Article on Christian Site Gives Advice to Christian Landlords on How to Discriminate Against Single Adult Renters

Article on Christian Site Gives Advice to Christian Landlords on How to Discriminate Against Single Adult Renters

This page reads like one big, long “how to” on how Christian landlords can get around laws to discriminate against unmarried adults. I am not so sure I am in agreement with this.

I realize that the Bible does not support hetero pre-marital sex, but I don’t know if I can support the idea of Christians wanting to bar adult singles from renting from them, on the off chance they may fornicate while renting – the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 7 it is better to stay single than to marry. It would seem to me that it would therefore be unbiblical for a Christian landlord to refuse to rent to a single adult based on his or her single status.

By the way, I have a collection of links on (Link): one page of this blog of married Christian couples who engaged in sexual sin, in some cases arrested for it (e.g., pedophilia, raping people, etc).

(Link):  Renting to Unmarried Couples: What Christian Property Owners Need to Know by Lara Sen

Excerpts:

• As both a devout Christian and a property owner, working within the confines of the law can sometimes mean going against your personal religious beliefs. Where can we draw the line?
• Here’s what Christian landlords need to know:
• Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
• Under the Federal Fair Housing Act, which was passedin 1968, landlords (Link):  cannot refuse to discriminate based on certain identity markers – including race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The law would be further amended in 1989 to prohibit discrimination based on disability or familial status.
• In this case, familial status refers specifically to pregnant women and/or the presence of children under the age of 18 – including single parents with children.
• An example of the Fair Housing Act in action is one, somewhat bizarre, case from 2011, in which a Wisconsin landlord  (Link): refused to rent a property to a single mother because there was no man “to shovel the snow.” The landlord was subsequently sued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• But What About Unmarried Couples?

• There are a number of reasons why Christian landlords may feel uncomfortable renting to unmarried couples. First off, young adults who are unmarried and cohabitating (Link): can pose logistical concerns, according to Houston property management firm Green Residential. Young adults and college students can pose noise problems, for example, so it’s important to build these concerns into a clear, customized lease agreement.

Christian Blogger About Divorce, Pastor Andrew Webb, Thinks All To Most Mid-Life Never – Married or Single – Again Adults Are Mal-Adjusted, Ugly Losers Who Have Too Much Baggage

Christian Blogger About Divorce, Pastor Andrew Webb, Thinks All To Most Mid-Life Never – Married or Single – Again Adults Are Mal-Adjusted, Ugly Losers Who Have Too Much Baggage

Holy guacamole did I ever find a post by a Christian guy who really knows how to slam never-married or “single again” adults.

I was astounded by parts of this guy’s post.

I almost re-tweeted a link to his blog post about divorce from my Twitter page (I saw someone else share it on Twitter), thinking someone may find it helpful (judging from the title alone, it sounded like it might be a good page) but thankfully, I skimmed it first.

I left a reply under the guy’s post, and his blog says my post is awaiting moderation. Who knows if he will approve it to appear or not.

(August 2016 update: my comment on his blog, that I made in April 2016, is STILL tagged with the “awaiting moderation” comment on his blog. Unreal.)

I have copied in my reply farther below. I tried to be civil in my reply.

I’m going to try to be charitable here on my own blog: maybe this guy does not realize how deeply insulting his blog post is – the parts where he talks about divorced people or the never-married.

This guy should realize that upholding marriage or discouraging divorce does not necessitate INSULTING SINGLE PEOPLE.

You do not have to scare married people out of divorce by suggesting that all “single again” or never-married adults out there are great big, scary losers who have a lot of baggage, so if married people divorce, they won’t be able to find a great partner.

All The Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister – Various Links to Reviews or Commentary About the Book and Its Issues

All The Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister  – Various Links to Reviews or Commentary About the Book and Its Issues

There are currently a million links about the new book “All the Single Ladies” by Rebecca Traister

Up til now, I have made individual blog posts about that book – reviews, commentaries that reference it, or interviews with its author.

I no longer feel like devoting that much effort into blogging about it, so here is a lone thread crammed with links about it.

This post may be edited in the future to add new links about this book as I find them.

Some of these links might only be tangentially related to the book. I only have one life to live, and I don’t want to spend it blogging about this one book.

It sometimes takes me a long time to put a single blog post together – especially hunting through the “Categories and Tags” area of the blog area, having to skim through a long list of tags. It’s a time consuming pain in the ass.

One thing you will notice in many of these articles is how often Traister points out that men do not usually face as MUCH social stigma or penalties as often in life -or employment- as single women do for being single. Which is true.

As I have written of before, (Link): Men are not hounded, judged, or shamed nearly as much as women are for remaining celibate, single, and/or childless.

The fact that a woman author had to write a book discussing singleness among women speaks to how much singleness is different for women than it is for men – it is far more socially acceptable (and among Christians) for a man to remain single and childless than it is for a woman.

Do some segments of culture harass men over being single or kid-free or question their manliness? Yes.

I am not saying that life or church is a cake-walk for never married or childless or childfree men. But as a matter of comparison, on a scale of one to ten, with one being “awesome and great” and ten being “terrible and hellish” single and childless men get treated to about a, I don’t know, a four on that scale, while women get a nine or a ten.

Because women have vaginas, they are expected to have babies. There is far more stigma attached for a woman to be single and without children than there is a for a man, because church and society do not expect having babies to be necessary for a man to be fully a man socially or biologically. Not near as much as it is for women.

Women get pressured for more often and more severely to marry and have babies than men ever do or ever will.

I am not saying men get ZERO pressure, only that they get a 1 or a 2 in pressure, where-as women get a 9 or 10 in pressure on the scale of marriage and natalism.

It is far easier to drift thru life as a single bachelor dude with no kids than it is for a woman to go through life with no husband or no kids – you won’t get judged as much by family, church, politicians, conservative think tanks, over this stuff as a woman does over it. And it’s sexist bullshit.

Here are the links (more might be added to this post in the future as I find them):

(Link):  The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

(Link):  Review: Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies is a reassuring balm to the rhetoric that surrounds us 

• Yet in spite of these harsh truths, All the Single Ladies is celebratory, the stories of real women who are single a reassuring balm to the rhetoric that surrounds us. Traister asks, by outlining the ways women can succeed when their societies support their choices, to consider what we really mean when we tell women to marry for better or worse.
• Her argument – that our public policies are what need to change, not the rate at which we marry or the age we do it – prioritizes equal pay over joint accounts, better health-care provisions over shared plans, comprehensive child care instead of Mommy-and-Me clichés, and other tangible solutions instead of abstract platitudes.

(Link):  Rebecca Traister’s ‘All The Single Ladies’ is a singularly triumphant work

(Link):   Single Women are Quietly Remaking Our World

• By Emily Simon
• “Single women are taking up space in a world that was not designed for them.”
• That sort of statement – at once radical and obvious – is characteristic of Rebecca Traister: a happily married mother of two who is currently encouraging us to recognize the cultural and political power of single women.

Hypocrisy Alert: (Anti Virginity Proponent) Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin

Hypocrisy Alert: (Anti Virginity Proponent) Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin

This is the same Moore who (Link): attacks and ridicules adult Christian virgins for being virgins until marriage.

 So this doofus  has a hella lot of nerve lecturing Christian preachers about not performing Christians who are living in sexual sin.

Moore: you do not honor Christian adults who are Virgins who are waiting ’til marriage to have sex, (which is a very basic Christian sexual ethic), so how do you square away bad-mouthing and shaming Christian couples who may be “shacking up?”

You actually have, in the past, criticized and shamed singles who are living sexually pure life styles. You are being absolutely hypocritical here:

(Link): Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin by S. Smith

Excerpts:

• Leading Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore is encouraging pastors not to perform wedding ceremonies for couples who are not Christians and those who are living in sin simply because members of their families belong to their church or their congregation is pressuring them to do so.
• Moore, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, spoke at a conference on “The Church and Sexuality” that was held at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, by the state’s Baptist and Southern Baptist leaders on Monday.
• (Link): Alabama.com reports that Moore told the crowd of about 500 people that pastors cannot hold non believers and those already living in sin accountable to their wedding vows if they are already not living their lives by God’s design.
• “You cannot marry anyone except believers and people under the authority of Jesus Christ,” Moore explained. “Unbelievers, you cannot hold accountable to their vows.”

Non-Romantic Nearness, The Billy Graham Rule, and Pope John Paul’s Friendship With a Married Woman

Non-Romantic Nearness, The Billy Graham Rule, and Pope John Paul’s Friendship With a Married Woman

Apparently, Pope John Paul II had a long term, platonic friendship with a married woman named Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.

First, I will list an assortment of news articles summarizing the former Pope’s relationship with this woman –

And then I will link to (much farther down this page) a really good blog post by a Christian, Dan J. Brennan, who criticizes other Christians who sexualize all male-female relationships or who discourage male-female friendship.
He is against the BGR (Billy Graham Rule), which teaches Christian men to sexually objectify ALL women, even celibate Christian women and keep single women at arm’s length.

(Link):  Pope John Paul II secret letters: Pontiff’s deep affection for Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka revealed

Feb 15, 2016

Letters shown to the BBC by the National Library of Poland have revealed an intense 30-year relationship between former Pope, John Paul II, and philosopher, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. There is no suggestion the late pontiff broke his vow of celibacy with Tymieniecka, a married woman.

GOP Consultant Rick Wilson to MSNBC: Trump Supporters ‘Childless Single Men Who Masturbate to Anime’

GOP Consultant Rick Wilson to MSNBC: Trump Supporters ‘Childless Single Men Who Masturbate to Anime’

I am right wing, and a Republican (though I am lately thinking about leaving the GOP, but not for the Democrats. Both the GOP and the Democrats are disappointing, but for different reasons).

I have said on this blog before that many Republicans (or at least a percentage) are stuck in the 1950s, and that they idolize the nuclear family. They ostracize or marginalize anyone who is not married with children (which is quite what conservative Christians do).

Some of the following links pertain to Donald Trump. I know a lot of people find Trump polarizing, but I don’t have strong opinions for or against the guy.

I don’t keep up with politics as much as I used to do, so I just happen to see the occasional blurb or Tweet about Trump. From what I’ve seen the last several months, Trump says offensive or over the top things. Every so often, he makes a point that I agree with a tiny bit.

It’s highly inappropriate for a Republican to trash un-married or childless men for any reason, but I’d also include doing so for the sake of taking Trump down a peg or two. Insulting people for being single or childless, or in the context of scoring political points, is totally uncalled for.

I suppose the GOP yea-hoo who made these disparaging remarks about single or childless people is unaware that most Americans today are single, and more and more are forgoing parenthood (Link about that and see this link).

(Link): GOP strategist slams ‘crazy’ Trump fans: ‘Childless single men who masturbate to anime’

The Islamic Billy Graham Rule – Unmarried Muslim People Are Punished For Being Alone Together

The Islamic Billy Graham Rule – Unmarried Muslim People Are Punished For Being Alone Together

Just when I think I’m done blogging on this blog for the day (and I do have other stuff to do off-line), I keep seeing pertinent stuff show up all over the internet.

This turned up on my Twitter feed:

(Link): Indonesia: Police Beat Couple with Canes for Sharia Crime of Being Alone Together

• Islamic sharia law was enforced with canes once again in Indonesia this week, including the cane beatings of a man and woman whose “crime” was being alone together in a guest room.
• This was no crazed mob action, either, as (Link): CNN reports the sentence was handed down by a judge, and imposed by a special police unit “charged with finding people who violate sharia law.”
• “The form of Islamic law is enforced in a very strict way in the area, including prohibiting unmarried people of different genders from being alone together,” CNN observes.

This totally reminds me of the insipid, sexist, ineffective, stupid, anti-singles Christian “Billy Graham Rule,” which I have blogged about before here (this view seems to turn up more in Christian gender complementarianism than it does Christian gender egalitarianism):

• (Link): Reclaiming Stolen Friendships – a blog post criticizing the Sexist, Anti – Singles Christian Billy Graham Rule
• (Link): Christians Should Stop Defending the Billy Graham Rule / How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Billy Graham Rule and Love Like Jesus by T. Grigg
• (Link): Think The “Billy Graham Rule” Would Have Saved Tullian? Think Again… (Billy Graham rule has all Christians treating single adult women as though they are harlots who cannot be trusted)

Except under the Christian BGR (Billy Graham Rule), you will get isolated, “tsk tsked,” or suspected of being a slut, rather than get whipped with a cane.

Also, and this is kind of funny in a sad way, Christians are stricter on this rule than the Muslims, in that they also look askance at single women who are alone with MARRIED men.

Single Christian women are doomed to live and die alone, because Christians who are inappropriately applying the “avoid even the appearance of evil” verse are ostracizing single women from every one, from other singles and from the marrieds. Similar the Islamic sharia rule that prohibits singles from being together.

Another dumb, oblivious, and naive thing about the BGR is that often times, married Christians end up having affairs with other married Christians.

Yet, I don’t usually see the same level of paranoia from Christians about married Christian women hanging out with married Christian men as I do the warnings about men being around un-married (single) women.

Here are some more links about the story (off site):

(Link):  The whipping girl: Screaming in agony, a woman collapses as she and a man are caned under Sharia law in Indonesia merely for being ‘seen in close proximity’ to each other without being married

• The woman was accused of getting too close to a fellow university student
• As the pair are unmarried, she had committed an offence under Sharia law
• She was brought to a mosque where she was caned in front of a crowd
• The woman received five lashes and at end had to be taken to hospital

(Link):  Crowd cheers as woman is brutally caned for being seen near man who wasn’t her husband

• Dec 29, 2015
• by Ruth Halkon
• Nur Elita, 20, had to be taken away in an ambulance after being beaten in public outside her mosque under Sharia law
• A crowd cheered as a young woman screamed in agony as she was repeatedly caned in punishment for being in ‘close proximity’ to a man she wasn’t married to.Nur Elita, 20, had to be removed from Baiturrahumim Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in an ambulance after she was brutally punished for allegedly showing affection towards another university student.Under Sharia law, men and women who are unmarried and unrelated are not allowed to get too close.

 (Link):  Couple caned for violating Sharia law

• Dec 31 2015
• Officials in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, held a public caning Monday. At the end of the punishment, she collapsed on the floor and was carried off the stage into an ambulance and rushed to hospital. Indonesia enforce strict Islamic laws including prohibiting unmarried people from having sex.
• Cheers went up as a masked man caned the woman, as a punishment for being “seen in close proximity” to a man she wasn’t married to, under Sharia law.
• The young Acehnese woman is caned in public, a punishment under the Islamic sharia law.
• Banda Aceh’s Deputy Mayor Zainal Arifin, who stood among the crowd, explained to bystanders that the punishments were meant to be a lesson for all and not simply entertainment.
• After her ordeal, 23-year-old Wahyudi Saputra, the man whom she was alleged to have been in close proximity with breached was also striked. “And also, those who have been convicted are reminded not to repeat the same mistakes”, he added.

(Link):  Woman accused of ‘affectionate contact’ with man caned in Indonesia

—————————–

Related Posts:

(Link): Similar Views of Women Between Christian Gender Complmentarians and Islamic Group ISIS

(Link): Extremist Muslims Like Family Values Too – Muslims are joining ISIS / ISIL (extremist Islamic group) because they believe it supports “Family Values” – When Christianity and Islam sound alike

(Link):  Evangelicals are Rethinking Friendship and Sexuality 

(Link):  Non-Romantic Nearness, The Billy Graham Rule, and Pope John Paul’s Friendship With a Married Woman

(Link):  Jesus Christ was not afraid to meet alone with known Prostitutes / Steven Furtick and Elevation Church Perpetuating Anti Singles Bias – ie, Single Women are Supposedly Sexual Temptresses, All Males Can’t Control Their Sex Drives – (but this view conflicts with evangelical propaganda that married sex is great and frequent)

(Link):  Patriarchy tends to sexualize all male / female relationships (article via Junia Project blog)

Link):  Southern Baptists Pushing Early Marriage, Baby Making – Iranians Pushing Mandatory Motherhood – When Christians Sound Like Muslims

(Link): Why Christians Need To Stress Spiritual Family Over the Nuclear Family – People with no flesh and blood relations including Muslims who Convert to Christianity – Also: First World, White, Rich People Problems

(Link): Modesty Teachings – When Mormons Sound like Christians and Gender Complementarians

(Link): Mormons and Christians Make Family, Marriage, Having Children Into Idols

(Link):  Topics: Friendship is Possible / Sexualization By Culture Of All Relationships

(Link):  Relationships Of Welcome, Not Fear (Re: How Sexist Christian Views Marginalize and Isolate Adult, Single Women and Maintain Other Stereotypes About Adult Singles)

(Link):   How the Sexual Revolution Ruined Friendship – Also: If Christians Truly Believed in Celibacy and Virginity, they would stop adhering to certain sexual and gender stereotypes that work against both

(Link):  Hey Ed Stetzer: Opposite Gender Friendships Are Not Sinful – Ed Stetzer’s Advice: “Avoid Any Hint” – More Like: Re Enforce UnBiblical Stereotypes About Men, Women, Sex, and Singles

(Link):  Why So Much Fornication – Because Christians Have No Expectation of Sexual

(Link):  Pervy Preacher from Seattle who teaches men “to objectify women, by his over emphasis of sexualization of women and subservience” (Re Driscoll) Purity

(Link):  Brotherly Love: Christians and Male-Female Friendships

 

Southern Baptist Leaders Highlight Benefits Of Youthful Matrimony – Southern Baptists downplay adult singleness, uphold trope that virginity past 25 is impossible etc

Southern Baptist Leaders Highlight Benefits Of Youthful Matrimony – Southern Baptists downplay adult singleness, uphold trope that virginity past 25 is impossible etc

So, if you are single and a virgin at 35 or 40, where is your support from Southern Baptists? They only care to scream and yell at the 20 somethings of today to get married.

Notice also that one guy in here spits out several of the stereotypes I’ve mentioned on my blog before – he feels that being a virgin past a certain age is impossible or too difficult, and that God has only “wired” men to want sex.

I’m a woman. I experience sexual desire. I’m a virgin in my early 40s. So, quite obviously, it’s not impossible to stay a virgin past 25 or 30, and, God has also wired women to want sex.

By the way, this is a battle they are not going to win. They can beg, cajole, plead, and shame all they like, but at this point in American culture, Americans are simply not going to marry young.

All the shaming, scolding, and cajoling to get Christians from the 1980s to “wait for true love” did not entirely work, because there are many individuals who identify as Christian who have committed fornication.

Not all, mind you – there are some Christian adults who never married and are still virgins. But if the “True Love Waits” type or propaganda did not work for many Christians, where Christians were encouraged to wait until marriage to have sex, what makes these Baptists thinks that similar tactics will work to get people to marry by a certain age?

(Link) Southern Baptist Leaders Highlight Benefits Of Youthful Matrimony

• March 10, 2015
• by Blake Farmer
• Leaders of the country’s largest Protestant denomination have a message for millennials: get married already.The Nashville-based (Link): Southern Baptist Convention and its nearly 16 million members continue to resist societal trends like gay marriage and cohabitation. They also want to go against the grain on the rising marital age.

  But back in 1972, Pam Blume was pretty typical. She was just a few years out of high school when she walked down the aisle.

• … Andrew Walker is out front on this issue, working for the denomination’s public policy division. Married at 21, Walker sees a sinful side to waiting. For one, it makes the church’s expectation of virginity, in his words, “impractical.”
• “The reality is, starting at the age of 12, 13, boys and men, growing up into maturity, are hardwired for something that God gave us a desire for and an outlet for,” Walker says. “And so to suppress that becomes more difficult the older you get.”
•  Walker says he isn’t suggesting a cut-off age to get married. But he writes articles and leads panel discussions on the benefits of youthful matrimony.His work is a minefield of potential awkwardness. During one conference, he introduced his colleague, Lindsay Swartz, but inadvertently made her feel like an old maid.
• “As the single woman, which I’m not going to bring too much attention to…gentlemen?” Walker said.Swartz, who handles social media for the denomination, says she would love to get married and start a family. But the 30-something also sees drawbacks.