The
Bible gives men the right to rape their wives.
The
Hebrews were permitted by God and Moses to force women of other races that they
have conquered into marriage (Deuteronomy
The
law of Levirate Marriage forced a man and woman into bed – to rape one another. If a man married and died leaving his wife
childless his brother was to be compelled by the threat of everlasting contempt
and disgrace for himself and his line to marry her for the sake of his brother
so as to raise up a first-born son in his brother’s name (Deuteronomy 25). A lot of the time, the man would be fathering
a lot of girls before the son would come.
The
Law did not have to permit these things because of human stubbornness. Laws are supposed to fight disobedience not
pander to it and reward it. The nation
would not hate God just because a few men could not get forcibly marrying a
woman from another nation. The brother
could have given his first-born son his brother’s name without fathering that
son by his brother’s wife. Nobody knew
how men caused babies anyway. There is
no excuse for the Bible allowing rape.
God tells us to do what is right and ignore what people say so he should
and would do the same himself. You can’t
change principles because people dislike them for you will find yourself
changing everything.
The
Bible says that we all have a duty to read it on pain of sin. In other words, women are forced to read
filth in the Song of Solomon and the Book of Ezekiel. This is divinised sexual harassment.
The
Law and the Catholic Church force a woman to take her husband’s semen inside
her in marriage. Many women find this
distasteful particularly if they know their husbands have committed
adultery. This is rape because some only
discover this on their wedding night and can say nothing and the Church forbids
condoms and wives refusing their husbands for too long on pain of eternal
damnation. This is rape for it is a
worse violation than forced penetration for obvious reasons. The man is violating the woman with his own seed. There is no doubt that Christian society has
raised up men as potential rapists and this is very worrying. The apostle wrote that a woman will be saved
in child-bearing. This commands what
will amount to rape in many cases.
A
girl getting pregnant by her casual or steady boyfriend is certainly the same
as rape even if the sex was consensual for she never meant to get pregnant and
he has violated her by not being careful.
He took advantage of someone that has infinitely more to lose than him.
Rape
victims should remain anonymous so that they can feel free to come forward and
report the crime. The law of Jesus and
Moses and the apostles that more than one witness is needed in addition to the
woman is a license for men to rape women legally – what you can’t go to court
for is hardly illegal in any real sense.
It is also a directive that takes away anonymity from the woman. The view that men are sexual predators is
correct for the woman has the most to lose by having sex and there is no doubt
that the woman is being used. The woman
accusing a man of rape should be listened to more readily than the man. Some women make false allegations because
they have no fear of the consequences.
But it is only right that this necessary evil be tolerated. The victims being free to
come forward comes first. A false
accusation against a man is nothing compared to the violation of a woman’s
body. Rape can kill by suicide or by
passing on HIV and can result in a baby.
A man need not die because of a false accusation. Men do not need the same support when they
are accused as a woman does when she says she was raped even if she was
lying. A woman has the right during sex
to report a man for rape just because she changed her mind during intercourse
if he did not stop or took too long to stop.
The
suggestion that women who accuse falsely should themselves be penalised by the
law is a cruel and sexist one. The Law
of Moses says that if you try to frame somebody or engineer a miscarriage of
justice the penalty you tried to bring on that person should be brought on you
and indeed has to be. The man might be
exonerated but who knows if he is really innocent? It is better for men accused of rape in the
wrong to go to jail than for women who really were raped to go to jail just
because the man they accused was thought to be not guilty.
In
Numbers 5, a religious ritual commanded by God that you would expect to find in
a medieval black magic grimoire rather than in the
so-called Good Book.
When
a woman was suspected of adultery she was taken to a priest by her
husband. The husband would make an
offering to God. The priest would get
her to take unnatural oaths. He would
give her holy water in which he had put dirt.
She was to take an oath to back up her claim to be innocent. If she lied she prayed that her body would
swell and her thigh waste away when she would drink the water. These curses were written and then washed off
into the holy water. Then the priest
makes her drink the water. The woman
swells and wastes away if she is an adulteress and the people curse her for
it. But if she is loyal then the water
does nothing bad to her. God said that
this is to be done with women who are suspected of adultery by their husbands
and God says: “The [husband] shall be free from iniquity and guilt, and that
woman [if guilty] shall bear her iniquity” (
It
does not bother God if a man is suspicious for very little.
And
there is no ritual set up for a man.
And
the husband should have been empowered to do the rite himself without trying to
expose and shame his wife in front of a man to whom his marital problems were
none of his business
Incidentally,
Christians say that the laws about cleanness in the Old Testament show that God
knew about germs before they were discovered so he made these laws to protect
his people. This is absurd for even pig
meat is clean if cooked properly and pig meat was forbidden. The ordeal shows that the woman only got
infected from the water if she were guilty not if she were innocent. That is not about germs. It is about magic.
The superstitious rite shows real suspicion of and hatred for women. It treats women as objects just like rapists do.
Incredibly, Catholic Answers says the only thing Christians can say. It says the guilty woman taking the drink and getting sick and injured comes from the crippling guilt she feels. Nobody could feel that guilty! Also many women would be remorseless. The text says nothing about feeling guilty. And besides what Catholic Answers says doesn't excuse the fact that the priest puts curses on the water to afflict the woman if she has been a bad girl by God's command.
Such disgusting rationalisations only insult the people who have suffered through God's vile law.
The
Lord God goes off his path to make loveless and abusive marriage acceptable in
Deuteronomy 22.
He
decreed that that if a man took a wife and consumed the marriage and claimed
that she was not a virgin when he had these relations with her and accuses her
of having sinned with another man he must prove it by letting the judges and
her relations know that the wedding bed was not stained with her virginal
blood. If no evidence of virginity is
found the girl was to be brought to the door of her father’s house and stoned
to death. But the hymen could have been
broken accidentally. This is quite
common. When God made this law he did
not want a girl who lost it when she was kicked or something to be spared for
you only make laws that can be put into action.
The man would not be accusing her without destroying the evidence of
virginity first so when God says that a man can be found out if he is defaming
his wife it is no consolation. If freshly
broken skin was found on the woman’s body it would be surmised that she tore at
the remains for her long-lost hymen to fool the judges.
If
the husband was found to be a liar which was nearly
impossible in practice for he would not be able to name the person who he is
saying stole her virginity he had to be fined and punished. He was not allowed to divorce her as long as
he lived. Women were not allowed to
divorce so while many marriages ended in legal divorce she was stuck with
him. She was being punished because her
husband defamed her and tried to have her killed. That marriage would be a nightmare and would
be devoid of love.
Some
imagine that this law does not condemn her for having sex outside of marriage
but for deceiving everybody. But if all
she did was deceive then why would she be stoned for the Law does not allow
stoning for lying except when you lie to get somebody executed? The sex was God’s chief concern for God hates
anybody lying about being a virgin as if having sex is a terrible thing. In Exodus, we read that God decreed that
singles who had sex should be forced to marry if the girl’s father agrees so
why the harsher penalty here? The Exodus
situation deals with people who must have come close to the death penalty but
the Deuteronomy situation brings the woman to the point of the death penalty
for her crime is worse.
A
married woman who was raped in the city was to be stoned to death for not
screaming unlike one who was raped in a lonely place. The law exists
showing that it was to be practiced. Any
woman could have said that she was too scared to scream so this proves that
anybody who did say that was not listened to.
God
says the man who rapes the married woman in the city is to be stoned to death like
her for he violated the wife of another man.
This is important. God says that
death is the fitting punishment for this and not because it was what people
wanted it to be. Christians cannot blame
the stubbornness of the Hebrews for that.
Conclusion
No woman that wants to be
called a woman should support or promote the Bible.
WORKS
CONSULTED
A
Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society,
A
Teenager’s Answer to “Shall I Go to the Prom?” Sherry Burgess, Guardian of Truth
Publications,
A
Work of the Flesh: Sexualism, Weldon E Warnock,
Guardian of Truth Publications,
Believing
in God, PJ McGrath, Wolfhound Press,
Biblical
Dictionary and Concordance of the New American Bible, Confraternity of
Christian Doctrine,
Contraception
and Chastity, Elizabeth Anscombe, Catholic Truth
Society,
Contraception,
John T Noonan, Jr., A
Mentor-Omega Book, New American Library,
Courtship
and the Dangers of Petting, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Divorce,
John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
God
Is Not Great, The Case Against Religion, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books,
Eunuchs
for the
Moral
Questions, Bishops Conference, Catholic Truth Society,
New
Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of
America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of
Columbia, 1967
Pornography
– A Psychiatrist’s Verdict, Melvin Anchell MD, Liguori Publications,
Preparing
for a Mixed Marriage, Irish Episcopal Conference, Veritas,
Rediscovering
Gay History, John Boswell, Gay Christian Movement,
Rome
has Spoken, A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How
They Have Changed Through the Centuries, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad Publishing,
Scattered
Vows, Exodus From the Priesthood, David Rice, Blackstaff Press,
Sex
& Marriage A Catholic Perspective, John M Hamrogue
C SS R,
Shall
We Dance? Dick Blackford,
Guardian of Truth Publications,
Son
of Joseph, The Parentage of Jesus, Geoffrey Parrinder, T&T Clark,
Edinburgh, 1992
The
Emancipation of a Freethinker, Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The
Bruce Publishing Company,
“The
Lord Hateth Putting Away!” and Reflections on
Marriage and Divorce The Committee of the Christadelphian,
The
Pope and Contraception, Brenda Maddox, Counterblasts 18, Chatto
& Windus,