Submission, Anyone? (was Re: another century of men on top)

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, June 11, 1998 at 19:27:41 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes:
>James Cullen wrote:
>>Leave it to the Southern Babtists to make the Catholics look liberal.
>
>While the Southern Baptists say that a wife should 'submit herself
>graciously' to her husband's 'leadership,' 'the Roman Catholic bishops in
>the United States...said marital roles, although different, should be
>characterized by "mutual submission" of a husband and wife to each other'
>(_NYT_ 10 June 1998: A1).
>
>This emphasis on 'submission' in the language of Christians is rather
>intriguing, sexually speaking. Religious rapture must come from the
>ritualized psychodrama of domination and submission. So, Les, there is
>kinky sex here after all, if we read it closely enough.

It's worse than you think.  The full injunction is "A wife is to
submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband",
following various selections from the Bible (Ephesians 5:22,
Colossians 3:18, 1 Peter:3:1). So wives play a service role in a
relationship that was designed to legitimate sexual intercourse.

Next will be a call for reinforcement of Deuteronomy 22:23-4, in
which it is specified that if a woman is raped and is too afraid to
cry out, she is to be stoned to death along with the rapist.

Or perhaps it'll be Deuteronomy 21:18-22, which directs that "If a man
have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey" the parents,
the child is to be brought outside the city, "unto the elders" and
stoned to death.

Bill