Social conservatives

This is a troublesome group to identify  as "opponents" of constitutional fidelity. They often claim to support that. Some argue they have largely hijacked the term "conservative", so that people who are disposed to support strict conservative positions find themselves allied with them. The problem is that they will often depart from constitutionality when their positions are not supported by the Constitution.

The problem is that they so dominate "conservative" groups or the Republican Party that it can be difficult to support strict conservatism without their support.

Here are some of their main issues.

Abortion. Abortion has not always been discouraged by laws in the U.S., whether making it illegal to have an abortion, or to assist in having one. The old common law rule, going back to Edward Coke, was that personhood began at birth, not at conception or at a later time. As an illegal act it was largely promoted by the Roman Catholic Church, and taken up by various protestant groups, in the late 19th and early 20th century.

In the mid 20th century many conservatives supported abortion on the theory that "unwanted" children would be more likely to become criminals. The evidence for that theory was always weak, but crime did tend to drop after abortion became more readily available.

Abortion was largely legalized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, which was decided on other grounds than the Fifth Circuit Court, which found a Ninth Amendment Right of a woman to decide how many children she could have, although the Supreme Court did not actually reverse the Fifth Circuit, so the decision in that court still stands.

Ever since Roe social conservatives have sought to reverse it, in the hope that they could revive anti-abortion statutes in some states if it were. That is unlikely. It would be difficult to empanel a jury that would convict in such cases.

There is also a problem that it is too easy to have an abortion, with or without assistance. There are now drugs that can induce abortion at any stage, at low cost.

But as long as social conservatives think overturning Roe is possible, they will be interfering with court decisions on the subject.

Contraception. Bans on this have now, properly, been struck down by the courts. It seems to arisen out of the theory that contraceptives make unwed sex more likely, and that without them couples would be more likely to remain married. The sexual practices of people might have once changed as the result of contraceptives being more available. But they are not going to change back. Abortion is only one of the alternatives to contraception. It doesn't work to try to make irregular sex more difficult or dangerous, not as long as we can't chaperone every couple through life. Even that didn't work when it was tried.

Homosexuality. Largely ignored for most of history, attempts to criminalize "sodomy" emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries, which accomplished little or nothing. Such laws are dead letters or struck down by the courts. Sexual preference is, in general, not a matter of taste, but of physiology. Even many animals exhibit it.

School prayer. The practice of having student say prayers in school or elsewhere has never been shown to be effective in their moral development. Kids just do it to please adults without changing their beliefs. Likewise for things like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  All one does is encourage hypocrisy. People need to come to belief through a personal journey. It cannot be compelled, even by example.

what social conservatives have in common is nostalgia for a past that never existed. It only appeared to exist.