Should I respect this sincere religious belief, a tenet of the SBC?

[Voltaire2]

"A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

'cause I think that is abhorrent and harmful bullshit and totally undeserving of respect.

[dhol82]

1. Well, only if you have to bake a cake.

Otherwise, all bets are off.

[marylandblue]

2. I'll have to check with my wife on this one.

[MineralMan]

3. Nope.

[thucythucy]

4. No. For one thing, it's a non sequitor.

A woman is expected "to submit" to an actual human being--her husband, who can make actual demands and commt physically, sexually, psychologically abusive acts.

"The church" isn't an individual--and isn't even a single organization, and "the headship of Christ" is at best a wooly abstraction, at worst a fantasy. In any case, no actual Jesus is going to come down and demand submission from "the church."

So on top of everything else, this offensive tenet completely fails as analogy.

[Igel]

5. Define "servant leadership."

Is beating her "servant leadership"? Is nurturing and supporting her efforts "servant leadership"?

"No, you filthy bastard, I know you agreed to help me go and get my graduate degree, and supported my choice of dissertation topic and my career choices. That's just morally wrong, and how *dare* you not get in my way." I can see women I've known saying this, but only after they screwed up and didn't want to take responsibility. In other words, so much.

Otherwise, it's just displeasure with the word "submit."

I would note, however, that from the earliest records the church rarely submitted to Christ. Mostly it found ways to do what it wanted and say it was submitting to Christ.

[Mariana]

7. I believe "the servant leadership of her husband" means

that he's supposed make all the decisions, and when he does, he does it for her own good. Kind of like how loving parents make decisions for their children. The servant leader husband chooses what's best for his wife because being a woman, she's incapable of doing that for herself.

[Major Nikon]

6. Evidently we should also respect their sincere religious belief to influence public policy on LGBT

It's not bad enough they wish to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation for their membership, but they also want their homophobic worldview to extend to everyone else.

So yeah, fuck them and the donkey they rode in on. Fuck their apologists as well. The idea we can't be tolerant unless we tolerate that bullshit is as dum as a sack of hammers.