Why Do You Use Those Hash Tags With Your Tweets?

Why Do You Use Those Hash Tags With Your Tweets?

I actually had someone Tweet this question at me.

I posted a link to some news story about a man who was arrested for raping a kid or something of that nature. The man in the story I tweeted, if I recall right, was married and a father.

Someone asked me on social media,

‘What do your tags, which include “FamilyValues, Complementarianism, Christianity, Fatherhood, etc, have to do with this news story you tweeted?”

For all I know, the guy in the story I tweeted was NOT a Christian.

It’s quite possible the guy in the story was an atheist, for instance. (I usually read or at least skim the links I tweet, but sometimes, I just go by the headline.)

Here’s why I include certain tags:

Sexism, Protecting Women, Family Values, and Christians Placing Biological Family Above Everyone Else

Sexism, Protecting Women, Family Values, and Christians Placing Biological Family Above Everyone Else

(Link):  The Problem with Protecting our Wives and Daughters

Excerpts:

by K. Du Mez

….I’m reminded here of the poignant words of Madeline Southard, one of the leading proponents of women’s rights in the Methodist church in the twentieth century. In her 1927 book, The Attitude of Jesus toward Woman, Southard raised precisely this question.

For centuries, Southard noted, women had been considered “the creature of her sex-relationships and of the resultant blood relationships.” As such, a woman’s status had been determined by her being “the wife, mother, daughter, concubine or mistress of some man,” but not as “a person in herself.”

Exploding the Myth of the Traditional Family by E. Hines

Exploding the Myth of the Traditional Family

(Link): Exploding the Myth of the Traditional Family by E. Hines

Excerpts

• ….But today, most families hardly fit that [nuclear family] mold. Fifty percent of American adults are unmarried and 41 percent of children in America are born to unmarried parents.
• That is an indication that the very concept of family is evolving, as more and more people realize that there are any number of ways to build good and functioning familial units.

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

As this report notes (link is much farther down this blog page), more pressure is placed on WOMEN to marry and have children than is placed on MEN.

I know that culture and Christians can treat single / celibate / childless men like trash, but they are TEN TIMES worse on Christian WOMEN in these regards.

Women get far more pressured to marry and have kids than men do or ever will.

Women get more shamed and insulted by Christians (and at times, secular culture) for staying single, celibate, and childless than males ever are.

Just because most women are capable of carrying a baby inside them, society and churches think it’s their DUTY to have a baby (as though women serve no other purpose in life), and if they choose to opt out (or cannot have a kid), they are still marginalized or insulted for it.

Men don’t face nearly as much insult or pressure to have kids as women do.

I am right of center – but I agree with this left wing (liberal) guy that other right wingers such as Dobson’s real goal is to be against what he perceives as liberal threats to the church or culture. That is one very real motivator some right wingers have, in why they do things like harass women to have children.

I also want to say how utterly moronic I find this approach by Dobson.

Francis Chan Challenges Christians: Stop Idolizing Family, Put Christ’s Mission First

Francis Chan Challenges Christians: Stop Idolizing Family, Put Christ’s Mission First

Yep. Christians idolize the family. I’ve been blogging about that for a few years now.

(Link): Francis Chan Challenges Christians: Stop Idolizing Family, Put Christ’s Mission First

Excerpts:

• March 23, 2016|3:20 pm
  BY KEVIN PORTER , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
• Many Christians have lost their edge — their radical, burning fire for Christ, says preacher and author Francis Chan, a firm believer that while family is important, the mission of the Kingdom of God should come first.In a video message recently shared by (Link): ChurchLeaders.com, Chan says that after many Christians get married they place Christ’s mission on the back burner, spending their days in the bubble of relationships, children and the comfort of security.
• The preacher challenges married Christians to stoke the flames of their passion for Christ and his work, and to step out of their comfort zones to take more risks to further His Kingdom.

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The Hell Out Of The GOP

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The  Hell Out Of The GOP

Sometimes some of these reviews of Traister’s book, or interviews with her, bring up how so many Republicans often demonize or criticize single motherhood.

I happen to be a Republican myself, someone who was raised in a traditional Christian home.

One thing I don’t get is how so many other Republicans and Christians do in fact constantly bad-mouth single motherhood, but out of the other side of their mouths, they frequently complain that not enough women are having babies.

It ticks these types of Republicans and Christians off that baby-making rates have declined a bit in the last decade or whatever (see this link for example).

So, on the one hand, my fellow Republicans complain about women having babies (women who happen to be single), but then turn around and complain and gripe about women NOT having babies.

Christians and Republicans are somewhat inconsistent on this point. They might argue that women should marry first, and then make a baby with their spouse, but this is part of the problem: plenty of women WANT to marry, but there are no eligible males for them to marry (see this link or this link for more).

And, of course, there are married women who cannot have babies because they are infertile, or some may choose to forgo motherhood – and their choices should be respected, not condemned.

Another thing that bothers me about this conservative demonizing of single motherhood is that I suspect one view that undergirds it is that they believe that marriage or parenthood supposedly makes adults more mature, responsible or godly, which is simply (Link): not true (and see this link and this link).

(There are a lot of conservative Christians who have taught or said that people only become mature or responsible when they marry or have a kid.)

The Bible does not teach that marriage or parenthood are necessary to make a person more godly, loving, responsible, or mature.

And even every day common sense and observation bears that out: we’ve all known, or heard of, married parents who are immature, greedy, or immoral swine.

Disclaimer:

• I am right wing and have been a Republican for years. However, I don’t always agree with Republicans on everything.
  I do occasionally agree with some of the left wing’s criticism of right wingers, and concerning how dismally right wingers treat singles, I agree with them on that.

The link I give you here is from a left wing site, by Amanda Marcotte, a liberal feminist who is (Link): sometimes hypocritical about women’s sexual issues.

Even though I completely disagree with Marcotte on some topics, I did find myself agreeing with some of the content of this interview she had with this book author:

(Link):  Scary single ladies: Rebecca Traister explains why single women frighten the hell out of the GOP by Amanda Marcotte

Excerpts:

• Author Rebecca Traister’s new book on single women looks at how this growing population is reshaping America
• Author Rebecca Traister’s last book, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” took a comprehensive look at how the 2008 elections changed everything for American women.
• Now she’s back with a similarly pop music-themed title, “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation,” an examination of the role single women have played in American culture, both in our history and in our current times.
• (Link): Single women are a potent political force in a way that they never have been before, making up nearly a quarter of the electorate and leaning to the left of both men and their married counterparts.
• This, along with a whole host of inchoate fears about what happens when women are left to their own devices without male supervision, has led to a rash of conservative pundits and politicians denouncing the ladies who aren’t married. I interviewed Traister about this moral panic over single women and what it means for the culture at large.
• [Question to the book author]: In your book, you detail how obsessed the conservative media has become with single women, who clearly anger right-wing pundits. The most hilarious quote you pull is Rush Limbaugh whining, “What is it with all these young, single, white women?” What is it with these conservative pundits focusing on single women?
• It was just a couple of weeks (Link): after his tirade of Sandra Fluke that he made those comments about another woman who had written a book.
• The fact that he said “white,” well, there are these versions of single womanhood that we are presented and the version that threatens most, is the white, privileged women.
• Sandra Fluke testifying in front of Congress, women who are writing books, Murphy Brown, and Anita Hill, even though she’s not white, a lawyer appeared for Clarence Thomas.
• There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
• What if reproduction is taken outside that version of male control? What if women are competing?

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.”

Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” has Replaced It) – by E C Miller

Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” has Replaced It) – by E C Miller

I am right wing, somewhat Christian, and believe that many Christians and secular conservatives have made the nuclear family and marriage into idols, which is wrong.

I am not opposed out-right to the traditional family, marriage, or to motherhood, and so forth, in and of themselves, but I am in disagreement at how so many right wingers and Christians elevate all those things to the point that they end up marginalizing anyone who does not fit the mould of “married with children.”

Anyone who is infertile, child free, divorced, never married, widowed, and what have you, is excluded or treated shabbily by the majority of “family values” obsessed right wingers and Christians, which again, in my view, is terribly wrong and unfair.

Here is an article explaining how and why the religious right elevated “the family” in their rhetoric:

(Link): Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why Religious Liberty has Replaced It) by E C Miller

Excerpts:

• From about 1970 until about 2000, American politics was largely driven by concern about the nuclear family. As established social hierarchies came under fire from the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, second-wave feminism, and others, conservative advocacy groups and their political allies demanded a return to the idealized family of the past. “Family values” became the rallying cry of a countermovement bent on holding the traditional line.
• Seth Dowland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University. His book, Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right, charts the influence of Christian “family values” advocacy across three decades and a variety of issues.
• RD’s Eric C. Miller spoke with Dowland about the project, the politics, and the significance of family in the United States.
• You introduce “family values” as the key term of the Christian Right in the late twentieth-century United States. Why was this term so influential for this group in this place and time? 
• Many of the political reforms enacted from the 1930s through the 1960s—particularly the expansion of the welfare state and the passage of civil rights legislation—attempted to expand equal rights to all people.
• Political liberals celebrated these developments, while conservatives looked around the nation at the beginning of the 1970s and saw economic stagnation, riots, sexual revolution, a decline in patriotism, and an increase in crime and drug use. Ministers and political conservatives argued that America was in decline. They believed that decline happened because of the demise of the “traditional family.”