Are Complementarian Women Next?

A face book page calls on Saudi men “to beat Saudi women who drive their cars in a planned protest next month against the ultra-conservative kingdom's ban on women taking the wheel.” http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.57e2385fa5eae620b459b4dacd967745.971&show_article=1 Another case of submission tyranny. But that's over there. It can't touch women here in the United States, right? Think again.

When Sandra Day O'Conner wrote the Supreme Court opinion, and based it on European law, she opened up Pandora's box of atrocities, which includes tyranny against women. Consider: only a few years after O'Conner's written decision, judges are beginning to allow Sharia law in their court rooms, including laws that restrict and punish Muslim women according to Sharia law. http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/new-jersey-judge-rules-islamic-sharia-law-trumps-u-s-law/ and http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/email-archives/2282-judge-orders-muslims-to-follow-sharia-law. In other words, the Muslims who are pushing for Sharia law are wielding an ever larger influence in the United States as well as in Europe and other western countries, and many nations are making concessions and allowing Sharia law to be practiced alongside their own, and even superseding their own.

In addition to Muslim pressure, complementarians are pushing to repeal rights that have been won for women, including the right to vote, the right to obtain a restraining order against their abusive husbands, etc. (do your own research. I refuse to provide links to their sites.) Similar to radical Muslims, complementarians also believe women should stay in their homes (with the exception of women like Mary Kassian, Phyllis Schlafly, & etc who go around teaching other women to stay in their homes and defer all money-making and decision-making to their husbands) and that husbands should maintain strict authority over their wives.

Added to these pressures, many voices are blaming Israel for disallowing citizenship to Muslims who live in Israel, which I presume includes banning them from the right to vote. In other words, in trying to vilify Israel for restricting the Muslim influence from taking over in that country, liberals in the US, are laying the groundwork to allow Muslims full citizenship and voting rights in the US. All it would take is a concerted effort by both Muslims, complementarians, and other anti-women-freedom groups, most of whom believe in producing large families, to raise up a huge block of voters to overturn the current laws that protect and give rights and freedom to women.

The bottom line is that our constitution, our declaration of independence gives the rights of equality specifically to men, not to women.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

At the time the Declaration of Independence was written, black men were not included as being equal, and later it was decided that a black man could be counted as half a person. Women were not included in that equality statement either. In fact, women were not allowed to vote until 1920, 144 years after our nation was formed. Although Amendment XIX (19) was ratified in 1920, it only states

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Nothing has ever been written into the law or constitution about the inalienable right of women to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, nor about their God-created equality.

With that lack of protection in our foundational laws, and with the growing pressure from Muslims and complementarians, with liberals pushing to allow illegal aliens citizenship status and to not block the corridor from Mexico, (or claiming that it is already blocked, when it is not,) with the children of illegals (some of them could be Muslim, Sharia-loving illegals) being granted citizenship if they are born in the US, the door is wide open for a takeover that would allow radical Muslims and/or complementarians to fill over half the seats in the house and senate, and for a radical Muslim or radical complementarian to become president within one generation. (perhaps sooner).

Indeed, even in the United States, which is purported to be the land of the free, women's status, freedom, and protection from tyranny is heavily dependent upon the mercy and goodwill of men. As recent as April 9, 1923, in Adkins vs Children's Hospital, just 2.5 years after women had won the right to vote, the court decided that the 1918 minimum wage act for adult women was “an unconstitutional interference with the liberty of contract.” # 11 of
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0261_0525_ZS.html
It took 14 years for that law to be overturned in “West Coast Hotel Co v. Parrish” http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0300_0379_ZS.html . As recently as 1893, just 118 years ago, the supreme court decided that "a woman had no legal existence separate from her husband” http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-744.ZO.html (bottom 1/5 of page) and as recent as June 29, 1992, a whole 99 years later, that the court concluded in the Pennsylvania case regarding abortion rights that “A State may not give to a man the kind of dominion over his wife that parents exercise over their children.”

If women are not seen as having these inalienable rights from God, but instead have received them from men, those rights can also be taken away by men.

But laws of our country aside, how many complementarian husbands deny their wives the right to drive when and where the wives choose? How many Christian homes in the USA have the same prohibitions against women driving that the Saudi's do? How many more husbands, in the name of husband authority, will inflict that rule upon their wives in the coming year? And how many so-called Christian husbands beat their wives for driving their cars? Perhaps the Christian community would do better to focus on those in their own pews, instead of worrying so much about radical Muslims. After all, they have much more influence in their own pews than they do among Muslims.

Waneta Dawn is the author of "Behind the Hedge, A novel" See www.wanetadawn.com A Mennonite woman fights to save her family yet keep her faith.