Firstly, I am struggling with your argument concerning women's suffrage. Are you saying we should grant suffrage to women because they want it? Is it immoral to deny anyone what they want? The more interesting question is why women came to want it at all. But on your grounds for morality if children should want suffrage would it be immoral not to grant it them? Morality makes an impossition on the desires. It was Smerdyakov (or was it Ivan Karamozov) who declared that God is dead and that all things were permissable. Morality whether of God or merely a social contract restricts whatever we might want. (And by the way I am not advocating here that we should take away women's ability to vote. I am just considering why no premodern society even considered women's suffrage a serious issue. We assume that they were all pigs because they oppressed women, but did they have any arguments in support of it and were they reasonable?)
I said woman's suffrage was a political matter. It may be a moral matter insofar as laws and customs affect moral behavior and visa versa. But it is moral secondarily, woman's suffrage is foremost a political matter. It concerns the eligibility for voting. Tocqueville warned that democracy worships the idol of equality. I am simply raising a question as to the prudence of the modern trend to make women the equals of men in all things. The pagan and unreligious Aristotle regarded the household as a kind of aristocracy, not a democracy, where the wife and the husband each ruled in the things to which they were most fitted; that is to say that they are not equal to all tasks. The most obvious example is bearing children to which men are completely unfitted. Aristotle simply indicated that men were more fitted to voicing and defending the interests of the household. From my observations of women engaged in politics, this seems true. Women, in my opinion, have not fared well in democratic struggles. They are not the equals of men in the defending their interests.
Nevertheless, my argument above was not that women universally should be denied suffrage in a democratic society. Long before universal suffrage of women, many states granted women the vote who were propertied but had no husband, that is to say that the interests of the household were represented, not the individuals of the household. But perhaps you think our Founders were stupid in this matter as they were stupid in retaining slaves, though providing for the means and motive for ending slavery.
Moreover, I never claimed it was a religious matter. You are the one who claimed that religion accomodated it. I think that religion has remarkably little to say with respect to it. And if you read my argument with a little less passion and more consideration you would see that nowhere do I even elude to religion.
In considering all of the societies and various regimes that ever existed, it was never (or at least none come to mind and I have been acquainted with quite a few) the case that women in a democratic or republican form of government were given universal suffrage or the ability to hold office until the last century. That is remarkable. For women have ruled as monarchs in ancient regimes, medieval, Renaissance and modern, and yet, in a democratic or republican government not until recent have women been given suffrage. The difference may simply be that in an aristocracy, it is at least possible, if very rare, for the best to govern. Therefore if a woman of outstanding virtue and born of noble blood becomes monarch, her authority is regarded as legitimate. However, in democracy, equals rule. And it is my opinion that women are done a disservice when we threw them into the fray with men because men are by nature louder and stronger and if Aristotle is correct more opinionated. And also less likely to listen, especially to a woman . In the last analysis, men do not like being ruled by women, especially when they are considered equals. If a woman is better born and educated than a man as in a aristocratic government, men are more likely to acknowledge her superiority. But in a level battle field, they show no courtesy to the gentler sex to whom they ought show more courtesy. But then again why should a man show courtesy when the would-have-been lady dons armor and wields a sword like a man only less ably? Women who wear men's clothes resemble them as much as men who wear women's.
I find your following statement most remarkable in all that you say: "Yes you reply because denying them supports the institution of the family."
This is perhaps at the heart of the differences between us: namely a difference in the understanding of the importance of the institution of the family. It is an understatement to say that the family is the foundation of society. It is a self-evident statement, but our troubled society has trouble seeing what is self-evident. We prefer to look for the obscure and obfuscate what is clear. For if there are no children, there will be no state. And raising and educating children will ever be the most important task of parents and society. If it is a truth not known in society, it will be observed by others who in hindsight see why it had fallen.
P.S. I was first brought to the attention of this matter when a professor of mine, who is now a good friend asked me to read an article he was submitting for publication. It really is a social condition we take for granted and yet most societies have never really considered it because it never was a real issue.
Darrell Dobbs, Family Matters: Aristotle's Appreciation of Women and the Plural Structure of Society , American Political Science Review (1996), 90:74-89.
I've been thinking about that - the mutability of morality over time, despite the unchanging nature of the core documents. Somewhat similar to the situation regarding interpretation of the Constitution (I know I mentioned that before but can't remember when). Torture is a good example.
I'm a little out of my element here - but didn't Jesus have quite a few negative things to say about rich men?
Moral systems and their effect on behavior fascinate me at this point. I know next to nothing about the subject.
What were the moral systems of T'ang or Ming China? Of shogunate Japan? Of Republican Rome at the time of the Punic Wars? of Sumeria and Egypt prior to Moses? of Israel and Judah? I don't know.
What is the relationship between religion and morality? Between class and morality? How did the Church accomodate aristocratic classes? How did it view "jus primae noctis" and other such? I don't know.