Seems Rick Santorum Supports Quiverfull

In recent public statements, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who is so far right he comes back upon his own tail, made comments that shows he probably supports the evangelical Christian Quiverfull movement. That is just one more thing that should prevent Santorum from serving as an elected official – even as a dog catcher.

Quiverfull is:

…a movement among some conservative evangelical Christian couples chiefly in the United States, but with some adherents in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and elsewhere. It promotes procreation, and sees children as a blessing from God, eschewing all forms of birth control, including natural family planning and sterilization. Adherents are known as “quiver full”, “full quiver”, “quiverfull-minded”, or simply “QF” Christians. Some refer to the Quiverfull position as Providentialism, while other sources have referred to it as a manifestation of natalism.

Quiverfull authors and adherents advocate for and seek to model a return to Biblical Patriarchy.[citation needed] Mary Pride recently distanced herself from the patriarchy movement in an article for Practical Homeschooling.

Quiverfull authors typically organize family governance with the mother as a homemaker under the authority of her husband with the children under the authority of both. Parents seek to largely shelter their children from aspects of culture they as parents deem adversarial to their religious beliefs. Additionally, Quiverfull families strongly incline toward homeschooling and toward homesteading in a rural area. However, exceptions exist in substantial enough proportion that these latter two items are general and often idealized correlates to Quiverfull practices and not integral parts of them.

Quiverfull

One nationally known adherent of Quiverfull is the Duggar family of Arkansas who have had 19 children and their own reality show on the TLC network.

During the GOP debate on Tuesday night (10/18/2011) Rick Santorum said about Herman Cain’s 999 tax plan:

He also doesn’t have anything that takes care of the families. I mean, you have — you have a situation where, under Herman’s plan, a single person pays as much in taxes as a — as a man and a woman raising three children. Ever since we’ve had the income tax in America, we’ve always taken advantage of the fact that we want to encourage people to — to have children and not have to pay more already to raise children, but also pay that additional taxes — we gave some breaks for families. He doesn’t do that in this bill.

And we’re going to — we’ve seen that happen in Europe. And what happened? Boom, birth rates went into — into the basement. It’s a bad tax for — again, it’s bold. I give him credit for — for starting a debate, but it’s not good for families, and it’s not good for low-income…

Rick Santorum: Herman Cain’s Tax Plan Would Be Terrible For Birth Rates

While in an interview:

Rick Santorum pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception, during a recent interview with CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart, arguing that birth control devalues the act of procreation. “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be”:

SANTORUM: [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.

Rick Santorum Pledges To Defund Contraception: ‘It’s Not Okay, It’s A License To Do Things’

Quiverfull is not a good thing to believe in since it throws out all the history of the women’s movement. It’s a return to Biblical Patriarchy and is part of the extreme belief of Dominionism. It attempts to return us to the dark days where it was wrong to have sex for fun and pleasure – something consenting adults should be allowed to do.

Just as I don’t want a government based on the Bible, I don’t want anyone who is a follower of Quiverfull or supports its ideas, anywhere near an elective office in this country.