WHY I’M CONSERVATIVE

I’ve had some good conversations with Crall lately about why I label myself conservative.

The biggest reason I consider myself as such is because I’m terribly uncomfortable with the sexual promiscuity that characterizes America.

Case and point, my favorite sex advice column in the world, Savage Love. Click the link, read the letters. Today’s subject is “Sexual First-Time Horror Stories,” and the common thread is that losing your virginity at a young age is no big deal; it’s just something you need to “get over with.” Sex is just a physical act, unless as in the case of the first letter-writer you get pregnant as a result, but that’s easily taken care of: she got an abortion.

Bear in mind your children are likely reading it, too. Savage Love is available on-line, in City Pages, in the Onion, in countless readily-accessible locations. The irony to me is delicious; conservative Christians are incessantly told they’re shoving their beliefs down everyone’s throats, yet I don’t recall the last time I heard a Christian glorifying behavior that is emotionally and physically risky to the point of potentially causing death.

I could (and eventually will) blog ad nauseum about this subject. Not just Savage, but all purveyors of degeneracy. I hate prime-time television; I loathe the fact that sex is portrayed as a recreational activity between virtual strangers, that it rarely if ever has repercussions of any sort, that people take it for granted that by the time they meet that special someone, both parties will have been with (in the Biblical sense) 50 people.

I’ve been called old-fashioned and I’ve been told that I have issues; I’m comfortable with either. The fact is I was always extremely careful and particular about my sexuality, and I’ve seen first-hand how wanton sexuality has destroyed people physically and emotionally. It breaks my heart that there are people reading this have teenagers who are being cushioned by popular culture into believing that sex is to be embarked upon the moment physical maturity is reached, and as long as a condom is available everything is hunky-dory.

I would encourage anyone with children to impress upon them that sex is not merely sex, despite what the world says. Believe it or not, when they're ready to settle down they may just meet someone who had some sexual scruples.