Audio only:
In this episode Trent shows how rhetoric about repealing the 19th amendment is inconsistent and even harms Christian social activism.
Transcription:
Trent:
After socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race with the support of 82% of young women. Some people on the right have talked about repealing the 19th Amendment that gives women the right to vote. They say this is the only way to restore goods, like the true meaning of marriage and legal protection for the unborn. But in today’s episode, I’ll show why this kind of rhetoric has the opposite effect and will make it harder to push back against evils like sodomy and abortion. First, let’s take a look at a common argument in favor of repealing the 19th Amendment. Here’s Protestant Pastor Dale Partridge in a clip that has been seen over 4 million times on X.
CLIP:
Is it good that women can vote in America? I don’t think so, and here’s why. Nearly every legalized moral atrocity of the last a hundred years was made possible by the female vote. Abortion and homosexuality would likely still be illegal if not for the female vote. Mass immigration and the welfare state wrote on the backs of the female vote. Nearly every modern Democrat, including Obama and Biden were elected because of the female vote. Even last night, the new Muslim, New York City Mayor Mond won specifically because of the female
Trent:
Vote. However, many people who make this argument against women voting aren’t consistent. They say women tend to vote for bad things like pro-abortion, liberal politicians, and so they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. However, young people as a whole are much more likely to vote for these bad things than women as a whole. Mamdani won because of his support among young people, not women in particular. Two thirds of men under the age of 45 voted for him on par with the rate of women between the ages of 30 and 45. Women under 30 went from Mamdani at a higher rate, but they aren’t a very large voting block. We can also see this in previous presidential candidates, including Donald Trump who did not win the youth vote in any of his elections even in 2024, young men under 30 were basically split between Harrison Trump.
So by that logic, should we repeal the 26th amendment and raise the voting age to 45 or 60 to make sure liberals don’t win? African-Americans are much more likely than women to vote for pro-abortion. Liberal politicians, the racial gap is way more prevalent than the gender gap in elections. So by that logic, should we repeal the 15th amendment and only allow whites to vote? Now, there are anonymous online accounts who would say yes, but who cares what anonymous trolls think. What’s more interesting are people like Dale Partridge or Joel Wein who publicly say, we should repeal the 19th Amendment. So I message them the following question, since people under the age of 40 and African-Americans support liberal pro-abortion politicians at higher rates than women, do you support repealing the 15th and 26th amendments to eliminate their right to vote? Webb didn’t reply to me, but Partridge answered my question and said, this men of every color should have the right to vote and represent their household within a republic.
So he didn’t support repealing the 15th amendment when it comes to age. Partridge said this, as for the 26th Amendment, I believe age alone is a poor standard for determining voting eligibility. A wiser approach would consider factors such as marital status, children land ownership, education years as an American citizen, and ideally religious affiliation. So unless you’re willing to be a full-blown racist who denies black people the right to vote, you can’t consistently say that women should be denied the right to vote simply because in the past few decades, their demographic tends to vote for liberal policies. You need an argument based on applied principles, not an argument from estimated outcomes to show women should not be allowed to vote. I cover some of those arguments in a previous episode I’ll link to below, including the claim that men risk more for society and dangerous jobs, and so only they should be allowed to vote. But this doesn’t explain why men with cushy jobs should still get the right to vote or why women who take on bodily risks like giving birth shouldn’t be allowed to vote when they’re the ones who allow society to perpetuate over time at all. When it comes to arguments I didn’t cover in that episode, Andrew Wilson has claimed feminism is incoherent when it says rights don’t really exist and that women have the right to vote. Here’s how we put it on the whatever podcast back in May.
CLIP:
Forced doctrine is a doctrine which I came up with, which tries to describe a phenomenon which you yourself are going to have to concede is true that half of the world right now, if men decide to, they can basically exterminate every single woman inside of their nations and there’s not a damn thing women can do about it. And because of this forced doctrine application, women’s rights all come from men not inherently from themselves. Therefore, feminism is a lie, complete lie that’s forced doctrine.
Trent:
And just to be clear, Wilson is not saying he endorses men, annihilating women. He’s making an internal critique of feminism. His argument is that if we don’t have inherent rights, then rights come from the state. Specifically, they come from the men who protect the state in law enforcement in the military. Therefore, feminists can’t complain if the source of their rights takes away their rights. Now, I agree with Wilson that it’s incoherent to say we have no natural rights, and that outlawing abortion violates the presumably natural right to control one’s body. But a feminist could just tell Wilson that unlike natural rights, social rights don’t have to come merely from a bureaucracy or rule by the strong. They can be part of a collective social contract that everyone, even the strong recognizes better than bureaucracy. For example, in a true bureaucracy, the rights of the weak come from the will of the strong regardless of sex in such a society, the rights of physically weaker men like the elderly, the disabled, or even men who aren’t in the top tier of strength and can’t open a random pickle jar like Wilson, their rights would come from stronger men who can do things like open a random pickle jar.
But the strongest 10% of society couldn’t unilaterally control the weaker 90% because even if you are individually weak, there’s still strength in numbers. As noted in this great scene from the 1998 film, A Bug’s Life,
CLIP:
Those puny ants outnumber us a hundred to one and if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life.
Trent:
Given this reality, everyone might prefer a social contract where more people have a say in government, which reduces the need to have to constantly threaten force over other people to get your way. So neither the argument from bad voting outcomes nor the internal critique argument show women shouldn’t be allowed the right to vote. What about a more principled argument? Some who advocate for Christian nationalism say women shouldn’t vote because there is a natural order where only households can vote and households are represented by husbands and fathers. Well, the Bible doesn’t have a teaching on voting rights since those are a recent part of history. Likewise, the Catholic church was originally wary of voting at all, be it for men or women since male voting is also a recent phenomenon in human history. But once women gained the right to vote, this was something that church supported as can be seen in Pope Pius, the 12 who said in 1945 that it is a strict obligation on all entitlement and women to take part in elections. Household voting would be something you’d have to support with a prudential argument. It’s not something from divine revelation or church authority. Partridge tries to support this argument by saying men must lead because women are more susceptible to making bad decisions.
CLIP:
Women are twice as likely to men to be seduced into an affair. They are 26% more likely to be financially scammed online. They’re three times more likely to fall prey to psychics and tarot card readings and astrology and mediums. The same emotional vulnerability that shows up there also shows up in politics,
Trent:
But you can make the same argument against men being trusted with the right to vote. Some studies say that men and women get equally scammed while others show that men are more likely to be scammed. Other studies show that because men are bigger risk takers, when they are scammed, they lose more money than women. Men being more likely to take risks is a good thing. It fosters exploration and discovery, but it’s a bad thing when men are more likely than women to end up in the ER or the morgue because of their risk taking. So the argument for men and women’s capabilities also isn’t persuasive, but even if you did implement household voting, it wouldn’t change much. Married women are only slightly more liberal than married men. The real problem with Western countries is that unmarried women and unmarried men are both more likely to support wicked policies and politicians.
However, if only households are allowed to vote, then what is the difference if these unmarried households still vote? This is why I asked Partridge the following question. Do you believe an unmarried man or an unmarried woman living on their own outside their parents’ home would qualify as a household that is allowed to vote? To which he responded? No, I do not believe an unmarried man constitutes a household. However, I do think that there should be an exception for unmarried qualified men serving in the military as their service demonstrates duty and responsibility worthy of representation. And of course, partridge thinks unmarried women don’t constitute a household either. My point though is that it’s ironic that nearly all the unmarried men who supported partridge’s video online would be unable to vote under his ideal system of government. But here’s my bigger concern. How do you convince 50% of the population or probably 80 to 90% under partridge’s plan to vote to give up their right to vote?
Partridge says, if we can overturn Roe v Wade, we can repeal the 19th Amendment. But while over 200 Supreme Court cases have been overturned in history, only one constitutional amendment has ever been repealed. Specifically the 18th Amendment, which banned alcohol sales. It was overturned 14 years later because the law couldn’t be enforced at organized crime, and the government really needed tax revenue from alcohol sales during the Great Depression. Realistically, you’d have to spend several generations converting people to a traditional view of Christian society until a super majority, at least 80% would vote for it. But by that point, you would need to take away people’s right to vote because most people, men and women could be counted on to vote for the right thing. The problem with repealing the 19th Amendment to address our social problems is that it cannot be implemented when its defenders say that it’s needed and when it could be implemented, it’s no longer needed to achieve its defenders goals.
So I’m asking online Christians, please stop saying stuff like this. It’s not going to lead to the social change that you want. All it does is give ammunition to our ideological opponents. Christians who talk about repealing women’s right to vote are like liberals who talk about abolishing the police or abolishing prisons. Their practically impossible proposals make it easier for critics to write off the more practical proposals that are out there and say they’re all just rantings of a lunatic fringe group. Also, it just makes us look like a bunch of whiners. I can’t win in the marketplace of ideas, so I need to outlaw the competition. The most practical thing we can do as Christians is to encourage men and women to get married and have children because this naturally moves people towards conservative positions on issues related to life and sexuality. But it’s hard to do that when you spread rhetoric online about how women are too dumb to be a public part of society.
This stuff makes men and women think that their lives are better off without each other. When God made men and women to be complimentary reflections of his divine love through their matrimonial bonds. So instead of trashing other people made in the image likeness of God as Christians, we should trash the lies that our culture has been feeding us. This includes the lies pedal to women that men in marriage inhibit their happiness. As I cover in my previous episode on the Real Problem with Childless Cat Ladies and the Lies pedal to men, by far right grifters, that marriage will lead them to a life of misery, as I showed in my debate with Pearl. Thank you so much for watching, and if you want to be part of a great event for Catholic men and women who want to build up our culture, then register today for the Council of Trent Conference in Dallas. On April 11th, we’ll have speakers like Brian Holdsworth, myself, Joe Hess Meyer, Evan Ragga, Lila Rose, and over two dozen Catholic creators who will equip you to evangelize a world in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Register today@conferenceoftrent.com. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.