AH Challenge: Racially liberal but sexually conservative USA

Your duty is to find world where the USA is just as racially tolerant and equal as OTL, but is a society of prudes where sex is concerned. There is no gay marriage, not even a spectre of civil unions, abortion is still illegal, out of wedlock birth is considered extremely abnormal and immoral, and even admitting to homosexual conduct is enough to be ostracized from the community. Bonus points for a black president in 2009.
 
The only way is to nip racial oppression in the bud, otherwise whenever you see downtrodden class A getting rights, downtrodden class B always thinks "I can do that! I'm not different from them!" To my understanding, the Japanese did manage to instill a very strong desire for monetary savings in it's women that persists some to this day, so perhaps something like that?

ED: Operating under an assumption that political empowerment of women led to more individualized and/or independent thinking among women that lessened the sexually conservatives mores you talked about since several of them have the practical effect of making things more difficult for women.
 
Birth control is the big one. You need to delay its invention and widespread adoption--maybe posit that it has some side effects that it doesn't have OTL--and everything else follows.

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Or go for a much more serious VD epidemic, maybe something horrifying like AIDS but that affects straight men and straight women more. I don't know much biology, though, so I don't know how deadly a disease like that can evolve to be. If its deadly and horrifying, you probably need it to have a long latency period so it can spread.

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or maybe some butterflies with the evolution of the Democratic Party in the 70s (remember that Ted Kennedy took an absolutist pro-life position back then). If the power shift from white ethnics to middle/upper class professionals, intellectuals, and activists doesn't happen, you'll probably end up with, over all, a somewhat more socially conservative set of laws, which will in turn influence behavior. It isn't going to be a dramatic difference, though.
 
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ninebucks

Banned
Wide-spread sexually-transmitted plagues throughout the entire 20th century. Non-monogamous sex becomes associated with certain death. Basically, the AIDS-scare times a hundred, for an entire century.

Meanwhile, the march towards civil liberties continues as OTL, but as world governments become increasingly interested in peoples' sexual health, fighting for sexual rights never catches on. Development of contraception is scrapped as birth rates dip.

By 2009, civilisation is scarred by the near constant sexual plagues, and is by-and-large willing to stick to government-mandated rules and about what is acceptable between the sheets, because they fear for their health. Even when medical advances cure one particular disease, the fear is enough to keep people in place.
 
POD No watergate.

America supports South Vietnam during invasion by north with supplies and bombing.

War finally dies down to a cease fire.

South Vietnamese democratic ally leads to war seen as a win by US.

Black civil rights leaders use black casualties as ammuntion in fight for rights.

This leads to eventually wide rift between OTL counter culture and civil rights movements.

Social changes, ie breakdown of family and increased drug culture leads to alliance between RR and old Religious Civil rights people in a backlash against Free Love Counter culture.
 
This sounds rather like some sort of wierd un-labelled DBWI, because that the description is not significantly unlike the modern US (at least the parts of the USA which do not touch the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans), which has largely come to terms (sort of) with racial equality, but is still much more conservative regarding the sexual revolution.
 
This might be a possible outcome of my favorite POD.

As a result of a successful reonstruction the former slave owning class lost nearly all of its land.


A new, and fairly succesful, group of former slaves manage to make reasonable livings from the land paid in compensation for the previous 250 years.

This group could be strongly influenced Christian preachers.

With property to transfer marital stability in the African Amercian community might be very good
 
This might be a possible outcome of my favorite POD.

As a result of a successful reonstruction the former slave owning class lost nearly all of its land.


A new, and fairly succesful, group of former slaves manage to make reasonable livings from the land paid in compensation for the previous 250 years.

This group could be strongly influenced Christian preachers.

With property to transfer marital stability in the African Amercian community might be very good

Darn it, you beat me to it.

If the "40 acres and mule" thing got done (perhaps with a longer Reconstruction to ensure it stuck), you'd have richer, more respected blacks who are a lot less likely to get disenfranchised and disrespected.

Despite the high illegitimacy rate, most blacks remain socially conservative, at least in certain areas (look at Proposition 8). A wealthier African-American community might be even *more* socially conservative than OTL.
 
Darn it, you beat me to it.

If the "40 acres and mule" thing got done (perhaps with a longer Reconstruction to ensure it stuck), you'd have richer, more respected blacks who are a lot less likely to get disenfranchised and disrespected.

Despite the high illegitimacy rate, most blacks remain socially conservative, at least in certain areas (look at Proposition 8). A wealthier African-American community might be even *more* socially conservative than OTL.

If they become integrated to American society real early maybe not-wealthier people are usually less socially conservative. Perhaps say ten twenty years earlier then OTL would be the best case scenario for this.
 
There is another factor in the successsful radical reconstruction idea. Education would also be key.

Now around that time the anti racist abolition movement was supported by what there was of a women's moevment. That movement's views might be quite puritanical.

I can see 20 000 idealistic young New England school marms having a real influence on former slaves and perhaps on some white folk who had not really benefit under the previous regime


One response to the sexual double standard is to ask for women's sexual freedom. Another is to demand different standards from males

In Britain one suffrage slogan was "Votes for Women Chastity for men."
 
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