Tellville

Sexual Orthodoxy? That's a new one...

Comments on the Bayly Blog Post: Chelsea Clinton drawing water at the well...

I don't know what poor Chelsea has done to deserve this sexual diatribe, but it's clear that she's not who this is about. I'm not sure who it is about, or for. At first I thought it must be people, likely female, who would like some equal opportunity in Christian service and in the world. But, no, I doubt people like that would last long in a Bayly church. I think he's probably preaching to the choir, one of those, "Aren't you glad we're not like those bad people" sermon/diatribes.

And, as is so often the case on the Bayly Blog, it's mostly about sex.

He asks:

Within the church today, why are we so reticent to recognize sexual distinctions that go beyond God's command or certain "roles" the result of His command?

...but still, despite this supposed submission to the biblical command, we show a complete absence of any biblical theology of sexuality.

...Why do we read sexuality in such a mind-bogglingly narrow way? We claim to love diversity, right? So why such a penurious, such a tight-waddish reading of this one so basic to our lives?

...A central part of understanding our culture is seeing the hatred for distinctions at its core, and few distinctions are more despised than this one present in the womb from our earliest days--male and female.

Actually, it's not so clear in "our earliest days," the embryo appearing female for awhile before male hormones make the eventual gender evident. One might say that all humans start out female and not be off the mark.

...And what doctrine of our precious faith would be more evangelistic to Chelsea Clinton than the archetypal Fatherhood of God and His gracious wiring of that Fatherhood into every area of the life of man—not “persons” or “human beings,” but “man?” See our Heavenly Father in all His glory and love--His mercy, His truth, His holiness, His grace, His faithfulness. Look at His great and tender love for His Son. Gaze upon the beauty of His Son and Spirit teaching us to pray to The Father with such tender intimacy, "Abba, Father."

Does this mean that those attributes of God are sexually connected? How so? If God wanted to explain to humans what he's like, it seems reasonable that he'd use language they could understand by relating what he wanted to teach to something familiar to them. A nice, loving, involved Jewish father could come in handy as an example of the kind of love he wants them to know he has for them.

Unfortunately, it can happen, as with all cults, that some of those who come along later, read that about God, and decide to run with it into rocky ground, build a rickety house with the rocks, and then throw the extras at people who don't agree with their ideas.

Some years back a well-known feminist was giving the commencement address at a college in New England and she opened her own (and Chelsea Clinton's) wound just long enough to allow this peal of thunder to escape: "We feminists are trying to become the husbands we wanted to marry."

Pejorative and strangely mixed metaphor (Bayly is good at mixed metaphor) slanting on the quote. How about considering the possibility of it not being a wound, she's not thundering, and taking the quote seriously? Maybe she was saying something useful to patriarchalist preachers who think women's best service is rent-a-womb. 

When it comes to sex, why are we so faithless? Why do we think we have to prove to the world we’re the good guys who stand on the side of feminism's purported liberation of women?

Probably shouldn't say "we" there, since Bayly is actually trying to prove the opposite.

Feminism's liberation of women?

Feminism hasn't liberated women yet. Women, feminists and those women who denounce feminists but profit from their long hard work, are on their way, but they haven't arrived yet.

Is that the liberation of women that’s given us the post no-fault divorce world where women and their children make up the largest growth in those living below the poverty line for the past couple of decades?

No, and that's not the result of no fault divorce, or feminist mistakes, it's the result of unequal laws, unequal judicial rulings, unequal hiring, unequal pay, and a cultural lag that keeps families' well-being second to business.

None of the other items in the litany of disadvantages for women is the fault of feminism. Neither is it the fault of feminists that their efforts have not eliminated all cultural inequities.

Years ago Joe Sobran pointed out that blood-guilt over abortion is the engine that drives the feminist movement.

I don't know who Sobran is, but I know a lot about feminism and its history, and he needs to study it more before he makes such goofy statements. Blood guilt over abortion may exist, I don't know if it does or not, but it does not drive feminism. Feminism is driven by women wanting to be treated like fully human persons. If there's any blood guilt, it's over not doing enough to right the wrongs women have suffered in the past, and still suffer.

Men, either we believe in the Fatherhood of God writ large over all creation and bear witness to His Fatherhood in our father-hating world, or we don't.

The fatherhood of God describes his character, not his non-existent hormone balance. It does not bestow his attributes on those who happen to have male genitalia. God denounced the fertility cults in the ancient world. From that evidence I'd doubt he's interested in supporting them now, no matter what Christian flag they're flying.

As for hating fathers, that's a strange statement. Who hates fathers? I love mine, and from all I've seen and read, everyone wants to love their father even though some fathers destroy their children's love by their actions, as do some mothers.

After all the ink is spilled, it really is that simple.

Yes, it is. It goes like this: Feminists want to be considered fully human. They want equal opportunity for both males and females. If people have equal opportunity, those who can do the job will, and those who can't won't. Thus, capability, not privilege, will be the choice point.

God said that those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. That seems to make genitalia somewhat less important than Bayly indicates.

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Response To Kamilla's Bayly Blog Comment

" I keep coming back to this Chesterton quote: 'When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.' And the whole of feminism is women putting our fists up to men."

Sorry, K, but that is nothing about feminism. I've studied it, worked at it, and I, like most of the feminists I've known don't see men as my opponents, certainly don't want to fight with them. We want equal opportunity for males as well as females.

"We forget that keeping the line of sexual orthodoxy..."

I'd hate to think that patriarchalists have some claim on "sexual orthodoxy," which is a rather arrogant term, is it not? Who gets to decide what sexual orthodoxy is, the historic religious sex police?  The ones who ran the witchcraft craze, burning succubi at the stake, the ones who tortured and executed people for using the sex position of woman on top?

Fertility Cult?

The Bayly Blog post "Counting our blessings..." is about how important it is for Christians to have lots of children. Bayly calls it being fruitful, and departs from his texts to make his case: that having lots of babies is the way to grow the church and be blessed by the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel.

Husbands are to love their wives (don't know if that's partially or totally a sexual reference). And the wives, for their part in the exhortation/requirement, are to have lots and lots of babies, presumably all they can. The man has his quiver full, the woman her belly full, as full as she can fill it, as often as possible.

Then, the covenant theology takes over, Bayly version: You provide the children, and they become Covenant children as you train them up to: males, be Covenant sons (ruling the church and family), females: have babies.

Nice for the sons, I suppose. The daughters, well, they just need to put out, and "carry to term," then, under the husband's direction, educate the children as he dictates.

Somehow, transformation of Christian doctrine into a fertility religion doesn't ring true to the Bible as I've known it. Do we have a cult here, a fertility cult with "Christian" whitewashing?

What do you think?

Bayly Blog: Covenant children and the emasculation of the church, with a tribute to my father...

Comments on the Bayly Blog post: Covenant children and the emasculation of the church, with a tribute to my father...

The post opens with a Bible quote from Genesis 18:18,19

…Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed… For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.

Bayly segues into his topic by presupposing that blessings of God promised to Abraham were dependent on Abraham "commanding" his household to do righteousness and justice, and thus the blessings of God upon the church are dependent upon men commanding those under them.

In case there is any doubt that the word "men" might refer to all humans, Bayly adds where commanding men are missing or their work is "soft and effeminate" the church has had her "manhood" removed, she's been "emasculated." Yes that's what he said.

Now, the incongruity of that strange pronouncement did occur to Bayly and he wrote a footnote about it, didn't say much, sort of brushed it off. Talk about a mixed  (contradictory!) metaphor! ...the church has had her vital manhood removed; she has been emasculated. Is this a case of if the only tool one has is a hammer, all problems look like nails?

I don't know about you, but if the church is referred to in the feminine, and metaphors about the church feature her as female, how could she be emasculated?

It seems to boil down to this:

Bayly thinks the church officers (male of course) might be characterized by a womanly softness and sentimentality. How's that? Well, they're too nice. They don't say no often enough, and they're too positive, don't want to discipline sinning church members, or other people's children (covenant children, which as a Baptist, doesn't compute with me).

As is frequently the case with Bayly Blog posts, there is a running not so subtle placing of women in the nasty box. Women are portrayed as inferior to men in courage, fearlessness, responsibility, and steadfastness.

Then, he turns around and presents us with the contrast between his parents.

His father was absent, off speaking most of the time, his mother was there, raising the children largely without her husband's help.

His mother was tough, his word for her. His father was a softie. His mother was the disciplinarian. Does she get credit for being a good mother? Sort of, because of his and his brother's constant railing about restricting women I have my doubts about her nickname "Mud" being only short for "mother." Dad gets a pass on avoiding discipline because he'd lost three children (mother had lost three children too, and she'd been there with them all the time). Dad is the focal point of the story/post because he had the courage to kick his wayward son out of the house.

Lots of criticism of other pastors in this post. Soft, wimpy, effeminate pastors. I'm really wondering just how he knows all this. Reminds me of an earlier Bayly pronouncement on why women don't want to get pregnant, he said because they didn't want to ruin the appearance of their breasts with breastfeeding. I wondered just how he knew so much about breastfeeding's effect on breasts, especially when he's wrong about it.

If Bayly knows so much about the lack of preacherly erective power in the average pastor, how's he know that? Is it from complaints from other pastors' flocks? Why are they telling him? Is it rumor? Is he constantly visiting other pastors' churches and evaluating their sermons? Comparing their maleness to his own supposed maleness?

I've notice something about the Bible bangers who rant about maleness, they don't look like the poster boy for maleness. And they protest too much. Them what's got it don't have to keep talking about it. I wonder if they even know what real masculinity looks like. I come from the country. I used to work in the fields along side men, kept up with them, surpassed most of them, because I was used to working in the hay, and they weren't. I could spot a real man, and the clues weren't arrogance, or "authority" or pontificating in thinly veiled references to male genitalia or erections. The clues were quiet strength, respect, honesty, kindness, and treating me and all women and girls like real people, equal humans, not putting us in some box of restriction. They didn't resent me because I could outwork them, they admired me for it, and for being my own person.

The bit about courage being an essential male trait: No, it's not. Women are probably more courageous by nature than men are. It's there so we can protect our cubs. My mother was a very feminine person, but the most courageous one I've known. She was genuinely fierce, born in. She hardly ever needed to use it, but like a good Buick LeSabre engine, when she kicked the pedal it was there. My father was courageous, but he wasn't born to it, he felt the fear and did it anyway.

Women have all the abilities and character traits men do. The church isn't being emasculated. If there is some biblical evidence to counteract and overturn all the metaphorical female imagery referring to the Church, I'd like to know where it is.  Male genitalia are only that, they carry no right to power and have nothing to do with courage, authority, or any other privilege or trait.

I've heard women preachers who preach the hell fire and brimstone style Bayly may admire. But, of course, he wouldn't think they had a right to stand there in the pulpit. Well, maybe, but they could only give their "testimony" and maybe sing. I don't know, haven't been spying in his church to see whether or not he's one of those emasculated guys who are emasculating the female church.

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After publishing the post above, shutting off my computer and realizing I'd stayed up too late, yet again, I had an Aquinas moment. I thought maybe I'd missed the import of Bayly's contradictory metaphor about emasculating the female church.

Maybe he doesn't think women are a part of the church in and of themselves. Maybe he, like Thomas Aquinas, believes women are fully human only when joined with their husbands in marriage, and that the husband is that person. If so, then it's only men who are really the church, everyone else is sort of there by proxy, their male figurehead (father, brother, husband, son) is the real church, the others are more like an outbuilding on the property. As in, a wife is a part of her husband, but he isn't a part of her. She's his uterus, basically. So, when a patriarchalist like Bayly speaks of women maybe he's not speaking of them as separate persons, equally with men a part of the church, but as extensions of the males they are a part of.

And, that could explain, positionally at least, some of the negative attitudes toward women that repeatedly appear on the Bayly Blog and in other patriarchalist writings. The female parts of those men are not their favorite parts. They are their inconvenient parts, their hard to manage parts, their troublesome parts, their essential, but irritating parts. Kind of like if you had a cow attached to your body.

Commenting On The Bayly Blog

I've decided to create a space on this blog for comments on posts that appear on the Bayly Blog. It has come to my attention that attempts to comment on posts there are often so highly censored that many people who disagree graciously and gently find that their comments are deleted, or if posted, are an invitation to derision and eventual banning.

So, since they are self proclaimed patriarchalists and frequently have things to say that could use some commenting on, I thought my Tellville blog might be a good place to discuss and counter some of the things the Baylys have to say.

Not all comments will be accepted for posting here, but you are invited to comment on the Bayly Blog posts I link to from here.

Please, no character attacks or denunciations--don't do what they do.

If you want to comment on a post from the Bayly Blog, or other patriarchal or complementarian blog or site, and I don't have a link to it here, email me with a subject line of, "Tellville Link Request" and I'll create one if I think it should be here.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for comments other people write here, everyone owns copyright for their own writings.

Rape and Patriarchy

One of the problems with patriarchy is that it necessitates having a male, or several males protect individual women. To be protected females must have a male umbrella that birth or marriage has provided them. They are not able to provide for or defend themselves, nor can they rely upon the law or legal system to protect and defend them.

This places women in a dangerous position all their lives. Their own male "protector" may turn against them, for any of a number of reasons, or be unable or unwilling to protect them.

If they are a daughter, their father and/or brothers may cast them out, neglect to protect them, be unable to protect them, or, in the case of "honor killings" murder them.

Mothers can similarly be treated by male family members, including murder at the hands of their own son.

If their male relative is in trouble themself, then the male relative's enemies may target one or more female family members in order to humiliate or taunt the male relative.

Rape of a vulnerable female is a favorite way to wreak destruction on a particular male, a family, or a whole culture.

In Pakistan, the actions of a brave woman, Mukhtar Mai whose brother was punished by her gang rape has brought attention to the plight of women caught in the claws of patriarchy in her country.

In Bosnia and Bangladesh muslim women were systematically raped in order to destroy families and weaken the culture. In their culture a woman who had been raped, particularly if she had a baby via that rape, would be rejected by her husband and cast out of the family.

Wherever women are property, and in patriarchy they are always property to one degree or another, they are not safe.

In the news today, a step in the right direction:

Pakistan's national assembly has voted to amend the country's strict Sharia laws on rape and adultery.

Until now rape cases were dealt with in Sharia courts. Victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime - if not they faced prosecution for adultery.

Links to Mukhtar Mai's blog extracts in English:

August 1-16, 2006

July 16-26, 2006

July 1-15, 2006

 

Bayly Blog: "The Fruitful Womb" #6

I would like to explain to Bayly and other similarly misled patriarchalists, since they are obviously wandering in the dark on this, why most women are not attracted to unrestricted reproduction.

He has said in his "The Fruitful Womb" post that, "The beauty of the breast is its fruitfulness, but women avoid pregnancy so their breasts won’t stretch and sag under the weight of their newborn’s milk and lose their erotic appeal."

No, Mr. Bayly, that's not why women don't want to be pregnant.

It's not about their breasts.

You forgot to mention stretch marks, varicose veins, rectal tears, and fistulas. Sometimes it's about one or more of those, but most of the time it isn't.

Why women don't want to get/be pregnant

It's not that they are being selfish with their wombs.
They believe they are responsible for their own behavior, and that includes what they do reproductively with their own bodies.

It's not that they don't trust God.
They believe God has not only given them breasts and a uterus, but a good mind for determining how to use them. And, they may genuinely believe God has indicated to them that they do not need to reproduce further, or at all, in order to please him.

It's not that they are sex maniacs.
They believe God makes sex pleasurable because he wants human beings to enjoy it, and that normal sexual desire is a gift from God that is to be satisfied whether it results in children or not.

It's not that they don't believe the Bible.
They believe supposed biblical proof for unregulated reproduction provided by those who preach it is based on woefully inadequate Bible interpretation.

It's because they want to be healthy.
If a woman is to be the steward of all God has provided, then taking good care of her body is a part of her responsibility. If she feels that becoming pregnant is not going to be good for her physical or emotional well being at this time, or ever, then not getting pregnant is the right thing to do.

It's because they want to have healthy children.
Having babies too close together is not to the child's health advantage.

It's because they want to fully enjoy their children.
A mother can only attend well to a limited amount of children at a time. Beyond that amount, she must constantly make decisions as to who to neglect.

It's because they want to have a balanced and full life too.
She believes she should have a right, and has a responsibility to live a full and productive life, including using abilities and gifts that go beyond child care.

It's because they are tired.
There is only so much one person can do and do it well. Mothers need to be able to rest too.

It's because they are overworked.
Some mothers are not overworked, most are. The more children, the more work.

It's because they don't want to vomit for three months, or nine, as the case may be.

It's because they don't want another cesarean section.

It's because they have a lousy husband and don't want to bring another child into the situation.

It's because they have no help.

It's because they are afraid.
It's easy for preachers and other people who've not been there to provide pie-in-the-sky assurances that one just needs to "trust God" when good sense would tell them not to get pregnant again.

It's because they don't want to be exploitive of others.
Who is paying for the health care, education, and public services of families who have large numbers of children? Other people, that's who, through their taxes and higher insurance rates.

It's because they just don't want to, and believe that they should get to make such decisions for themselves.

And sometimes, more often than you'd guess, it's not that they don't want to get pregnant, it's because they can't. And they think it's a private matter and none of other people's business, so they don't share it in spite of the fact that they get hounded by people who believe that women aren't really worth much, or doing the right thing if they don't put out--babies, that is.

Bayly Blog: "The Fruitful Womb" #5

Bayly's knowledge of breasts

He says, "The beauty of the breast is its fruitfulness, but women avoid pregnancy so their breasts won’t stretch and sag under the weight of their newborn’s milk and lose their erotic appeal."

Just how does Bayly get his knowledge of breasts? And, how does he know that women "avoid pregnancy so their breasts won't stretch and sag under the weight of their newborn's milk and lose their erotic appeal"? How many women has he interviewed on this subject? How many breasts has he studied?

I'm a woman, and I've researched this a bit, known a lot of breastfeeding women, been a member of La Leche League, read some books on the subject, breastfed three children. He's all wet, and not with breast milk either. Women's breasts don't sag "under the weight of their newborn's milk." If women's breasts sag it's because they did not wear a good support bra when their breasts were heavy with pregnancy, or just heavy because they have large breasts and going braless or poorly supported can cause sagging in large breasted women.

And, breasts do not lose their erotic appeal through breastfeeding.

It would be nice if poorly informed and misinformed males did not pontificate on matters about which they are ignorant. And even nicer if they did not pressure women to lend their wombs for unlimited use to males who think they own those subject-producing chambers to freely use for populating their "father rule" kingdoms.

Bayly continues:

"I write this as a meditation on the announcement of ---- and ------- ------- that, thirteen months after marriage, a couple months after the birth of their first blessing, ......, and a week after ...... baptism, God has placed another little one under their care. Lord willing, they will meet him May 31, 2007."

I've been there, done that, know what it costs the mother, the children, and the father. It would have been much wiser and kinder to all concerned if both I and any others doing the same had spaced those children at least two years apart. And, yes, we too were as poor as church mice, and God did not pour out blessings on us because we were ignorant enough to have our children too close together. He blessed us more after we got smarter about it.

On to the comments section of the Bayly Blog post:

Several men commenting were thrilled to read the post, they couldn't wait to fill those wombs.

One woman was frightened to leave herself open to uncontrolled pregnancy, but felt she must in order to do the right thing as a Christian.

Bayly makes a comment of his own in his comment section, one that makes his belief in the male ownership of women's wombs crystal clear.

He says that although he believes "fully in God's plan for husbands serving their wives through being the final authority in the home--what is variously called "father-rule," "complementarity," or "patriarchy" he thinks the decision about whether to have more children or not is one where husbands should be real careful to take the wife's desires into consideration. But, he says, "He still holds the authority, but he should be perfectly attuned to her heart."

There you have it. The man has the final authority over whether the womb shall be full and filled as often as he desires. He's supposed to be nice about it, but it's his choice.

In his post on "the fruitful womb" Bayly has made fun of women who don't want to be baby machines, derided couples who want to enjoy sex rather than be primarily reproducers, promised them that if they reproduce without restraint God will magically provide great unspecified "blessings," and now he adds, but be real gentle with her, guys.

Makes you feel kind of sick doesn't it?

What bothers me is not that some women are content to reproduce without restraint, or that some men think they own their women, but that real flesh and blood women and men are victimized by these beliefs, as are their children. Not everyone, mind you. There are always counter examples, and they will be provided by the ones preaching this archaic and unwise set of beliefs.

It's the victims, and potential victims that bother me. Like the young woman who sat on my front porch and told me she and her husband were bound for a primitive mission field, and would have very little in the way of financial support. Her husband had told her they'd not have enough money for birth control supplies so they'd have to trust God to prevent any pregnancy that he didn't want them to create. She wanted to know if I thought that was wise and if she was lacking faith and being less than a good Christian to have doubts about it.

I said I'd advise her to explain to her husband that it would be necessary for him to trust God to remove his sex drive because there wouldn't be any sex if they couldn't afford birth control. She said she'd thought her husband's plan was a bad one, but needed someone to confirm it.

God not only graciously provided a uterus to women, and a penis to men, but also brains for both genders (equal in quality and usefulness) to use in determining how to manage their other equipment.

The brain is also useful for noticing when someone is misusing and misapplying scripture to promote their beliefs.

Bayly Blog: "The Fruitful Womb" #4

Bayly now moves to the parable of the talents:

And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.”

    But his master answered and said to him, “You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.” (Matthew 25:24-28)

Bayly says, "What a perfect picture of Christians’ stewardship of the womb today."

And here, I thought that parable was about money, talents being the name for a unit of cash.

I ask you, as a woman, just how do you feel when you read the words, "stewardship of the womb"? Does that creep you out like it does me? What business does any man have referring to a part of a woman's body as though it were cash, or some machine he needs to keep busy in order to make money from it? Whose body is it anyway? Well, it's his, as we shall see later in his post.

He says it's ironic, to him, that we have been blessed as no other people in history, but we're being stingy with God because we're not fully exploiting the wombs of our women. Personally, I think it's possible that some of those blessings have come from our being wise about limiting our reproduction and sparing our women from damaging their bodies and/or producing more children than they can or want to provide for and educate.

He says, derisively, "But we look at prior generations of Christians and shake our heads in disbelief. Susannah Wesley had fifteen children. Can you believe it? The poor woman. Poor woman nothing. God blessed her with children and those children were her glory, each of them being a gift from God."

We do not know whether Susannah Wesley would have had more or less children if she'd had the choice. But we do know that uncontrolled childbirth has cost the lives of many, many children and mothers, and injured and handicapped others. Bayly may know nothing of the history of obstetrics and gynecology and be able to blithely damn women to "full use of the womb" but, thank God, I'm not that ignorant, and neither are the majority of women today.

If Bayly feels compelled to apply so many unrelated texts to sex, how about limiting his field of application to an area he's more expert in, say maybe the appropriate and responsible use of male equipment. How about preaching and writing about "stewardship of the penis?" As in, keep it clean and healthy, don't use it to get people pregnant who don't want to be pregnant or who should not be getting pregnant.

The latter would include women who have given birth less than at least a year ago, women who have too much work to do already, women who have health problems, and women who feel dread at the prospect of another pregnancy and/or another child to care for, and women who do not have the financial resources to give good care to the children they have now or won't if they have another one.

It's worse than ironic to me, raised on a farm, to read a supposedly educated man encouraging women and their impregnators to give less care and respect to a woman's reproductive and general health than a good farmer would provide for his livestock.

Bayly Blog: "The Fruitful Womb" #3

Bayly now quotes:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27,28)

Bayly says it is obvious right away that God created woman to be a "helpmate" for man--and the primary way she was to "help" was to lend her womb for Adam to fill for her.

Now, I don't get that from the text, nor from the verse that contains "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it: and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Just how literal an application does this passage require? And what kind of hermeneutics is it to demand a literal application of the first part of a passage and not also a literal application of the rest of it?

If they are to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, what would that look like? Does it mean, go ahead and have sex, like the animals do, and produce offspring? Or does it mean be fruitful in some other manner, and fill the earth with something other than offspring? Does it have something to do fruitfulwise with subduing the earth and ruling over it?

And, how would one rule over the fish of the sea, birds of the air, and every living thing that moves on the earth? What kind of fruitfulness might that be? Could it have anything to do with ecology, with managing one's use of the earth's resources? I don't know, but the passage may not have much, if anything, to do with human reproduction.

But, if it does have to do with human reproduction, just how full of humans do we make the earth in order to fill it? Standing room only? And, how many human beings are we to produce per capita to do the job? Is there a reasonable stopping point? How might we determine what that would be?

What is responsible reproduction like? Do we simply breed like rabbits and hope for the best, with God blessing our thoughtless and irresponsible reproductive behavior because of our insistence on interpreting that verse fragment literally and unreservedly?

The same Bible that says be fruitful and multiply also says to not mar the corners of the beard, and a whole lot more instructions that are not practiced by the sexual literalists.

The question that comes to me is: Why insist that sex is primarily for reproduction and that it should be largely unlimited?

I think it has to do with the core of patriarchy, "father rule." If there are no children, the rulers have no kingdom. And the more children, the larger the kingdom. These guys want a kingdom, the woman's womb is the provider.

Abuse and Patriarchy/Complementarianism

I've said that I believe the hierarchal viewpoint (as evidenced in patriarchy and complementarianism), applied, creates an environment that is sheltering and enabling for abusers. It provides a cloak for them, and more opportunities to abuse than would be available in a non hierarchical environment.

I believe that because it's reasonable that it would be the case, and also because I know of situations in which it was the case.

The poignant and tragic story of one woman's sacrifice to the hierarchalist viewpoint is told in detail by a witness to the tragedy, Pastor Dorcas George.

This young mother died, not only because her husband shot her, but because her pastoral counselor kept sending her back to him for more abuse, preaching to this new Christian the patriarchal tenet that God would protect her if she "submitted" enough.

Would all hierarchalists have sent her back? No, I don't think so, but many would have. And even if they would not if asked directly, the teachings women are subjected to in hierarchical congregations will lead many to presuppose that God expects them to "submit" to an abuser.

Here is the kicker: Because the woman herself is not taught to decide for herself, but to rely on a husband, a father, or a male pastor for important decision making, she does not have the final say as to whether she is being abused in the first place. And, then she does not have the final say in what to do about it.

Thus, women are powerless in the face of abuse, unless a wise and knowledgeable male leads or directs them out of it.

Who should have power over women's lives, health, and safety?