocal minority in the Republican camp that really really really really hates abortion and same sex marriage. Republicans learned long ago that they could harvest cheap votes quite easily by giving lip service to being against abortion, so that’s what they did. Just Darwinian selection, those that expressed the desire to end abortion survived, those who didn’t, didn’t. This is why you see Republican congressmen telling their mistresses to get abortions, they simply don’t care about the issue other than the easy votes they get from it. Totally ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/32 "2018-03-21T21:45:31Z")
But everybody (well, everybody sane) cares whether the other guy is allowed to murder. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/33 "2018-03-21T21:47:21Z")
It almost seems like, aside from bestiality or other paraphilias, open non-monogamy is actually the biggest taboo in this society (America.) I think we are likely to eventually have a female president, a gay president, a Muslim president (most likely in that order too) but I _cannot_ conceive of an America that would elect someone President who was openly in a relationship with more than one person. Again, let me repeat _openly_ - we’ve obviously elected men with mistresses and who have engaged in affairs. But it seems really, really remote that we’d ever elect a person who was in an ongoing, continuous, publicly-acknowledged relationship with more than one other person. I realize this is a really niche lifestyle so it’s probably just not represented enough among the electorate to be relatable to most voters. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/34 "2018-03-21T21:51:31Z")
Related, I find it a bit hard to trust polls about how religious Americans are. I can see a major influencer being the respondent thinking “Y’know, I probably _should_ be more religious, but I just can’t find the time, so I’ll respond to this poll by saying I go to church weekly like I _should_, instead of once or twice a year, which is what I actually do, but feel guilty about.” Similarly, it’s easy to feel like one _should_ care about banning abortion and gay marriage so one pays lip-service to the idea when in reality has never really cared about nor, aside from casting a Republican-ish vote now and then, done anything about either one. If anything positive comes from the Trump administration, it may be that sex scandals become irrelevant, as they should be and should always have been. It’ll become a little harder to care about the next president banging a secretary when this one turns out to have multiple porn stars under his belt, as it were. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/35 "2018-03-21T22:15:39Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Their definition of “religious freedom” is, “You are all free to be Old Testament Christians like us.” In truth, they ardently desire to invoke a Christian version of Sharia Law. Homosexuality is considered an “abomination” and thus to be energetically expunged over and above probably any other perceived sin. Often, people like this are less upset living next door to a paroled axe murderer than living a block away from a known homosexual. > > They will often pompously invoke the saying, “This is a Christian nation!” If it is, we’ve violated the Constitution, but that seems to go over their heads, and they energetically pursue their agenda while considering themselves true Americans. I respectfully and in all seriousness state that an “Old Testament Christian” is a contradiction in terms, and is not a possibility either in theory or in practice. Being “Old Testament” inescapably means being without Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/36 "2018-03-21T22:32:41Z")
Different Christians have varying ideas about how much of the Old Testament is relevant - I don’t think it’s possible to make a generalization like that. Edit - I don’t think many people, if any, would actually refer to themselves as “Old Testament Christians”, I think it’s something that last poster was using as a figure of speech. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/37 "2018-03-21T22:36:13Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > Different Christians have varying ideas about how much of the Old Testament is relevant - I don’t think it’s possible to make a generalization like that. > > Edit - I don’t think many people, if any, would actually refer to themselves as “Old Testament Christians”, I think it’s something that last poster was using as a figure of speech. Ah, I think I understand - I had never heard that term. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/38 "2018-03-21T22:57:56Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I hear this quite often. In other words, if you don’t believe in GOD, why prevents you from raping, pillage, murder etc. This is very, very telling, and gives us some incite to the so called morals of these people. In my opinion morality based on obedience, such as murder being bad because your priest says your bible says your god says so, is no morality at all. Persons who believe that morality exists only in the form of orders from above have no morals at all. Such people seem to be pretty uncommon, though. Most people have cobbled together a basic morality just due to having and applying empathy. But if such morality is subject to being overridden by deferring to obedience (like say on the subject of whether gay people should be persecuted) then its not much of a moral system at all. (I actually have some experience in this - I was raised in a religious household, and when I accepted that I was an atheist I realized that I had been given literally no moral training or guidance at all. It took me some work to figure out actual morality on my own, once “because god said not to” stopped being a factor.) ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/39 "2018-03-21T23:18:01Z")
I’m going to take a step back to a look at a definition of what conservatism is. One of the issues, IMO with conversations about liberals and conservatives is vague definitions that lead to people talking past each other. I’m going to use Karen Stenner’s (Behavioral Economist with a PhD in Political Psychology) paper [“The Three Kinds of ‘Conservatism’”](https://www.karenstenner.com/) as that basis. > [@](#): > > When people use the terms conservative or rightwing they typically mean one (or problematically, more) of the following: an enduring inclination to favor stability and preservation of the status quo over social change (what I call “status quo conservatism”); a persistent preference for a free market and limited government intervention in the economy (“laissez-faire conservatism”); or an enduring predisposition, in all matters political and social, to favor obedience and conformity (oneness and sameness) over freedom and difference Stenner refers to that last type as authoritarianism later in her paper. She seems to work into using it because of the emotional load attached. I’ll use it but she specifies that their main driver is about preferring sameness. Authoritarian structures just tend to be the natural result of trying to achieve their goals. It’s pretty easy to discount the laissez-faire type for this discussion. It’s also not hard to see how those who prefer stability and limited social change aren’t happy about pretty big social changes in the US that have happened during their lifetimes. The authoritarians, favoring oneness and sameness over diversity, have a pretty clear motivation to be more than a little uncomfortable with celebrations of diverse expressions about one of the strongest human drives. We just went through a period where social attitudes on sexuality changed significantly and there was a theme to the messaging about those changes celebrating differences. It’s not surprising to me that those who value stability and/or oneness often wrap their opposition to things that threaten what they value in the US’ dominant religious tradition, Christianity. Religious canon tends to change slowly and homosexual behavior is still dominantly a sin in most Christian denominations. That’s attractive to those most disposed to value the status quo… An authoritarian gets an omnipotent, omniscient deity prepared to punish threats to sameness with eternal damnation. IMO that’s more packaging for what the major drivers actually are. Letting ourselves get too hung up on specifics of the religious argument distracts us from that root cause. All that’s still in the realm of framing the problem to answer something at least close to the OP’s question. Why are those two strains of conservatives motivated more by preferences for stability/sameness versus what others in society are motivated by? A good chunk of the answer is that they were born that way. The same as liberals and atheists owe a lot of those dispositions to being born that way. [Study on twins suggests our political beliefs may be hard-wired](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/09/study-on-twins-suggests-our-political-beliefs-may-be-hard-wired/) > [@](#): > > They found that somewhat more than half of the difference in self-identified political ideology (56%) is explained by genetic factors. The remainder was explained by unique factors affecting one twin and not the other. A second measure of ideology based on 27 questions produced a similar result (genes appeared to explain 58% of the difference between individuals). > > Funk and her colleagues also found that about half (48%) of the difference in authoritarian beliefs is inherited. As far as the religion that a lot of the arguments are wrapped in, that seems to have a [strong heritable component too](https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene). > [@](#): > > They estimated the heritability of spirituality to be around 40 to 50 percent, which is quite high considering how tricky it is to measure. Other U.S. studies using even more detailed questions in larger numbers have found similar or even stronger genetic influences. These studies demonstrate our variable but innate inherited sense of spirituality, which affects how we perceive the world, ourselves and the universe. This is independent of our formal religious beliefs and practices and, strangely, largely independent of family influence. The religious right, short of something extreme like an active eugenics program, is part of what we are as a species. Those who want, at most, tiny changes made at a glacial pace will naturally come into conflict with those who want massive changes yesterday. People who most value our differences will clash with those who are most disposed to value our areas of sameness. Homosexuality is just the latest proxy war, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950/40 "2018-03-21T23:18:07Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > In my opinion morality based on obedience, such as murder being bad because your priest says your bible says your god says so, is no morality at all. Persons who believe that morality exists only in the form of orders from above have no morals at all. I agree, but such people exist. And they are some of the ones regarding whom it’s important to society that there are laws in the first place. If it were up to me, there would be a test for the belief “morality equals orders given from above” that would exclude people who hold that belief from even running for office - after all, they have defined themselves as incapable of the job. But it isn’t up to me. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-so-interested-in-controlling-other-peoples-sexuality/810950.md?page=3)