Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 18: “Putting Women in Their Place.”
Christianity, and frankly religion generally, would not be such a force for backwardness, evil, and hypocrisy if there were only a few people in weird cults that everyone knew to steer clear of. If the number of Christians in the world were 0.33 percent instead of 33 percent, that would mean there’d be just over 25,000 people in dark corners of secular societies, doing whatever they wanted in rented halls or in Larry’s living room on Tuesday nights, but no harm to the rest of the neighbourhood, and normal people could walk by and never have any idea what kind of nonsense was going on inside. Yes, of course, occasionally one of them would get a little full of themself and, say, desecrate the statue of the town’s founder in the main square, but they’d get a fine or a little time in jail and everyone would move on. Larry would bake his famous oatmeal cookies in preparation for next week’s gathering and the world would be as it was.
This utopia, the statue notwithstanding, unfortunately is not what we have to live in today. Christians are big in numbers and therefore they wield political power, directly when a Christian manages to get elected to office, and indirectly when Christian constituents push for or against legislation that is not aligned with the Bible or their other scattered crazy denominational rules. The world witnessed this power just last week when the prime minister of Ireland, where about 70 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, was unable to make two amendments to the constitution which would have removed some pretty backward and misogynist wording.
Here are the details.
Article 41.3 of the constitution says:
The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.
Article 41.2.1 says:
In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
And finally article 41.2.2 says:
The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.
Anyone with common sense and a mind not addled by the reactionary strictures of the Catholic Church would find this kind of wording embarrassing and backward in a blog post let alone in the modern constitution of a democratic country. In trying to change the article about marriage, it’s evident what the rationale of the prime minister was. I see it as twofold. One is basic: marriage may or may not be a good thing, just as not being married may or not be a good thing, and so it’s a reactionary anachronism to say that the family is founded on marriage. Can’t two people just live together unmarried—which was admittedly called “living in sin” when I grew up about five hundred years ago—and form a healthy family, kids or no kids? Why does marriage deserve protection but simple loving cohabitation does not? It is a basic unfair discrimination built right into the constitution. (Just in passing, Ireland to its credit does in fact allow gay marriage, but two gay people living together can bolster the foundation of the state without having to get married.)
The voting down of a rewording of this article of the constitution is bad enough, but the other two are an embarrassment. I see the slimy residue of the hands of the Catholic Church all over it. As I read the articles now, they are so ridiculous that they seem like the setup for a bad joke: “by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” What? There’s no logic there, again on two fronts. One: by what stretch of the imagination can it be said that a woman staying in her place at home contributes to the common good? Vacuumed carpets and hot meals on the table for a grumpy or overstressed husband (or wife) somehow make society better? The other point of course is that if you want to insist perversely that the presence of someone in the home somehow helps the state, that doesn’t have to be a woman. As we men become less relevant in the onslaught of woke attacks on our malevolence or irrelevance, then, hey, maybe our place is in the home? Why should women get all the fun of working a full day to exhaustion, outside the office?
The third article which was attempted to be changed is a parody of itself. Again, it reads: “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.” What? It really says that? What duties in the home? That phrase or home duties are not mentioned elsewhere in the constitution. The obvious inference seems to be that it is referring to housework again: a clean and tidy home keeps interest rates down, perhaps? Or maybe other duties are meant. Keep your husband happy sexually or the value of the Irish Stock Exchange might flag as much as your husband’s penis?
The disgusting worst of it though is that the implication is that even if they or the family needs the money, a woman shouldn’t keep an unkempt home either. Do you want to attend that work department meeting by Zoom or do you want to make sure that the dishes are clean and the floors are swept? And the extrapolated, if not blatantly obvious, implication is that women should stay home where they belong, and leave that officey stuff to the big strong men. It’s ridiculous. I live in Canada and there is no such denigration of women in our constitution or in our charter of rights and freedoms. We are not a perfect model by any means, but we are generally a progressive and fair-minded people. We are about 63 percent Christian, but we take seriously the separation of church and state.
Finally, in my opinion, part of the reason for the failure of these constitutional amendments in Ireland had to do with the proposed rewording to replaced the old-tymey wording. It was strung together by a committee and/or late at night when everyone was tired and just agreed to it to be able to get the hell out of that windowless boardroom. I’m an editor. Words matter. You can’t just introduce the term “durable relationships” without being able to say in plain language, and in expansive language, exactly what you mean by that.
The end is that in this regard, modern Ireland has decided to remain mired in the past. Christianity tends to have that kind of influence.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a transcript, sources, and for how to contact me. And please join me again on Monday/Thursday.