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xchrom

(108,903 posts) Fri Mar 14, 2014, 07:18 AM Mar 2014

Conservatives: Sex Is Bad Unless We're the Ones Having It

http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/conservatives-sex-bad-unless-were-ones-having-it

Conservative leaders know they have a sex problem. On one hand, they know that raising the alarm about how the sex-havers are out of control is a time-tested way to rally the troops by creating fear and resentment of other people’s sex lives. Witness any hand-wringing story about “hook-up culture,” if you have any doubt. On the other hand, sex is, well, popular, and not just among the liberals and young feminists conservatives like to demonize. Pretty much everyone has it and wants to have it, even people who are easily angered and agitated at the idea of other people having it.

Taking a blanket view against non-procreative sex or premarital sex, while popular with a handful of hardline social conservatives, is politically toxic, and not just in the mainstream. So conservative leaders have come to realize that they need to have it both ways: An ability to demagogue about the supposed sexual evil that is dragging the country down into the gutter while allowing their audiences to make an exception for themselves and their own sex lives.

In other words, conservatives need to believe that their own sex lives are wholesome while maintaining the belief that everyone else is going to hell. And their leaders are continuously trying to find new ways to encourage that hypocrisy.

The most in-your-face example from CPAC of a conservative trying to let an audience know that sex is okay for them but not for other people came from the mouth of the ever-blunt Ann Coulter. She lamented what she perceived as a paucity of lectures aimed at lower-income people for having sex.