The Church orders Wives to Submit to their Husbands

[denuseri]

Then they wont....everyone makes a choice to submit or not.

It doesnt matter if he is saying to submit becuase god wants them to, or the pope or elton john or some scientific study or space aliens from area 51.

Its free speech in action.

No one is being forced to attend his church.

[Thorne]

No one is being forced to attend his church.

You're right about that. And I do find it encouraging that so many women, and men, are abandoning that church because of this.

But how many other women would like to do so, but cannot because their husbands forbid it? How many of those women will have to endure spousal rape, because that's what their husbands want? How many of those women will risk their lives in childbirth because their husbands won't allow them to use birth control?

Once you take that first step down the road of unwilling submission, you open the doors to church-sponsored virtual slavery. Where defying the church becomes not only a sin but a breach of law. In short, this kind of thing can set the stage for a fundamentalist, religious government. Just see what happens in places like Saudi Arabia, or any other country living under religious dictatorships. Women become property, not partners.

Perhaps the answer to decaying marriages is to eliminate the religious component altogether. Studies in the US have shown that areas which are predominantly religious have a higher divorce rate than areas which are much less religious. And the more fundamental the religion, the higher the divorce rate. Maybe letting people deal with their own marriages and keeping the church out of it is the better way to go.