"I'm not a monster."

"No, but you do have some pretty fucked-up cultural scripts."

"Become powerful and then you can ignore your cultural scripts and do whatever you want! --At least until the Second Coming appears in your office and tells you that you have to stop cheating on your wife."

"I'd say I'm sorry but I'm honestly not. On the other hand, I see no reason why she oughtn't go back to writing books."

"That was my second question! She's a lot happier when she gets a chance to write. She is an intelligent and talented Proverbs 31 woman who is utterly wasted on folding my underwear."

"Complementarianism is to a first approximation nonsense!"

"I have literally no idea how this revelation will affect my marriage."

Shrug. "I can't see the future, so not me."

"Do you want me to call Nick? He's the Eye who spies on me, although I'd appreciate it greatly if you acted like I believed he was my personal assistant."

"So that he can report on my liberal ways to his masters? I was planning to go on TV and denounce them sooner rather than later..."

"Best to control the information flow to the people spying on you, I've found. --Are you planning a coup?"

"At the moment I'm just going to completely delegitimize their current actions and give them a chance to shape up or expose themselves as hypocrites."

"Okay, but you understand that if you get on TV and say 'actually, God is fine with gay sex and screwing fourteen-year-olds, complementarianism is a lie, free speech is good' or whatever, there will be riots. People will die. Some of the people rioting will be in the military and they will come here and shoot us and take over the government and last time that happened we nuked Cascadia."

"...Adults screwing fourteen-year-olds is in fact not okay, but I take your meaning."

"It is not obvious from the outside which sex you do and don't take offense at!"

"Statutory rape is bad! Anything rape-like is bad! Anything consenting adults do--for sufficiently scrupulous definitions of consent, I suppose--is fine. To a first approximation."

"Unless the consenting adults are cheating on their spouses! And you might want to figure out a word to use other than 'statutory rape' if you're talking to Cascadians."

"That one is less sexual immorality and more 'in general, sleeping with people who are not your partner when you have a partner who is not fine with it is a dick move.'"

"I hope you can understand that from the outside it is not remotely obvious that having consensual sex with fourteen-year-olds is worse than cheating on your spouse, and we Gileadites have clearly been functioning on an outdated version of the commandments so we have very wrong preconceptions about what you do and don't approve of."

"Fiiiiiine. I will be comparatively gentle about ripping off the band-aid."

"Not actually what I was going for. I suggest contacting a government you like in North America, which sounds like it would probably be Canada, and arranging for a peaceful transfer of power. Present it in the press conference as a fait accompli. Complete amnesty for lower-level members of the Republic of Gilead, higher-level members get prison sentences or maybe house arrest, most governmental functions shall continue as normal but Canadian laws will apply, special elections will be held at thus-and-such a time, you will distribute pamphlets to every pastor explaining correct Biblical interpretation."

...She hesitates. 

"...Would Canada go over substantially better than Cascadia?"

"I don't think it would make that big a difference, You just seemed pretty down on sex with fourteen-year-olds. I think it depends on what policies You prefer. Cascadia tends to grant teenagers more rights, it's slightly more sexually liberal in general, it's easier to buy drugs there, they have stronger gun rights, they're kinder to animals, they're bizarrely anti-city, they spend a ton of money on their military but are generally pretty pacifist, they're the only country I know of where having open borders is a political third rail, they have forecasters which is admittedly a fascinating method of government..." 

"Fourteen-year-olds having sex with fourteen-year-olds is fine. And Canada seemed just about set to wipe itself out if I hadn't showed up."

"The problem with the Cascadian model is that, if it's common and socially acceptable for teenagers to raise infants or be their family's primary breadwinner, it's really hard to justify legally limiting their other choices, especially once you started giving a bunch of them the right to vote. For what it's worth, I think it's genuinely very rare for a fourteen-year-old to date someone much older than twenty, teenagers are just not very interested in people twice their age. Canada was wiping itself out because it values women's rights and wants to protect teenagers from making choices that they are quite likely to regret, both of which seem to be things You value."