The concept of “faith based initiatives” was an effort to eliminate discrimination against religious groups. If the federal government is going to give money to secular charities to do drug treatment programs or family planning, or job training, etc., then it should also fund religious groups on an equal basis. Gambling and porn I’ll give you. Frankly they’re such minor issues I didn’t think about them.

But more important to this discussion is the fact that none of those things is very important to rank and file religious conservatives. The “religious right” is really concerned about three big issues: abortion, public schools, and homosexuality. We believe abortion is murder, don’t want our children’s faith and values subverted by public schools (or in my case, don’t want my money to fund subversive schools – they’ll never get me to send my kids there anyway), or be coerced into condoning gay sex. Various leaders get worked up about gambling or pornography, but I don’t see those as having much popular support.

On gay issues I’d argue we are the ones for limited government – we don’t want our kids taught it is right, we don’t want our government endorsing or rewarding it, and we’d like to treat it in a Biblical manner (love the sinner, condemn the sin) in our businesses and associations. It is the pro-gay side that wants government to forcibly change everyone’s attitudes and close down businesses and associations that “discriminate.” S
Many conservative religious groups were very leery of the initiative because they don’t want to become dependent on government funds or be coerced into accepting restrictions on their faith-based activities.

On schools, the problem is that they are run by the government. They have to teach something and I don’t see how there is any more government involvement to teach materials that support family values than those that undermine them.

Banning abortion is indeed more government, but its murder. That’s as core a government function as there can be, which is why libertarians like Ron Paul and Neil Boortz are pro-life.

I agree that there is a great deal of misunderstanding between social conservatives and libertarians. I have long considered myself to be both, and have found the two views highly compatible – a view that is quite common among social conservatives. But obviously many libertarians don’t see us that way.

Part of the problem is probably the language that social conservatives use. When we talk about America’s “Christian Heritage” we’re actually talking about things like limited government that honors the inalienable rights endowed by the Creator, and when we speak of the importance of values we include a broad notion of personal responsiblilty, honesty, charity, etc. Not just sexual purity. But I can see why there would be confusion. And it doesn’t help that some politicians have tried reaching out to us without really understanding what they were talking about – G.H.W. Bush, for example.

There is one key difference, though I don’t think it is a huge one in practice. For social conservatives freedom is the freedom to do what is right, not necessarily to do what you want. In practice that usually ends up being a fairly subtle difference because we also recognize that government is always run by imperfect sinners, and we therefore need broad protections to ensure that the government does not restrict our right to do what is right. So you have a right to worship false gods or express stupid opinions not because those acts have intrinsic value of their own, but because we need freedom of speech and of religion to prevent government from coming after people who express true opinions.

The place where the difference really comes up is in vices where we see no redeeming value in a whole category of activity. So vices such as drugs, gambling or prostitution can be banned without harming anyone’s ability to do right – those things are always wrong and don’t need protection. But that still doesn’t mean that banning those things is good policy. Personally I favor legalizing drugs because I think banning them does more harm than good. There is no intrinsic right to do drugs, its just bad policy to ban them. I’d say roughly the same about gambling and most porn, except for an interest in preserving some safe zones where we and our children don’t have to be confronted with it. I think those are probably minority positions among the “religious right”, but ones that most could find acceptable.

I also expect that most social conservatives take a similar approach to consensual sex outside of marriage – its wrong, but not worth banning. But it is critical to us that we teach our children that it is wrong, and to refuse to condone what we regard as sinful behavior.

Of course, socially conservative institutions have the same temptations of power as any others. Since the Supreme Court has made it so difficult to prevail on our main issues, I think sometimes our more minor concerns get pushed and enacted because they are relatively easy ways to “do something.”. A politician can quietly strengthen laws against pornography or gambling without much of an outcry, while even the most modest restriction on abortion is met with outrage and usually a lawsuit.

I’m pretty confident that if libertarians and religious conservatives were the two dominant political coalitions, they’d be able to reach a satisfactory equilibrium along the lines I suggested. And if religious conservatives thought they could secure their main issues by compromising on other vice issues, they’d probably do it. But real libertarians are a pretty minor source of opposition to religious conservatives. They aren’t that big of a group to begin with, and many of them agree with us on our key issues, or at least are willing to set aside their differences on them.

The main source of conflict with the religious right comes from the Left and focuses on abortion, homosexuality, or issues that mostly come up in schools. Very often those are straw man arguments that badly misconstrue what social conservatives actually believe. And the critics usually don’t care much about limited government on other issues. Even within the GOP, the main opposition to religious conservatives comes from those who aren’t terribly conservative on other issues – current pro-choice GOP senators are Snow, Collins, Murkowski, Hutchinson & Brown. I’m not really seeing how limiting our focus to the core issues helps us much there.

I usually see the animosity only going the other way. Lots of social conservatives consider themselves to be libertarians, or at least to have libertarian leanings. We see our main opposition within the party to be the country club moderates. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some sniping between some of the Washington groups, but how many people pay attention to that?

But I sense your basic point is that social conservative need to do a better job explaining ourselves because we aren’t perceived as being for small government. And I agree with that. Both libertarians and religious conservatives are very concerned with principles, and those principles overlap about 90% of the time. The main source of animosity between them is that libertarians think we are big government people who reflexively want to ban anything we don’t like. In reality, outside of abortion we’re mostly just trying to live our lives and raise our children in accordance with our own principles.