To them Family Values is just an innuendo for literal patriarchy. I’m not exaggerating, I mean literal “Rule by the Father.”

The Republican paradise is an oligarchy of household heads who each reign sovereign in their own homes.

The son is the father’s to mold, the wife is the father’s to pleasure himself with, and the daughter is the father’s to marry off to the boy of some good respectable family, if not to just marry off to one of his own business partners or acquaintances.

When Republicans freak out about the erosion of family values, they’re freaking out over the increasing ability of people to strike out and live sustainably outside of this regimented model of society.

Queer people don’t let themselves be married by arrangement of their parents, prosecuting child rapists fully doesn’t let men horse trade their daughters, women having their own independent hobbies and interests don’t depend on their husband for everything in their lives, welfare for single mothers doesn’t allow men to hold a standard of living hostage for women to remain in abusive homes, No Fault divorce doesn’t allow men to keep women legally trapped in a marriage they want out of, the right of women to vote means that a significant chunk of the government will always at least be at risk of further pushing against the household head interests, Sex work allows women to turn the very objectification under which they are normally oppressed into a means by which they can provide themselves a standard of living which competes with, if not surpasses, what a household head man can hold over her head to keep her in line.