Really. This is happening. If you want an insight into the worldview that informs the people who oppose LGBT equality, take a gander at Michelle Duggar’s tips for creating a healthy marriage:
1. A husband needs a wife who respects him as a man: This one states that a woman destroys her husband’s manliness by “being financially independent; Love is killed by self-sufficiency.”
Ladies, you are not viewed as chattel from a governmental perspective anymore, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be.
2. A husband needs a wife who accepts him as a leader and believes in his God-given responsibilities
Ladies, please do not worry your pretty little heads about “things.”
3. A husband needs a wife who will continue to develop inward and outward beauty: Your hairstyle, for example, can show “obedience vs defiance” and “personal discipline vs inconsistency,” among many other things.
Ladies, do your damn hair.
4. A husband needs a wife who can lovingly appeal to him when he is going beyond his limitations and wisely respond to those who question his ideas, goals, or motives: “Ask your husband to tell you when you have a resistant spirit; ask forgiveness whenever you do.”
Ladies, if your husband says you’re being a little bit too vocal about your quote-unquote needs, pipe down.
5. A husband needs quality time to be alone with himself and with the Lord.
Or whatever else it is he’s doing when he’s locked in his office.
6. A husband needs a wife who is grateful for all he has done and all he is doing: “Expect nothing and be genuinely grateful for each little evidence of your husband’s love.”
Ladies, even if he beats you, remember how he tells you that he loves you afterward. That’s the important part.
7. A husband needs a wife who will be praised by other people for her character and her good works.
Don’t embarrass your husband by doing anything that might lead people to believe that you have your own personality, your own soul, your own passions, your own anything, really. Just worship that man.
Do realize that this sort of thinking is a big part of why things like marriage equality mess with wingnuts’ heads so much. In their world, The Man is unquestionably the most important part of the equation and The Woman is there to serve his every need. When asked, wingnuts don’t really know how to express the ways that gay marriage threatens their heterosexual marriages, or they’re embarrassed to really answer the question. But this is the answer. Two men or two women being married threatens the worldview that says that The Man Of The House is faultless, just by virtue of his god-given penis-having. And for heaven’s sake, in a successful lesbian marriage, there isn’t even a god-given penis-haver! But yet those ladies down the street are doing just fine, aren’t they?
So, Men are the most important part of the equation? That’s a very interesting concept. I don’t know where to begin to speak to this level of ignorance.
Love is “killed by self-sufficiency”? “Expect nothing” and cling to any little crumb of affection from one’s husband? This isn’t marriage; it’s Stockhold Syndrome. Any marriage that looks like this is borderline abusive. If this is what fundamentalists believe marriage should look like, I pity them.
Stockholm, not “Stockhold.” Typo.
Even my grandmothers born in the 1890s would have burst out laughing if you suggested that they treat their husbands this way. One was Italian and the other one was Irish. The Irish grandmother probably would have whacked her husband over the head with a frying pan if he disrespected her. Michele D is brainwashed beyond belief.
Yes, this is exactly the ‘natural order’ that fundamentalists are always saying is under attack by feminism, homosexuality, and sexual ‘permissivity’. It’s no surprise, since Christianity is basically about man-worship, and equating men with god. The pope is needed as a living Jesus for people to worship, which they do quite literally. Even in the household, the man in the house is a god that has total control.
What’s even sicker is from what I’ve heard about it their show – since I haven’t actually watched it – the girls in the family can’t just be kids, but have to spend all their time being mothers to their growing brood of younger siblings (can’t the boys help out?) They even all have the same hairstyle, just like their mother. Is that how they show their “obedience”? And I think that begs the question: isn’t this a little too close to a fundamentalist polygamy setup – one man with lots of wives whose lives revolve around him?
happily, such people are freaks…so much so that even most fundy trash watch their show with a sense of “what the hell is THAT?”
I know more than a few really religious conservative women, and most would be MORTIFIED if they were expected to live this way.
Of course, the flip side, in our nation of 310 million people, is that there are a few million people who DO live this way.
Kind of scary, ain’t it?
“Sick” does not even begin to describe this woman. Michelle Duggar does not describe a marriage but a form of slavery. I cannot believe that in this modern world that Mrs. Duggar would hold such views. I think even Jesus would disagree with this view.
Here’s hoping that at least one of the children in that horde turns out to be LGBT.
“Love is killed by self-sufficiency.””
I thought those RW types promoted self-sufficiency and despised dependency.
“A husband needs a wife who accepts him as a leader and believes in his God-given responsibilities”
Don’t think. Don’t question. Just obey. That’s what God put you on this planet for.
“Expect nothing and be genuinely grateful for each little evidence of your husband’s love.”
Just be grateful if he comes home and remembers your name. After all, you’re just the baby dispenser and house maid.
What farked up, sexist, demeaning garbage.
Even if I were straight, I wouldn’t marry the kind of woman she is describing.
People seemed so shocked by this but the current movement to end systematic oppression of groups of people (Women, Disabled, LGBTQ, and those of “different” races) are constanly disregarded by the media, humor, and everyday politics. Question authority, speak up, and open your eyes to the world around you… ! :)
There is no force on earth that would marry a man who wanted me to be anything like that. I’d kill him in the first week.
And I would be willing to bet that her husband is out there having numerous affairs, because he has zero respect for his fawning slave-wife.
Peter — It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
I think this is what is called the Quiverful movement in fundy-land. This is the same stuff which is preached every day on ‘family values’ shows on the radio like Focus on the Family, Family Talk, Family-this & Family-that. I think Family Talk (James Dobson’s new show) had a program on called ‘Teaching girls to be little ladies’ or something like that. This is part of the reason transgenderism freaks them out like nothing else (except maybe gayness).
“A husband needs quality time to be alone with himself and with the Lord.” = Best euphemism ever