The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
The Atheist Thread, Cont'd.
Impish:
While pursuing my reading on the Haggard scandal, I found this article reviewing books by evangelicals on gender roles and sexuality, such as "God's Gift to Women," by Eric Ludy, about the ideal christian man and his property, his wife. The title isn't meant to be ironic or funny: it's completely serious.
The article also deals with their view on people like me, those dang homosexuals. Amazing stuff:
http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/sharlet/sexasaweapon/
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: Impish on November 04, 2006, 12:04:57 pm ---While pursuing my reading on the Haggard scandal, I found this article reviewing books by evangelicals on gender roles and sexuality, such as "God's Gift to Women," by Eric Ludy, about the ideal christian man and his property, his wife. The title isn't meant to be ironic or funny: it's completely serious.
The article also deals with their view on people like me, those dang homosexuals. Amazing stuff:
http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/sharlet/sexasaweapon/
--- End quote ---
OMG. I'm always appalled when I read the crap of those Christian fundamentalists (or about their crap). I am so happy that I don't have to deal with it on a daily basis. Christian fundamentalists are on the fringes where I live. In the media they practically don't exist, same as in society.
If those fundamentalists had a popular say and were present in our daily culture, I'd be mighty pi§§ed.
Though, unluckily, I happen to live in a village with a relatively multitudinous group of evangelicals, measured by the total of the village's population. At least I have the comfort to know that this is an exception in Germany.
I had never even heard of evangelicals before one of them took over our local kindergarten (became boss there). From then on, being informed about them and their methods and fighting them wherever I can has become kind of a personal crusade for me. And I have three supporters, and we made life for this woman in our kindergarten as hard as possible. Now she's gone (but I can't take credit for this; she got pregnant) and the rest of the bunch is quiet since then. They know they don't have any say anymore. And they know there are people who critically eye everything they try to bring into our kindergarten.
Enough rambled. Back to the article: it was very interesting to read. And although about such an annoying subject matter, it is in parts funny. What really gave me a laugh was this:
--- Quote ---Dobson is most-recently known in the secular world for his charge that Spongebob Squarepants had been recruited as an agent of the "homosexual agenda,"
--- End quote ---
This is so ridicolous, so beyond any rationality that I can't take it serious, I can't help but smile about it.
nakymaton:
Interesting article. It answers some of the nagging questions I've had about fundamentalism: why women in particular are attracted to a religion that advocates literal interpretation of a book that, among other things, says that the appropriate punishment for rape is to marry the victim (whereas other infractions merit stoning or getting hands cut off or something like that). It blames men for things that go wrong in relationships, but in a different way than 70's-era feminists would -- it blames their lack of a certain kind of manliness, and their lack of religious devotion.
The books almost seemed aimed at some of the fundamentalist women that I know -- children of divorce, or women who have been through divorce themselves, or who have alcoholic or abusive husbands or fathers. Women who have a very idealized view of the past, of some sort of good-old-days where husbands were reliable and faithful and provided for all the material needs of their stay-at-home wives.
And it is interesting that gay men have taken the place of the temptress in the legions of "evil." Maybe Jon Stewart's joke about the threat of gay marriage -- that fundamentalists believe that 50% of marriages end in divorce because 50% of spouses turn gay -- is really what they believe. *boggles*
Mikaela:
--- Quote ---GLBT christians amaze me most of all: all that effort to explain away the simple fact that the bible really does teach hatred toward them.
--- End quote ---
I very much agree with this amazement, but it's the same that I find in myself when thinking of women in general being attracted to this faith. (I only refer to Christianity becaue that's the only religion I'm familiar with to any great extent). I can only surmise, as has already been mentioned here, that such women haven't really got much in-depth knowledge of the texts of their religion.
The passage on Lot and his wife and daughters were one of those that spoke very strongly to me back in the days when I was making up my mind, reading the bible: I was envisioning the family's last days before leaving the doomed city and the helpless terror those two girls and their mother must have felt at hearing the father casually offering the girls up for gang rape. What do you do when your only protector in a harsh world treats you like some piece of...... I don't know. (There is no emoticon fitting my emotions at this). The later story where both girls get pregnant by their father who conveniently claims he was too drunk to know what was going on..... Well, I know who I personally feel certain was the true guilty party there. >:( Then again, there is another story (I'm sorry, I can't offer up chapter and verse off the top of my head) where a poor woman is offered up for gangrape by her husband without any intervening rain of fire, in order for him to stave off an equally angry mob. There's a horribly tragic passage of her crawling back after the night is over, lying helpless and maimed to death on her husband's doorstep.
These stories are absolutely horrible on their own as reminders of a misogynistic historical past one would idealistically have hoped humankind had put far behind us by now (though we've not, of cuorse), but they're supposed to be the word of God? This is what the word of God has to tell me about the treatment of women? And they are only a few of a heap of examples. I guess my views on this are obvious without me spelling it out any more.
But in that context, the article you linked to, Impish, was extremely illuminating. Thank you!
That the current fundamentalists have transferred their strong emotions of fascination and hatred from women-as-temptresses to gays-as-tempters is keenly observed and rings true once considering the current political climate in the US, the way it appears from over here. It goes a long way to explain the mystery of why there seems to be such an extreme hartred and fear of gays; now seemingly carrying the burden for more than those various men-who-sleep-with-men verses of the Bible.
It's infuriating. And insulting. And scary.
Impish:
The immortal words of a Pastor in Dover, Pennsylvania, after the state's Supreme Court ruled against teaching "Intelligent Design" in science classrooms:
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."
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