Obama Pines for the Days of Pre-blog Monolithic Mainstream Media

22 posted on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 6:42:17 PM by papasmurf: “Help me out here. What’s the difference between “giving Michelle her way 90% of the time”, and Rep. Bachmann “submitting to her Husband’s wisdom”? Anybody?”

Rep. Michelle Bachmann is a conservative Lutheran who presumably believes the teachings of her church on male headship in the church and the home. She's being consistent with her core religious beliefs.

Conservative Christian women have been in politics for a very long time. Conservative Christians as well as non-Christians have gotten used to the idea that a woman can submit to her husband in the sphere of the home and male leadership in the sphere of the church without impairing her ability to govern in the sphere of the state.

I think just about the last politically significant effort to argue that women have no biblical right to govern in the state was when John Knox wrote a very badly timed book, originally aimed against the Roman Catholic queens of Scotland and France, which backfired when Queen Elizabeth I assumed the throne of England as a Protestant. The view that women have no biblical right to rule the state has pretty much been discredited in conservative Christian circles since the mid-1500s, and that's a good thing.

However, I'm not sure what it means to have the President of the United States deferring 90 percent of the time to the wishes of his wife. We didn't elect her, any more than we elected Nancy Reagan or Laura Bush.

Typo alert: I wrote “Roman Catholic queens of Scotland and France” but meant “Scotland and England,” i.e., Mary Queen of Scots, and Queen Mary of England. While Mary Queen of Scots was married to the King of France, she was the queen consort, not the queen regnant, and did not rule in France. Queen Mary of England was, of course, an entirely different person who shared only the same name and the same religion.

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