Rick Perry’s Views On Sex: Window Into His Inability To Think Logically

Rick Perry’s views on sex, sex education, and abstinence-only education are an excellent view into his inability to think logically. Rick Perry appeared before the Texas Tribune and was asked why Perry holds on to abstinence-only education when it has been proven Texas has the third-highest rate of teen pregnancy. “It works,” Perry responded, to laughter from the audience. Watch carefully this entire video, and see the wheels spinning in Perry’s head as he struggles to come up with a reasonable answer that fits his worldview. Those answers? (1) In my experience abstinence works (seriously), (2) We’re getting a “good return” on our abstinence-only education — as if children are, say, a porn stock investment, (3) Abstinence-only education works. Seriously. This is the Governor of the second-largest state in the Union, and the second-most populous state in all America. Is this the problem-solving ability you want to see in the White House? One in which “it works because I think it does” is the answer? Didn’t we have eight years of that already?

The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen writes of this exchange,

The problem here isn’t just that Perry has the wrong answer. The more meaningful problem is that Perry doesn’t seem to know how to even formulate an answer. He starts with a proposition in his mind (abstinence-only education is effective), and when confronted with evidence that the proposition appears false (high teen-pregnancy rates), the governor simply hangs onto his belief, untroubled by evidence. As Jon Chait put it, Perry seems to struggle “even to think in empirical terms.”

To understand the larger dynamic here, consider Paul Waldman’s sharp observation: “[T]he difficulty he has here comes from the fact that his stance on sex education is about 95 percent moral and 5 percent practical. He gets forced to confront the practical question, and he does so in such a bumbling way because he keeps trying to turn the practical question into a moral one…. He doesn’t have a practical argument because he’s probably never thought about it in those terms, and doesn’t much care.”

That sounds right to me. In general, conservatism isn’t pragmatic because policy outcomes aren’t the goal. Indeed, they’re largely irrelevant. As we’ve seen in too many instances, Republicans aren’t principally concerned with solving problems; their goals are ideological.

In a case like education and lessons on sexual health, the left tends to look at this in terms of results: what works in preventing teen pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases? For the right, the question is philosophical: what’s consistent with their morality?

The exchange in the clip is amusing because it makes Perry look foolish, but it actually offers a peek behind the curtain: the right believes programs work, even when they don’t work, so long as ideological goals are being met. Real-world implications are meaningless.

Postscript: Just as an aside, Perry also believes public-school science classes should present students with both science and religion, assuming young people are “smart enough to figure out which one is right.” Here’s a radical idea: maybe Perry should consider a similar approach to sex-ed?

(Hat tip: Towleroad and Unreasonable Faith)