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Should women vote?

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by Marcia, Feb 4, 2010.

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  1. Marcia

    Marcia Active Member

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    Based on a statement by Aaron that he thinks women's suffrage is rebellion, I am starting this thread.

    Comments?
     
  2. FR7 Baptist

    FR7 Baptist Active Member

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    Of course women should vote. In fact, I'd like to see a roughly equal number of men and women in office to better represent the people.
     
  3. rbell

    rbell Active Member

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    So, only women can effectively represent women?

    Does that translate into all other realms of representation...in other words, if a state is 29.227% Icelandic, does that mean that you are upset if their percentage of Icelandic representatives is only 27.195%?
     
  4. NaasPreacher (C4K)

    NaasPreacher (C4K) Well-Known Member

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    I can see that, unless it is mandated by law that there MUST be equal representation.

    Of course women deserve the right to vote, there is no reason to deny it.
     
  5. FR7 Baptist

    FR7 Baptist Active Member

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    No, I never said that. My point is that men and women have, in general, differing ways of looking at things, and a fairly equal mix can bring the best of both worlds.
     
  6. ccrobinson

    ccrobinson Active Member

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    Aaron has no Biblical support for such a statement.
     
  7. Mexdeaf

    Mexdeaf New Member

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    I think some on the BB think more highly of themselves than they ought to think. Having said that there is nowhere in the Bible where it is prohibited, addressed or even "principle stretched to the Nth degreed."
     
  8. RAdam

    RAdam New Member

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    Should women vote? Yes.
     
  9. Crabtownboy

    Crabtownboy Well-Known Member
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    Very true. In fact democracy was totally unknown in Biblical times except for ancient Athens. There is no scripture for or against democracy. Ancient Athens had a pure democracy. A pure democracy is one in which sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate.

    We have a representative democracy. Our founding fathers were very opposed to a direct or pure democracy. Their fear was that the majority would inflict harm on the minorities of the country. Naturally this fear came from their experiences with the English Kings and parliament.

    Hmmm, do you believe Paul believed in the "divine right of kings"?
     
  10. rbell

    rbell Active Member

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    Fair enough.
     
  11. Robert Snow

    Robert Snow New Member

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    Let me play devil's advocate.

    If it is imperative for women to vote why did it take over 140 years for the country to realize it?

    Do you think it is true that women tend to vote for the more conservative or the more liberal candidate. Or do they vote evenly for either candidate?
     
  12. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

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    Of course they should. All eligible citizens should vote, regardless of gender. The right to vite is Constitutionally guaranteed, and we shouldn't take that for granted. Just ask a liberated Iraqi or Afghan citizen about how cherished the right to vote is. I'm one of those whose family came here and had to go through the hard-earned process of becoming a citizen. I took my oath of citizenship just 3 months before a POTUS election, and standing in line to cast my ballot was one of the proudest moments of my life.

    Ignore Aaron. He's completely wrong on this issue. His claim of women voting to be moral rebellion is not only not supported in scripture, and certainly not supported in history. In fact, the Nineteenth Amendment was one of the few amendments that ratified by every single state.
    Good question. Taking a long time to do something isn't usually and indicator of level of imperitive. Look how long it took to abolish slavery. Jefferson wanted slavery to be illegal in the Constitution, but he knew any attempt to do so would result in the Constitution not being ratified. So he excluded mention of slavery in the Constitution. Yet in his public life, he referred to slavery as evil, but a necessary evil at that time.
     
    #12 Johnv, Feb 4, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 4, 2010
  13. Robert Snow

    Robert Snow New Member

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    Good point, but didn't the people in the U.S. realize the importance for women to vote before 1920?

    Don't ignore Aaron, show him where he is wrong, for instance with comments like:

    Another good point. But didn't Jefferson have slaves? Seems like I remember a few years ago a story about him fathering a child with one of his slaves.
     
  14. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

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    Whether they did or didn't I suspect there was sufficient opposition to not include it in the Constitution. In fact, women voted prior to the Constitution, during the country's colonial period. But the custom of voting in the US was to become tied to property ownership, and women often were not property owners. The formal call for women to vote was seen as early as the 1800's, just a few decades after the Constitution was adopted.
    Yes. Ironic, isn't it? He owned slaves, but he opposed slavery. I suspect that had more to do with the fact that he was in debt most of his life (since a slave was property, you couldn't legally free a slave unless you were out of debt). It's a matter of fact, though, that when he was in Virginia's House of Burgesses, he proposed legislation to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but was overturned. Interestingly, he had his slaves educated and given quality training skills, extremely unusual for a slave owner to do. Upon his death, five of his slaves were emancipated, but the rest had to be sold to pay off his substantial debt.
     
  15. Peggy

    Peggy New Member

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    How about this - should women be allowed to vote in church on things regarding church policies and governance?

    I say Yes.
     
  16. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

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    If your church has a consistory or presbytery model, I can't see any practical or moral reason to not allow women in the presbytery or consistory to vote in church matters. On congregational matters that require a congregational vote, there is definitely no reason to limit the votes only to male members.
     
  17. annsni

    annsni Well-Known Member
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    Yes, women should vote and they should vote their own choices. I know of women who carry the "obedience" thing a bit far and will ask their husbands who to vote for and will only vote for who he says even if they don't agree.

    Absolutely. If they are a member in good standing, they should be able to vote.
     
  18. menageriekeeper

    menageriekeeper Active Member

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    For just about the same reason that it took so many years (and lives) to get a Bible translated into a language that the "common man" could read for himself.

    That reason being, those who believe they have control over something generally don't want to share the power.
     
  19. Robert Snow

    Robert Snow New Member

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    I believe you hit the nail squarely on the head. People who have power rarely desire to share it with others. It's human nature to be greedy.

    BTW, I've never heard a church leader tell women not to participated in giving when the offering plate was being passed around.
     
  20. Scarlett O.

    Scarlett O. Moderator
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    Probably for the same reason that, even though it is stated in our Constitution that "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...." that it took 188 years for the Civils Rights Act to be passed ensuring an end to Jim Crow laws and segregation. Something that was imperative from a mission statement of our nation took 188 years to be fully realized.

    And we know that it is imperative based on Biblical mandates that a husband love his wife the way that Christ loved the church, yet it took the United States 199 years to pass the first law banning the marital rape exemption law for husbands and 217 years for all 50 states to realize it.

    Playing against your devil's advocate, I would submit that the passage of time is not necessarily a definition of realization.

    Sufferage, civil rights, and bans against marital rape exemptions were all considered, debated, fought for and against, and were a part of our nation's conversations long before the law realized their status.

    I do not think that women bloc vote as a gender. Certainly, there are organizations of women who push certain candidates for liberal and conservative causes. But one cannot say that women all have the same belief system and thereby vote as a bloc.
     
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