Really. This is happening. If you want an insight into the worldview that informs the people who oppose LGBT equality, take a gander at Michelle Duggar’s tips for creating a healthy marriage:
1. A husband needs a wife who respects him as a man: This one states that a woman destroys her husband’s manliness by “being financially independent; Love is killed by self-sufficiency.”
Ladies, you are not viewed as chattel from a governmental perspective anymore, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be.
2. A husband needs a wife who accepts him as a leader and believes in his God-given responsibilities
Ladies, please do not worry your pretty little heads about “things.”
3. A husband needs a wife who will continue to develop inward and outward beauty: Your hairstyle, for example, can show “obedience vs defiance” and “personal discipline vs inconsistency,” among many other things.
Ladies, do your damn hair.
4. A husband needs a wife who can lovingly appeal to him when he is going beyond his limitations and wisely respond to those who question his ideas, goals, or motives: “Ask your husband to tell you when you have a resistant spirit; ask forgiveness whenever you do.”
Ladies, if your husband says you’re being a little bit too vocal about your quote-unquote needs, pipe down.
5. A husband needs quality time to be alone with himself and with the Lord.
Or whatever else it is he’s doing when he’s locked in his office.
6. A husband needs a wife who is grateful for all he has done and all he is doing: “Expect nothing and be genuinely grateful for each little evidence of your husband’s love.”
Ladies, even if he beats you, remember how he tells you that he loves you afterward. That’s the important part.
7. A husband needs a wife who will be praised by other people for her character and her good works.
Don’t embarrass your husband by doing anything that might lead people to believe that you have your own personality, your own soul, your own passions, your own anything, really. Just worship that man.
Do realize that this sort of thinking is a big part of why things like marriage equality mess with wingnuts’ heads so much. In their world, The Man is unquestionably the most important part of the equation and The Woman is there to serve his every need. When asked, wingnuts don’t really know how to express the ways that gay marriage threatens their heterosexual marriages, or they’re embarrassed to really answer the question. But this is the answer. Two men or two women being married threatens the worldview that says that The Man Of The House is faultless, just by virtue of his god-given penis-having. And for heaven’s sake, in a successful lesbian marriage, there isn’t even a god-given penis-haver! But yet those ladies down the street are doing just fine, aren’t they?
