The Conservative War on Sex

It's not about abortion; it's about pleasure and freedom.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

One somewhat satisfying outcome of America’s very indiscreet political present is that the dog whistle as died. Subtext is now just text. Conservatives especially are simply saying exactly what they think and what they aim to achieve, whether that’s ending American democracy (“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” Jack Posobiec said in his welcome speech at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which no prominent Republicans have rejected) or outlawing divorce (“rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws and support covenant marriage” reads the Texas Republican Party’s 20222 platform) or discriminating against LGBTQ people (“We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma,” Oklahoma state Sen. Tom Woods said at a public event).

And now they’re being increasingly honest about what sex is like in a conservative paradise: Definitely not for fun.

“Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, and ending recreational sex and senseless use of birth control pills,” the Heritage Foundation — the group crafting policy for a Donald Trump presidency — tweeted. When science writer Michael Shermer tweeted (rightly) that conservatives were coming for IVF, birth control pills, and an end to recreational sex, conservative activist Christopher Rufo, most famous for starting the war on “woke” and anti-DEI hysteria, responded with, “So what? The pill causes health problems for many women. ‘Recreational sex’ is a large part of the reason we have so many single-mother households, which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. The point of sex is to create children—this is natural, normal, and good.”

This doesn’t really make sense — if the point of sex is to create children, then those single-mother households seem to be doing it right — but his ultimate point is that sex is to be done within the confines of marriage, and for the purpose of marital childbearing. Which is not how the vast majority of people in the US have sex, whether they’re married or not. But the goal is to make it incredibly difficult to have sex for pleasure alone by limiting the tools available to prevent unintended pregnancy, which in turn will make sex more anxiety-inducing and perilous, and to also limit the tools to have children that don’t involve sex at a young age.

Make no mistake. They are coming for IVF. They are coming for birth control pills (and other forms of contraception). They are coming for the very concept of recreational sex — sex for fun (which, yes, partnered and married people do too!). Sex, they argue, should come with “consequences.” Or, as the Heritage Foundation put it, conservatives should focus on “restoring the consequentiality to sex.”