General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pope Benedict XVI are in the news for stances that gird the infrastructure of Patriarchy.
“Patriarchy” has a lot of definitions but one workable one is: “male dominance organized around an obsession with control over women, sexuality, and religion”. The Pope urged Catholic lawmakers to oppose laws favoring same sex marriage, abortion, divorce, celibacy for priests and euthanasia. He is quoted as saying that these are “nonnegotiable values.” Patriarchy considers all matters of the heart that are tied to sexuality to be “nonnegotiable”. Everyone must be heterosexual, divorce should be banned, and women should not have access to abortion; period and end of report.
General Pace has stated that “homosexual acts are immoral”. If one considers homosexuality to be a set or series of “acts”, then this is a total misread of the core of what it means to be a human sexual being. What these emissaries of patriarchy don’t understand is that it is our humanity that is nonnegotiable. This is our most sacred value. And we are not going to back down, kowtow or bow down to the intractable soul killing pronouncements of men who are obsessed with dominance and control over our souls, our hearts, our moral agency, our futures, or our right to be; period and end of Report.
Sylvia Rhue, Ph.D.
Director of Religious Affairs and Constituency Development
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Comments: 2
I'm sure that's not what you meant, anywy. Lately I've been paying a lot of attention to the problems of communicating with people who disagree with me and trying to change their minds. One thing I know, if that's what you want to do, you don't use words like "patriarchy."
On the other hand, when I talk with people who share my opinions, I find that that's a convenient word because we agree on what it means and its appropriateness.