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A Christian Message on the Importance of Fathers

By Fannie

It's my favorite when anti-gay, anti-feminist heterosexual men who worship a male god nonetheless insist that both men and women are very important to relationships- especially the marital one! Some folks are just okay with some genders being more important-er than others. Thus, as you can imagine, it's likewise my favorite when such dude-god lovin' men find it problematic when some people worship a dual-gender god, as opposed to a strictly male god.

Here, Playful Walrus, in criticizing a gay male couple's marriage ceremony, mocks the homo newlyweds' invocation of a "mother/father god" in their ceremony, writing:

"Wait... Why call God 'father-mother'? Looks to me like only fathers are important in this relationship."

His point is that it's inappropriate, and possibly hypocritical, for a gay male couple to acknowledge the value of both sexes in god whilst engaging in a marriage that contains only one sex. So here, it is most apt to wonder- does Walrus' rule regarding a god's gender composition pertain only to same-sex couples, or does Walrus also deem it fit to apply to dual-gender couples as well?

Given his apparent belief that the gender composition of one's marriage should correspond with the gender composition of one's god, it's fun to think about the implications of Walrus' own worship of his male father god via Christianity. Using his own logic, his Christian father-god demands and implies that it is only fathers- men- who are important in the Christian marital relationship.

Indeed, under the traditional view of marriage, marriage is not a relationship between two people, but is an arrangement between a man and his reproductive vessel(s). One who sits through some Christian wedding ceremonies- replete with copious praise to the father-god, fathers "giving away" their daughter to another man, and man-priests officiating over the whole transaction- might likewise be compelled to wonder why the Christian marriage deigns to require "one woman" at all when it is so very evident that it is the men, fathers, and sons who are truly important here. The most important role for women, the clearly less important gender within this holy male circle jerk, is to be submissive for gender-hierarchy purposes.

Yes, indeed, I do think Walrus is on to something here in observing how the "gender" of a supreme deity reflects the relative importance of we mortal gendered beings. Too bad that in clinging desperately to the male privilege his god-father bestows upon him, he is incapable of extrapolating his own Deep Thought to its logical conclusion.

In another hilarity-ensuing twist, Walrus then goes on to accuse the aforementioned married gay men of trying to co-opt motherhood, which he says is impossible given that "Men can't contribute eggs or carry children in a womb, after all."

The Christians, how they love to project!

Of course, that men do not generally have eggs or wombs has not stopped Christian "fathers" from creating a religion wherein humans are to be "born again" through the non-existent womb of their savior man/son/father/god (depending on sect).

Nor has the lack of eggs and wombs stopped men, "so resentful of women's monopoly of all nature's rhythms," from inventing pseudo-reproductive rhythms that mimic the biology of women's bodies, claiming them as their own, and lording them over all of humanity as the "savior" of mankind.

Nor has it stopped holy men from adorning themselves in dresses and exercising authority over women who actually have eggs and wombs, as though the wombs belong to them, society, and/or their male god but certainly not to the women themselves.

That men do not have eggs or womb does not preclude the Greatest Divine Male Of All from motherhood, so why would mere biological anatomy preclude male humans- who were supposedly created in this god's image- from motherhood?

In this way, Christianity sends quite the metaphorical message that biological sex and mere anatomy is of no limitation when it comes to motherhood and marriage. As long as incubators exist for impregnation and hatching purposes, men are clearly more than enough to fill all marital and parentage roles.

And yet.

Given the greater female investment and importance in gestation and reproduction, do you ever get the impression that the Godly Males are protesting a bit too much?

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on March 24, 2010 (boomark / email).