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.
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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! |