Can Science Vanquish the Small-Mindedness and Bigotry of Social Conservatism?

[Brewman_Jax]

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/155552/...servatism/

From the article:

Quote:Growing public support for gay rights, including gay marriage, is the latest example of the moral liberalism that has transformed advanced industrial societies in the last few generations. The social traditionalists who claimed to be a “moral majority” in the United States in the 1980s are acting like an embattled, declining minority in the second decade of the 21st century. A few years ago the conservative activist Paul Weyrich declared that the right had lost “the culture war” and called on social conservatives to withdraw from mainstream society into their own traditionalist enclaves.

Many paranoid social conservatives blame the triumph of moral liberalism on a conspiracy of sinister secular humanists, using the media and the public schools to indoctrinate their children and grandchildren in a godless morality. But the truth is that social conservatism has been undermined by technological progress, which has increased the opportunities for freedom in matters of sex and censorship while raising the costs of enforcing traditional norms.

The pill did more to undermine traditional sexual morality than an imaginary secular humanist conspiracy could have done. Advances in contraception, far more than liberalization of abortion laws, not only reduced the costs of premarital sex but allowed married couples greater opportunities to plan their fertility. One result has been below-replacement fertility for most natives of advanced industrial societies, as a result of choice rather than coercion. Given the opportunity, most Americans, like most people in other advanced industrial nations, prefer fewer or no children to the large families of yesteryear. Participation in the modern workforce by the majority of mothers as well as unmarried women would have been impossible, if not for the pill.

...

If it was that easy, this article would be moot.

Unfortunately, science and learning by itself won't do it. I've met some well-educated and technical professionals that are freepers and teabaggers. The article does not talk about the racial aspect, for the individuals I noted above are all white males, although I have met a female freeper. Freepers and teabaggers from minority groups are rare.

However, the beauty of scientific advancements is that it makes a lot of socially conservative stances irrelevant and obsolete. They just erode away to nothingness. Hopefully, the small-minded neo-cons will go the same way disappear into the dustbin of history.

[jaxx]

The only way science can vanquish them is by making them invisible. I hope they're working on it.