Honorary Knight Commander
"This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her nothing. They ask
her support and her love, and repay her with contempt and oppression."
Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God.
This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt and oppression.
There is no book which tells of a more infamous monster than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and cruelty and revenge, unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God with hell, and extends his outrages throughout all eternity!
Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What would you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed and said, "Doctor, come to my daughter, she is very ill. She has lost her reason, and she is all I have!" What would you think of the doctor who would not reply at all at first, and then, when she fell at his feet and worshiped him, answered that he did not spend his time doctoring dogs? Would you like him as a family physician? Do you think that, even if he were to cure the child then, he would have done a noble thing? Is it evidence of a perfect character to accompany a service with an insult? Do you think that a man who could offer such an indignity to a sorrowing mother has a perfect character, is an ideal God?
Helen Gardner, regarding the tale in Matthew 15:26 where Christ spurned the request of a Gentile woman who had beseeched Him to heal her sick daughter, by telling her, "It is not right to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs."
[Editors note: It was this passage from Matthew which, when I was grappling with my own doubts, convinced me that Jesus was not the Christ, was not even a decent human being, that he was in fact a despicable, heartless, racist piece of shit.]
The bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a slave [Ex. xxx, 7], that he may sacrifice her purity to a mob [Judges xix, 24; Gen. xix, 8], and that he may murder her, and still be a good father and a holy man. It teaches that a man may have any number of wives; that he may sell them, give them away, or swap them around, and still be a perfect gentleman, a good husband, a righteous man, and one of God's most intimate friends; and that is a pretty good position for a beginning. It teaches almost every infamy under the heavens for woman, and it does not recognize her as a self-directing, free human being. It classes her as property, just as it does a sheep: and it forbids her to think, talk, act, or exist, except under conditions and limits defined by some priest.
Helen Gardner
Men, Women and Gods
(more of Helen Gardner to follow)
Further reading
