If you're trying to critique the whole religious right, you really need to do it on the basis of more than one article.

This is a fair point, Lynet. I'm working on a follow-up post that will address just how widely these opinions are shared in the religious right.

Nitpick:

In the New Testament, Jesus is emphatic that the only possible justification for a Christian to seek divorce is infidelity. . . . If your husband doesn't cheat on you, it's your God-given duty to stay with him, no matter how badly he mistreats you in other ways.

Actually, those verses only apply to men divorcing their wives, which says something about the society of the time.

True enough! One could certainly make the argument that, according to the Bible, it's only men who have the right to initiate divorce. But I was doing my best to give the fundies the benefit of the doubt and show that even making that concession doesn't help their case.

There are fundies who believe in some form of equality between husband and wife (often with the husband having the "final say" if they cannot agree).

In other words, husbands always get what they want and wives don't.

My two best friends in the whole world got married in California during the period in which it was possible, and they remain married, despite Prop 8. I know how much it meant to them and how important it is to them to be married -- actually married, not just partners in a civil union.

I fully and one hundred percent support gay marriage. I wouldn't want anyone to think otherwise.

I actually think there should be no government sanctioned marriages for anyone. Civil unions for everyone.

I disagree, on several grounds.

First, a practical and political reason: doing so would take away marriage from people who already have it. Plenty of people are opposed to civil unions already. The numbers would only increase if they thought they'd be forced into them as well.

Second, emotional: many people, including regular DA commenter Greta Christina want, on a fundamental level, recognition of their relationship as a marriage by the government. Why shouldn't we recognize it as marriage on that level?

Marriage is an unbelievably old human institution and human ritual. My parents did it. ...Getting married means being a link in a chain, taking part in a ritual that's central to human history and society.

[...]

Civil unions and domestic partnerships just don't have that.

Let's look at the recent Supreme Court ruling in California. Let's look at what it won't change for my partner and me... and what it will.

On a day- to- day level, it probably won't change much. We're domestic partners, and California domestic partnership does afford most of the legal rights and responsibilities that marriage offers.

[...]

But it will almost certainly change how we feel about society, and our place in it. And it will change -- officially -- how society feels about us.

When we get married today, the State of California will officially recognize that our relationship has the same weight as our parents' did, and their parents', and theirs. It will officially drop this “separate but equal” bullshit. It will officially stop seeing us as kids at the little table, poor relatives who should be content with leavings and scraps, second-class citizens. It will officially see us as actual, complete, honest- to- gosh citizens. From Greta's essay I Do--And Why.

Third, philosophical: A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. If there's no difference between legal marriage and civil unions, why use a new term? What's the point? Now, if civil unions expand to include other domestic partnerships (say, siblings or a parent and child living together) I might see the point, but otherwise it seems like changing the word is pointless. Just to separate the relationship from its religious roots? Well, a man and a woman can go to a judge right now and be married. The separation's already there. And if a Catholic couple goes to church and the priest's licensed as a civil union officiant, I don't see how it's been any different from him being licensed to perform a marriage.

Consider for a moment, taking a girl child and raising her from birth to believe that her only chance of salvation, her only path to redemption, her only purpose, her only means of pleasing and loving God and being loved by him in return is to subject and submit herself to the whims of the men in her life, be they fathers, brothers, or husbands, and to bear them sons.

Try to tell me that this isn't child abuse. Even if there is no explicit physical or sexual abuse (which often also occurs in these situations of extreme power differentials between the sexes).

That this type of rearing of girl children occurs ubiquitously, in the US, in the Christian community, and with impunity, makes me ill.

I am disgusted that we allow this to take place under cover of religious liberty or cultural relativism.

And, it is not only the Quiverfull idiots. And, it's not just the Mormon loons. And, it's not just the JW lunatics.

But even if it were only limited to those groups, it would still be millions of girl children being brainwashed and inculcated to believe that they are sub human baby incubators and ciphers with wombs and vaginas.

The fact that millions of American citizens are being subjected to egregious human rights violations and the government turns a blind eye in the name of religious liberty is an outrageous violation of the separation of Church and State and the Establishment Clause.

This is one of the reasons why I steadfastly support public education, and I am vehemently opposed to any public funding for religious schools. It is often our only way of reaching these children.

The women, sadly, are often beyond all help.

I just don't buy that garbage about how some women really choose of their own volition to live these kinds of lives as an honest expression of their religious faith.

First of all, if you've been brainwashed from birth -- how exactly is it a choice?

Ok. Maybe you can find a handful of crazies who actually want to be sex slaves. Fine. (My own mother was one.) Why does that mean that their daughters should also be subjected to this abuse?

Let's call a spade a spade. Religion is little more than a tool of social control meant to impose sexual slavery upon women. And we're supposed to treat it with some kind of respect because . . . ?

I actually think there should be no government sanctioned marriages for anyone. Civil unions for everyone.

This is one of the broadest brushes I've noticed you painting with recently. While it is the general rule that you will condemn those who hold a Biblical worldview, you are usually more focused on the specifics of the person or organization you are disagreeing with. In no way does this portrait represent the view of all "right wing fundamentalists." I could attempt to explain but I'm not going to convince you anymore than you will convince me.

In contrast, your last paragraph "...Fortunately, we have a better vision of marriage: a harmonious joining of equals, a partnership embarked upon for the sake of mutual happiness. And if one partner is unloving or abusive, that marriage deserves to end, so that the innocent partner can seek the happiness they deserve elsewhere. The fundamentalists' vision is a nightmare, but we can still prevent it from coming to pass..." is more typical of how you succinctly state your differing worldview without falling into an unfair depiction of a group of people with whom you disagree.

I'm sure there are some atheists and groups that you would not want others to consider as representing your views either.

You are soooo right. As much as christians talk about being holy and wonderful, they ignore the parts of the book they claim to follow. They'll quote about teh evilz gayz from Leviticus but ignore the parts in Leviticus which bans wearing cloth made from two or more materials, shaving, allowing women on their period to be around non-bleeding society members, etc., etc., etc.

Closer to home, my daughter, now 26, used to share a room with a nice xtian girl of her age when she was at college. The roommate finished her degree and promptly married her longtime boyfriend, settling down to a life of housework, kids and soccer practice. This outcome was never in doubt; it was her plan all along, per her parents' wishes, who didn't want her to attend college anyway, since "she'll never need it."

My daughter and I had quite a discussion about her--I felt truly depressed about her situation. I saw it as a potential abusive situation right away, since this young woman was essentially giving over control of her entire life to her husband, and who knows how well he's equipped to handle it? What if he's abusive? Or a drunk? What if he's one of those morons who simply refuses to work for a living?

My daughter assured me the husband was a good guy, not abusive, etc. But I pointed out to her that, within their marriage, he's in a position of power where no one can challenge him, which therefore puts him in a position to abuse that power, intentionally or not. Say, for example, they get into a dispute about how to properly discipline one of their children, as all married couples usually do at some point. Who wins this argument? The husband does, always, because this young woman is being taught that she is to give in at all times, because her husband knows what he's doing better than she does. It doesn't matter that he's smacking an 8-year-old kid in the head and calling him stupid for forgetting to clean his room---he's her husband, and he doesn't think it's abuse, so it isn't. Period.

This is the legacy of female marital submission---abused, dysfunctional kids and wives, husbands with an overinflated sense of their own worth.

What a racket. And it is still being practiced everywhere.

It doesn't just exhort abused wives to stay with their abusive husbands. It lays the blame for the abuse squarely at the victim's feet. When they say, "If you're a good enough Christian, eventually your abusive husband will reform," the obvious implication is, "If your husband hasn't reformed, you're not a good enough Christian."

And because you can always be a better Christian, that makes the hypothesis unfalsifiable... and gives no ending point at which an abused wife can say, "Okay, I gave it my best shot, now I'm out of here." She is expected to tolerate the abuse forever. If the abuse is continuing, it's not because her husband is an abusive asshole. It's because she's not a good enough Christian. Yet. She has to try harder, and for longer.

Which is evil enough in and of itself. But it also plays directly into the psychology of abuse... in which the victim gets the blame for the abuse. By the abuser, and often by the victim themselves.