NOT!
Or, Why Y Chromosomes and Male Sex Organs Do Not
Necessarily Endow Decision-Making Skills
Recently, (I wrote this in the Nineties) the Southern Baptist Convention amended its statement of core beliefs, calling on the Christian wife to ‘graciously submit herself to the servant leadership of her husband.’
Dictionary definition of ‘submit.’ From the Latin, ‘submittere,’ “To lower.” “To yield oneself to the governance or authority of another.”
Common synonyms: Yield, Surrender, Bow, Comply,
Obey, Agree, Resign.
Do the Southern Baptists know what they’re demanding? Do they know the nasty things the word ‘submit’ infers on the battlefield, the boardroom, the bedroom, or in a dark alley? Perhaps they do.
If so, then all the more reason to oppose them.
But, what does all this have to do with the Promise Keepers?
The seven principles of the Promise Keepers’ organization include one which closely approximates the Baptists’ requirement
for wives to be submissive.
As thinking beings, we must judge any recommendation for social behavior based on the soundness of the argument—whether it reflects the complex reality of the strengths, weaknesses, abilities and limits of real human INDIVIDUALS as accurately as possible. And so, right here and right now, we cannot with good conscience accept any asserted universal tendency toward the possession of superior decision-making skills based on the possession or lack of a certain set of sex organs.
We hereby reject the Promise Keepers vision of leadership based on sex and instead offer another vision of leadership in America based on INDIVIDUAL human qualities. Thank you for your consideration.
Submitted as graciously as possible,
By your ordinary, everyday, pro-science, pro-technology, small d democrat, large and small r republican, agnostic, secular humanist, and hard-core individualist, patriotic American,
Sally Morem
*Pun most definitely intended