Empty Quiverfull

Some days all it takes to annoy me is listening to the BBC at 2PM on MPR. They are mostly just plain annoying. Today it was more then just them which got me going. They were busy explaining the Quiverfull movement, starting with an audio clip of some woman preacher warning about how Satan was responsible for feminism and birth control. The only "godly" path for a woman is pregnancy, as a part of full subservience to her husband.

The name was new to me. The ideas, unfortunately, not so much.  The are so old, in fact, that I thought they'd gone out decades ago, justly victims of a more enlightened age. But there is a movement out there to bring it all back, and we're not talking the Catholic Church here, still adamant about birth control prohibition. This is an evangelical movement, and realizing it is out there helps explain a lot of what has seemed more than a bit crazy in, say, rabid right wing politics.

This movement has some effects, should it ever catch hold in law. It would outlaw marital rape. Not by making it a crime, as it is now, but by defining away its existence. If a woman must be in subjugation to her husband, he has the only rights, and cannot be guilty of rape, no matter how unwilling the wife. With no birth control and no right of refusal, she must be constantly pregnant, regardless of any consideration to her health, economic strain on the family, or considerations of strain from overpopulation on the planet.

The movement relies, if it considers these issues at all, on the wisdom of the husband. However, there is truth in the saying that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It would take us back a century in women's rights, and rush us forward a century in making this planet unlivable. All in the name of "God's will". No, more like the will of collective individuals who find a need in their lives for more individual power and carry a belief in their personal supremacy. I find the adherents to be foolish, corrupt, greedy and scary.