Why are today's conservatives prone to supporting minor-attracted persons and child marriage?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

First off, this thread really isn't meant to be in bad faith. I used the PC word because people will whine if I use the real word anyway.

But, this feels like a phenomenon going back to Roy Moore. Conservatives have defended a lot of minor-attracted persons lately by alluding to Mary and Joseph. Matt Walsh said that the problem with teen pregnancies isn't that the teenager is pregnant, it's that they're unwed. A Missouri state senator passionately defended voting to allow 12-year-olds to marry, and get raped by, adults.

There's clearly something off here. The standard insult used by conservatives towards anyone who supports any form of "gender-affirming care" or talking to kids about LGBT issues is "groomer," which until 2022 referred to people - especially adults with children - who build trust and an emotional connection in a relationship in order to manipulate, abuse, and exploit them.

I don't understand how minor-attracted persons are less dangerous to children than teachers talking to them about LGBT issues or menstruation. Is there a compelling reason for this?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

A couple of different things.

Regarding the child marriages dude, and the Mary-Joseph stuff, maybe this is something that was always "there", lurking out in the fields and the forests and the hills of America's internal frontier, but we are only aware of it at a mass level thanks to modern media. As for people defending him, maybe they do so out of partisanship or knee jerk narrative contrarianism.

Regarding Roy Moore... (1) In the modern era half the population is primed to assume scandals publicized by "liberal" media are fake anyway; (2) intertwined with this is knee-jerk partisanship; (3) In the post-Bill Clinton era, where conservatives were told it didn't matter who the president slept with, or how moral he was, so long as the country was run well, it seems like an insincere overreaction to the assumption (acknowledgement?) that every politician is engaged in some sort of licentious behavior by rationalizing that "they're all bastards, so the least we can do is vote for our bastard" - look at how dialogue over the 2020 election played out, with Joe Biden's hair sniffing and Tara Reid.

The inclusion of the Matt Walsh comments on this list is understandable but I think misses the mark (or is intentionally inflammatory).

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

A couple of different things.

Regarding the child marriages dude, and the Mary-Joseph stuff, maybe this is something that was always "there", lurking out in the fields and the forests and the hills of America's internal frontier, but we are only aware of it at a mass level thanks to modern media. As for people defending him, maybe they do so out of partisanship or knee jerk narrative contrarianism.

Regarding Roy Moore... (1) In the modern era half the population is primed to assume scandals publicized by "liberal" media are fake anyway; (2) intertwined with this is knee-jerk partisanship; (3) In the post-Bill Clinton era, where conservatives were told it didn't matter who the president slept with, or how moral he was, so long as the country was run well, it seems like an insincere overreaction to the assumption (acknowledgement?) that every politician is engaged in some sort of licentious behavior by rationalizing that "they're all bastards, so the least we can do is vote for our bastard" - look at how dialogue over the 2020 election played out, with Joe Biden's hair sniffing and Tara Reid.

The inclusion of the Matt Walsh comments on this list is understandable but I think misses the mark (or is intentionally inflammatory).

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

So I decided to delete previous drafts and go for a short reply, since it's a beautiful day and sitting on your computer is no way to go through life. In more conservative circles, early marriages are more common for reasons that we can probably guess. Is that what Walsh is, rather imprecisely, defending? Yeah, I dunno. Maybe important to keep in mind he was around 24 when he made those comments and was married at 25. The rant strikes me as a sort of detoured locker room conversation where someone points out a historical (or perceived) fact out of context ("girls used to be married at 16") and then runs with it. The problem for Walsh here is that those types of conversations are probably his money maker. But I don't get the vibe that Walsh is going to sell anyone's pre-teen daughter for a piece of land or whatever.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Regarding the child marriages dude, and the Mary-Joseph stuff, maybe this is something that was always "there", lurking out in the fields and the forests and the hills of America's internal frontier, but we are only aware of it at a mass level thanks to modern media. As for people defending him, maybe they do so out of partisanship or knee jerk narrative contrarianism.

There's a creepy tendency to stress Mary's youth (which isn't directly indicated anywhere in the Biblical canon, although we can surmise that she's likely younger than most women are when they have their first child today) in some homiletic and devotional contexts too. Normally it's a way of communicating her piety and trust in God, but lots of preachers seem to have legitimately no idea how unsettling it ends up sounding anyway. I'd be interested to know if it's less present in churches in other countries.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The most foundational belief of modern conservatism is the idea that the powerful should be able to do as they please with the powerless. Given that, it's not particularly surprising that they take a lenient view to pedophilia, as long as it's the "right" people doing it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

So I decided to delete previous drafts and go for a short reply, since it's a beautiful day and sitting on your computer is no way to go through life. In more conservative circles, early marriages are more common for reasons that we can probably guess. Is that what Walsh is, rather imprecisely, defending? Yeah, I dunno. Maybe important to keep in mind he was around 24 when he made those comments and was married at 25. The rant strikes me as a sort of detoured locker room conversation where someone points out a historical (or perceived) fact out of context ("girls used to be married at 16") and then runs with it. The problem for Walsh here is that those types of conversations are probably his money maker. But I don't get the vibe that Walsh is going to sell anyone's pre-teen daughter for a piece of land or whatever.

     I think the historical, out-of-context fact is probably close to the truth. The big problem that American conservatives face is the question of what are we conserving? Most Republican politicians are content being the Party of No, and your average GOP base voter is easily distracted with "lol Dems don't know what a woman is", but that's not compelling to someone who wants to think more deeply about it.

     Most concretely one can point to the 1950s or the 1980s, but are those worth conserving? After all, we have already seen that they ultimately end up in the 2020s. This drives many to try and establish a vision of conservatism that is more stable and doesn't just immediately devolve into liberalism, especially when you see prominent movement conservatives whose views on social issues are just American liberalism c.2010, something that gives you the impression of a man being swept down a mountainside in an avalanche being certain he can stop the snowtide in the very spot where he currently happens to be.

     The problem is that Americans naturally have low cultural and historical awareness, and this leads to many latching on to a romanticized view of history, e.g. "in the old days when things were really trad women married at 16". I understand why people do this and I embrace that approach in no small part (though making the age of consent 18 is one of the best things about modernity). The oddest part to my reckoning is their seeming notion that the past can be transplanted into the present, as if we could just pass the right set of laws and all of a sudden America will be a society of yeoman farmers again like it was in the late 18th century.

[afleitch]

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

So I decided to delete previous drafts and go for a short reply, since it's a beautiful day and sitting on your computer is no way to go through life. In more conservative circles, early marriages are more common for reasons that we can probably guess. Is that what Walsh is, rather imprecisely, defending? Yeah, I dunno. Maybe important to keep in mind he was around 24 when he made those comments and was married at 25. The rant strikes me as a sort of detoured locker room conversation where someone points out a historical (or perceived) fact out of context ("girls used to be married at 16") and then runs with it. The problem for Walsh here is that those types of conversations are probably his money maker. But I don't get the vibe that Walsh is going to sell anyone's pre-teen daughter for a piece of land or whatever.

     I think the historical, out-of-context fact is probably close to the truth. The big problem that American conservatives face is the question of what are we conserving? Most Republican politicians are content being the Party of No, and your average GOP base voter is easily distracted with "lol Dems don't know what a woman is", but that's not compelling to someone who wants to think more deeply about it.

     Most concretely one can point to the 1950s or the 1980s, but are those worth conserving? After all, we have already seen that they ultimately end up in the 2020s. This drives many to try and establish a vision of conservatism that is more stable and doesn't just immediately devolve into liberalism, especially when you see prominent movement conservatives whose views on social issues are just American liberalism c.2010, something that gives you the impression of a man being swept down a mountainside in an avalanche being certain he can stop the snowtide in the very spot where he currently happens to be.

     The problem is that Americans naturally have low cultural and historical awareness, and this leads to many latching on to a romanticized view of history, e.g. "in the old days when things were really trad women married at 16". I understand why people do this and I embrace that approach in no small part (though making the age of consent 18 is one of the best things about modernity). The oddest part to my reckoning is their seeming notion that the past can be transplanted into the present, as if we could just pass the right set of laws and all of a sudden America will be a society of yeoman farmers again like it was in the late 18th century.

American conservatism, western conservatism is blinded by the appeal of the sort of social and family conservatism that existed for a hot minute, for whites and other in groups, after the war. The modern GOP is rooted in a post Nixon boomer nostalgia for a lost childhood that has effectively devolved into a deliria because they never got 'it' back and they are now being outvoted and dying.

At the same time, they ignore or rail against the extraordinary redistributionist policies and welfare policies that allowed for this state to exist, including living comfortably on one wage etc.

Social conservatism, not of a particularly religious hue, but structurally more conservative than today, would thrive under a socialist or redistributionist system. You can't 'trad' your way in life if two paychecks don't cover expenses. You can't settle down earlier if you can't afford a home and you can't 'begat' much if childcare cripples you. Which is why your 'influencers' in that genre are loaded.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Liberals do not usually complain about distributing condoms to middle schoolers, so the difference between them and some conservatives on adolescent marriage is not much of anything to do with being more against underage sex.  It is that liberals believe that it is better for a girl to either have an abortion or to single parent than for her and the father to get married at a young age.

[Associate Justice PiT]

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

So I decided to delete previous drafts and go for a short reply, since it's a beautiful day and sitting on your computer is no way to go through life. In more conservative circles, early marriages are more common for reasons that we can probably guess. Is that what Walsh is, rather imprecisely, defending? Yeah, I dunno. Maybe important to keep in mind he was around 24 when he made those comments and was married at 25. The rant strikes me as a sort of detoured locker room conversation where someone points out a historical (or perceived) fact out of context ("girls used to be married at 16") and then runs with it. The problem for Walsh here is that those types of conversations are probably his money maker. But I don't get the vibe that Walsh is going to sell anyone's pre-teen daughter for a piece of land or whatever.

     I think the historical, out-of-context fact is probably close to the truth. The big problem that American conservatives face is the question of what are we conserving? Most Republican politicians are content being the Party of No, and your average GOP base voter is easily distracted with "lol Dems don't know what a woman is", but that's not compelling to someone who wants to think more deeply about it.

     Most concretely one can point to the 1950s or the 1980s, but are those worth conserving? After all, we have already seen that they ultimately end up in the 2020s. This drives many to try and establish a vision of conservatism that is more stable and doesn't just immediately devolve into liberalism, especially when you see prominent movement conservatives whose views on social issues are just American liberalism c.2010, something that gives you the impression of a man being swept down a mountainside in an avalanche being certain he can stop the snowtide in the very spot where he currently happens to be.

     The problem is that Americans naturally have low cultural and historical awareness, and this leads to many latching on to a romanticized view of history, e.g. "in the old days when things were really trad women married at 16". I understand why people do this and I embrace that approach in no small part (though making the age of consent 18 is one of the best things about modernity). The oddest part to my reckoning is their seeming notion that the past can be transplanted into the present, as if we could just pass the right set of laws and all of a sudden America will be a society of yeoman farmers again like it was in the late 18th century.

American conservatism, western conservatism is blinded by the appeal of the sort of social and family conservatism that existed for a hot minute, for whites and other in groups, after the war. The modern GOP is rooted in a post Nixon boomer nostalgia for a lost childhood that has effectively devolved into a deliria because they never got 'it' back and they are now being outvoted and dying.

At the same time, they ignore or rail against the extraordinary redistributionist policies and welfare policies that allowed for this state to exist, including living comfortably on one wage etc.

Social conservatism, not of a particularly religious hue, but structurally more conservative than today, would thrive under a socialist or redistributionist system. You can't 'trad' your way in life if two paychecks don't cover expenses. You can't settle down earlier if you can't afford a home and you can't 'begat' much if childcare cripples you. Which is why your 'influencers' in that genre are loaded.

     You do make a valid point that increasing inequality makes it harder for one to reclaim the paradigm of the 1950s even if we did decide that that is a valid goal, though going too far in the economic left direction creates a problem as a lot of the ideological underpinnings of socialist thought have low compatibility with social conservatism (and especially of the secular variety). The big problem whose legacy we are living with is that Reagan's three-legged stool unites three distinct groups with distinct goals and visions for America, and all three groups have to sacrifice a little to get along and build a path to victory. Business conservatives and neoconservatives don't really care about the question I identified, and are fine with whatever so long as they get their respective desires of market liberalism and foreign intervention. Socons on the other hand have to sacrifice the very conditions that made a socially conservative America feasible in the first place.

     Ultimately I do think socons should be comfortable with somewhat more robust social programs than are normally associated with the American Right, but the problem is how we could translate that into a viable electoral coalition that would not just get bowled over by the Democratic Party. After all, the three-legged stool was a product of necessity. Maybe it could work if we find ourselves in a hypothetical future where a socon-oriented, economically center to center-left GOP started winning clear majorities of racial/ethnic minorities, but that is a very big if.

[OSR stands with Israel]

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

So I decided to delete previous drafts and go for a short reply, since it's a beautiful day and sitting on your computer is no way to go through life. In more conservative circles, early marriages are more common for reasons that we can probably guess. Is that what Walsh is, rather imprecisely, defending? Yeah, I dunno. Maybe important to keep in mind he was around 24 when he made those comments and was married at 25. The rant strikes me as a sort of detoured locker room conversation where someone points out a historical (or perceived) fact out of context ("girls used to be married at 16") and then runs with it. The problem for Walsh here is that those types of conversations are probably his money maker. But I don't get the vibe that Walsh is going to sell anyone's pre-teen daughter for a piece of land or whatever.

     I think the historical, out-of-context fact is probably close to the truth. The big problem that American conservatives face is the question of what are we conserving? Most Republican politicians are content being the Party of No, and your average GOP base voter is easily distracted with "lol Dems don't know what a woman is", but that's not compelling to someone who wants to think more deeply about it.

     Most concretely one can point to the 1950s or the 1980s, but are those worth conserving? After all, we have already seen that they ultimately end up in the 2020s. This drives many to try and establish a vision of conservatism that is more stable and doesn't just immediately devolve into liberalism, especially when you see prominent movement conservatives whose views on social issues are just American liberalism c.2010, something that gives you the impression of a man being swept down a mountainside in an avalanche being certain he can stop the snowtide in the very spot where he currently happens to be.

     The problem is that Americans naturally have low cultural and historical awareness, and this leads to many latching on to a romanticized view of history, e.g. "in the old days when things were really trad women married at 16". I understand why people do this and I embrace that approach in no small part (though making the age of consent 18 is one of the best things about modernity). The oddest part to my reckoning is their seeming notion that the past can be transplanted into the present, as if we could just pass the right set of laws and all of a sudden America will be a society of yeoman farmers again like it was in the late 18th century.

American conservatism, western conservatism is blinded by the appeal of the sort of social and family conservatism that existed for a hot minute, for whites and other in groups, after the war. The modern GOP is rooted in a post Nixon boomer nostalgia for a lost childhood that has effectively devolved into a deliria because they never got 'it' back and they are now being outvoted and dying.

At the same time, they ignore or rail against the extraordinary redistributionist policies and welfare policies that allowed for this state to exist, including living comfortably on one wage etc.

Social conservatism, not of a particularly religious hue, but structurally more conservative than today, would thrive under a socialist or redistributionist system. You can't 'trad' your way in life if two paychecks don't cover expenses. You can't settle down earlier if you can't afford a home and you can't 'begat' much if childcare cripples you. Which is why your 'influencers' in that genre are loaded.

     You do make a valid point that increasing inequality makes it harder for one to reclaim the paradigm of the 1950s even if we did decide that that is a valid goal, though going too far in the economic left direction creates a problem as a lot of the ideological underpinnings of socialist thought have low compatibility with social conservatism (and especially of the secular variety). The big problem whose legacy we are living with is that Reagan's three-legged stool unites three distinct groups with distinct goals and visions for America, and all three groups have to sacrifice a little to get along and build a path to victory. Business conservatives and neoconservatives don't really care about the question I identified, and are fine with whatever so long as they get their respective desires of market liberalism and foreign intervention. Socons on the other hand have to sacrifice the very conditions that made a socially conservative America feasible in the first place.

     Ultimately I do think socons should be comfortable with somewhat more robust social programs than are normally associated with the American Right, but the problem is how we could translate that into a viable electoral coalition that would not just get bowled over by the Democratic Party. After all, the three-legged stool was a product of necessity. Maybe it could work if we find ourselves in a hypothetical future where a socon-oriented, economically center to center-left GOP started winning clear majorities of racial/ethnic minorities, but that is a very big if.

Fundamentally people also don’t get want the glue was off the 3 legged stool either . It wasn’t really tax cuts or small government but the belief in the preservation of American Hegemony.

Economic conservatives supported American Hegemony cause it meant it would be easier for American businesses to expand across the world and part of our hegemony is the reserve currency

National security conservatives believed in it for obvious reasons

Social conservatives believed in it cause it allowed them to expand their branches of American churches globally . Add into the fact that the Soviet Union was an atheistic empire and Radical Islamists persecuted Christians, supporting American Hegemony benefited them from their point of view too .


The Bush years just utterly shattered this belief and it caused the entire stool to break apart and conservatives since 2008 have just latched on to whatever was the populist movement at the time (whether it was tea party libertarianism in the Obama years or Trump since 2016)

[Ferguson97]

It is that liberals believe that it is better for a girl to either have an abortion or to single parent than for her and the father to get married at a young age.

As does any normal human being.

See the problem with the child marriage argument on your guys part is that it just doesn't make any sense at all. If a teenage father is willing to be a part of his child's life, then whether or not he and the mother are legally married just doesn't matter. You cannot force someone to get married, so allowing child marriage just doesn't bring any benefit at all.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It is that liberals believe that it is better for a girl to either have an abortion or to single parent than for her and the father to get married at a young age.

As does any normal human being.

See the problem with the child marriage argument on your guys part is that it just doesn't make any sense at all. If a teenage father is willing to be a part of his child's life, then whether or not he and the mother are legally married just doesn't matter. You cannot force someone to get married, so allowing child marriage just doesn't bring any benefit at all.

Given the importance placed on marriage in many cultures throughout history it is quite obviously not the position of "any normal human being" that marriage between a child's parents don't matter.  Marriage between father and mother encourages commitment to and sustained involvement with a child. Children whose parents are married are less likely to suffer abuse, to develop mental illness, get in trouble with the law, etc. etc.  So the question is do we say to the dad "stick around if you want to" and hope he does, or do we formalize it and hold him to it socially in the way this has been done traditionally, through marriage?
https://marripedia.org/link_between_family_structure_and_child_abuse
https://ifstudies.org/blog/marriage-facilitates-responsible-fatherhood

[Ferguson97]

Given the importance placed on marriage in many cultures throughout history it is quite obviously not the position of "any normal human being" that marriage between a child's parents don't matter.  Marriage between father and mother encourages commitment to and sustained involvement with a child. Children whose parents are married are less likely to suffer abuse, to develop mental illness, get in trouble with the law, etc. etc.  So the question is do we say to the dad "stick around if you want to" and hope he does, or do we formalize it and hold him to it socially in the way this has been done traditionally, through marriage?
https://marripedia.org/link_between_family_structure_and_child_abuse
https://ifstudies.org/blog/marriage-facilitates-responsible-fatherhood

Yes, couples who are married produce better outcomes for their children compared to couples who do not get married.

But it's a gross, gross oversimplification to suggest that simply having those couples get married will somehow close the gap on the aforementioned outcomes. This is not a direct, causal relationship. It's borderline prima facie absurd to even suggest that a simple change in legal status will, by itself, reverse a laundry list of negative trends and outcomes.

Rather, the more likely explanation, is that certain personalities are more likely to get married. And those same personalities are more likely to approach both their relationship and parenthood in different ways.

If you take a pair of bad, unmarried parents, having them get married isn't going to automatically make them good parents.

And in the case of teenage parenthood, there is no reason to believe that having these teenagers get married before they're 18 would produce positive outcomes:

Assuming you don't actually want to force people to get married against their will... if there's a teen father who wants to be involved with his child and stick around and help raise it, he's going to do it. If he doesn't want to be involved, he's not going to. Now he's certainly going to be forced to pay child support (as he should) if he doesn't want to be an active part of its life.

Giving those teenagers the option of marriage isn't going to change whether or not that teen dad decides to be involved, or whether or not he's a good father. He will either be involved or not. And there's nothing wrong with just having them wait until 18.

tl;dr - it's correlation, not causation.

[afleitch]

Marriage has always been the public face of partnership and family, to the point at which statecraft itself functioned to ensure legitimacy by at times, literally, overseeing what happened in the bedchamber.

Privately it has always counted for little when it comes to having and raising children. Sex happens, children are born and raised by parents, step parents, aunts etc. Childrearing was shared because it was practical. If you were well to do, your parents hardly had any input into raising you and that was quite common until the middle of the last century. If you were poor, parenting was shared amongst family members, legitimate or not. Again this was and is still quite common under similar circumstances.

[TheReckoning]

Social conservatism, not of a particularly religious hue, but structurally more conservative than today, would thrive under a socialist or redistributionist system. You can't 'trad' your way in life if two paychecks don't cover expenses. You can't settle down earlier if you can't afford a home and you can't 'begat' much if childcare cripples you. Which is why your 'influencers' in that genre are loaded.

This it blatantly contradicted by history. People were much more inclined to follow the “trad” structure in the 1960s and prior, when people were much, much poorer than they are today. In fact, the opposite of what you are saying is true- the most people become wealthier and the more technology progresses, the more the trad model becomes obsolete. Case in point- before birth control and abortion were widespread and easily accessible, serial monogamy was the only way to ensure no children would be born out of wedlock to less than two involved parents. Now that we have birth control and abortion, serial monogamy is no longer necessary to avoid the negative affects of having multiple partners (which is the norm now).

[Associate Justice PiT]

No, I'm trying to resist the temptation to be inflammatory in this thread, but I think it's something that needs to be discussed and I appreciate you contributing and think your reasoning is sound. The reason I mentioned Matt Walsh is that he isn't just "some random guy on Twitter." If it were just random people saying and doing these things, I wouldn't have made this thread. But politicians and prominent conservatives have made this an issue over the last several years and used their version of "grooming" as a smoke screen, I feel.

So I decided to delete previous drafts and go for a short reply, since it's a beautiful day and sitting on your computer is no way to go through life. In more conservative circles, early marriages are more common for reasons that we can probably guess. Is that what Walsh is, rather imprecisely, defending? Yeah, I dunno. Maybe important to keep in mind he was around 24 when he made those comments and was married at 25. The rant strikes me as a sort of detoured locker room conversation where someone points out a historical (or perceived) fact out of context ("girls used to be married at 16") and then runs with it. The problem for Walsh here is that those types of conversations are probably his money maker. But I don't get the vibe that Walsh is going to sell anyone's pre-teen daughter for a piece of land or whatever.

     I think the historical, out-of-context fact is probably close to the truth. The big problem that American conservatives face is the question of what are we conserving? Most Republican politicians are content being the Party of No, and your average GOP base voter is easily distracted with "lol Dems don't know what a woman is", but that's not compelling to someone who wants to think more deeply about it.

     Most concretely one can point to the 1950s or the 1980s, but are those worth conserving? After all, we have already seen that they ultimately end up in the 2020s. This drives many to try and establish a vision of conservatism that is more stable and doesn't just immediately devolve into liberalism, especially when you see prominent movement conservatives whose views on social issues are just American liberalism c.2010, something that gives you the impression of a man being swept down a mountainside in an avalanche being certain he can stop the snowtide in the very spot where he currently happens to be.

     The problem is that Americans naturally have low cultural and historical awareness, and this leads to many latching on to a romanticized view of history, e.g. "in the old days when things were really trad women married at 16". I understand why people do this and I embrace that approach in no small part (though making the age of consent 18 is one of the best things about modernity). The oddest part to my reckoning is their seeming notion that the past can be transplanted into the present, as if we could just pass the right set of laws and all of a sudden America will be a society of yeoman farmers again like it was in the late 18th century.

American conservatism, western conservatism is blinded by the appeal of the sort of social and family conservatism that existed for a hot minute, for whites and other in groups, after the war. The modern GOP is rooted in a post Nixon boomer nostalgia for a lost childhood that has effectively devolved into a deliria because they never got 'it' back and they are now being outvoted and dying.

At the same time, they ignore or rail against the extraordinary redistributionist policies and welfare policies that allowed for this state to exist, including living comfortably on one wage etc.

Social conservatism, not of a particularly religious hue, but structurally more conservative than today, would thrive under a socialist or redistributionist system. You can't 'trad' your way in life if two paychecks don't cover expenses. You can't settle down earlier if you can't afford a home and you can't 'begat' much if childcare cripples you. Which is why your 'influencers' in that genre are loaded.

     You do make a valid point that increasing inequality makes it harder for one to reclaim the paradigm of the 1950s even if we did decide that that is a valid goal, though going too far in the economic left direction creates a problem as a lot of the ideological underpinnings of socialist thought have low compatibility with social conservatism (and especially of the secular variety). The big problem whose legacy we are living with is that Reagan's three-legged stool unites three distinct groups with distinct goals and visions for America, and all three groups have to sacrifice a little to get along and build a path to victory. Business conservatives and neoconservatives don't really care about the question I identified, and are fine with whatever so long as they get their respective desires of market liberalism and foreign intervention. Socons on the other hand have to sacrifice the very conditions that made a socially conservative America feasible in the first place.

     Ultimately I do think socons should be comfortable with somewhat more robust social programs than are normally associated with the American Right, but the problem is how we could translate that into a viable electoral coalition that would not just get bowled over by the Democratic Party. After all, the three-legged stool was a product of necessity. Maybe it could work if we find ourselves in a hypothetical future where a socon-oriented, economically center to center-left GOP started winning clear majorities of racial/ethnic minorities, but that is a very big if.

Fundamentally people also don’t get want the glue was off the 3 legged stool either . It wasn’t really tax cuts or small government but the belief in the preservation of American Hegemony.

Economic conservatives supported American Hegemony cause it meant it would be easier for American businesses to expand across the world and part of our hegemony is the reserve currency

National security conservatives believed in it for obvious reasons

Social conservatives believed in it cause it allowed them to expand their branches of American churches globally . Add into the fact that the Soviet Union was an atheistic empire and Radical Islamists persecuted Christians, supporting American Hegemony benefited them from their point of view too .


The Bush years just utterly shattered this belief and it caused the entire stool to break apart and conservatives since 2008 have just latched on to whatever was the populist movement at the time (whether it was tea party libertarianism in the Obama years or Trump since 2016)

     You make a strong point, and I think it is part of what leads to a lot of soul-searching for socons these days. Business conservatives and neocons can still rejoice in American hegemony, even if it has lost a little luster. American power on the other hand is decidedly not advancing a socon agenda these days, with supporting a socially liberal agenda worldwide gradually becoming a major foreign policy focus. If you have a genuine policy interest in social conservatism, it's very hard to still see America as being the shining city on the hill.

     I know that the kind of person I am describing is ultimately not a common one, as most voters are happily entertained by the bread and circuses, but the tendency that this thread was made to describe is not a common one either. The Missouri lawmaker who was defending 12-yo children marrying was in a clear minority among his caucus in his legislative body, as the comment was made in the context of a bill raising the minimum legal age to marry from 15 to 17, which passed with a huge bipartisan majority.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

     You make a strong point, and I think it is part of what leads to a lot of soul-searching for socons these days. Business conservatives and neocons can still rejoice in American hegemony, even if it has lost a little luster. American power on the other hand is decidedly not advancing a socon agenda these days, with supporting a socially liberal agenda worldwide gradually becoming a major foreign policy focus. If you have a genuine policy interest in social conservatism, it's very hard to still see America as being the shining city on the hill.

     I know that the kind of person I am describing is ultimately not a common one, as most voters are happily entertained by the bread and circuses, but the tendency that this thread was made to describe is not a common one either. The Missouri lawmaker who was defending 12-yo children marrying was in a clear minority among his caucus in his legislative body, as the comment was made in the context of a bill raising the minimum legal age to marry from 15 to 17, which passed with a huge bipartisan majority.

First of all, I appreciate the willingness from conservatives to constructively engage with this question. Yes, the premise is fairly loaded, but I really didn't have a more diplomatic way of asking it.

Fair point about the Missouri lawmaker, but keep this in mind as well: people here often complain about "random state lawmakers" doing or saying something horrendous - but those are precisely the people who impact our daily lives, arguably more than Congress. We should hold local lawmakers to the same standard as federal ones.

And Matt Walsh, again, is an influential voice in his community. The comments he made about teen pregnancy were recent. Regardless of personal morals, I think we can all agree here that teen pregnancy and teen marriage are both undesirable.

The trads are going nowhere and that much is known. I'm sure you are familiar with Rod Dreher's "Benedict Option," whose objective is to basically shun modern society and return to traditional, religious norms. (Something I can agree with... but for different reasons.) But we can't ignore modern psychology in determining if/when a child should be wed - which is never.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

If you are 100% opposed to premarital sex, you could make an argument that it's better for people to get married at a young age than engage in premarital sex.  I don't think it should be illegal for a 16 year old to marry with the permission of his/her parents.  Frankly, I'd rather two high school students decide to commit to one another for life than have casual sex with a bunch of other students.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Given the importance placed on marriage in many cultures throughout history it is quite obviously not the position of "any normal human being" that marriage between a child's parents don't matter.  Marriage between father and mother encourages commitment to and sustained involvement with a child. Children whose parents are married are less likely to suffer abuse, to develop mental illness, get in trouble with the law, etc. etc.  So the question is do we say to the dad "stick around if you want to" and hope he does, or do we formalize it and hold him to it socially in the way this has been done traditionally, through marriage?
https://marripedia.org/link_between_family_structure_and_child_abuse
https://ifstudies.org/blog/marriage-facilitates-responsible-fatherhood

Yes, couples who are married produce better outcomes for their children compared to couples who do not get married.

But it's a gross, gross oversimplification to suggest that simply having those couples get married will somehow close the gap on the aforementioned outcomes. This is not a direct, causal relationship. It's borderline prima facie absurd to even suggest that a simple change in legal status will, by itself, reverse a laundry list of negative trends and outcomes.

Rather, the more likely explanation, is that certain personalities are more likely to get married. And those same personalities are more likely to approach both their relationship and parenthood in different ways.

If you take a pair of bad, unmarried parents, having them get married isn't going to automatically make them good parents.

And in the case of teenage parenthood, there is no reason to believe that having these teenagers get married before they're 18 would produce positive outcomes:

Assuming you don't actually want to force people to get married against their will... if there's a teen father who wants to be involved with his child and stick around and help raise it, he's going to do it. If he doesn't want to be involved, he's not going to. Now he's certainly going to be forced to pay child support (as he should) if he doesn't want to be an active part of its life.

Giving those teenagers the option of marriage isn't going to change whether or not that teen dad decides to be involved, or whether or not he's a good father. He will either be involved or not. And there's nothing wrong with just having them wait until 18.

tl;dr - it's correlation, not causation.

It is not at all absurd to believe that a change in legal status would make a difference to the experience of parental and partner commitment when that status is geared precisely toward these results in its vows and social expectation.  We don't know for sure how much of the relationship between marriage and commitment is directly causal, but the effect is there independent of other variables that we can measure such as education, income, cohabitation status, etc. 

[Ferguson97]

It is not at all absurd to believe that a change in legal status would make a difference to the experience of parental and partner commitment when that status is geared precisely toward these results in its vows and social expectation.  We don't know for sure how much of the relationship between marriage and commitment is directly causal, but the effect is there independent of other variables that we can measure such as education, income, cohabitation status, etc.  

We're talking about teenagers. Completely different ball game.

There is no benefit to allowing teenagers to marry, it only allows for the possibility of abuse.

Edit: I'd like you to read this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/the-forgotten-girls-monica-potts-book-excerpt/673581/

It talks about how girls can be trapped by a teen pregnancy.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It is not at all absurd to believe that a change in legal status would make a difference to the experience of parental and partner commitment when that status is geared precisely toward these results in its vows and social expectation.  We don't know for sure how much of the relationship between marriage and commitment is directly causal, but the effect is there independent of other variables that we can measure such as education, income, cohabitation status, etc.  

We're talking about teenagers. Completely different ball game.

There is no benefit to allowing teenagers to marry, it only allows for the possibility of abuse.

Edit: I'd like you to read this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/the-forgotten-girls-monica-potts-book-excerpt/673581/

It talks about how girls can be trapped by a teen pregnancy.

Interesting article, but I read it a bit differently.

Seems like those girls got pregnant or married because they felt trapped already. They didn't feel they had much of a future otherwise.