Without a Net...

I ran across an odd fragment of fundie logic recently.  Counseling young people about sex, reasonable professionals often say something to the effect that they should "abstain, but if you do have sex, use a condom."  The right-wing consider this an egregiously mixed message.  But why?  It's really nothing more than common sense, like saying "don't crash your car, but if you do, wear a seat belt."  What could be wrong about giving people a way to protect themselves from the potentially bad consequences of errors?

The problem is that the faith-based world view does not allow for error.  Accidents are OK.  Accidents are either someone else's fault (see: the usual suspects), or acts of God.  But errors or mistakes -- anything for which the faith-based individual would have to take responsibility -- that's a different matter, for all of these are seen as a failure of faith.  Faith starts with thoughts and beliefs, and the sole job of the faithful is to get their thoughts right.  If their thoughts are truly faithful, then their actions will be righteous.  If their actions are erroneous, it was their faith that was flawed.

This metaphysics underlies the moral absolutism of the right.  We in the reality-based community reason like so: "We have evidence that delaying sexual activity until a certain age results in better health and well-being, so we counsel abstinence.  If some young people fail to do this, which we also know from evidence (or personal experience) they will, there are additional threats to health and well-being that they expose themselves to.  So we give them the tools to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease in that contingency."  The message "abstinence first, condoms second" is consistent, the second part reinforcing the concerns about safety and well-being which inspires the first.  But the faith-based mind cannot see this.

For the faith-based -- and again I'm not singling out religious faith here, although there is a strong correlation -- thoughts and beliefs must be 100% complete and correct.  "Abstinence for young people is right," they opine, "and sex of any kind is wrong.  In order for our faith in this ideal to be sufficiently pure we must not dilute it with the compromise of protected sex.  While we might secretly hope that our daughters and sons will use condoms if they stray from the true path, we cannot allow their thoughts to be darkened by the possibility of a fail-safe."  This notion that intentions must be black or white leaves them with absurd retrofits to map their views to reality, like the claim that suggesting safer fall backs makes failure more likely.  That's like saying that children won't fall off a high-wire as often if you don't let them use a net.  Even if this were true (which seems unlikely) it would not be a sufficient argument for allowing those kids who do fall to get injured!

This attitude extends far beyond the emotionally charged arena of sex education.  For the faith-based right wing, any feature of life or governance which has a "moral dimension" (that is, impinges on some faith-inspired value) is subject to the same treatment.  Poverty is bad, so we should eliminate welfare.  Drug use is bad, so we should eliminate drug treatment programs.  Crime is bad, so we should kill or permanently incarcerate more people that any other western country.  This is the true face of "compassionate conservatism" -- spare the rod and spoil the child, they say.  And forget about coddling citizens with a social safety net.  It would just make them lazy.

- jack*

Comments

[jimBOB]

If I could suggest a slightly different interpretation, I think it comes from a disagreement over where the badness of an act lies. Take premarital sex. The reality-based community (RBC) objection to rampant teen sex comes from the idea that such behavior can have bad concrete consequences (diseases, premature parenthood, exploitation of naive and unformed personalities etc.). Yet knowing the hormonally charged nature of adolescence, the RBC recognizes that 100% teen celebacy is an unlikely goal. So in that case, mitigating the bad consequences is through condom use is a reasonable backup.

To the faith-based community (FBC), the source of the problem is different. Premarital sex isn't bad because it leads to bad consequences. It's just bad because it's, well, BAD. (If you doubt this see the somewhat comical campaigns also waged against masturbation, a widespread sexual behavior with none of the above bad consequences.) In this formulation, anything that might lead to widespread acceptance of non-marital sexuality (education, contraception etc.) is an enemy - especially if it's something that mitigates the external bad consequences of the behavior. Since the main idea is to stamp out non-marital sexuality for its own sake, bad consequences are just an incidental tool to help with the main task, not the basic motivating factor as they are to the RBC.

This is a bit different from your idea of it all being a question of getting your beliefs into the right shape. There is a logic to the RBC position, but it comes from taking the badness of the subject matter as a premise rather than a consequence. It also means there's almost no common ground to be had between RBC and FBC, as their disagreement flows from radically conflicting worldviews.

[jack]

That's a good thought. Making the consequences more severe certainly helps to reinforce the inherent "badness" of the act. But to deliberately make people suffer needlessly while still claiming to be moral requires explanation.

Also interesting is your comment about anti-masterbation efforts. It's only where the faith-based values coincide with something in reality -- like the very real consequences of early sexuality -- that the faith-based view gets any traction. The masterbation issue, while just as heartfelt, appears comical.

[jimBOB]

At a certain point, extremist faith-based morality becomes pathological. Putting unbelievers and heretics to the sword was part of the history of Christianity. These days bombing of infidels gets done in the name of various religions. There's probably no more potent engine for creating suffering than fanatical fundamentalism.

I haven't read too many posts on your blog (though I'll be doing so in the next few days) so I'm not sure if you've ever tackled the question of how one might base a secular moral system. It's a knotty question I've often pondered. Your request for an explanation of that makes people suffer assumes that an aspiration to the alleviation of suffering is an inherent feature of moral systems. It would doubtless show up in most secular moral thinking, but the faith-based, suffering in the here-and-now may be outweighed by suffering one might believe would follow in an afterlife. Thus an unyielding opposition to anything that might encourage non-marital sex would be justified if it kept even a few from an eternity of suffering in Hell.

WRT getting political traction with moralistic arguments, you're right that appeals to faith without reference to anything concrete probably won't get too far. Personally, I think fundamentalism per se is less of an issue here in the U.S. than is fundamentalism being used as a political tool by ruthless plutocrats. Of course, sometimes it turns around and bites them (see Arlen Specter.)