Monday, November 29, 2004

From the Transcript of Meet the Press, November 28, 2004



It's not from the Handmaid's Tale, not quite yet anyway:

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.
We can try to find common ground, but there are differences, and I want to see just how profound they are. The Southern Baptist Convention in 1998 passed this statement on the family: "...A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband... She...has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household..."
And, Reverend Land, you went on to explain it this way: "If a husband does not want his wife to work outside the home, then she should not work outside the home." Is that your vision of America?
DR. LAND: It's my vision for Christian families. I don't think that the law has anything to do with it. That was a statement about the theological belief of Southern Baptists. And, you know, George Will had a real great answer for that when somebody asked him, "Where'd they get this stuff?" And he pulled out the Bible and turned to Ephesians, chapter five: "He got--we got it from Ephesians, chapter five." We almost needed to footnote the Apostle Paul when he said that "Husbands should love their wives the way Christ loves the church," which means husbands will always put their wives' needs above their own. And they are to be the head of their home, which means that they're responsible. It's a servant leadership role.
And my wife, who you met, has a PhD in marriage and family therapy and has worked outside the home since our youngest child was in kindergarten. That was our mutual choice. We're not against women working outside the home unless the husband believes that it's not the right choice. Now, remember, this is a husband who loves his wife the way Christ loves the church and is going to always put his wife's needs above his own. But I would certainly not want to make that a matter of legislation when you-- that's about marriage. It's about what goes on in a marriage and about what we believe is the ideal for the family.

(Bolds mine.)

You know, I really don't want to write about fundamentalist wingnuts and their unpleasant ideas about women all the time, but they won't shut up for long enough so that I could find something else to blog about. And I'd like to point out, dear Dr. Land, that a cage is still a cage even when it's gilded.