Throughout the Western world in which Judaeo-Christian ideas have informed the powerful leaders who set patterns for cultural groups, Bible stories have been the primary source of validation of preferred practices and behaviors of people at all levels of society. In the Twentieth Century sexism is alive and well. Even disregarding the misogynistic rants of a certain radio talk show host and his followers, who would almost certainly jump to the very wrong conclusion that Women for Women .org (an international organization dedicated to helping women survivors of war rebuild their lives) must be a porno WEB site, sexism is easy to find in American institutions. Women’s Global Network (WGN), the Associations of Junior Leagues International, Women in Science International League, Council of Women World leaders, International Council of Jewish Women, Women Achievers Association, P.E.O. Sisterhood, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Women’s Environment and Development Organization, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), International Federation of Business and Professional Women, International Federation of University Women, Women’s International Zionist Organization, Young Women’s Christian Association, Women in Action, and the National Organization of Women (NOW), and other organizations for women around the world exist for the purpose of addressing inequality issues for women. To characterize women who belong to these organizations as feminazis, as some men do and as Rush Limbaugh has done regularly since his declaration in 2005 that abortion rights activists are militant feminazis, is always an attack not just on women but on American civil society.

It might be a good idea to reconsider the way we tell young people some of the Bible stories that inform and instruct them. I have always liked the story of Ruth and Orpah and Naomi and Boaz. I still do. It’s a story about loyalty, commitment, and devotion. It is also a story that suggests women should be submissive to men... to serve them in order to gain their protection. It is important to tell young people, boys and girls, about when and why the story was first told (around 900 BCE) and how and why the story was passed from generation to generation until it was written down probably somewhere around 450 BCE. It is important to tell them what we now know about biology and equity and justice that people who lived three thousand years didn’t know. It is important to lead them become self-actualizing individuals, both male and female. Let’s have done with splitting the human race into camps of weaker and stronger, inevitably bad and innately good. Let’s see the whole world as filled with all God’s children.