Why do women in East Texas think contraception is morally wrong?

February 17, 2010 7:46 AM

Why do women in East Texas think contraception is morally wrong?

I followed this post from the blue to OK Cupids fascinating case for Older Women. Perhaps the most fascinating map to me is the slider map for the question "Is Contraception Morally Wrong?" (Unfortunately I don't see how to link to the map directly, so you have to scroll down. Note the map is not static, you can move the slider back and forth.)

I expected a Catholic/Protestant or maybe a urban/rural divide but mostly the differences are by the age of the women. There is one surprising regional difference however: women under 32 in East Texas and Louisiana feel contraception is wrong. Likely Louisiana women are influenced by Catholic perceptions on contraception, but this does not explain the East Texas data.

Part of the reason this piqued my interest is that I have had two different conversations with 20-something Protestant mothers in central Oklahoma in the last year or two who expressed that through bible study they were starting to question the morality of contraception. One of the mothers was involved in a Life Church type of congregation. I am fascinated by this trend and would love if anyone has any data or anecdotes. I am especially interested in whether this is historical (East Texas women have long thought this) or whether it is an emerging trend.

posted by Tallguy to society & culture (46 answers total)

Two possible reasons:
1. Sexual intercourse is only for procreation. Or, at least, only for the marriage bed. Alternatively, contraception takes away the "consequences" of sexual relations.
2. They (mistakenly) believe that contraception is abortion.
posted by General Malaise at 7:51 AM on February 17, 2010

It's hard to draw any real conclusions from that chart without knowing what the scale is. You can't tell if dark blue is 0 and dark red is 100 or if they are 48 and 52.
posted by smackfu at 7:57 AM on February 17, 2010

Wikipedia sez:

In 2000, The religious demographics of Texas were:[3]

* Evangelical Protestant – 24.4%
* Roman Catholic – 21.0%

That'd do it, I think.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:58 AM on February 17, 2010

Sys Req: I didn't think there were quite as many Catholics in Texas. Good find. But I found a county-by-county breakdown of Catholic adherents and it definitely does not show a lot of Catholics in East Texas. For that matter, it also calls into question whether the blob of women in central and northern Louisiana that believe that contraception is wrong is driven by Catholicism. Basically there appears to be little agreement between the OK Cupid map and this map of Catholics.
posted by Tallguy at 8:05 AM on February 17, 2010

The Evangelical Protestant movement is sort of defined by a large measure of grass-roots theology. Since there's no real hierarchy, the only way to profit from the large user base is to formulate and disseminate alternative messages that will be attractive to the adherents.

I haven't read any real studies on this, but talking with former and current EPs who have joined the pro-choice movement, the Evangelical pro-life movement really took off when EP groups like Focus on the Family started selling the anti-abortion message at the local level, directly to women's bible study groups. First they would raise awareness about the issue, then "convert" church members who were on the fence or even pro-choice by personal testimony and targeted readings of bible passages taken out of context.

I would not be at all surprised if there were a similar organized anti-contraceptive movement. It's sort of interesting to contrast this with the Roman Catholic church's dissemination of theology down from the pope to the laity.
posted by muddgirl at 8:08 AM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

And here is a map with a slightly different scale from this page showing more or less the same pattern.
posted by Tallguy at 8:08 AM on February 17, 2010

I wouldn't put too much stock in the Catholic factor; a big chunk of them are Mexicans (which means more concentrated in the west and south of the state, not the area you're looking at) and Catholics are pretty notorious for heterodoxy (about half ignore the sex-related Church teachings).
posted by kittyprecious at 8:10 AM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I'm going to guess this has more to do with Evangelical Protestantism. Just looking in my home state I see a little isolated chip of blue centered on Lynchburg, VA, which has a reputation as an unusually Evangelical city due to its connection to the Falwells (and their institutions such as Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church).
posted by strangely stunted trees at 8:10 AM on February 17, 2010

Also, a quick comment about those slider maps - anyone else notice that the color concentrations at the younger levels were all in more rural areas, while the color concentrations at the older ages were in more urban areas + Florda retirement communities? In other words, older women on OK Cupid may appear to be more liberal because they tend to live in more liberal areas. If you pay specific attention to the change in opinions in Florida specifically, you can see how it tends to buck the national trends.
posted by muddgirl at 8:11 AM on February 17, 2010

Oddly enough, the better question is why Protestants don't think contraception is morally wrong. Until the early twentieth century, the entire Christian church, regardless of its location in the various spectrums of Christian tradition, was unified in believing contraception to be unacceptable.

A bit of Noncomformist dissent around the edges went nowhere until the Anglican Communion officially reversed its position at the Seventh Lambeth Conference in 1930. The Anglican Communion is one of the more intellectually respected ones amongst the various Protestant traditions--or at least it was at the time--and when they got on the bus (or off, depending on your point of view), most other Protestant denominations didn't take all that long to follow. By the middle of the twentieth century, the standard Protestant position was that contraception was a decision of the couple alone, if it was even a moral issue at all.

This shift came more or less out of nowhere, but it's probably related to the Protestant disinterest in Catholic conceptions of natural law. I say "probably" because no one has done all that much research here, and in fact, a friend of mine is doing is Ph.D. thesis on Protestants just stopped caring about this. His advisors think the project is interesting in no small part because no one's really done it before.

To tie this back to the original post, contraception is an issue with a complicated moral history, and the reasons why Christians might think it's wrong are far, far better worked out than reasons why Christians might think it's okay. In my own anecdotal experience, I know a ton of Christian twenty- and thirty-something women who are far less comfortable with contraception than their parents, but very few the other way around. As the current generation re-examines a lot of the details of the religion we've received from our parents, oddities like this one, i.e. a radical departure from Christian tradition with little or no attempt at explanation, start to come up for grabs.
posted by valkyryn at 8:17 AM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

My suspicion too is that is has to do with Evangelical Protestant beliefs. It seems like a natural outgrowth of EP rhetoric on abortion (humans should not play God with new life), abstinence (save sex for marriage and procreation), and homosexuality (gay sex is wrong because it does not allow for procreation).

Further, I am deeply curious whether this is something new. Looking at the slider, I am shocked at how many under 22 year olds across the country consider contraception to be morally wrong. Is this a generational thing (< 22 year olds have thought this for a long time and change as they get older) or is this a sign of changing attitudes to come?
posted by Tallguy at 8:21 AM on February 17, 2010

I think the answer is mudgirl's grassroots theology in the form of the quiverfull movement.

Basically the argument is that children are a blessing from God and that one should accept all blessings given. A corollary to this is that to use contraception is to attempt to impose one's own will over the will of God.

For a pop culture example, see the Duggar family from 19 kids and counting. From their web page FAQ "We prayed and studied the Bible and found a host of references that told us God considered children a gift, a blessing, and a reward. Yet we had considered having another child an inconvenience during that busy time in our lives, and we had taken steps to prevent it from happening... we agreed we would stop using any form of birth control and let God decide how many children we would have."

Their oldest son Josh married recently and he and his wife vowed during their ceremony not to use contraception.

So basically some people think that using contraception is an attempt to thwart God's will and shows a lack of appreciation/recognition of the blessings God offers.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:22 AM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

If only I had a penguin, it's true that there are some grassroots-ish movements in play here, but the idea that "using contraception is an attempt to thwart God's will" is a really old idea. This is why the Catholic Church thinks it's wrong, and has for as long as anyone's been able to tell, and it used to be why the Protestant traditions also considered it to be wrong.

Again, I think the real point of interest is why the map isn't a much darker red than it is.
posted by valkyryn at 8:25 AM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

My suspicion too is that is has to do with Evangelical Protestant beliefs. It seems like a natural outgrowth of EP rhetoric on abortion (humans should not play God with new life), abstinence (save sex for marriage and procreation), and homosexuality (gay sex is wrong because it does not allow for procreation).

The problem with this is that the rest of the southeast is just as EP as East Texas, isn't it? I grew up in East Texas, and there are a lot of extremely conservative sexual beliefs (and, of course, lots of babies born to young and single mothers--that's what you get when you don't teach contraception), but I can't think of a reason why that region would be more anti-contraception than the rest of the socially conservative EP South.
posted by Mavri at 8:35 AM on February 17, 2010

I'd be wary of assuming there will necessarily be a strong relationship between OK Cupid's statistics and those that you would obtain if you polled a truly representative sample of women from East Texas. OK Cupid is probably to some degree its own demographic.

In other words, there could be a whole segment of the female East Texas population who think that contraception and online dating are equally evil in the eyes of The Lord, and something like that would skew the figures somewhat.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 8:40 AM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't put too much stock in the Catholic factor...

Aside from the Mexicans, there are (or were) a lot of Black Catholics in TX.

I think the thing in TX is that you have Evangelicals on one hand, and Catholics on the other. The one thing they tend to agree on is that a bit of rubber can thwart the will of God.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:10 AM on February 17, 2010

Nthing the procreation. A older woman of my acquaintance actually thinks that oral sex is morally wrong. "You can't conceive with your teeth" was her explanation.
posted by DU at 9:10 AM on February 17, 2010

In other words, there could be a whole segment of the female East Texas population who think that contraception and online dating are equally evil in the eyes of The Lord, and something like that would skew the figures somewhat.

Yeah, these maps clearly under-represent the older women in East Texas, who would not sign up for OK Cupid.
posted by muddgirl at 9:21 AM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

That concentration seems to me to be centered around Waco. Waco, TX is the home of Baylor University, which is a pretty hardcore Christian university that teaches the kinds of theology that frequently lead people to conclude that contraception is wrong. That might explain the concentration of young women who feel that way.
posted by KathrynT at 9:22 AM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Put another way, righteousness is a battle. And you can only "win" it by forbidding more and more things and looking down on more and more people.

For years Protestants world wide allowed birth control and drew attention to this difference with Catholics. Now the "righteousness gap" requires a change of position.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:45 AM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Looking at the slider, I am shocked at how many under 22 year olds across the country consider contraception to be morally wrong. Is this a generational thing (under 22 year olds have thought this for a long time and change as they get older) or is this a sign of changing attitudes to come?

I hope not! I'd say that it's unsurprising that young people have more conservative beliefs. At that age you are still under the rules and mores of your parents and just coming into your own -- making your way in the world will challenge many assumptions that were a given in your family household. As you start to form your own identity, you also start to look out for yourself in a different way, I think. It's all fine and dandy to say that you'll remain a virgin until marriage and that you'll only have sex for procreation when the situation hasn't really presented itself or has been easy to avoid. You go off to college and suddenly that possibility is all around you and you have to decide for yourself what you really want to do. Most opt for sex and many decide that they aren't ready for babies yet. God is really rather stupid about this. He should take a memo.
posted by amanda at 9:59 AM on February 17, 2010

I've known a number of young women who are evangelical Protestants. I can't speak to larger trends, but in my personal experience, when these women rejected the use of contraceptives, it had everything to do with abortion, and absolutely nothing to do with the idea that sex is only for procreation.

As General Malaise points out above, the idea that contraceptives cause abortions is mistaken, at least from an OB/GYN's perspective. As doctors define it, pregnancy begins when a fertilized egg attaches to the uterine wall. Because contraceptives do not "kill" an attached, fertilized egg, they are not abortifacients.

Here's the rub: many evangelical Protestants have a different definition of pregnancy, or at least of the beginning of life. An outgrowth of the pro-life movement is the idea that life/pregnancy begins at the moment an egg is fertilized. Because one of the mechanisms by which contraceptives prevent pregnancy is thinning the endometrium so that fertilized eggs (human beings, in their estimation) cannot attach, many of these evangelical Protestants believe that oral contraceptives are, therefore, abortifacients.

Just as "the Pill" has become shorthand for any number of different oral contraceptives, "contraception" has become synonymous with oral contraception to some people. This may account for the apparent hostility to contraception that the OK Cupid analysis found, as the women of my acquaintance who believe that oral contraceptives are abortifacients are generally okay with condoms, diaphragms, and the like.

Again, this is anecdotal based on my personal experience. I'm sure some young women object to contraception because sex is only for procreation, or for other reasons.
posted by jingzuo at 10:08 AM on February 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

Be careful not to read too much into this statistic. There's a difference between...

* I think it's morally wrong and I deliberately forgo the use of contraceptives when engaging in sexual activity.
* I think it's morally wrong, so that's how I'll answer this specific questionnaire at this specific moment.

In other words, plenty of people will say X is wrong, and then take part in X anyway. Because people are wonderfully irrational creatures.

If you were to properly look at this question and questionnaire in context, you'd consider it along with rates of sexual activity, birth rates and family sizes. And then you'd probably find that white Protestants have vastly different results than Mexican Catholics, which speaks more to cultural influences on contraception usage than religious influences.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:19 AM on February 17, 2010

I would point out that around 80% of American Catholics use birth control (and some portion of the 20% is actively trying to get pregnant). It's not an issue American Catholics pay any particular attention to the Church about, and few local churches push it. I think General Malaise is probably correct, based on my experience in conservative Christian areas.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:20 AM on February 17, 2010

I grew up in East Texas (Tyler) and I'm honestly perplexed by this. On the one hand, people in East Texas are very conservative and very religious. The Tyler paper still features a Bible verse on the front page, and each Friday a whole section of the paper is published listing the local churches and the details of their services for that Sunday.

On the other hand, the region isn't particularly Catholic as much as it is Baptist and non-denominational Protestant. I attended the local Catholic school for many years, and I never felt like the Diocese of Tyler contributed that much to the East Texas religious conversation; unlike, for example, how the Archdiocese of San Antonio does for Central Texas.

So this has to be (as others say above) an evangelical protestant thing. The youth factor is more explainable by the growth of evangelical protestantism among younger generations. I know that there has been a big shift away from more mainstream protestant churches in recent years as upstart non-denominational churches have offered more non-traditional services featuring things like bands instead of organs.

Weird stuff. Now I have a conversation topic for the next time I visit home.
posted by fremen at 10:38 AM on February 17, 2010

East Texas is demographically and culturally more deep south than plains or western along many different vectors, many of which align to make it the most conservative part of the state. This specifically means East Texas proper, not Southeast Texas (the Gulf coast from Beaumont to the border), as the map in question clearly shows. The NE quadrant of Texas was cotton and slave country. It is more densely African American than other parts of the state, less Latino (though that is changing). It is also more deeply rooted in rural lifeways. And its brand of Christianity is particularly evangelical (as opposed to the more institutionalized Baptist hegemony just to the west). It aligns politically with the other dark blue areas on the map by virtue of religion and relative rurality, and to some extent by virtue of isolation, self-imposed or geographical or both.

In short, it just doesn't surprise me. I'd expect it to look like the entire ArkLaTex region, give or take a few variables. And it does.
posted by fourcheesemac at 10:38 AM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

la morte de bea arthur: In other words, there could be a whole segment of the female East Texas population who think that contraception and online dating are equally evil in the eyes of The Lord, and something like that would skew the figures somewhat.

I may be misunderstanding, but wouldn't the skewed figures require a segment of women in East Texas who think that contraception is evil but online dating is actually a-okay? I.e.: contraception eschewers would be over-represented among online daters?

One other observation: With the slider at 18, pretty much all of East Texas looks like a mass of blue (i.e.: high concentration of "contraception is morally wrong"). However, as you move the slider over to 28, you see that the Dallas-Fort Worth area stays deep blue while Houston fades into a more neutral green. Perhaps the Baylor connection that KathrynT mentioned might have something to do with this?
posted by mhum at 10:54 AM on February 17, 2010

mhum, I was just conjuring up a makebelieve example of how the data from OK Cupid might not be representative of East Texas at large. I wasn't really suggesting that the data is skewed in any particular direction for any specific reason.

I can't speak for this particular geographical/cultural group, but in my experience there are plenty of social groups where online dating is pretty much off the radar, although that's increasingly less true than it was.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 11:30 AM on February 17, 2010

mhum - the "old women" graph would presumably be a lot bluer if we polled the opinions of all women, rather than the opinions of just women who used OK Cupid.

Put this another way, we can make some assumptions about the users of OK Cupid, based on these graphs and knowledge of human nature:

(1) The younger population on OK Cupid will trend pretty closely with the national population, as online dating in general and OK Cupid in particular have become destigmatized.

(2) The older population on OK Cupid will NOT trend closely with the national population, as online dating in general and Non-eHarmony sites in particular may be stigmatized as "places where immoral people hook up for sex". The population of older women on OK Cupid will be self-selected out of the population of single older women who are aware of online dating.
posted by muddgirl at 11:31 AM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

...And I just realized the interesting fallout of my assumptions is that younger women who believe that contraception is immoral don't remain single long enough to use OK Cupid at the age of 40 :)
posted by muddgirl at 11:35 AM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

le morte de bea arthur: I was just conjuring up a makebelieve example of how the data from OK Cupid might not be representative of East Texas at large ... in my experience there are plenty of social groups where online dating is pretty much off the radar

Indeed. My hypothesis can go the other way: namely, that there are social groups where contraception is a-okay but are under-represented in OkCupid's data because they have either chosen chosen a non-OKCupid on-line dating site or don't do on-line dating at all.
posted by mhum at 12:00 PM on February 17, 2010

muddgirl: the "old women" graph would presumably be a lot bluer if we polled the opinions of all women, rather than the opinions of just women who used OK Cupid.

This may very well be the case. As you astutely observe in your follow-up, "younger women who believe that contraception is immoral don't remain single long enough to use OK Cupid at the age of 40".

This still leaves the mystery of exactly who are these women, aged between 18 and 32, located in East Texas who are using OKCupid but who also think that contraception is morally wrong.
posted by mhum at 12:17 PM on February 17, 2010

They're looking to get married and have already dated all the boys at their church. Or their stated beliefs about premarital sex and contraception don't match their actions. Or they (as was pointed out above) assume that "contraception" means hormonal contraception (which is OMG ABORTION) and not condoms.
posted by muddgirl at 12:22 PM on February 17, 2010

Many of the answers you have here are a good cross-section of common misconceptions about Catholic and Evangelical teachings about contraception. Interesting in its own right and evidence that the Churches do a poor job of communicating their own theology. Usually the fanatics and loudmouths get to define us to the non-believing world, not the thoughtful people. I think it's because we can't fit our explanations into a sound bite or a tweet.

I think the only way to get a valid answer to your question would be more primary research --- another survey. Who can tell what socioeconomic factors are at work in the region?

But let me take a stab at contraception, if only to explain our perspective:

Christian theology is heavily influenced, even after these many centuries, by St. Thomas Aquinas. The basic idea is that everything in nature, including all the various fleshy bits involved in sexual union, are Good as they are created and are made for a purpose that God intends (teleology, essentially). So a technology that artifically blocks or short-circuits the natural operation of those bits goes against God's intention in giving us a genital function in the first place. (YMMV with the various Protestant groups, of course, since they are so diverse.)

Our belief is that the purpose of sex is twofold -- strengthening the intimacy of the couple and then procreation. Sex is supposed to image God's total gift of Himself to us and the new life that comes from intimacy with God. Not every act of sexual union has to be for the purpose of procreation. But neither is it acceptible to redefine the purpose of our genital function to exclude procreation.

Catholic couples can and should prudently decide when and when not to have children. But what we say they should do is honor their own bodies (and God's design) by paying attention to their own fertility.

Ulitmately, the test for sexual morality is this:
What practices are the most selfless and loving?
What practices are most accepting of your partner's body the way it is?
What practices most reflect the love that Christ has for His Church?

Way back when my wife and I were contracepting (yep, we've been on both sides) I didn't have a whit of knowledge or care about her fertility. She took a pill. Her job, not mine. After we learned a lot more about our faith and stopped the pill, we had to communicate about all sorts of stuff we had the convenience of ignoring before. We had to let God's design for our bodies impose itself on our agenda. Contraception had allowed us to keep God out of this most intimate part of our lives.

If you don't believe in God, that's no big deal. But to many believers, it is.
posted by cross_impact at 12:43 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

Interesting in its own right and evidence that the Churches do a poor job of communicating their own theology.

Umm... you're assuming that many of the commenters in this thread aren't current or former members of "the Churches", which would be a false assumption.
posted by muddgirl at 12:46 PM on February 17, 2010

muddgirl: They're looking to get married and have already dated all the boys at their church. Or their stated beliefs about premarital sex and contraception don't match their actions. ...

Fair enough.

I think, at least for me, the puzzling thing in OKCupid's data is how different East Texas appears (with respect to this question) from, say Oklahoma and Arkansas. Or more dramatically how, with the slider at 30, Dallas diverges from Houston. The smoothness of the transitions from age-to-age seem to suggest that this isn't merely a statistical fluke (e.g.: due to low sample sizes). I agree that there is likely some amount of sample bias here (i.e.: the un-representativeness of OkCupid's data). But, what exactly is the nature of this bias? Does OkCupid have much better market penetration in Dallas than in Houston, Oklahoma, and Arkansas? In which case the only people they signed up for on-line dating in those latter three areas are also the people more likely to buck convention?
posted by mhum at 12:57 PM on February 17, 2010

Also, your experience matches pretty closely with the testimonies of other women in the evangelical movement - hormonal or barrier-method contraception was the norm or at least unquestioned until the issue was addressed by a pastor or (more likely, depending on your doctrine and regional location) another church member. It's not surprising that younger members of the church would place a moral importance on this issue around the same time that adults in the church do.
posted by muddgirl at 1:00 PM on February 17, 2010

There are potentially some difficulties with those maps arising from sample distribution and presentation. The maps present the data at the county level so rural counties predominate visually, however 81% live in urban/suburban areas and single women have an even more uneven geographic distribution (also counties don't contain similar sized populations). This is without even considering skew among OKCupid users.

So while, no doubt generally accurate (it has a huge sample size) it is likely less accurate for rural areas which show up more on the map. Looking at the first map we might conclude that the women of south-east Oregon are unusually keen to have frequent sex, whatever their age, or we might pause to consider that is Malheur county, population 31,615, so perhaps a small sample size is somewhat skewing it.
posted by tallus at 1:06 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

tallus' explanation is far simpler and more probable than any cultural theories thrown out above.

Graffiti 2:16- do not attribute to religion that which is better explained by sampling bias.
posted by slow graffiti at 1:36 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think tallus and graffiti the others who mention sampling issues raise an important point. But in East Texas there are dozens of contiguous counties all showing the same trend which stands out as unusual. And as a population map of Texas and the US shows the parts of Texas under discussion have fairly high population densities. Furthermore, I found one map on the OK Cupid blog not aggregated by state. The map is of responses to the question of whether flag burning should be illegal on a page of other survey results. It shows the area under consideration appears to be moderately well represented in the OK Cupid poll. Without better data we cannot be sure, but it sure looks to me like a trend that deserves discussion.

Also, as others like cross_impact and valkyryn helpfully point out, there is a long theology in Christianity of opposition to contraception. But that doesn't explain either the shift to acceptance in the 20th Century or any real or perceived shifts back now. Also, showing that a thread exists in southern EP that rejects contraception doesn't explain why the phenomena exists among East Texas and not other places with similar numbers of EP.

Part of my armchair fascination with this topic is this: for some cultural trends (fashion, food, shopping, etc.) people have long looked to California as a bellwether. What Californians do one year are what the rest of the country do a few years later. As political blogs have pointed out, Texas has become a bellwether for conservative politics and attitudes and what is part of the Texas Republican platform one election becomes part of the national platform the next. I appreciate the pointers to the quiverfull movement and others and I am wondering whether the attitudes of the young female OK Cupid users all over the south and the sorta young OK Cupid users in East Texas regarding contraception will become the norm among a larger part of the population.
posted by Tallguy at 2:15 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

cross_impact: So a technology that artifically blocks or short-circuits the natural operation of those bits goes against God's intention

If you don't mind me asking, as an outsider this has always perplexed me (I grew up Catholic, and I still don't fully understand). Using this as a guide what is the distinction between putting on a condom and putting on a band-aid? Both would seem to thwart God's will (will we get pregnant? will the blood clot?) Thanks for your thoughtful answer.
posted by Tallguy at 2:26 PM on February 17, 2010

Using this as a guide what is the distinction between putting on a condom and putting on a band-aid? Both would seem to thwart God's will (will we get pregnant? will the blood clot?)

The distinction is between a normal, every-day function, preventing death/infection, and a blessing which is miraculous, mysterious, and creates a new life. When blood clots, things go on as usual. When sperm and egg meet, something new starts. It is easy to justify interfering with death/infection, not so easy to justify interfering with the creation of new life (especially when you're dealing with the Creator of Life).

I would also suggest that there is a certain discomfort with the way that the pill and other forms of hormonal birth control can disrupt the menstrual cycle, and the sense that "natural" cycles are what God intends, whether you're conceiving or not.

(raised evangelical)
posted by heatherann at 3:40 PM on February 17, 2010

Band-aids (and other medical technology) assist the body's God-given ability to heal. Condoms prevent the body's God-given ability to procreate. Only one is thwarting God's will.

But that doesn't explain what's happening in East Texas/Louisiana. My guess is that it's at least partially related to Hispanic population changes. That part of Texas doesn't have as much of a Hispanic population as most of the rest of the state, and had much less until fairly recently (I don't know about Louisiana). Recent immigrants are a bit more likely to follow the more conservative Catholic teachings and in an area without as much of a well-established Hispanic social network, may be more likely to use OK Cupid.
posted by Dojie at 3:43 PM on February 17, 2010

To paraphrase some of the above, an band-aid is an aide to God's will, while a condom/pill/etc. is a bane. (It may seem odd that God is so limited, but the faithful will say that He allows us the freedom to disobey.)

It's the same logic that makes Viagara a covered drug under most plans, while the Pill isn't. (It does make internal sense.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:28 PM on February 17, 2010

I think this is an anomaly of how the data is represented on the map. If you will notice, as you move the slider, the blue actually starts out in Dallas and spreads eastward and northward. Even on a Google map, it is is easy to see that the population and number of towns in this area is relatively sparse. Not knowing exactly how these graphs work, I would suspect that a disportionately high number of responses from the Dallas area itself created the effect on the response map.
posted by tamitang at 7:31 PM on February 17, 2010

What heatherann and dojie said. An injury or illness requires a response because it is an acute abnormal situation and action is needed to avoid further suffering (infection, etc.). Healing is definitely part of God's plan.

The difference is that our fertility is not an acute abnormal situation. It's just part of how we are made. And there is a very natural work-around since women are not fertile for the majority of their cycles. So a condom is not needed to avoid pregnancy. It's a heck of a lot more convenient, I'll admit, because a little tube of latex can replace a lot of attention, awareness, and communication and you can get to the fun stuff a lot quicker.

muddgirl, I am aware that many of the posters above are probably former members of the churches in question. I believe that illustrates my point, though, that the Churches do a poor job of communicating their theology. Both inside and outside of the Churches.
posted by cross_impact at 7:04 AM on February 18, 2010