Is there just too much reward for going extreme?

How to signal to your side that you are more committed, virtuous, etc.?  Just go to the extreme and insist on it as a matter of moral righteousness.  The latest on IVF…”Why the Southern Baptists’ vote opposing IVF could change national politics
The move may signal the beginning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many social conservatives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next frontier.”

If this headline and subhead are, in fact, accurate, this is a political disaster for the right.  Talk about finding a way to lose the culture war.  

Honestly, what I started thinking about is those on the cultural left going so all-in on trans issues to the point of completely ignoring biology.  To be clear, I am all for giving trans people basic rights and basic respect and accommodating in ways that are clearly reasonable.  But there’s a bunch of people out there insisting that, no transwomen should really be competing against biological women in sports and that’s just fine.  This is obviously wrong and unsurprisingly highly unpopular.  There’s also a bunch of people out there insisting that to ever question that we shouldn’t medically “affirm” the gender identity of every single adolescent who struggles is to be a horrible transphobe (most of us who have been or know teenagers recognize how unstable and fraught identity can be in this period). 

But, when those on the left takes these positions, they show to other lefties just how committed and virtuous they are.  And, of course, it’s a great way to lose politically by turning off normie voters.  I don’t know if the IVF thing is the perfect equivalency, but I do think there are similar dynamics of “look how committed and ideologically pure we are!” aspect to both of these.  And the result, in both cases, is bad policy and bad politics.  In this case, I’d love to see the right lose voters over this, though, because I’ll take anything I can get to move people away from anti-democratic authoritarianism.