Radical Feminists: Reformers or Reprobates

Abigail Adams was wife of the 3^rd president of the United States.  She and John Adams fell deeply in love and were married in 1764.  Their marriage was not just the union of a husband and wife. They were close companions, the best of friends. They counseled each other. They were lovers in the truest since of the word.  Abigail was the daughter of a Congregational minister and professed to be a Christ-follower in 1759.  She was not so unusual except for one major thing; she was a radical feminist in her time.

The wife of President Adams was continually stepping out where few women were brave enough to tread.  John was proud of the fact his wife could run the farm more efficiently than he when he was off on a diplomatic mission.  She openly questioned the southern patriots who clamored for liberty when they so blatantly denied liberty to their fellow man.  Abigail endured great criticism when she enrolled a black boy in a local evening school. 

Abigail Adams fought for the rights of women by declaring they should not simply be attractive ornaments hanging on their husband’s arm.  They should be educated.  They should be involved in the education of others.  She insisted that women should have a voice in their government.  She continually reminded her husband that women deserved better, "I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.”  (New Viewpoints in American History, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, p.109)

John and Abigail were happily married for 54 years.  Abigail’s love for her husband was never questioned.  They had many children together.  One would ascend to the Presidency of the United States as did his father.  Abigail was ever conscience of the need in the hearts of men for the grace of God.  She wrote of her assurance “that those who fear God and work righteousness shall be accepted of him..."  (Dictionary of U & U Biography, Abigail Adams)

Now let us fast-forward 240 years and look at where feminism has come.  This is not your mother’s feminism.  It is not the feminism of Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  It is the feminism of Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan and Andrea Dworkin.

Does Sandra Fluke represent the feminist movement in 2012?  Ms. Fluke recently testified before Congress demanding her ‘right’ to free birth control from Catholic Georgetown Law School.  (No laughing please, I know she is coughing up $43,750 to pay tuition at Georgetown University Law Center, top-law-schools.com.)  Ms. Fluke had no qualms about violating the religious rights of those who oppose such a thing in order to selfishly protect herself from the consequences of her own sexual immorality. (Assuming her desire for free birth control is not for medical purposes.)  Abigail Adams would have had a few words of advice for a radical feminist who insisted that her birth control be subsidized by those whose conscience it violated. 

Does this mark the death of feminism?  Can anyone really take the movement seriously?  For hundreds of years the movement was admired because they fought for things that were honorable; education, women’s suffrage, equal rights and equal pay.  Abigail Adams and her ilk fought to correct injustices and eliminate atrocities aimed at women.  Now, the radical feminists are fighting for the right to have tax payers buy their contraceptives so they can participate in illicit, promiscuous sex?  Why are these women not trying to emancipate sex slaves throughout the world?  Why are they not trying to eliminate the detrimental institution of polygamy?  Why are they not committed to the rescue of innocent female children who are being sexually assaulted?  Why are they not fighting the spread of pornography and its destructive depiction of women as simple sex objects created for the sexual pleasure of men?  There are so many noble causes to rally around but instead they choose to create a battle that involves forcing others to pay for their sexual pleasures? 

Abigail Adams was all about how she and her husband could help each other.  She was not divisive, she was not hateful.  She loved him deeply and patiently worked with him to make him understand.  She embraced the Judeo-Christian concept taught in Genesis 2:24 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”  The feminism of Abigail Adams was about loving her man, not despising him.

Is this the death of feminism?  Can anyone really give credence to a radical movement that is so hate-driven?  No one can take seriously the ideas of the Ku Klux Klan because they are blinded by their hatred of blacks.  Who could give the Jew-hating Nazis any serious consideration?  When Iranian leader Ahmadinejad spouts his hatred for Israel at the U.N. few take him seriously.  When radical feminism is no longer about improving the lives of the oppressed, when it is only about hating men, who can take them seriously?

It seems a good movement has been hijacked by those consumed and blinded by their own misandry.  Here are but a few examples of man-hatred:

·        “All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a women,” – Catherine MacKinnon, Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies.

·        “Only when manhood is dead--and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it--only then will we know what it is to be free.” Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies And Discourses On Sexual Politics - The Root Cause.

·        “I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” – Robin Morgan, editor of MS magazine.

The radical feminist movement has lost its way.  They are eaten up with hatred, not just hatred for men but also self-hatred.  The movement desperately needs to be rescued by women of integrity who know how to love instead of hate.  It was a movement that fought for decency, chastity and rightness. Has it now become a movement that is fighting for indecency and immodesty?  Sandra Fluke is fighting for the right to have sex anytime, anywhere with anyone and insists that others pay for it.  Is this what the feminist movement has come to, demanding the right to be mere sex-objects?  Is the totality of a woman’s nobility now simply to have earned the right to free birth control in order to fornicate without consequences? 

When a love is replaced by hatred it leads to a corruption or perhaps even an extinction of values.  It is blinding.  Hatred can never extinguish itself; its only antidote is love. 


Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

The War For Our Minds

Thought Police

“Tolerance is not, in itself, a virtue. On the contrary, tolerating what is vicious and wicked can be a sign of moral amnesia brought on by making a god of tolerance” – R.R. Reno, First Things.

Tolerance is necessary for a people to live at peace in a pluralistic society.  But tolerance must be defined by limitations.  Enforced tolerance doesn’t reveal the true heart.  It simply reveals the heart of those powerful enough to force others to accept it.  The deception is the belief that society is a better place due to the ‘virtuous’ tolerance legislated by the “Gods of the Marketplace” (Rudyard Kipling).  It’s like telling your child to take his cough medicine, he may take it, even without complaint, but you know he hasn’t given his heart to it.

Tom Trinko tells of an old woman of the Baltic States who had lived under the horrible oppression of both the Nazi and Communists governments.  When asked which was worse, Nazism or communism, she stated that communism was worse.  “If you did what the Nazis wanted, they left you alone, but the Communists demanded that you think what they thought.  Essentially the Nazis merely wished to enslave or possibly kill you, but the Communists wanted to steal your soul.” (American Thinker, Tom Trinko)

Men lose their minds when overtaken by the lust for power.  The greed for power can cause men to participate in outrageous acts of insanity.  “Power corrupts the few, but weakness corrupts the many.” (Macbeth, Shakespeare)  There are only a few, drunk on their own power, who will try to determine how the many are to think their thoughts.  In the name of the virtue of the times, tolerance, we are being told what we are permitted to think about abortion, pornography, sex, homosexuality and a variety of other issues that have polarized conservatives and liberals.  True Christians will not get direction on these issues from society, but from the Word of the Living God.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech.”  Our courts have struggled over the years to define just what is and is not free speech.  The recent fuss over Rush Limbaugh saying derogatory things about a left-leaning law student and liberal activist, Sandra Fluke, is a perfect example of how difficult it is to draw parameters around what can or cannot be said.  Limbaugh apologized but his apology was rejected because it was not sincere enough.  I know, you are having thoughts of small children throwing sand at each other in a sand box.

Just when you think things are beginning to calm down, another character rushes on stage.  Gloria Allred, a celebrity ambulance chaser if there ever was one, spouts her doctrine of politically correct speech by uttering her shrill cry that Rush Limbaugh ought to be arrested.  I know, you are now looking for some men with white coats to enter the stage of this comedy.  Gloria Allred is insane in her desire to be a part of the discussion.  She knows that her best team of lawyers would lose to a rank amateur law student fresh out of law school on these outrageous charges.  The government couldn’t prosecute Rush or anyone else for practicing their freedom to speak.

The irony of it is that those who insist that conservatives Christians bow to society’s golden idols of homosexuality and abortion will whip them with the cords of intolerance if they do not bow.  In so doing they expose their own hypocrisy by violating their own doctrine.  Instead of recognizing and respecting the opinion of their opponents, they call for them to be cast into the fiery furnace.

Americans are getting a much clearer understanding of what it might be like to live under Sharia Law where people are severely punished, perhaps killed if they don’t become a Muslim.  Ms. Fluke and Ms. Allred represent a cadre of liberals determined to impose penalties on those who refuse to bow to their gods of liberalism.  This is selective tolerance.  While flailing Rush Limbaugh for his name calling, these same accusers declare the young woman who wants to dedicate her life to being a great mother and a loving wife to be a Neanderthal idiot.  Gentlemanly males who have been taught to treat women with respect by opening doors for them and using their greater physical strength, not to harm them, but to protect them are targeted as chauvinist pigs.  Those who refuse to enthusiastically embrace homosexuality are declared homophobes.  Christians have been run out of the adoption business if they refuse to accept homosexual adoption. 

The agenda of the liberal left has nothing to do with tolerance.  It has everything to do with a lust for power. It is an unbridled desire to control others.  “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can control the whole animal.”  (James 3:3)  Saul Alinsky would be proud of the progress of the liberal faction in our society.  The progressives, just like the communists, are attempting to control the masses by determining what they can and cannot say. 

Jesus said, “The things that come out of the mouth come out of the heart.” (Matt. 15:18) The attempt of the thought police to decide what we can or cannot think reveals an outrageous attempt to supplant God.  They have decided they are their own source of morality.  They get to choose what is the right or wrong thing to say or think.  They have written their own set of commandments.  They are vigilant and totally devoted to their cause because they truly believe they are creating heaven on earth (utopia).

Christians must not “defile themselves with a portion of the king’s meat” (Daniel 1:8) by blindly accepting a tolerance and political correctness that is defined by those who discard the Word of God and replace it with their own moral compass.  Christians declare themselves children of the Almighty and they cannot be stolen away by those who would choose thoughts for them. 

As Christians, we resent others telling us what to think and say.  We look to Christ to guide us and correct us in that area of our lives.  “With our tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.  Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing, my brothers, this should not be.”  (James 3:9-10)  Our speech and thoughts must be governed by the truth found in God’s word and the very words of Christ himself.  True Christians have a great desire to say the right things and speak the right words although we often fail.  We don’t take this lightly because “the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart.” (Matthew 15:18)

To those who would like to govern our thoughts and speech, thanks, but no thanks, we already have a God.

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.