Wives Quotes
Luther’s logic was that polygamy was sanctioned in the Old Testament and never specifically forbidden in the New Testament. This fact totally puzzled the American Mormons when the Protestants railed against the immorality of their plural marriages.
This was quite a radical, feminist statement at the time. But it gives us a good insight into the sexism that then existed where for many the belief was that a young woman would be harmed by a college education.
This relatively radical viewpoint regarding equal rights for women was expressed by Roosevelt as his Senior thesis at Harvard in 1880. In those days, the kind of scrutiny of everything a candidate ever wrote or said that is characteristic of modern politics, did not exist. It is very doubtful that if the Republican Party officials had ever known that he had espoused these views—even as a young student, that he ever would have risen so high in the party, much less get nominated at the Vice Presidential candidate which was his entree to the Presidency. When in office however, there is no record of him reviving his youthful proposal that women who marry retain their maiden names.
The Greek culture was quite sexist. However, all cultures had observed strong women, some who ruled and others where wives or mistresses of rulers were very influential if not powerful.
These murders were punished by burning at the stake and other gruesome forms of execution as if a king had been murdered.
At the time and for many years afterward, once a woman married in America, she lost most of the legal rights she had. She could not own property—the husband controlled it all, and she had no rights to make family decisions including the upbringing of her own children.
Robertson was so fearful of feminism that he ascribed almost every evil in society to it as well as witchcraft.
At the time, in many states married women could not control their own inheritance, could not sign a contract, owned no part of a family business that a women might have founded and worked in her entire life, could not be an executor of a will—even if it were her husband’s.
This is a particularly interesting passage of the Koran. On the one hand it provides the religious justification for the sexist dominance of the male in a marriage. However, at the same time, it gave wives rights at a time when few cultures and religions did--such as the right to own and inherit property. Women in the Western world did not obtain some of these rights until the last hundred years. So historically, Islam was somewhat ahead of Christianity when Muhammed lived, but while most Western interpretations of gender role and rights have changed and advanced, a small minority of Islam has been reformist and modern so Islam has gone from a leader in modern gender relations to an obstacle to equality and fairness by not changing and reforming.
