Dare To Be A Feminist

The Satanic Temple last week filed a lawsuit against Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, alleging that the state’s abortion restrictions violate temple members’ freedom of religion.

No, you can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your ‘religious freedom.’ If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

President Barack Obama

When did politics enter the evangelical birth control debate?

"... a 1968 document produced at an evangelical conference co-sponsored by Christianity Today and the Christian Medical and Dental Association that said, “Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful we are not agreed, but about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances we are in accord. … When principles conflict, the preservation of fetal life ... may have to be abandoned to maintain full and secure family life."

Laura Ortberg Turner writes at Christianity Today that feminism is the Christian f-word. Turner argues that evangelicals have wrongly dismissed feminism as "anathema" to the body of Christ. She con...

Thousands of young seminary girls crowd women’s section, prompting police to prevent entry of prayer activists.

Several hundred members of the Women of the Wall feminist prayer group were blocked from entering the women’s section of the Western Wall on Monday morning, with police saying the move was due to thousands of young Orthodox girls who had taken over the site. It was the first time in the group’s 25-year history that it was denied access to the women’s section for its monthly prayer session, Haaretz reported.

Police said that between 5,000 and 7,000 seminary girls had thronged the women’s area, on orders from their religious leadership, in order to deny access to the Women of the Wall. In addition, police said, about 1,000 ultra-Orthodox male protesters were in the Western Wall plaza seeking to disrupt the controversial prayer service, which is held by the Women of the Wall at the start of each new month (Rosh Chodesh).

Women of the Wall have increased their public profile this year after a series of confrontations at the Wall and subsequent legal rulings in their favor. The group, according to its website, seeks “the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall,” an objective that is vehemently opposed by the ultra-Orthodox.

When it comes to authority, there is no equality. You say, “How does your home run?” A dictatorship. Any questions? It’s a monarchy, okay? Mono. One boss. Okay? That’s how my home is run. That’s how every biblical home is run, by the way, okay? And you say, “Oh, your wife must hate you!” No, women love that. Because they were born to fill that role. Just like I was born to be the husband and the leader, my wife was born to be the wife and to be submissive and subject to me. And she’s gonna be most happier doing what God created her to do, just like I’m going to be most happy doing what God created me to do!

And, you know, you say, “Well, that’s not true, because I talk to all these women that are just, you know, they just want to be a feminist and stuff…” You know what? Here’s what I’ve found over the years: The women who are screaming the loudest that they want to be a feminist and that they don’t want a man telling them what to do, on the inside, are really screaming the loudest, please tell me what to do. Please put me in my place. And, you know what? If you don’t believe that? You’re just ignorant. It’s that simple.

And, yeah, I’m sure that there are some reprobate lesbians out there that have a different view. But let me tell you something: A normal woman, on the inside, wants to follow a leader. She wants to follow a husband. She wants a man there that she can look up to, not look down on…

"Having a female body was the factor most likely to render one vulnerable to being called a witch...the truth about the majority of persons accused of [witchcraft]: old, unattractive, disliked, and FEMALE"

— Witchcraze: A New History of European Witch Hunts by Anne Llewellyn Barstow

The past few months the GOP has waged a war on women that places them firmly in bed with religious lobbyists, treating women like they are subhuman all in the name of patriarchal religion. N