Above all, conservatives feel impelled to make clear distinctions between right and wrong.
We reject all notions of moral relativism. Though we’re obviously imperfect, and (like all human beings) often fail to do the right thing, we try to draw lines between the beneficial and the dysfunctional, between productive and destructive.
In policy as well as personal life, we seek to differentiate between good and bad behavior, and we want all of society (not just government) to encourage the good and discourage the bad.
In other words, conservatives insist on making distinctions, giving the individual broad latitude to choose, and then recognizing that choices must carry consequences.
A decent society supports and rewards good choices and discourages bad ones.
[...] Since nearly everyone (including Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats) believes that abortion is at least unfortunate, 'tragic,' and morally questionable, we want to block or discourage the choice to abort a baby. In most cases, the desire to 'terminate a pregnancy' amounts to an effort to erase the consequences of previous bad choices (like unprotected sex outside a marital relationship). The pro-life consensus among most conservatives stems not only from religious commitment but from a logical desire to avoid facilitating irresponsible behavior – in both snuffing out potential life and encouraging reckless sexuality.
The conservative focus on making distinctions makes it easy to defend traditional definitions of marriage. The difference between a same-sex relationship and the union of a man and a woman isn’t subtle, or slight or inconsequential. Aside from the brutally obvious fact that no love between two men or between two women will produce its own progeny, it’s the union of profoundly contrasting male and female elements that gives marriage its unique and permanent power. The insistence that marriage apply only to this joining of opposite genders doesn’t require the conviction that homosexual relationships are wrong, but it does arise from the clear-eyed recognition that they’re profoundly, irreducibly different from male-female coupling.