by Lorette C. Luzajic
Part 12 of the Pillars of Faith series
Dirty Devotion
I was ten when I learned that my duties to The Lord included picking up men’s crusty socks. I never forgot reading in the church library that my husband’s filthy laundry actually belonged to Christ.
I honor men as heroes — those who risk their lives in rescue work, those providing for family, those who simply live and let live. I will stand tall for men’s equality, as for women’s. But pick up his socks and call him Jesus? No can do.
“I wasn’t just picking up dirty socks for my husband; I was serving the Lord Jesus by doing this,” Beverly LaHaye wrote. “It was almost a time of devotion each day as I lovingly picked up those blessed dirty socks.”
Family Values?
Pullquote: Beverly is head of Concerned Women for America, founded in ’79 to protest the Equal Rights Amendment.
The LaHaye lovebirds rule the roost of the Christian Taliban. Tim is cofounder of the Moral Majority. Bev is head of Concerned Women for America, founded in ’79 to protest the Equal Rights Amendment. With a budget in millions, and minions all over, the goal is an international fundie-fascist utopia of “Biblical Worldview.” That “view” doesn’t exist — even in said Bible.
The little black book shows women subservient to men, but the one man, one woman family unit is nowhere to be found. “Biblical” families today would fill courts with the unmarried, polygamy, slavery, pregnancy of sisters and servants, incest, child abuse. And pedophilia: Mary herself was a girl when impregnated.
But we waste our breath on reason and logistics as these nutjobs trumpet on about the treachery of civil rights for the “American family.” Human rights belong only to Christians, and not Satanic Christians like Obama or Catholics.
The New Terrorism
Pullquote: Feminism is more than an illness; it is a philosophy of death.
And not to feminists, of course. Says LaHaye, “Feminism is more than an illness; it is a philosophy of death.” And when a gay tourist couple visited the U.S., the CWA proclaimed “a new threat to border security” and “domestic terrorists.” LaHaye famously stated that queers recruit “boys by becoming teachers and Boy Scout leaders.” (She has never denied charges that her son, Lee, is openly gay, and manages CWA’s money.)
The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund has a few problems with Bev and her CWA: they want any science or history contradicting Old Testament folktales removed from class; they want millions more pumped into “abstinence only” teen health programs, which repeatedly prove futile; they don’t want Plan B “morning after” pills available; they falsely proclaim that abortion leads to breast cancer and PTSD.
Under their “core values” the CWA also decries pornography, though clearly this censorship creates decidedly un-family values of violence — just look at porn-free Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan. They also lobby to have education authority “returned to parent.” Given the stupidity of many, this is terrifying. And this: “CWA supports the God-given rights of individuals in the United States and other nations to pray, worship and express their beliefs without fear of discrimination or persecution.”
Sounds fair enough — except it doesn’t extend to heathen gods, in America or in heathen lands. Most alarming, the CWA lobbies for “sovereignty” — which they explain to mean the U.S. won’t have to answer to U.N. or anyone else for their definition of human rights. And of course, we can’t forget that educating women is preventing men from keeping all the spots in higher learning, and that women aren’t as happy as they used to be — but happier when?
New World disOrder
Pullquote: Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.
Institutions the LaHaye ministries consider “demonic” are American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, and the U.N. And in addition to Bev’s love of laundry and loathing of “radical” agendas like civil rights, she also rails against arts funding, as art is pornography, of course.
She sums it up: “America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.”
Fine then. I’ll trade in my degree for the first man I dated out of high school and get pregnant. But with the possibility that he left me years ago, or beat me, or it just didn’t work out despite my desperate efforts to save the marriage, whose socks will I pick up? And who will pick up mine, as I head barefoot toward the kitchen?
Lorette C. Luzajic writes about all kinds of interesting people at Fascinating People.
No different from Westboro Baptists, IMO. Same fascism repeated.
All these fundies with gay children… it seems that the best way to avoid having homosexuals offsprings is being atheist…
And why would an atheist want to avoid that?
See, that’s why you never hear about prominent atheists with gay children; they just don’t care.
Sometimes I just wish the rapture would really happen…
It’s worth pointing out that Beverly LeHay moved 3,000 miles away from her husband to take a job running an organisation that tells women they should quit their jobs and stay home.
She sacrificed her life to help all those miscarried women, she must be really blessed!
(kidding, but a lot of facts can be read in more than one way)
Sweetly ironic.
Ok, wait- my first thought was why in the world would any gay person want to work in any capacity for CWA, family or not? It’s not like he’s going to effect any real change. There’s no way I could work in that kind of environment.
Earning an awful lot of money, being your mother your head? Yeah, a job no one would like to have.
I watched an interview with Timmy, quite some time ago, and became appalled at his attitude and actions. Like Jack Van Impe, LaHay actually gloated with intense enjoyment at his descriptions of death, torture, destruction and pain while describing his idea of the end of the world. He happily admitted that it became much of the source for his sickening “Left Behind” books. He didn’t care who he frightened, as long is it made them come around to his way of thinking.
Hmmmm, the terrorist doesn’t care who they terrorize, as long as their goals are achieved.
“Fine then. I’ll trade in my degree for the first man I dated out of high school and get pregnant”
No you wouldn’t since if these people had their way you would never have been to high school or dated a guy. you would have been taught just enough reading and basic math to allow you to buy groceries and then you would have been married off by your family to some guy of their choosing once you turned 12.
OOPS. The comment I replied to no longer exist so my comment doesn’t make any sense now.
Huh, where did that comment go?
It’s not a response to a comment, that’s a quote from the article.
:)
You right my bad. too much work not enough coffee.
Be careful, you might feel God:
http://www.mail-archive.com/mythfolk@yahoogroups.com/msg02645.html
Thanks for letting me know. Next time the voices are telling me to go and kill the infidels I’ll make sure I didn’t have too much coffee this day. I think that if it was under 3 cups I can safely assume it was god talking to me and shout ” I obey my master” as I’m loading the machine gun.
The part of this that bugs me is the assumption that this sort of female slavery is what all men really want.
Uh, no.
I don’t want an at home baby machine. I don’t even want ONE baby, much less a house full of them. I want an educated woman who makes more money than I do and can engage me intellectually on a wide variety of topics. I want a woman who wants to travel, and will go to places I don’t want to go without me. I want independence. I don’t want a ‘complement’, I want a partner.*
I guess that means I am just as evil as the women’s libbers, huh?
*fortunately, my wife is all of this and more. I win!
I was just getting ready to reply with “Sorry, you can’t have my wife” but then I noticed the asterisk.
Shoot… :)
Well said, sir.
Funny how these female promoters of women’s submission are the heads of organizations and involved in politics. I have to wonder when Beverly Lahaye finds anytime to pick up her husband’s socks.
Undoubtedly, she just makes money from her books and speaking engagements and has hired help to pick up the socks. Hypocrite!
But if the help are all women, then Bev is helping them fulfill the Lawd’s intended design. Praises!
She’s just making sacrifices for Jesus because of our evil feminazi society! Don’t persecute her!
Are we speaking about biblical concubines?
As an unmarried, financially independent, well-employed woman (who plans to stay that way, preferarbly forever), I say Mrs. LaHaye and her ilk can pick all the dirty socks they want. I’ll be busy up-manning their bored-to-death husbands and children in every conceivable way.
Financially independent women make baby Jesus cry.
Nah, baby Jesus is just colicking. Or crying over his mommy’s vacuous patheticness. Who knows?
I need to move to Canada…
My girlfriend used to be Women’s Officer at an Oxford University college – I just let her read this. I honestly think she’d cheerfully petrol-bomb CWA right now!
Excellent article. One picky little point, though – correlation is not necessarily causation in countries that have both anti-porn laws and high occurrence of violence. By making this point, you’re using the same fallacious argument as the CWA and Focus on the Family types make when they say that most rapists/serial killers/etc. look at porn.
A really fantastic article, though! I grew up in a household that revered the LaHayes, and every time I think I’ve completely eradicated that type of thinking in favor of skepticism/atheism, I’ll find another place, deep down in my brain, where it is still hanging on.
Not quite. There’s a general (but not absolute) trend for countries with strong anti-porn laws to have high levels of violence, AND for countries with weak anti-porn laws to have less violence. There is an actual correlation, though you’re right that this doesn’t imply causation.
On the other hand, while it’s true that most serial killers and rapists use porn, so do most other people. There is not only no causation there, but not even any correlation.
Well… the Internet is for porn