Talk:Mothers Organized for Moral Stability

Possible re-focus of article

It looks like MOMS often gets lumped in, in reliable sources, with other groups like POSSE, etc. It may be better to shift the focus of the article towards opposition to sex education, rather than to individual groups that a) aren't particularly notable and b) whose articles would largely be duplicates of one another. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:22, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The closest I've found to that subject is Abstinence-only sex education. That's a bit surprising actually.--v/r - TP 13:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Pavlov's Children

Somebody called this film "Christian-extremist" saying that it does not "represent all Christians". This second claim is certainly true- but the source which had described it as "conservative religious propaganda" thus never claiming it reflected the views of the whole Christian Church!

I replaced it with "radical-right" because the film was not "extreme" in any particular presentation of Christian doctrine but rather in its slant on Pavlovian conditioning as part of a Marxist global plot (a secular ideology which happens to oppose orthodox Christianity and all other major world faiths in their orthodox iterations), and was shown by groups like the John Birch Society who were in fact condemned by many extremist Christians of the time for allowing theologically-liberal Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews and Mormons to join. Still other extremist Christians opposed all participation in politics as "worldliness" and failing to "live separate from the world", refusing even to vote; Jehovah's Witnesses and some Anabaptist-linked groups still preach this doctrine.

Political extremism rather than religious fundamentalism was the ideology underlying the film: it is thus best described as being of the radical right- defined as those who believed in complete rejection of the New Deal and the welfarist ideology which captured the center ground of western societies following World War II along with their conspiracist view of leftists, liberals and centrists- in some cases even less radical rightists- and all movements for progressive social change as "Communist subversion", which Hofstadter termed "the paranoid style in American politics". ; many within this sector of the Right held to radically anti-Semitic ideology and/or genetic White Supremacy, whereas others opposed equal rights for Jews and people of color not because they were biologically inferior but as part of a Communist conspiracy.

By the 1970s, Pavlovian/Skinnerian methods were opposed as "dehumanizing" by most on the political and religious Left, just as a broad coalition of religious leaders and the political Right had criticized them twenty years earlier for reducing humans to the equivalent of dogs; the orthodox religious and rightist critique of this behaviorism was based upon the impropriety of saying man, made in God's image, is a mere animal to be trained and not a complex being to be educated as a whole person. The leftist critique reached similar conclusions from very different foundations of post-modern relativism and pluralism (which rendered suspect the "absolute" and "logocentric" nature of reducing humanity to scientifically observable data or stimulus-response loops),the Third Force/Humanistic school of psychology represented by Carl Rogers, and the more radically holistic theories of human personality embraced by proponents of affective education, the Esalen Institute, Center for Expansion of Human Potential, Abe Maslow and their "Eupsychian Network" of supporters.

This rendered the film effectively irrelevant to later battles between social and religious conservatives- who mostly dropped communistic conspiracy themes to focus on the explicit "threats to faith and family" of homosexuality, pornography, abortion, moral relativism, pluralism and "secular humanism"- and comprehensive sexuality education advocates with their progressive allies. Some critics of the Christian Right note that present conservative approaches to sex education are much more behavioristic than present progressive approaches, in an ironic similarity to those which they condemned as anti-human; abstinence-only curricula are often heavily overlaid with fear and shame while offering the "carrot" of social approval, a good satisfying marriage, and eternity blessed by God for those who obey instructions. A "stick" of social ostracizion, expulsion from private Christian schools, sensationalized near-universal dire consequences from AIDS and infertility to suicide and drug addiction, future unhappy marriage and even eternal punishment in Hell is used to threaten those who do not conform. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.155.240 (talk) 17:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Very Limited References No Notability Nominated for speedy deletion

This article is about a non notable organization that has very limited references, is focused in one county nearly 50 years ago and is a non existent organization for many years. It is equivalent to covering a local defunct PTA chapter. Suggest moving some info into another category if it somehow could apply. Not a significant enough article for Wikipedia. 208.54.40.153 (talk) 08:34, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

What is it about Harper Collins and the Princeton University Press that you do not consider reliable independent secondary sourcing? That it is defunct is completely irrelevant, of course, as notability is not temporary. And this local defunct PTA chapter caused a national stir— usually something like that warrants a Wikipedia article, as seems to be demonstrated in the references given. At the risk of sounding a bit crass, Mr. IP address, "WTF"? KDS4444 (talk) 15:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)