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Is Religion Inherently Oppressive?
There’s little doubt, outside circles filled with self-delusional reactionaries, that religion is probably the most important force in continuing the oppression of women worldwide. Around the world, various abuses from coerced marriage to domestic violence to restricting reproductive rights are all excused under the banner of religion. More to the point, women’s rights have advanced more quickly in societies that put religion on the backburner, or like the United States, have strict laws separating church and state. But even in the U.S., the main result of the growing power of the religious right is the rollback of reproductive rights and other protections for women’s equality.
Former president Jimmy Carter, who is probably the country’s most prominent liberal Christian, is willing to set aside his enthusiasm for faith to admit this. While doing press promoting his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power, Carter told the Guardian that “women are treated more equally in some countries that are atheistic or where governments are strictly separated from religion.”
This isn’t because atheists and secularists have fewer people in their ranks that have ugly and backwards attitudes toward women. It’s because, by never having religion in the discourse about women’s rights in the first place, discourse in secular circles and societies never gets mired in endless, irresolvable debates about what God wants. Instead, secular societies can get straight to the facts and policy debate. When you stop worrying what God wants and start worrying about what people want, it’s much easier to argue that women should have full human rights. After all, women are half the human race. When everyone is talking about what God supposedly wants, it becomes very easy to forget that ultimately, the issue of women’s rights is about ordinary, everyday men and women and what goes on in their lives.
--snip--
Carter, like many liberal Christians, is happy to criticize more conservative religious leaders who want to oppress women. Still, it’s hard not to have doubts that Carter’s own devout Christianity might make him less critical than he should be of the role religion plays in the oppression of women. The sticky point when it comes to advocating for a kind of Christian feminism is that the Bible is undeniably sexist. And it’s not just the Old Testament, where women are told they were created from men and told, repeatedly, that they are basically property to be disposed of as men see fit. The New Testament has plenty of verses that should cause feminist eyebrows to shoot up.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/religion-inherently-oppressive
Former president Jimmy Carter, who is probably the country’s most prominent liberal Christian, is willing to set aside his enthusiasm for faith to admit this. While doing press promoting his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power, Carter told the Guardian that “women are treated more equally in some countries that are atheistic or where governments are strictly separated from religion.”
This isn’t because atheists and secularists have fewer people in their ranks that have ugly and backwards attitudes toward women. It’s because, by never having religion in the discourse about women’s rights in the first place, discourse in secular circles and societies never gets mired in endless, irresolvable debates about what God wants. Instead, secular societies can get straight to the facts and policy debate. When you stop worrying what God wants and start worrying about what people want, it’s much easier to argue that women should have full human rights. After all, women are half the human race. When everyone is talking about what God supposedly wants, it becomes very easy to forget that ultimately, the issue of women’s rights is about ordinary, everyday men and women and what goes on in their lives.
--snip--
Carter, like many liberal Christians, is happy to criticize more conservative religious leaders who want to oppress women. Still, it’s hard not to have doubts that Carter’s own devout Christianity might make him less critical than he should be of the role religion plays in the oppression of women. The sticky point when it comes to advocating for a kind of Christian feminism is that the Bible is undeniably sexist. And it’s not just the Old Testament, where women are told they were created from men and told, repeatedly, that they are basically property to be disposed of as men see fit. The New Testament has plenty of verses that should cause feminist eyebrows to shoot up.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/religion-inherently-oppressive
Yep.
20 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The FSM loves women and their rights, thinks gays are great, has compassion for undocumented immigrants
and even thinks tea-partiers can be forgiven.
You betcha! 
"Add Jimmy Carter to the list of people who don't really understand the destructive power of religion."
Marcotte attracted criticism in January 2007 for her views on the March 2006 Duke lacrosse case, when three students were accused of rape; the students were charged, but the charges were later dropped and the players charged were pronounced innocent by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper.18 Marcotte declared on her blog that people who defended the accused were "rape-loving scum."19 One comment in particular attracted attention:
All charges were finally dropped and several months later the lead prosecutor Mike Nifong was disbarred for heavily interfering with the normal course of a police investigation and "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation". 21 Marcotte later said "I do not support Mike Nifong’s choices in this case and wish generally that rape cases could be handled with due process instead of tried by a public that has politicized what should be a matter for the criminal justice system. Any suggestion that I feel any way about this case outside of that is false."22
Journalist Cathy Young described Marcotte as a leader of a "cyber-lynch mob," writing that, "in Marcotte's eyes, the real crime of the independent feminists is helping preserve the idea that the presumption of innocence applies even in cases of rape and sexual assault."23 The post attracted so much commentary, including from The New York Times, that Marcotte ended up deleting it.24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Marcotte
I've been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and fucked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.20
All charges were finally dropped and several months later the lead prosecutor Mike Nifong was disbarred for heavily interfering with the normal course of a police investigation and "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation". 21 Marcotte later said "I do not support Mike Nifong’s choices in this case and wish generally that rape cases could be handled with due process instead of tried by a public that has politicized what should be a matter for the criminal justice system. Any suggestion that I feel any way about this case outside of that is false."22
Journalist Cathy Young described Marcotte as a leader of a "cyber-lynch mob," writing that, "in Marcotte's eyes, the real crime of the independent feminists is helping preserve the idea that the presumption of innocence applies even in cases of rape and sexual assault."23 The post attracted so much commentary, including from The New York Times, that Marcotte ended up deleting it.24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Marcotte
