Political ideology and shagging

While researching articles today, I came across a banner ad that caught my eye.


(Oh, I hear you, sister. Can’t stand those liberal guys—they’re always doing crazy stuff, like advocating for universal health care. Or expecting me to have a job. A girl can only take so much!)

But this is a tad odd, isn’t it? Aren’t conservatives always talking about how the vast majority of Americans share their views? Family values, and all that? If most people in this country are conservative, does Miss White Supremacy over there really need a conservative-specific website to help her find someone to date?





Well, apparently so. Welcome, kids, to ConservativeMatch.com!

You have to give them some points for creative marketing. I wish I could come up with a tagline like that.

So I was pretty curious about what sort of singles would specifically join a conservative dating site. Yeah, yeah, I’m liberal-leaning, but I don’t like fighting about it, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I sign up for BushHaterHookups.com, or whatever. So, seriously, ConservativeMatch.com??? Who are these people?

Well, Sadly, it turns out that you can’t view anyone’s full profile without signing up for an account yourself. But I browsed around a bit, becoming more intrigued by the minute. This place sure is conservative! Right down to the site-specific, "Conservative Match Magazine".

(If you can't see that, the top one says, "In the first of a two-part series, Stephanie Wood explores the benefits of a long distance relationship, and reaches into Scripture to encourage readers to be bold."... And Jesus did say unto them, that to board an airplane in the name of finding conservative love is good in the eyes of the Lord. Amen.)

Well, with my curiosity now raging, I took the obvious next step… I signed up.

The first part was simple and didn’t set off any red flags—pick a username, tell us how old you are, pick a password. The only little-bit-funny part was that one of the options in the marital status drop-down menu was “Annulled”. Hee.

But then, I got to the section called "beliefs". And things got interesting.

Agree/disagree?

The homosexual lifestyle is immoral.

Sex outside of marriage is immoral.

Pornography is immoral and harmful.

Prayer should be permitted in public schools.

Whoa.

And then...

Agree/disagree?

All men are created equal regardless of race, gender, or nationality.

What???

Gee, I’m really not sure about this one. I mean, a lot of brown people are inferior to us, aren’t they? If you have one guy who’s running around in a forest wearing a loincloth and speaking some language that isn’t English and eating things he finds under rocks, and another guy who wears nice, real clothes that he bought at Walmart on sale and drives a truck and knows to order a Supersize meal because it’s such a better value (duh!), then obviously the first guy can’t be equal to the second guy. If he was equal, he would have been smart and come to America where you don’t have to eat bugs or speak weird languages and can wear something other than burlap, for God’s sake. You can’t argue with that. Because it’s science.

Also, “all men are created equal regardless of… gender” seems like it might be a trick question.

Anyway.

So here I am, set up and ready to go on a nice, conservative date with a nice, conservative boy. (Well, sort of… I didn’t really fill out the profile, I just put in some standard stuff and went straight into “Search for Singles” mode because I was just. That. Excited.) So, I entered some criteria— gentlemen between 23 and 26 who are over 5’6 and identify themselves as “Very conservative”—and click “search”.

Three things jump out at me right away:

• A preponderance of mullets.
• Serious over-representation of Mel Gibson in the “favorite actors” category.
• Lines like this: “I'm seeking someone who is a conservative Christian and who puts God first in her life, and will put her husband and family second.”
• And this: “I listen to Rush Limbaugh just about ever single day.”
• A lot of cowboy hats.
• A lot of military garb.
• One black person. (ONE!!!)

But, worst of all…

Only a few of these guys are really peculair, some are actually cute, and none of them are really big enough assholes to make fun of.*

Damnit. I hate when I go to exploit the biases of other people, and then just end up learning something about my own, instead.

*Update: Wait, I found one!!! Keep an eye out for the next update.