I Fail to See the Beauty of Complementarianism

The Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference will take place in Louisville, Kentucky on April 12-14. The conference will feature an exclusively male line-up of Religious Right speakers such as R. C. Sproul, John Piper, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler, and C. J. Manahey of the Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville.

The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, a Christian organization devoted to male "headship" and rigid gender roles, will be hosting a pre-conference called "The Beauty of Complementarity". The pre-conference will feature pro-patriarchy, anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ workshops.

• Complementarity and the Disappearance of Men
• Complementarity and the Beauty of Submission
• Complementarity and the Call to Purity
• Testimony: My Journey Out of Lesbianism to Complementarianism
• Testimony: My Journey Out of Feminism
• Redemption Through Motherhood: Why Caring for Children is Caring for the World
• The Gospel for the Struggling: Overcoming Sinful Desire
• God's Design for Women

The pre-conference will feature a special women's track with stereotypical gems such as these.

• Count It Pure Joy: A Generation Returning to Motherhood
• Fitted for Flourishing: How the Bible Creates a Happy Home
• Teachers of Life: Titus 2 and Theological Discipleship
• Bound for Life: Following Your Husband Through Life's Challenges

Complementarians baffle me. In their desperation to restore outmoded gender roles, they struggle to recreate an era that never really existed. They insist that women will find happiness if they abandon their autonomy and dignity by submitting to a man, even though many women know better. They stubbornly ignore evidence that gender roles are not innate, and that gender identity can take infinitely many forms. Glaringly, they also ignore the unhappiness, unfairness, and even abuse that occur in complementarian communities.

I suspect that complementarian men feel threatened in our day and age. They live in a world in which many women demand equality and LGBTQ people serve as a reminder that sex and gender are not binary. They live in a world in which white, straight males no longer have the unfair power and privilege they had decades ago. Desperate to regain power, they seek refuge in a patriarchal system, no matter how outdated, unfair, or inaccurate that system may be.

Jim Garlow on Sexual Orientation

Jim Garlow of Skyline Church in La Mesa, CA spoke with Wayne Grudem, co-founder of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, on issues surrounding the 2012 presidential election. During "Biblical Issues for this Election," they spoke at length about same-sex marriage and LGBTQ issues, during which Garlow insisted that sexual orientation is merely a modern "construct."

"There are those that try to content, 'Well, I was born this way.' Well, there is no scientific evidence of that. We don't know what the causative factors are. But the Bible does not address orientation, to my knowledge. The Bible does address the issue of practice, so we're not talking about orientation, how one sees themselves. That's a modern phenomenon. Only in the last few years they've started using those kinds of constructs. We do know the Bible talks about practices, any practices."

Garlow also claimed that every "healthy heterosexual male" has an inclination toward polygamy, a statement that says volumes about his attitudes on sex and gender. Unfortunately, Garlow does not seem to realize that there are males and females who might be drawn to multiple partners throughout their lives, males and females who are happy with monogamy, and males and females who are asexual. Garlow compared homosexual feelings to adulterous temptation, lumping them together with other kinds of sinful "brokenness."

GARLOW: I would contend that every male, every healthy heterosexual male I know has a pernicious tendency towards polygamy. We have that capacity, but we don't act out on it. We don't act on it. In the same way that a person may have a pernicious tendency toward same-sex attraction. They don't have to act out. That is a practice or an act. We're not talking about orientation, because all of us have enough wrong orientations within us. We've got a lot of corruption, a lot of brokenness within every single one of us. We don't have to act out on any of those, including that same-sex attraction.

GRUDEM: Or give legal endorsement and approval and promotion to it. And once it's required by law, then it has to be taught to the children in all the schools of the nation, as something that's morally ... right.

As I listened to Garlow's words, I realized how similar they sounded to Exodus International's rhetoric at the two Exodus events I infiltrated (see here and here). Like Exodus' speakers, Garlow conflated homosexuality with other forms of sexual "sin" and "brokenness," refusing to acknowledge sexual orientation as innate. The words of Garlow, Grudem, and Exodus International all served the same purpose: to delegitimize calls for LGBTQ equality and erase non-heterosexual sexual orientations. The more I listen to Religious Right rhetoric, the more connections I notice among the rhetoric of its members.

(Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.)

More on Sean Harris, Pastor Who Told Audience to Punch "Effeminate" Sons

Remember Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, NC, who told his congregation to punch their "effeminate" sons? Republic of Gilead has blogged on the aftermath of that sermon, as well as the reaction of Berean leaders to J. Lee Grady's commentary on male dominance. While wandering through the audio selections of the Berean Baptist Church website, I stumbled upon several other sermons and commentaries from Harris that I'd like to share with readers. Harris has much to say about environmentalism, feminism, progressive Christians, and the LGBTQ community.

Chik-Fil-A and the Art of Marriage

The LGBT blogosphere has been abuzz about Chik-Fil-A's role in a marriage workshop being sponsored by the right-wing Pennsylvania Family Institute. Chik-Fil-A is an openly Christian fast food franchise, and the Pennsylvania Family Institute is a conservative organization promoting "traditional" marriage and family. On January 3rd, Good As You reported that Chik-Fil-A and the Pennsylvania Family Institute were co-sponsoring an event called "The Art of Marriage" in Camp Hill and Reading, PA. Several progressive blogs and news websites weighed in, including Change.org, Lez Get Real, and the Advocate. The following day, Joe.My.God noted that the Pennsylvania Family Institute's website no longer listed Chik-Fil-A as a sponsor, although the fast food chain is still listed as a source of food for the event.

In an article at the Christian Post, Pennsylvania Family Institute president Michael Geer stated that Chik-Fil-A is not sponsoring "The Art of Marriage," insisting that local Chik-Fil-A restaurants were simply trying to be "good neighbors" by providing food for the event. (Hat tip to Towleroad.)

Now that the controversy surrounding Chik-Fil-A is calming down, I'd like to focus on "The Art of Marriage" itself. Since "The Art of Marriage" will be held in my neck of the woods, I plan to listen in and blog afterwards about the workshop's themes, barring any bad weather.

Stay-At-Home Daughters

Gina McGalliard wrote a fascinating piece at Bitch Magazine entitled "House Proud: The Troubling Rise of Stay-At-Home Daughters." McGalliard introduces readers to the Christian patriarchy movement, a fundamentalist subculture that emphasizes male authority over the family and rigid gender roles. Groups such as the Vision Forum and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood promote this patriarchal paradigm as God's vision for the sexes. Overlap between the Christian patriarchy movement and the Quiverfull movement have been observed.

In the Christian patriarchy movement, men are encouraged to be leaders and providers, while women are encouraged to be submissive wives, mothers, and homemakers. As McGalliard's article explains, daughters are raised with the expectation that they will submit to their fathers (and later husbands) and devote themselves to the domestic realm. Higher education and careers are discouraged for young women, because they would instill independence in women that would be inimical to the Christian patriarchy movement's aims.