Marriage is the foundation of society. This statement is self-evident truth, yet for all the issues related to feminism that are destroying the middle class institution of marriage, we observe a completely different dynamic among the poor. Beginning with the Great Society programs, welfare incentives were arranged in such a way as to penalize married families and reward single mothers. Again, this has been proven time and time again.

I recently spent some time in Ensley Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham. Ensley is among the least integrated neighborhoods in the United States and has been the victim of policies aimed at destroying the family for generations. It presents a panoply of social pathologies wrapped within the ‘new dynamic’ of multi-generational welfare recipients. While white, middle-aged, middle-class women might ask where the men are, there is no need to ask where the men are in Ensley- many are either dead or in prison, many are on probation or parole and headed back to prison, and anyone who can escape ‘the hood’ does so. Where are the men? Gone.

The familial dynamics are controlled by the grannies. These are the women who typically raised their grandchildren and having reached an age at which they can collect a check every month, they represent the largest reservoir of stable income in the community. The power they wield through their home-ownership and income is considerable, thus the local community has a distinctly matriarchal tone to it. Worship services in the churches are dominated by women and the men present tend to all be married and rather quiet.

Raised in a middle-class ethos as I was, I was ill-prepared for the reality of tax-time. In my world, a tax refund was the excess of earned income withheld over actual tax due that was refunded after filing a tax return. Not in Ensley. In Ensley, every person receives a tax return of between $1000 and $2000. Every dependent child is worth $2000. Fly-by-night tax preparation businesses prepare the returns for individuals, often keeping a significant portion of the refund and never showing the filer the 1040 that was filed. In January and February, they party like rock-stars on the tax refund money.

Jobs are few and far between, but even so employers find it difficult to find qualified applicants who are willing to show up for work. Underground employment and business is booming, but profits are low. Prostitution is endemic, but prices on the street range from $5 for a blow-job to $20 for someone to come by and scratch the itch for an hour or so. Of course, one gets what one pays for. STD infested deranged crack-whores. Drug dealers abound, crime is rampant and nothing is safe. Well, perhaps that’s changing though.

Several years ago, the City of Birmingham (recently the subject of the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States- so far) installed acoustic sensors that detect and triangulate the location of gunshots. The system is pretty neat, because it determines whether the weapon was a pistol, rifle or shotgun; and it triangulates the location to within a dozen feet or so and directs a message to the nearest patrol car with mapping information within seconds of the shot being fired. After installing the sensors, the police department spent a period of time calibrating the system. Police went to various places in the city and fired weapons. The first interesting data point was less than 30% of the shots they fired were reported. I mean- really. Who reports gunfire in Birmingham, Alabama? Perhaps it gets reported in Vestavia Hills or Mountainbrook (affluent, mostly white neighborhoods) but in Ensley, what’s the point? Several years ago I recall visiting Ensley and sitting on the front porch in the evening listening to the gunfire. A single incident might be two people each burning off half a magazine from a Glock or some other high-capacity pistol at each other. Fifteen to twenty rounds fired within as many seconds. On a Friday night it wasn’t unusual to hear this kind of exchange four or five times over the course of the evening. That was then, though.

After calibrating the system and testing it for months, the police knew where most of the gunfire occurred. When they went live they put a lot of manpower in those areas. When someone fired a weapon they were triangulated and the information sent to the nearest officer’s in-car computer within seconds. The police arrived with individuals still shooting at each other or standing around with guns still smoking. Since most of the shooters were either on probation or parole, they were immediately slam-dunked. Within months a significant number of the bad guys were taken off the streets. I can attest to the fact that on my recent visit, in sharp contrast to my visit two years ago, it was unusual to hear any gunshots at all, although it did happen every few days.

The primary difference I saw between 2010 and 2013 is the sharp rise in young mothers walking the streets, which have obviously become safer. The power of the grannies has grown with fewer thugs on the street, but economic interests have caused somewhat of a baby-boom. I met multiple young women who were kicked out of their home at or after age 17 because they were no longer dependents and therefore no welfare money could be collected for them. In other words, their welfare-system utility had just vanished and they were liabilities. It was time for them to put the baby-maker in motion, because after all, having a baby means somebody has to pay, even if you take it to the extreme of having 15 kids. Everybody in the hood knows that. The interesting thing is that I can think of another mom with more than 15 kids, but she has a different setup that pays for the kids in a completely different way.

How does one create an incentive that rewards intact families in this entitlement environment? Actually, this might not be that difficult. First, give priority to married, cohabitating families in public housing and section 8 rent assistance, followed by widows. These are not people who have a lot of assets, so this isn’t a case of Shamiqua getting cash and prizesifwhen she divorces Deshawn. In fact, it would carry a significant disincentive to divorce because not being married means kissing the Section 8 voucher or project apartment goodbye.

This alone would fundamentally alter things for the urban black community. The next big issue is the money. As I pointed out in this post, unwed and divorced mothers are increasingly supported by their surrogate husband, the State. With the economy further and further in decline, it seems like a no-brainer to phase out the payments. People respond to incentives.

That brings us back to a central problem in the urban black community: the lack of men. Given that situation, there is a solution and it is arguably one that particular community is somewhat comfortable with: polygyny. It brings Isaiah 4:1 to mind. From what I’ve seen in the hood, there are plenty of men willing to wife up 4 or 5 women and in fact, I could point to numerous examples of guys who keep a “roster” and are servicing 3 to 6 different women at any given time. Make it official, remove the incentives for single mothers and reward married families regardless of their structure.

The tradcons will scream that the taxpayers will be footing the bill. Right. Like the taxpayers aren’t already footing the bill. The churches, completely dominated by women, are opposed to polygyny. However, the churches have the most to gain if they’d ever study their Bibles and reach the same conclusion that Martin Luther did: polygyny is neither prohibited nor is it condemned anywhere in Scripture and it is a legitimate form of Biblical marriage.

God created three covenant entities: the family, the state and the church.

The family is the first of the covenant entities and was created in Genesis 2:14. The man, given authority to create a marriage (for this reason), separates himself from his father’s family and leaves his father’s headship authority in order to create his own family and is in authority over his marriage and subsequent family. The four elements necessary for a Biblical marriage are:

The authority of the husband over his wife and children is undisputed throughout the Law. In the judgment of Moses concerning divorce (c.f. Deuteronomy 24:1-4) it was the man who created the marriage that had the authority to end the marriage, but if he did so, he was to issue the woman a certificate of divorce. The mission of the family is to be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it.

As I have covered elsewhere, nowhere in Scripture is a man forbidden from having more than one wife, inasmuch as the practice is neither forbidden nor condemned. Therefore, it is a moral action. The authority of the husband over the wife is restated in Ephesians 5:22-24, as equal to the authority of Christ over the church.

The second of the covenant entities God created was the state. In Genesis 9:16 God commanded that a murderer must be put to death. The Law discusses the cities of refuge and the avenger of blood who was tasked with executing a murderer. In 1st Samuel 8, we see the nation of Israel has rejected God as their king, so He ordered Samuel to anoint a king over them. Later, through the Davidic Covenant, God established this as a permanent and everlasting kingdom which Christ would eventually rule. We see in Romans 13 the governors of the state are ministers of righteous and they have the power of the sword. This power of the sword no longer rests with the congregation.

The third of the covenant entities is the church, which was given the mission of going out and making disciples of all men, and preaching, teaching, training and rebuking in righteousness that every man might be equipped for every good work. The church is to decide the contentions between believers (1st Corinthians 6), care for the widows and orphans (1st Timothy 5) and preach sound doctrine (2nd Timothy 4).

It must be observed that these three covenant entities exist within the context of God’s moral law. The moral authority of each of these entities to act is derived from their God given authority. Do any of them occasionally overstep their bounds? Of course. Does that make it right? No.

The Christian family exists within the church, just as the church exists within the state. The state has no more right to dictate doctrine and practice within the church than the church has to the right to dictate order and discipline within marriage. This is within the context of obedience to God’s moral law.

Inasmuch as the state has the mission of upholding order and morality, laws prohibiting homosexual unions are perfectly acceptable. Laws requiring the permission of the state in order to marry are not. Murder is prohibited, as is theft. The government is morally within its bounds in making and enforcing laws against these things, which are mala in se (wrong because they are morally wrong). The government is also within its bounds in making regulations to support social harmony. Things like speed limits, building regulations, zoning ordinances and the like are not mala in se, but rather mala prohibita (wrong because they are forbidden).

However, the invasion of another of God’s sphere’s of authority, such as the government dictating doctrine and practice within the church, is outside the grant of authority God gave the state. Likewise, the church’s decisions in the middle ages that regulated the marital bed was a usurpation of the authority of the husband in an area in which the church was not given authority.

The current state of affairs, in which the state has usurped the authority of the husband and father by allowing the police powers of the state to be used by women to overthrow their husband’s authority, destroy their marriage, remove the children from his guidance and authority and extract monetary tribute is morally wrong. The church, in refusing to rebuke this practice within the congregation is immorally abandoning its obligations and abdicating its mission.

Historically, the church made a practice of usurping the authority of both family and state, as well interfering in the affairs of both. The historic invasion of the family that resulted in the ridiculous restrictions on what might or might not be allowed to happen within the marital bed influenced culture and society for over a millennium. These restrictions were codified into laws applied to the general public. Within the last fifty years or so, these laws have been swept away, taking with them the perfectly moral laws prohibiting true indecency such as homosexuality. The church lost the strength to hold the pendulum at the point they’d pushed it and having pushed it too far away from moral equilibrium, the pendulum swung back and is now pushing far beyond the point of equilibrium.

Research such as this demonstrate that in an environment in which there are no longer any legal protections afforded to marriage, polygyny is a reasonable response that is within the moral framework of Biblical marriage. In times past the walls of the edifice we call marriage were high and strong, defended by both church and state. Today those walls have been swept away, breached by feminism. Polygyny, long forbidden by the church and ignored by the state, is perhaps the only remaining form of Biblical marriage that might provide some protection against frivorce. The believing man who created the marriage with his believing wife, forbidden to divorce her for any reason, still has the authority to add another wife, or to choose to marry more than one in the beginning.

It is axiomatic that because women have the right to vote, the laws concerning marriage will not be changed for the better. In fact, it’s probably a good bet that the laws will only get worse over time until the system finally breaks. However, there is a way to do an end-run around the legislature through the judicial branch, which is what “progressives” have done for years. There’s no reason that same sheet in their playbook can’t be used.

In civil rights litigation the object is to get the courts to implement a social change that the legislative bodies will not respond to; or to extract cash and prizes from someone in order to teach them a lesson and effect social change. In the big cases everyone has heard about, litigants were using the courts to enact a change by judicial fiat. Think of the civil rights movement, the issue of abortion, sodomy laws, gay marriage, you name it. The idea is to reframe an issue in such a way the court gives you what you want. However, in order to reframe the issue there has to be a goal.

What is the goal with respect to marriage?

Because of the need to tie this down tight under the rubric of religious free exercise, we start with the Bible. Genesis 2:24 and associated passages of Scripture inform us of the standards for marriage:

Notice that none of these things has anything to do with the State or the Church. The reason is that God gave the man a grant of authority to create marriage in Genesis 2:24. This authority to create marriage did not include the authority to end a marriage until Moses, who permitted divorce. (see Deuteronomy 24:1-4). The authority of the man within the marriage was described in Ephesians 5:22-24 as being the same as Christ’s authority over the church, because in Genesis 3:16 women were commanded by God “he shall rule over you.”

Quite simply, there is no room for either state or church in this business of getting married or being married.

The State has its job keeping order and governing. The church has its job making disciples of all men. The husband has his job of ruling his own household. Three separate entities, three separate jobs.

The problem is first, about 1500 years ago the church usurped the authority of the man and decided by fiat that the church was in charge of marriage and no person was really married without following the church’s rules and receiving the church’s blessing on the marriage. Following the Protestant Reformation the church lost it’s grip on power and control such that the state seized power over marriage. This culminated in a licensing scheme and rules by the State concerning marriage, specifically regarding the termination of marriage.

You can’t allow the church a voice in this because God didn’t give them a voice in marriage.

You can’t allow the State a voice in this because God didn’t give them a voice in marriage.

The only way to win at a high level is to place the issue squarely before the court in such a way as they cannot dodge the bullet. That means reliance solely on Scripture. The landmark case US v Seeger is helpful in understanding the importance of being congruent. Reading it, one might think it’s about draft dodgers. The subject is a conscience-driven objection to the draft but the issue is religion, and the Supreme Court laid down their test of religious belief in this case.

As soon as one brings a church into this the water is immediately muddied with the teachings of that church, especially doctrine and statements of faith. A family exists within a church in the same way a church exists within a state. Get it? The State doesn’t have the right to dictate doctrine to the church any more than the church has the right to dictate doctrine to the family. Some will howl and scream at that, but it’s true. The church (which includes the families) is required to obey the law of the state. As long as the church is within the bounds of the laws of the state, they have freedom to act. It is the same with the family. As long as they are acting in a moral manner in accordance with God’s Law, the church has nothing to say to them.

God’s Word defines what morality is. As soon as one steps off that rock, you’re on shifting sand. God’s Word and only God’s Word defines morality.

The Bible placed the husband in charge of his family. Full Stop. No other person or entity has MORAL authority over the family other than Christ. The authority to create a family by taking a wife is also the authority to take another wife. Having more than one wife is not immoral because the standard of commitment established by Genesis 2:24 is non-exclusive commitment by the man and the authority to marry rests solely with the man. Keep in mind that a man marries a woman, a woman is married.

Keep in mind also that the church usurped the authority of the man over his family over a thousand years ago. The result of that usurpation of authority by the church meant following the protestant reformation that the (now secular) governments didn’t want the church doing any more social engineering so they too usurped that authority for themselves. Keep in mind, we’re talking about a rights issue. If you go back to the book, God gave the authority to the man, nobody else.

Let’s bring this back to litigation.

That’s why this has to start with something so far outside the norm that it only makes sense to “give them what they want” and establish judicial support for covenant marriages that define their own terms. Yep, that’s polygyny. It’s far enough out there it would make more sense for the court to recognize the contract than deal with the fallout of judicially voiding the contract and violating the religious rights of third parties.

Once the concept is established and judicially accepted it should be safe for monogamous marriages, but not before then. I also believe it would be far more difficult for this type of case to be won as a monogamous marriage (and take far longer), whereas with a polygynous marriage the issue could be forced fairly easily due to the nature of the marriage. Sorry, but monogamy just looks too much like ‘same old – same old.’

Marriage is to be for life and the fact a man is not prohibited by God from having more than one wife is the context to view what comes next. Pay particular attention to God speaking to the men of Israel and His references to the man’s spirit, or conscience.

“And this is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion andyour wife by covenant. But not one who has done so has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take heed then, to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth. ‘For I hate divorce,’ says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘and him who covers his garment with wrong,’ says the Lord of hosts. So take heed to your spirit,that you do not deal treacherously.” Malachi 2:13-16. Emphasis added.

It was treacherous of the men to divorce their wives when the wife no longer pleased them because they were not required to get rid of her in order to take another. She gave up her beauty and youth keeping his home and bearing his children and she had the right to be loved, supported and treated with dignity as she grew older. Notice that God did not say ‘take heed to the traditions and teachings of Moses’ but rather ‘take heed to your spirit.’

Moses, sitting as a judge over Israel, obviously had a case come before him of a woman who had been thrown out by her husband. She couldn’t return to her father’s house because she was married. She couldn’t marry another because that would be adultery- a death penalty offense. She had no way to live other than by becoming a prostitute and that would be a sin. Moses made a concession to the women which allowed the women to remarry without the charge of being an adulteress. His judgment was that if the man was so hardhearted as to throw out his wife, he must give her a certificate of divorce so she could prove she was lawfully divorced. There was no family court in that day; it was the man who had the authority to initiate marriage and it was the man who divorced his wife simply by presenting her before the elders and publicly giving her a certificate of divorce.

In Matthew 19:3-9 we find an interesting exchange. The Pharisees came to Jesus with a legal question concerning this judgment of Moses. They asked if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason. There were two schools of thought in that day: one was that a man could divorce his wife for literally any reason she might displease him, the other was that divorce was only allowed for infidelity. Pay careful attention to how Jesus answered their legal question. He went back to Genesis two and said “What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.” Without referencing Moses, Jesus clearly said divorce is not allowed.

The Pharisees immediately cited Deuteronomy 24:1-4, in which Moses published his judgment with respect to divorce. Jesus responded saying “Moses permitted you…” It is important to see that everyone present knew exactly what was being said and what the issues were: It was not God that permitted divorce in His Law, but rather Moses the judge who permitted it. After acknowledging that Moses had indeed allowed divorce, Jesus said “but from the beginning it was not so.” So, twice we see Jesus is saying God’s design and intention is that marriage is for life. In Matthew 23:1-3, Jesus said the Scribes and Pharisees sat in the seat of Moses and the people were to do all that they commanded them to do. Jesus, in His earthly ministry as a man, was likewise subject to their authority. With that in mind we notice that Jesus interpreted the judgment of Moses in the strictest of terms.

That raises the question: After making it clear that He didn’t like the judgment, did the Lord ever get around to reversing it? When we look at 1^st Corinthians 7:10-11, we see Paul taking great care to say this is a command from the Lord: the wife is not to separate and the husband must not divorce his wife. Yes, He did overturn the judgment of Deuteronomy 24:1-4.

Looking at it in that manner, it becomes impossible to reasonably say that divorce is allowed because of what Jesus said in the Gospels. Jesus was discussing a situation that resulted from a judgment by His servant Moses. The case was brought before Him by those who sat in the seat of Moses and they went down in flames during oral argument. All Jesus did was acknowledge the precedent and clarify the interpretation of the precedent but He clearly didn’t like it. He issued His ruling on the subject in 1^st Corinthians 7:10-11.

But what about Matthew 5:31-32? To answer that question, we need to take a look at the Greek word apolellumenẽn, which is translated as ‘a divorced woman’ in both Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9. In order for Matthew 5:31-32 to be understood, we need to recognize the word means ‘the innocent spouse, unjustifiably dismissed by her licentious husband.’ (translation by Spiros Zodhiates.)

“And it was said, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Matthew 5:31-32.

The only way the ‘divorced woman’ could be committing adultery was if she was still legitimately married to the husband who divorced her. In other words, Jesus is saying God will not accept an illegitimate divorce, not that it’s OK to divorce your spouse if they’re unfaithful. Effectively, we have a situation in which the State is claiming a person is divorced with all the attendant consequences, but that person is not divorced as far as God is concerned. This is what the church should be teaching.

The clear meaning of Matthew 5:31-32, taken in conjunction with 1^st Corinthians 7:10-11 is that from God’s perspective, a Christian woman cannot divorce her Christian husband for any reason and likewise a Christian husband cannot divorce his Christian wife for any reason. Yet, experience tells us this is happening. This is reduced to a single question:

In 1^st Corinthians 7:10-11, the believing wife is told she is not to separate from her believing husband, but if she does, she is to remain single or be reconciled to her husband. In 1^st Peter 3:1, we see the wife is told to submit to her husband even if he is in disobedience to the Word, and obviously adultery is disobedience to the Word. Later in 1^st Corinthians 7:12-17, Paul says the wife is not to divorce her unbelieving husband if he is content to live with her. Paul obviously recognizes a wife’s legal capacity to drag her husband into the secular courts of the world and divorce him, but the Lord commanded the wife not to separate, much less divorce. Separation is the lesser aspect of divorce. In keeping with the entirety of Scripture, nowhere does the wife have the authority to divorce her husband except in the case of the believing woman whose unbelieving husband will not stay with her.

The law of the bondservant (Exodus 21:2-6) says if the man wants to leave the service of the master, and the master provided him with a wife, he leaves without the wife. Let’s reverse that to comprehend what Paul said: If the man wants to leave the wife that his master gave him, he has to leave the service of the master. Think about that and look at 1^st Corinthians 7:12-17 again. The two passages are in perfect agreement.

Servants obey their master because he is the master and they are servants. In the case of Christians, the Master said His servants are not to divorce. Notice that if the unbeliever left, the left-behind believing spouse was free to remarry. Can the marriage covenant be broken because one spouse or the other violated it, for example, by committing adultery? No. The covenant isn’t broken until one spouse or the other breaks faith with the one who established the covenant (the Lord) and leaves.

The only permissible divorce for a Christian is when their unbelieving spouse departs from them.

There is always someone who wants out of their marriage and the practical solution was to remove marriage from the control of the Church and give it to the State. These people say “The State is ordained of God, so how could a properly legal divorce granted by the State not be a legitimate divorce?” In the same way that bowing down to idols won’t make them god’s, but it will make the Lord angry with you for doing it. Do not render to Caesar that which belongs to God. It’s idolatry.

( Legal = State’s Law … Lawful = God’s Law )

If a believing wife legally divorces her believing husband, the divorce is illegitimate (cf. Matthew 5:31-32) and they are still lawfully married. Separated they may be, legally divorced, but not lawfully divorced. 1^st Corinthians 7:10-11 says the wife is not to separate from her husband, but if she does separate (with no reason specified regarding violence, child abuse, sin, ignorance, wrong doctrine, STD’s or bad breath), she is to remain single or be reconciled to her husband. Not with her ex-husband or former husband, but with her husband.

The believing husband has the right to take another wife and thus isn’t sentenced to celibacy by his wife’s disobedience. She was commanded not to separate, but if she did she was commanded to either remain single or be reconciled to him. The man was told no such thing and he can take another wife, not because his wife’s sin enabled him, but because he always had the right to do so. Wives are bound to their husbands as long as he lives but husbands aren’t limited to having only a single wife bound to them. Her sin of dragging him through family court simply means the husband is not legally impaired from taking another wife.

According to Deuteronomy 24:4, if a man divorced his wife and she married another she could never return to him regardless of whether the second husband died or divorced her. This is the clearest indictment of serial monogamy as sin in all of Scripture. There is some question as to whether a Christian wife who divorced her husband and married another man could return to her first husband at any point after that. Is the wife’s second marriage valid? She was already married and commanded to remain single. If the second marriage was invalid the arrangement was institutionalized adultery and the wife, upon repenting of her sin, would be free to return to her husband.

The husband, commanded in 1^st Peter 3:7 to live with his wife is required to reconcile himself with her if she returns in repentance. Commanded to love her as Christ loves the church, he’d be required to receive her regardless of what she’s done because Christ always seeks reconciliation and the return of repentant sinners. No wonder the Disciples said its better not to marry: They understood what the Lord was saying. If you marry her… you’re stuck with her. She can go a whoring and she’s still your bride… just like Christ and His gone-a-whoring church… individuals of which occasionally repent and come back to Him.

Q: What if the wife is convicted of her sin and desires to return to her husband, but he has since married another woman?

The husband is required to love his wife and live with her, so how can he refuse to be reconciled to wife #1? Having more than one wife is no bar to reconciliation because nothing in Scripture says a man can’t have more than one wife. The only problem would be if the husband doesn’t explain that issue to wife #2 before they get married. If she thinks she’s getting a monogamous marriage, he’s laying the groundwork to defraud her if he says nothing.

“all thecongregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourself above the assembly of the Lord?”

“We’re equal in Christ and we’re commanded to submit to each other in fear of Christ, so who are you to claim authority over me?”

ReductioAd Absurdum

• No, says the feminist wife. It’s my body; I make the decision of whether I’ll grant him access to it and what kind of access that might be.
• That depends on what he wants, says the orthodox tradition, and we’ve developed a detailed list of rules and prohibitions to govern this area because we don’t believe God left this to the discretion of the husband.
• “The wife is to submit to her husband in everything” said God.

Any sexual acts with an animal by either a man or woman	Sin of Bestiality.
Any sexual acts between a man and a woman who are not eligible to marry	Sinof incest or adultery
Any sexual acts between two men	Sin of Homosexuality
Any sexual acts between two or more women who are not involved in any kind of a marriage.	Not a sinbecause it is not a condemned (unlawful) activity. It is a problem if they do so in rejection of men and marriage
Any sexual acts between two wives within a legitimate (polygynous) marriage, with either their husband’s permission, or at his command.	Not a sinbecause it is not a condemned (unlawful) activity.
Masturbation by either a man or a woman	Not a sinbecause it is not a condemned (unlawful) activity. Is the fantasy legitimate, or lust?
Any sexual acts between man and wife within a legitimate marriage; when the woman is not menstruating or within the proscribed period of time after a childbirth.	Not a sin;and to some extent, Commanded: “be fruitful and multiply”

To deny the Authority of the Husband over his wife

is to deny the Authority of Christ over the Church.

If the model for Christian wives is found in Proverbs 31, then the model for Christian husbands isn’t Jesus, but rather Job. Take a look at Job describing himself.

“Then I thought, ‘I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand. My root is spread out to the waters, and dew lies all night on my branch. My glory is ever new with me, and my bow is renewed in my hand. To me they listened and waited, and kept silent for my counsel. After my words they did not speak again, and my speech dropped on them. They waited for me as for the rain, and opened their mouth as for the spring rain. I smiled on them when they did not believe, and the light of my face they did not cast down. I chose a way for them and sat as chief, and dwelt as a king among the troops, as one who comforted the mourners. Job 29:7-25

I took it out of verse form and arranged it like this to make it easy to see why Job was so Alpha. It isn’t out of reach, it just takes work.

The question is asked, ‘how do we fix the mess we’re in now that the Feminist Imperative has pretty much destroyed marriage as an institution?’ I disagree with the idea of abandoning marriage but this is a classic puritan vs pilgrim vs apostate argument here. I’m pilgrim on this one.

First, stop defining marriage according to the State and Feminist Imperative. To begin, we must reframe the debate and move to a more defensible position that actually has a chance of winning. Marriage hasn’t been killed so much as redefined into an institution completely under the control of the State.

The beginning of the end was when the State stepped in and started requiring miscegenation licenses. A license is a permission to do something the licensee does not have the right to do. If the State grants the license, it has every right to regulate the privilege it has extended and may alter or amend the regulations any time it sees fit and the licensee has a duty to obey. If the State is now totally on Cupcake’s side the options are not to either live in fear of Cupcake or give up on marriage, there’s also the option of giving up on the State’s licensed, privileged marriage.

The idea that marriage can somehow be ‘taken back’ was roundly scoffed (comment; article) when I brought it up and I think the problem is too many people have been blinded by precedent that doesn’t specifically apply to them. In fact, I think the emotions are so out of kilter with respect to marriage that I need to shift the focus a bit to another area in which the State historically exercised a public policy interest directed at the family, often against the will and over the objections of the family. In fact, the situation with homeschooling in the 1970’s through the 1990’s was remarkably similar to the situation with marriage today. The States had laws requiring attendance in either public or private schools which had degenerated to the point of being Twiddle Dumb and Twiddle Dumber. The only way out was to reframe the situation and teach the children at home. That put the homeschoolers up against the police power of the State and most of the States made it very clear that the children belonged to the State.

Many States actively prosecuted parents who homeschooled their children. Parents ran the risk of having the children removed from the home for not sending the children to a State sanctioned school. There were still people who did so but for different reasons. Some States, like Michigan, consistently slam-dunked the homeschoolers until somebody finally came before them with the right issue. The following is the Michigan Supreme Court in People v DeJong, 442 Mich. 266 (1993),501 N.W.2d 127. They explain the issue of religious free exercise and why the DeJong’s won when others (who homeschooled for non-religious reasons) lost. The question wasn’t whether these people were having their rights violated. Of course they were. That’s what the police powers of the State are all about. The question became ‘what, if anything, are we going to do about this.’

Read the case. Really, just read it.

The winning argument that got a religious exemption in the homeschool war, but which only won after two trips up and down the appellate ladder, was based on the fundamental right of religious free exercise and the parents right to determine the education of their children. Essentially, the DeJong’s claimed they had a duty to God to homeschool their children because “the major purpose of education is to show a student how to face God, not just show him how to face the world.” The State was therefore violating their rights of religious free exercise and forcing them to sin by the requirement that they become State certified teachers in order to homeschool their children.

Notice that it wasn’t until they got to the State’s Supreme Court that they finally won. They were prosecuted and convicted. Their conviction was upheld. They were shot down by the Michigan Court of Appeals twice before they finally got their case before their Supreme Court and honestly, this one could have gone to the US Supreme Court. It was cert-worthy. It was not an easy fight, but they won with a 4-3 split. One of the main reasons they won was because they were members of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Pay $100 a year and if the State takes you to court you get legal representation from people who are experts in this particular area. I believe another reason they won was because their refused to accept defeat after losing almost half-a-dozen cases and refused to compromise one iota with respect to their religious beliefs. They demonstrated a ‘truly held and sincere religious belief.’

Read the dissenting opinion and take a look at Employment Div, Dep’t of Human Resources v Smith,494 US 872, 881; 110 S Ct 1595; 108 L Ed 2d 876 (1990), the case the dissent rests so heavily upon. Notice what Justice Scalia said in the Smith case (emphasis added):

*881The only decisions in which we have held that the First Amendment bars application of a neutral, generally applicable law to religiously motivated action have involved not the Free Exercise Clause alone, but the Free Exercise Clause in conjunction with other constitutional protections, such as freedom of speech and of the press, see Cantwell v. Connecticut,310 U. S., at 304-307 (invalidating a licensing system for religious and charitable solicitations under which the administrator had discretion to deny a license to any cause he deemed nonreligious); Murdock v. Pennsylvania,319 U. S. 105 (1943) (invalidating a flat tax on solicitation as applied to the dissemination of religious ideas); Follett v. McCormick,321 U. S. 573 (1944) (same), or the right of parents, acknowledged in Pierce v. Society of Sisters,268 U. S. 510 (1925), to direct the education of their children, see Wisconsin v. Yoder,406 U. S. 205 (1972) (invalidating compulsory school-attendance laws as applied to Amish parents who refused on religious grounds to send their children to school). 882*882 Some of our cases prohibiting compelled expression, decided exclusively upon free speech grounds, have also involved freedom of religion, cf. Wooley v. Maynard,430 U. S. 705 (1977) (invalidating compelled display of a license plate slogan that offended individual religious beliefs); West Virginia Bd. of Education v. Barnette,319 U. S. 624 (1943) (invalidating compulsory flag salute statute challenged by religious objectors). And it is easy to envision a case in which a challenge on freedom of association grounds would likewise be reinforced by Free Exercise Clause concerns. Cf. Roberts v. United States Jaycees,468 U. S. 609, 622 (1984) (“An individual’s freedom to speak, to worship, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances could not be vigorously protected from interference by the State [if] a correlative freedom to engage in group effort toward those ends were not also guaranteed”).

Get that? Religious free exercise isn’t enough… it has to be combined with another Constitutionally protected right in order to get a religious exemption to a law that’s neutral and generally applicable (like no-fault divorce statutes). He very helpfully provided a list of sanctioned rights that have won before. So, what other rights can we manage to get violated in order to win?

The Supreme Court has long held a fundamental right to marry, but there’s also that thing called the ‘contract clause’ to the US Constitution. The Supreme Court holds to a three part test based on this case that’s very similar to the rational basis test in deciding whether a State has violated the contract clause. So now, we’re looking at:

Normally the contract clause would lose, but the religious free exercise claim turns this into an issue of fundamental rights so the court has to apply strict scrutiny. That means the State has to first identify what its compelling interest is in interfering with a contract of marriage that was entered into and agreed upon by both parties as a matter of religious free exercise and their long-standing right to marry. Then it has to demonstrate why it’s forced to violate the conscience of these people and no lesser measures could be taken to achieve the the compelling interest.

What, exactly, is the State’s compelling interest in allowing the wholesale destruction of families when every State in the country holds as a matter of public policy that marriage is beneficial and is to be encouraged and protected? Notice the supporting evidence the court considered and think what kind of supporting evidence could be used in a case in which the subject matter is marriage.

While ‘The Constitution is not a suicide pact,’ the Feminist Imperative most certainly is.

There is a footpath out of this swamp, but for now, that path can only successfully be traveled by Christians. Re-read the DeJong case. The fundamental difference between rational basis review and strict scrutiny is that under rational basis you can’t win but a good set of facts (like the DeJong’s presented) examined under strict scrutiny means it’s actually possible to win. In fact, I think the issue of reclaiming marriage as an area of religious free exercise is even better than the issue of homeschooling. The reason is that the Bible clearly covers every major issue that would become an issue.

That kind of marriage would present a much different case than the ones that are regularly destroyed with impunity by courts on a daily basis. The only marriages the courts deal with today are licensed marriages in which the State has a legitimate claim with respect to being a party to the marriage. The problem is overcoming the presumptions and demonstrating an equitable solution for governing the marriage.

The idea is to create a situation in which if they rule against you, they will violate your fundamental rights and force their rational basis argument into a strict scrutiny appellate world. But no court will ever get to see a case like that unless and until people adopt the idea of…

As was laid out in part one, there is a specific form of marriage that can be arranged to offer maximum protection based on the fundamental rights of religious free exercise, right to marry and right to contract. However, this can’t happen in a vacuum. The family can’t do it alone, there has to be a real church there to help with the heavy lifting.

The first problem is it’s extremely difficult to find a church. Remember that Israel was a very religious nation, but when Elijah said he was the only one left who worshiped the Lord, the Lord told Elijah He had 5000 who had not bowed the knee and kissed the Baal. I’d guess it’s about the same in the US today. There might be 5000 churches out there, but they’re in hiding.

You might be wondering what I’m talking about, when every major city lists many hundreds of churches in the yellow pages. The problem is what most call a church isn’t actually a church. Just like the issue of marriage, we have to define what a church is correctly. A local church is a congregation of believers who are saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the creator and founder of the church. He is the head of the church and the ultimate authority of the church.

What one sees, instead of churches, are not-for-profit corporations that offer services of a religious nature to the general public. These corporations were created by the state and have an obligation to obey the law of their creation. These companies are limited in what they can do by their charter to do business. They are creatures of the state, not Jesus, the Christ, and that’s the law.

“Upon the other hand, the corporation is a creature of the State. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public. It receives certain special privileges and franchises, and holds them subject to the laws of the State and the limitations of its charter. Its powers are limited by law. It can make no contract not authorized by its charter. Its rights to act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved right in the legislature to investigate its contracts and find out whether it has exceeded its powers. It would be a strange anomaly to hold that a State, having chartered a corporation to make use of certain franchises, could not, in the exercise of its sovereignty, inquire how these franchises had been employed, and whether they had been abused, and demand the production of the corporate books and papers for that purpose.” Hale v Henkel, 201 US 43; (1906) Emphasis added.

Now, take a look at 1^st Corinthians 6:1-6. While the reader may see an ecclesiastical court or an arbitration board described there, I see the way out of the State courts because it very much looks to me like a command that believers bring their controversies before the church for judgment; not to the State.

It isn’t enough to not get a marriage license. It isn’t enough to have a tight contract. There has to be a manner and method of dispute resolution that holds together with what the Bible says. Why are the two of you waiving your right to go before the courts of the world? Because that’s what the Bible says to do. It isn’t a polite gesture because we don’t agree with what’s going on, God told us to stay out of the courts of the ungodly. Forcing me into the courts of the world means my rights of religious free exercise are being violated. Commanded not to be in the courts of the world, I’m forced to choose between sinning by showing up or violating the order of the court by not showing up. Either way, I’m being damaged.

This is not a sneaky way to deny recourse to an injured party, this is a matter of religious free exercise that holds to the same form as any ‘normal’ waiver of right to sue in favor of mandatory, agreed-upon binding arbitration. It’s normal, it’s done all the time, but in this case God requires it.

But if, to the shame of the church, not even a single wise one is found to hear such cases, the whole thing could fall apart. Terminal testicular atrophy on the part of the elders will destroy any church. The elders may be fem-bots who will shaft you as badly as or even worse than a family court. They may be cowards and refuse to do their job. What if the so-called church is actually a corporation? I don’t want to find out what kind of mischief that could cause. The State is the creator and master of its corporation and that matters.

I personally saw a church split in Springfield Missouri back in the mid-90’s. First, the pastor (a seminary graduate) got saved. As he started walking with the Lord, he started changing the Sunday services and they became profoundly more worshipful. His sermons started talking about salvation, then sin and finally repentance. That was the last straw. The churchians fell out with the Christians, fired the pastor in a secret board meeting the Christians weren’t told about and it wound up in court. The first judicial determination the judge made was to find the church was a Missouri not-for-profit corporation. After that, the doctrine, statement of faith and the Bible were deemed irrelevant (The now-fired pastor was threatened with contempt if he mentioned the Bible in her court again) and the case was decided based on the Missouri Code governing corporations. It took me several years to realize she was correct in her decision: It wasn’t really a church at all.

On the other hand, a group of believers who meet in somebody’s home to pray, sing hymns, study the Bible and exhort one another is actually a house church in all but name… but without the business and commerce ties to the State. Just like the loudest voices denouncing the covenant marriage as being unworkable are attorneys, the loudest voices arguing that the fact the congregation is incorporated doesn’t matter will be the pastor. The employees of the church are the primary beneficiaries of the corporate business model because after a certain point, it’s all about money.