And women are still chattel?

And women are still chattel?

In the 1850s American preachers used selected texts of the Bible to demonstrate that God approved of slavery. In fact Christ himself says only a word or two about the practice, and that is in regards to an owner treating his slave fairly. Up until the early part of the last century the same sort of preachers from one end of this country to the other “proved” using the Bible that God didn’t want women being equal to their men. Women were chattel.

In my own lifetime in the Southwestern church in which I was raised I personally heard more than one preacher exhorting the congregation on the Bible’s teachings regarding miscegenation. The Bible is clearly against a man of one race marrying a woman of another. According at one time or another to too many preachers to count these were all Christian “traditions” set by the Christian God back “in the beginning of time.” Yet most of us now see them as clearly being prejudiced, bigoted, and antithetical to our American character and belief in fairness and justice for all.

The point is to avoid hypocrisy. If one Biblical “rule” must be the law of the land then they all must be. If we are to deny gays their right to marry because of a Biblical verse then we must reinstitute slavery, deny women’s suffrage and property rights, arrest men and women who are married to those of another race, and let’s not forget stoning those adulterers and adulteresses. One can hardly claim it is only because of Biblical law that we make murder and theft illegal and then allow people in this country to “put other gods before them.” If we are going to align our civil law to Biblical law as some Muslim nations align their civil law to Sharia law then we must not allow these people to live here who worship other gods (or even Our god in the wrong way…) and must punish those who curse.

Furthermore marriage is not solely a “Christian” virtue. If it were tens of millions of Americans could not be truly married, since they were married by military commanders, Rabbis, Imams, Justices of the Peace, or even Notary Publics (In Colorado couples may even solemnize their own marriage). Using such reasoning billions of people around the world today are not married and untold millions of people in the past could not have been married before Christianity (or even Judaism which dates to around 1900 BC with Abraham) came into being. No, marriage is and has always been a civil contract between two people who love each other and wish to spend the rest of their lives together. If they further wish to have the ceremony performed by a preacher or priest and solemnized by their particular faith they have that right. Worrying that “my” marriage is in some way affected by someone else’s marriage because it is different in whatever way is paranoia. I defy any man to stand in front of me and tell me that because gay men and women have been allowed to marry in this country my bonds to my wife have been lessened in any way. One might note that Massachusetts, where gay marriage has been the law for some time, has one of the very lowest rates of divorce in the country. Apparently if gay marriage threatens “traditional” marriage then traditional marriage could do with a lot more of the threat.

Chandler Mcgrew

Bethel

http://www.bethelcitizen.com/story.php?storyid=6698

“We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief. Nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. At the same time as our constitution prohibits state religion, establishment of it protects the free exercise of all religions. And walking this fine line requires government to be strictly neutral.”

Ronald Reagan
A True Conservative