Hmmm. I fall into the same category as you do. You hate to use the term social conservative only for the word Conservative.

Nice site btw. I have a fact-finding site. Check it out if you like. Lemme know what I can fix. Later.
Pete

Extremely interesting once again. You are right that both groups of social activists are pushing social change through statism -- a One-World Socialist Social Change. I'm against any change except the change in my pocket. Call me anti-social if you will.

I've never liked this labeling of all non-economic, non-fiscal, or non-military issues as "social". I, too, will, in the best "laissez-faire" tradition, leave economics alone, it doesn't interest me all that much. I'll leave it to the industrialists.

The so-called "social" issues include everything pertaining to race, religion, sexuality, abortion, guns, art, and just about everything else. How can you have a single position -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- on all of those?

The so-called "social" issues are essentially the moral issues, the spiritual issues, the most important issues. Those are the issues the media and politicians deride as "single" issues. They, of course, have their own "single" issue, i.e., economics (whether Marxist, New Deal, or libertarian).

As to "liberal" or "conservative" -- hmmm.... The "social conservatives" (e.g., Bork, Santorum) are, as you noted, very social indeed, they are what I call "moral collectivists". They want to collectivize morality just as their counterparts on the Left want to collectivize economics. They are my enemies.

But I don't like "social liberal" either. Mainly because it connotes an extrovert and I'm an introvert. "Liberal" has fine historic connotations -- liberty, individual freedom -- but today it also connotes a relativist, "permissive", "tolerant" attitude that I don't have. I'm an absolutist, a dogmatist. I love or I hate, I don't tolerate too much. I'm a "theological conservative" in that I believe that individual freedom must be rooted in an eternal Divine order.

On particular issues:

I'd be considered "conservative" on abortion today, and in the past I was "ultra-liberal" on that issue. But, actually, I must confess, my present pro-life position was a move to the Left. I was pro-abortion because I wanted to protect a woman's abolute rule over her own property (her body and all that is in it) -- a "conservative" position. I'm anti-abortion now because I also want to protect that humsn life growing within her -- protecting the weak is a "liberal" position. I'm still wrestling with that. Anti-abortion is considered "conservative" because it is associated with religion, but there are atheists who are against abortion, and, as for myself, my religious beliefs are the same now as they were when I was pro-abortion.

Homosexual marriage is another such issue. Homosexual is "liberal". Marriage is "conservative". But the alternative to homosexual marriage is homosexual promiscuity, which is obviously "liberal", or else eradication of homosexuality, which is radical -- Communist. I'm against that. So I'm "conservative" for homosexual marriage. Sex sanctified by, and sanctifying, the tight bondange of holy wedlock, the vow of eternal fidelity. Total Commitment.

On drugs, pornography, prostitution, etc., I'm libertarian. I don't take dope, and if I had a son I wouldn't want him to take dope either ("it isn't square, it will lead to long hair"), but I say drug laws (especially federal drug laws) should be repealed for all the reasons that have been given abundantly here and in many other blogs and books over the years. I consider prostitution (including marrying for money) immoral, a profanation of the sacred, but I say it should be legal. I'm not turned on by most pornography, sex should be suggestive and taboo rather than explicit, but I'm against government censorship. In other words, I'm for discriminating between the moral and the legal. Legally, therefore, I might be "liberal", yet morally "conservative".

Extremely fascinating all this is....

That was the most awsome explaination I've ever heard! Although from looking at your website, I see you have names and descriptions for every leaning or school of thought. You've been thinking about this for a while. Nice!

Dear Pete:

Thank you!

Ah, Indiana, whose legislature failed by one vote, IIRC, to declare pi = 3 awhile back. Le plus ca change...

I must strongly disagree with this post. Not because I like the idea of "petitions for parentage" and "gestational certificates" -- they sound like the creations of a totalitarian government to me.

However, I think sperm and egg donation should be banned for everyone, married or otherwise. These practices are immoral and dehumanizing; forbidding them is neither.

Given the once predicted and now quite actual temptation to use in vitro fertilization to produce human embryos for experimentation, this reproductive technology should be banned as well.