A Marriage Proposal
  by Janet Brazill

A big topic this year seems to be "Marriage." At least in Colorado Springs.

Religious groups have not been shy in expressing their disapproval of the attempts of some homosexuals to co-opt (as they see it) the term "marriage" to describe their unions. Newspaper readers are subjected to a barrage of hysterical letters claiming that allowing homosexuals to participate in the sacrament of marriage would somehow threaten the writers' own heterosexual marriages.

This Fall Colorado voters will be deciding Initiatives concerning marriage - some defining it as a union between one man and one woman (actually a contradiction of the biblical Mosaic law in Deuteronomy 21:15 which includes rules for plural marriage); some proposing to give homosexuals the same legal benefits as marriage, others would grant only limited privileges.

And now we learn there is a marriage crisis in El Paso County, where statistics from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment show that this county has one of the state's highest divorce rates.

Many have expressed surprise that this could happen in an area with more than 80 Christian organizations, nearly 400 churches and a reputation as an evangelical Vatican.

Actually, this could very well be the reason for the high divorce rate, since Christianity is based on the Bible, much of which preaches the subjugation of women. Perhaps this patriarchal oppression grew intolerable for the religious women involved in these divorces. Polls show that atheists and agnostics who don't follow the Bible have a lower rate of divorce than churchgoers.

Upset by this lack of marital bliss in his fair city, our Colorado Springs Mayor has now signed a proclamation in support of a Marriage Covenant which Christian groups devised to address the problem. It is difficult to believe that giving churches a more active role will change things since religious fundamentalist groups are the ones most fervently opposed to women's equality. They defeated the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1980's and have opposed treating women equally in the workplace. One local religionist, James Dobson, denounced the 1995 women's conference in Beijing as "the most radical, atheistic, and anti-family crusade in the history of the world" because it sought to advance women's rights. He helped start the Promise Keepers, a men's group that promoted the hierarchical structure of women being subordinate to men. Today they lobby for building strong marriages through Biblical values.

This can only mean more of the same. While some Bible verses instruct husbands to love their wives, they make it strikingly clear that wives are to be under the authority of their husbands (Eph 5:22-24; Col 3:18). And if the husband fails to properly love his wife? 1 Peter 3:1 tells the wife to submit anyway: "Wives, be ruled by your husbands; so that even if some of them give no attention to the word, their hearts may be changed by the behavior of their wives."

Here's an idea -- modernize! Instead of using a centuries-old marriage guide written for different times, do away with the word "marriage" altogether. Same with "husband" and "wife." All serious unions, heterosexual or homosexual, would become "partnerships" with partners having full legal equality and respect.

No more male-dominated marriages. No more controversial Initiatives. We could end this debate once and for all!

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