[aortailwjrt]

I grew up in a dry county in Texas. Want to see a ton of Southern Baptists who claim they never drink but actually binge drink once a week until they're blackout drunk? Go visit a dry county in Texas. Way, way more DUIs than surrounding areas.

[anonporridge]

This brings up a great point that's really common in ultra religious communities.

When you demonize some common human activity as sinful, and use social shame to try to keep people from doing it, what you actually accomplish is a lot of grandstanding and moral high horsing, and when individual self control fails, it fails hard and dramatically because there isn't a social structure in place to guide people on how to engage with vices as safely as possible.

You get massive binge drinking and drunk driving.

You get drug use with no culture of testing, so overdoses are more common.

You get teenage pregnancy and STIs because abstinence only education doesn't work and kids don't know how to use birth control and STI barriers.

You get men that don't know how to accept sexual rejection and women who aren't taught how to reject, both of which lead to sexual assault, intentional and not.

Overcoming the demons of our human nature depends in large part on accepting the fact that they are an intrinsic part of us, and learning to dance with them is more effective than trying to ignore them.