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Modesty Objectifies Women Says Nude Egyptian
Posed in nothing but sheer black polkadot stockings, red patent leather shoes and a red hair clip, Egyptian blogger, Aliaa Mahdy struck a blow to the objectification of women.
Strange. We usually hear that nudity objectifies.
Nudity and modesty don’t mean anything in themselves. The question is: what are they creating in any particular situation?
And Mahdy believes that strict modesty expectations in Egypt help to create “a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman.”
But how could modesty objectify? Consider the most extreme example:
Women who live in Taliban-controlled provinces of Afghanistan are expected to cover themselves head to toe with mesh across their eyes. There, a woman’s ankle is thought incredibly sexual, as are her arms and face and eyes and hair. Every part of her body becomes sexualized through extreme modesty.
But the entire body needn’t be covered for this surprising effect to arise. One young Christian woman found that less radical modesty objectified her, too:
Modesty taught me that what I looked like was what mattered most of all. Not what I thought. Not how I felt. Not what I was capable of doing.
Modesty made me objectify myself. I was so aware of my own potential desirability at all times that I lost all other ways of defining myself.
Supposedly women should be modest to protect themselves from rape or sexual harassment. Yet “immodest dress” does not force men to rape. And sexual-harassment runs rampant in places where women are fully covered.
Rebecca Chiao tracks sexual harassment and assault in Egypt where she says both are ubiquitous, “Every time you walk out of the house, you are under attack – physically and verbally,” she says. “The reports we get are graphic and angry.”
And as reported in The Guardian:
In a 2008 survey, 83% of women reported having been sexually harassed. Almost three-quarters of Egyptian women who said they had been harassed were veiled and 98% of foreigners said they had been intimidated or groped.
Sexual harassment is a huge problem in Afghanistan too, a place where women couldn’t be more covered. Last July Afghan women marched against the widespread harassment women face there. Noorjahan Akbar, who organized the protest said:
Every woman I know, whether she wears a burqa or simply dresses conservatively, has told me stories of being harassed in Afghanistan. The harassment ranges from comments on appearance to groping and pushing. Even my mother, who is a 40-plus teacher always dressed in her school uniform, arrives home upset almost every day because of the disgusting comments she receives.
These women are sexually harassed despite modesty. But then, the puritanical focus seems to actually define women primarily as sexual beings.
Meanwhile, when women work to broaden themselves, punishment may be administered via a convenient – and hypocritical – appeal to the honor of virginity which modesty supposedly guards.
At one point Egypt’s military sought to suppress women’s voices and power by stripping activists of their clothing and performing “virginity tests” by which two fingers were inserted into their vaginas. Sexual assault parading as a test of “honor”! Yet this brutality was really a tactic to humiliate and silence, observed Mona Eltahawy of The Guardian.
Women journalists are clear models of empowerment so it’s no surprise that they are under attack. So much so that Reporters Sans Frontieres recommended media stop sending female journalists to cover Egypt after two high profile sexual assaults.
No wonder nudity and sexuality arise as political protest in this atmosphere. Eltahawy of The Guardian continues:
When a woman is the sum total of her headscarf and hymen – that is, what’s on her head and what is between her legs – then nakedness and sex become weapons of political resistance.
Modesty isn’t itself a problem. Many women choose modesty for reasons they find meaningful and significant. Modesty becomes a problem when an obsessive focus on women as sex lies behind it.
Reposted on Daily Kos (Spotlight)
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Community Bullies Rape Victim
Last month Penn State’s Defensive Coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of sexually assaulting young boys. After the allegations became public one of the alleged victims became the target of bullying at Central Mountain High School in Mill Hall, Pa., where he had been an all-star athlete.
The young man, called “Victim One” in court records, says fellow students and even the high school football coach (who is also Assistant Principal) made verbal attacks and threats of violence after allegations went public.
When his mother reported the abuse, the school simply advised, “Go home and forget about it.” And in fact, the school’s Principal initially tried to keep Victim One from reporting Sandusky’s alleged assaults in the first place, his mother says.
Victim One’s mother has now pulled her son out of school.
In a similar case, last year fourteen-year-old Samantha Kelly became a victim of bullying which was so intense that she committed suicide. Once again, the bullying arose after her mother reported the rape (it’s unclear whether statutory or forcible) and when it became public after the local Fox News affiliate identified Kelly by name.
So sad that sometimes the community gangs up on rape victims while protecting the perpetrators.
Yet another example of the “entitlement-silence-protection” phenomenon that is all a part of rape culture.
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Yo, Mama—These Jugs Make Milk!
By Elizabeth Hall Magill @ Yo, Mama
Breasts are fun. They’re so fun that we’ve named them funbags, squeezeboxes, jugs, hooters, racks, boobs, and tits. They’re fun to look at, fun to touch and squeeze. They bounce. Men like them, and that is a good thing.
Breasts can be fun to own. They give a woman pleasure, and that is a good thing. They are an important part of a woman’s body—emblematic of her femininity, her sexuality. When a girl begins to develop breasts, it is her body’s way of saying she will one day be a woman, and a girl listens to that. She listens as the growing pains shoot through her chest, she listens as her mother and grandmother talk about finding a bra. Breasts are such an important part of the transition from girlhood to womanhood that we sometimes call them girls.
Breasts can be a total drag to own. You have to figure out what to do with them—hike ‘em up, pump ‘em up, flatten ‘em out, air ‘em out, cover ‘em up. They’re sensitive, and if one of them gets kicked or pinched or squashed it hurts like hell. Growing them hurts too. Sometimes they grow too fast, and a girl hates being teased for it. Sometimes they grow too slow, and a girl wonders when she will look like other girls. Breasts always grow just right, but girls don’t always know that. It’s confusing to grow breasts.
It’s confusing to own breasts, because breasts are great at selling things. They are FABULOUS at selling beer… a cheeseburger, a car, some soda, a TV show, a video game, or most anything a man could want. Oh, yes, and bras. Breasts are good at selling bras.
It’s confusing to own breasts, because on a deeply subconscious level (or maybe not so subconscious) a woman has to wonder—if breasts are so great at selling things, does that mean the ones on her body would be? What if the ones on her body are smaller than most of the ones that sell stuff—or bigger? What if they bounce less, or more? What if they’re not simultaneously perky and exceedingly large—is that natural, and sexy? Yes, the cultural interest in breasts can be confusing to a woman.
Of all these breasts we see, very few are ever doing what they were made to do: feed children.
There are periodic outcries against women who breastfeed in public. Sometimes women are made to feel ashamed—asked to cover up, as if they were doing something indecent. Facebook has removed pictures of breastfeeding women, labeling them obscene. Breastfeeding has been, in a variety of contexts and for many years, seen as obscene. However, using breasts to sell beer or cheeseburgers does not violate any societal code of conduct. Breasts are for fun, silly. Not for food.
Why, in the name of all that is pleasurable and seductive, do we freak out when a woman wants to feed her child in public, but we don’t freak out when she wants to use her breasts to sell something?
Moving along, then—the breast can be pleasurable for a woman (and for a man), and the breast can feed a baby. If exhausted, overwhelmed, sometimes shamed nursing mothers can figure this out, I think it’s about time we asked the question:
How, in the name of all that is vulnerable and resilient, can we continue to pretend that the breast is anything other than what it is—a beautiful part of a woman’s body that can and sometimes does help another human being to survive, and even to thrive?
A longer version of this piece was originally posted on Yo, Mama
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Miss Representation: Girls are Pretty, Boys Are Powerful
Powerful Man Pretty Woman
Girls get the message that what’s important is how they look. And boys get the message that what’s important about girls is how they look. That’s one of the observations made in the film, Miss Representation.
Girls and boys both buy into this belief system. And then boys become men, step into power, and perpetuate a social order that favors them. Most CEOs are male, most of Congress is male, most publishers and editors are male, and we’ve never had a female President of the United States. Girls become women and go with the flow, too. Yes, there are many exceptions. But these large patterns remain.
Our world incessantly whispers – or shouts: women are more body than brain. Women are emotion, not rationality and action. Women are sex.
And sex sells, they say. Sex sells products. Sex sells the message that women are all about sex.
Now add demeaning and violent images.
The message: men are powerful, and better than women.
And when women try to move out of the box to gain power?
Well look what happens on conservative networks like Fox, where men dress conservatively while female anchors wear plunging necklines, short skirts, and say things like, “Hillary Clinton looked so haggard and, like what? 92 years old?!” Or Greta Van Susteren asks VP candidate, Sara Palin, whether she has gotten breast implants. When women aren’t co-conspiring, Rush Limbaugh complains that no one wants to see a woman age in office.
Even when women do become powerful a headline runs, “Condi Rice, Dominatrix.”
Condi Rice, dominatrix
Perhaps alongside an ad for a nutcracker shaped as Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton nutcracker
Any wonder 51% of Americans are women, but only 17% of Congress members are?
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation’s writer-director says this is unfortunate since research shows that:
The more diversity and more women you have in leadership, both in government and business, the greater the productivity, the creativity and the bottom line.
And:
There’s this new transformative leadership that’s embracing empathy, collaboration, empowerment… those are more feminine qualities and those are now more associated with success in the global landscape than the traditional sort of command-and-control male leadership traits. So I think we’re going to start to see a shift.
Let’s stop misrepresenting women and their potential. We all lose out when the talents and vision of half our population are stifled. Women and girls are not less important than men and boys.
Newsom urges us to empower both young women and young men to create an equitable society together, making sure that girls are mentored and have a plenty of good role models.
And as Miss Representation points out:
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
— Alice Walker
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Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
Della Calfee. Ass Like That
“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at,” art critic John Berger famously observed.
Now some feminist artists are turning the tables in the exhibit, Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze:
With a gallery filled with men stripped naked this body of work exposes women’s cheeky, provocative and sometimes shocking commentaries on the opposite sex (which) may make the viewer squirm a little. But that is precisely the point.
The exhibit reveals sundry masculinities from female/feminist/
transgender perspectives, moving from sensuous rear views of the male buttocks to gender-bending to daughters gazing at fathers. Featured artists include Juana Alicia, Nancy Buchanan, Guerrilla Girls on Tour!, Lynn Hershmann, Jill O’Bryan, ORLAN, Carolee Schneemann, Sylvia Sleigh, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, May Wilson, and Melissa Wolf.
Man as object strikes a pose, buttocks pushed out, offered to us as bedroom eyes shoot a backward glance. Men flex in awkward positions, or bend gracefully into compliant cants. Some men turn submissively into tables.
Others lie down. Natural enough, yet rarely seen in art. Too sensually passive… waiting… vulnerable… or “on the bottom” for mainstream viewing?
Karen Zack, Man As Object
The visions can come across as “gay.” Since sexual pose is so often meant for the male gaze, on some unconscious level we may see it all through male eyes. And that is jarring, too.
The camera pleasurably zooms in on erotic man-parts. Images of male autoeroticism and penises abound, including a piece called “Where’s His Head?” that depicts a giant phallus-man fondling his much smaller man-phallus. Indeed! And when Pinocchio tells a lie, it’s not his nose that grows. More like a woody that “lasts more than four hours.” Actual penises are rarely displayed, apparently unable to live up to what Richard Dyer called “the mystique implied by the phallus.”
The exhibit includes a lenticular postcard (turn it one way and it’s a woman, turn the other and it’s a man) that juxtaposes Courbet’s “Origin of the World” with a close-up vagina shot versus ORLAN’s “Origin of War” with a penis close-up.
At times men are objectified in one-dimensional, controlling and demeaning ways. But sex-positive feminist photographer Shiloh McCabe explores the other side, working to ensure that her gaze does not consume or dominate. She takes a wide view, seeing those who are usually not. Her subjects help create their own representation so they can retain their power. “I’m not here to objectify or harm; I’m here to nurture and document,” she explains.
Laura Hartford. Graham Reclining
Man as object, Rubenesque, reclining, bathing, cooking, lounging, washing up before bed. Man as Madonna and Child, patriarchal man, veiled man, man as cowboy bunny, trans man. Blonde man in short shorts. Bodybuilder, Founding Father. Homeless man. Nude and vulnerable. Empowered. Bound and submissive. Striking a pose. Objectified.
So much to gaze at. And so much to see.
“In the past it was totally taboo for women to gaze upon the male, yet it was appropriate and common in the reverse,” observes artist Marian Yap. “Do you think that things are changing?”
Good question. This exhibit pushes us out of our taken for granted ways of seeing to explore that path.
Check out a video on the exhibit here.
Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze. Opening Friday, November 4th at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco and running through the end of November. The show will travel to the Kinsey Institute Gallery, Bloomington, IN and will open April 13, 2012 through the end of June.
This exhibition was created by The Women’s Caucus for Art – the founding organization promoting feminist art and art as activism since 1972.
For more information click here.
Ms. Magazine reposted this piece on their blog October 28, 2011
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Men, Women React to Male/Female Nudity
By Lisa Wade @ Sociological Images
We’ve all heard the truism “sex sells.”
But whose sex is sold? And to who?
If it was simply that sex sold,
…we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture. Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men. So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex”?
What is really being sold is men’s (presumably heterosexual) sexual subjectivity: the experience of being a person in the world who was presented with images that were for his titillation. Women do not live in the world this way. They are not exposed everyday to images that legitimize their lust; instead, the images teach women that they are the object of that lust.
In light of this, Sociologist Beth Eck did a series of interviews attempting to tap into what it felt like for men and women to look at male and female nudes. Her findings were pretty fascinating.
First, she asked men and women to look at naked images of women, including this one of Cindy Crawford:
Women viewing images of female nudes almost inevitably compared themselves to the figure and felt inadequate. Said one women:
…the portrayal of these thin models and I just get depressed… I’m very hard on myself, wanting to be that way.
Women ended up feeling bad whether the model conformed to conventional norms of attractiveness or not. When looking at a heavy set woman, they often responded like this:
I am disgusted by it because she is fat, but I’m also… I need to lose about 10 pounds.
I don’t necessarily find her body that attractive… Her stomach looks like mine.
Men, in contrast, clearly felt pandered to as holders of a heterosexual male gaze. They knew that the image was for them and offered praise (for a job well done) or criticism (for failure to live up to their expectations). About Crawford they said:
Personally I think she is attractive.
I like that.
Both men and women, then, knew exactly how to respond to female nudes: women had internalized their object status (women as sex object-things) and men had internalized their subject status (men were people looking at sexy objects).
Eck then showed them male nudes, including this one of Sylvester Stallone:
Interestingly, both men and women felt uncomfortable looking at male nudes.
Men responded by either expressing extreme disinterest, re-asserting their heterosexuality, or both. They did not compare themselves to the male nudes (like women did with female nudes), except to say that they were both male and, therefore, there was “nothing to see.” Meanwhile, because men have been trained to be a lustful sexual subject, seeing male nudity tended to raise the specter of homosexuality. They couldn’t see the bodies as anything but sexual objects for them to gaze upon.
In contrast, the specter of homosexuality didn’t arise for women when they looked at female nudes because they weren’t used to being positioned as lustful. Eck explains:
When women view the seductive pose of the female nude, they do not believe she is ‘coming on to’ them. They know she is there to arouse men. Thus, they do not have to work at rejecting an unwanted advance. It is not for them.
Many women also did not feel lustful when looking at male nudes and those that did often experienced lust mixed with guilt or shame. Eck suggests that this may be, in part, a reaction to taking on the active, consuming, masculine role, something they’re not supposed to do.
Summarizing responses to the male nudes, she writes:
Men, over and over again, reject the seductive advance [of a male nude]. While some women welcome the advance, most feel a combination of shame, guilt, or repulsion in interacting with the image…
This is what it means to live in a world in which desire is structured by a gendered sexual subject/object binary. That is, men are taught to be subjects who see women as objects, and women are taught to be objects. It’s not just “out there,” it’s “in us” too.
This piece was originally posted in Sociological Images. A slightly edited version is
reprinted here with permission.
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Hookup Culture
College students are having sex, but not as much as you might think. And most of them are kind of disappointed about the whole thing.
Sociologist Lisa Wade told MTV that’s what she learned after interviewing first-year college students. You can see the three-minute video at Sociological Images.
Rumor has it that at four-year universities one and all are hooking up with random strangers to have no-strings-attached, emotion-free sex. Everyone thinks everyone else is having great sex, and lots of it. But not them. Turns out, they’re not alone. They’re typical.
Throughout the entire four years of college, most average only 4 to 7 different hookups. That’s just more than one a year!
And nearly one third of the women have opted out entirely, figuring if the only sex they can get is with acquaintances or strangers, why bother?
Others tolerate the hookup hoping to find love, or at least relationship. But things don’t usually work out as hoped.
And most are dissatisfied by quality, too.
Almost everyone is drunk, which doesn’t help. Women complain that men are not skilled. And an awful lot of these encounters involve women giving men oral sex, but getting nothing in return.
Only about 11% say they enjoy hooking up.
Students wanted at least one of three things:
- pleasure
- meaningfulness
- empowerment
But few were getting any of these.
Yet everyone assumes they know what everyone else wants so no one ever asks.
Wade found that 70% of women and 73% of men wanted a committed relationship, but thought that everyone else felt differently. And they don’t want to talk about it because they fear they’ll come across as repressed, dysfunctional, or needy.
So no one says anything and hookup culture ends up the only game in town.
Wade says casual sex can be a good thing for students who want to focus on school since relationships — and breakups — take up a lot of time and energy.
But with widespread dissatisfaction, she feels that hooking up shouldn’t be the only option.
Students think no-strings sex is sexual liberation. But if you believe you have no other choice, is it?
Maybe it’s time for students to talk to one another.
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Orgasm: It’s All in the Mind
One in three women have difficulty climaxing when they have sex, says Planned Parenthood. Thanks to a culture that represses women’s sexuality.
Others can climax via thought alone.
What we’ve learned from the mind-only technique could help women experiencing sexual difficulty.
Using brain scans, Dr. Barry Komisaruk found that some women can climax from “a combination of breathing exercises and fantasy, while others use their imagination and pelvic floor exercises.” He explained, “Some imagined erotic scenarios, but others imagined very romantic scenes such as a lover whispering to them. Others pictured more abstract sensual experiences, such as walking along a beach or imagining waves of energy moving through their body.
“There’s been a lot of focus on the body and our physical responses,” Komisaruk continued, “but for many people, and women in particular, the mind plays an even more important role.”
Physical stimulation seems to be more vital for men than for women, who require the right ambience, mood and relaxation.
As women move toward orgasm the parts of the brain responsible for fear, anxiety and emotion relax and lower in activity. (Men’s emotional centers also deactivate, but less intensely.) At orgasm the emotion centers effectively close down and women move into an almost trance-like state.
That emotion shuts down at the critical point is interesting, since so many women say they need to feel emotionally connected to enjoy sex. Contradictory? Maybe not. Sex therapist Paula Hall points out that “women in particular need to feel relaxed and safe in order to let go and enjoy sex fully,” and feeling emotionally connected and safe might get them there.
Relaxation is helpful for both men and women. Perhaps that is why orgasm comes more easily when they keep their socks on. In experiments, cold feet kept orgasm rate down to 50 percent. Add socks, and the rate went to 80 percent. Cold is not relaxing.
All of this resonates with techniques suggested by sex therapist, Lonnie Barbach. In one recommendation, she tells non-orgasmic women to touch themselves just to discover how their bodies feel, but making sure not to come to orgasm.
Two things happen here. Unworried about meeting a goal, stress is minimized. And as bodily sensation becomes the focus the women cease to be distracted by other things, including worries about coming.
Which suggests some advice to men: If you constantly ask a woman if she’s coming, do you really think she will? Not a good technique for avoiding anxiety.
Jill Morrison discovered her ability the for mind-only climax one day as she lay with her husband before making love. “He wasn’t even touching me, but I felt very relaxed and I found my mind slipping into a wonderful and relaxed sexual ‘zone’ where I could see myself lying in a sexually abandoned position, naked, having let go of all the stresses in my normal life,” she related. “To my absolute amazement, I had an orgasm there and then, without any kind of stimulation beyond my mental concentration.
“In my view,” she says, “sex for women is 90 percent in the mind. It’s about concentrating purely on the physical pleasure and removing myself from all the complications of relationships. It’s very liberating!” She adds, “The more you do it, the better you become.”
Interesting advice.
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School District Allegedly Expelled 7th-Grader for Reporting Her Rape
by Christie Thompson @ The Ms Magazine Blog
The Republic School District in Springfield, MO, is facing a lawsuit for allegedly ignoring a young victim’s multiple rapes and then expelling her for reporting her attacker. The story is yet another awful example of the victim-blaming culture surrounding rape in schools. Like the recent story of the young cheerleader in Texas–who was kicked off the squad for refusing to cheer on her rapist–it seems that schools too often victimize the very students they should be protecting.
According to the lawsuit [PDF], a 7th-grade special-needs student had been repeatedly harassed and assaulted by a male classmate, which escalated into him raping her on their middle school campus. When the victim reported it, school officials allegedly told the girl during their first meeting that they did not believe her. They allegedly failed to refer her to a counselor or sexual assault forensic examiner or to report her rapist to county authorities, as Missouri state law would mandate.
Instead, the lawsuit says, she was coerced into taking back her allegations, as well as made to write and hand-deliver an apology letter to her attacker. School officials allegedly expelled her from school for the rest of the year and referred her to juvenile authorities for filing a false report.
She was allowed to return to school the next fall only, she says, to face once again verbal and physical harassment from her attacker, which she kept silent about for fear of being further punished. Then, the lawsuit reports:
On or about February 16, 2010 … not being subject to any surveillance or monitoring, [the attacker] was able to hunt her down, drag her to the back of the school library, and again forcibly rape her.
When she finally came forward about the incident, the school allegedly again expressed skepticism and failed to take action. Her mother took the girl to complete a rape kit, which confirmed sexual assault, and the DNA results matched the accused. He pleaded guilty to the charges and is serving time in juvenile detention.
Even then, the lawsuit days, the school board inexplicably still suspended the the victim for “disrespectful conduct” and “public display of affection.”
While the lawsuit, filed July 29, has yet to be decided, here is what we do know: The victim was raped at least once by the young man she identified as her attacker. The school district continues to deny this and accuse the victim of lying about it.
It’s hard to see motivate a young girl to fabricate multiple rapes, given the secondary trauma she went through in reporting them. It’s easier to imagine why a school district might be reluctant to admit a rape had occurred on supposedly supervised school grounds.
Most upsetting is the way the school district has attempted to trivialize the victim’s claims, going so far as to blame the special-needs seventh-grader for not better protecting herself from being raped at school. It has dismissed the victim’s accusations of truly egregious misconduct as “frivolous,” saying that the student “failed and neglected to use reasonable means to protect her self.” Take a moment to ponder what “reasonable means” 7th-graders are supposed to be taking to protect themselves from rape on school grounds. Karate lessons?
When will school authorities stop persecuting and start protecting young victims of sexual assault? Join Broadblogs, Ms. and Change.org in supporting the victim and holding the Republic School District accountable. Click here.
This piece originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine Blog
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Christians for Gay Rights
At churches, schools, and shopping centers volunteers are gathering signatures to repeal California’s new law requiring public schools to include gay people and gay rights milestones in school lessons, according to Lisa Leff, at the Associated Press.
The referendum is being led by less-experienced Christian conservatives since the Mormon and Catholic churches, who led the fight against gay marriage, have not joined forces.
Turns out, not all Christians seek laws to limit gays or keep them in the closet.
Having heard the battle cry, “Gays are against God!” some students from my Women’s Perspective club hoped to gain greater insight by visiting with the Christian club on campus.
We visited a lot of clubs, on numerous issues, hoping to take in various points of view. So we took a turn with “The Upside Down Club,” so named because they felt their ideas were the reverse of society’s.
This group surprised us more than any other.
When we asked how they, as Christians, felt about legislating against gay rights, they said they were against it.
Why?
“We believe in the separation of church and state,” offered one student. “I am personally against gay marriage, but feel that no one’s religious beliefs should be deemed the law of the land. We shouldn’t force our beliefs on everyone else.”
Others said there was a conflict between anti-gay passages in the Bible and “love thy neighbor,” which they felt was the higher law.
In my classes, some Christian students were for gay marriage because they had learned how it would help families. After all, without marriage children may not be able to visit a sick parent in the hospital, they can lose out on social security or inheritance if a parent dies, they aren’t guaranteed child support if parents separate, and mom and dad aren’t given job-protected time to care for a new child. So gay marriage strengthens families.
Along this vein, some Mormons belong to an organization called Mormons for Marriage, which promotes gay nuptials with the slogan, “Family! It’s About Time.” They feel that marriage will be strengthened, not weakened when gay couples have the same civil rights as heterosexuals. I can relate. I know several couples who divorced because one spouse was straight and the other was gay. The relationships were unstable and the breakups certainly weren’t good for families.
From time to time, students in my classes have apologized for the intolerance of other Christians, who get so much publicity.
Nice to see these folks truly living the Golden Rule.
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