Sarah Posner talks to Kathryn Joyce, an expert on the "Christian Patriarchy" movement, about Alan Grayson's ad attacking Daniel Webster's "Taliban Dan" ad and says that, contra my earlier post at The Plum Line, some of Grayson's criticisms are more accurate than they appear, even though they take Webster's statements out of context. Jed Lewison makes a similar point. Joyce says:
While the Grayson campaign can be taken to task for taking Webster's comment out of context, in the larger context, they're correct. Grayson's campaign argued that Webster seemed to be supporting submission in his comments to an audience of conservative men, whom he directed to pray that they would better fulfill their biblical duty to love their wives, and leave prayers about women's submission to their wives. However, the emphasis of these remarks, as those familiar with Christian rhetoric could recognize, is not on the optional nature of wives' submission. Wifely submission is part of an often-unbalanced equation to Christians who subscribe to "complementarian" or "patriarchal" marriage roles, where men must "love" and women "obey." Saying that a woman should pray for God's guidance in submission, if she wants to, is not leniency, but rather standard evangelical language that emphasizes individuals must obey biblical mandates regardless of how others around them behave. So, Webster is saying, men must be accountable to God for their responsibility to love their wives regardless of whether she submits -- that they must pray to do right, even if she doesn't.
The point being, Webster wasn't really questioning whether wives are supposed to "submit" to their husbands; he thinks they should -- he was merely saying that men should worry about their religious obligations, while women should worry about theirs. But even the full context of the quote suggests he does buy into a sexist, reductive gender binary that reinforces men's "inherent" authority over women.
As to whether or not "Taliban Dan" remains a smear, as ugly as I might find Webster's religious views, it seems obvious to state that he's not trying to force them on other people through violence.
