Disclaimer: It has been a while since I have thought about this clusterfuck of fail. Like, I had to go look up what I named Captain Courtship, because I totally couldn't remember. Ah, the sweet bliss of forgetfulness.

Wine: none, because this chapter is boring as fuck and I don't want to fall asleep. Luna has decided to stop sleeping through the night. I'm sure anyone who has kitten parented know how this story goes.

Ok, so, you know how I said I was going to do Part 2 of this chapter either that night or the next day? I lied. My excuse is adorable and currently playing with my sweatshirt. Luna: mommy, your shirt has strings. STRINGS MOMMY!

Anyway, when last we left our intrepid hero, Nosy Busybody was about to tell Captain Courtship what his five principles are for a successful marriage. I'm sure you are SUPER EXCITED to find out what they are, so I won't leave you in suspense.

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Sakal: Certainly. Keep in mind that I invented them only as a partial antidote to those other five. My principles were: Godliness, true patriarchy, covenant, youth, and obedience.

Any list that contains the words true patriarchy can't be awesome. Let's find out what these mean, because they won't be horrible at ALL amirite?

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Sakal: God-like-ness... acting in the ways God has exampled and taught. God directly arranged two marriages in Scripture: that of Adam and that of Christ. Neither one was or is anything like a courtship in any of the ways we have discussed. Except, I will grant you, that Christ has no physical need for his marriage to the church.

Ok, so, when God created Adam and Eve, and directed them to marry, they were the first humans. THERE WAS NO WAY FOR THEM TO COURT BECAUSE THEY WERE THE ONLY HUMANS THAT EXISTED. I can't even with this as an excuse for why courtship doesn't go far enough. Honestly, I never really understood the church as the bride of Christ shit, because that was some sort of metaphor for a thing I didn't understand. That said, I'm pretty sure Christ wasn't looking to see if the Church had breasts he could "delight" in, so I'm not sure this is analogy that makes sense.

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Sakal: In opposition to the false patriarchy of courtship. Scripture does not show the father merely ‘giving his permission’ for a courtship, or giving his assent to an ‘engagement’. Patriarchy means, ‘father-rule’ and ‘ruling' is what Scripture shows the father doing; giving his word, not merely his permission.

We never see the father saying to the young man, ‘come convince my daughter to marry you’, instead he says, ‘you may marry my daughter, she is yours, she belongs to you now’. Courtship speaks of the parents ‘involvement’; but can you really say Abraham or Bethuel were merely ‘involved’ in Isaac and Rebecca’s marriage?

And the young man’s father... well, perhaps we can get into that later, but there are several Biblical principles about the young man’s father which courtship completely ignores or violates. What do most courtship advocates even see as the role of the young man’s father, except to be one of the people who must ‘feel’ the marriage is ‘right’?

I copied more here than I normally would have, because this is important. This, right here, is the crux of this whole clusterfuck of fail. Fuck consent, fuck kids having any say in their own lives. A proper child should do whatever the fuck his or her daddy says, and that's it. No questioning or saying no is permitted. We talk a lot about how fucked women are in this lifestyle, and that's totally and completely true, but at least in this one instance, a penis won't help you have a better life. Even a male child still has to marry the person they are told to marry, and since Mr. Ohlman (who is a creeper) doesn't believe in "leave and cleave" and believes that parents should still influence their grown children's lives, even marriage isn't a way out for these kids.  It's heartbreaking.

Also, maybe someone should tell this asshole that part of the reason we don't do things this way today is that we don't live in the fucking Bronze Age anymore. We also don't live in tents....but they do in the Bible. Should we all move out of our homes into tents in order to be more godly? It really blows my mind when people use the Bible as an exact word for word example of how to do things. In addition, it has been a while, but I'm pretty sure I remember something in the New Testament about Christians not being tied to the strictures of the Old Testament. I kind of want to know if this guy follows the Levitical dietary rules and so forth, because it sure seems like he is cherry picking things that give him and others of his ilk more power. FUCK THIS GUY.

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Sakal: I am not arguing for dating. Scripture rejects dating even more soundly than it rejects courtship. We were speaking of covenant, and I’m saying that a young man should consider a young woman as a future wife only when she is a present wife... when the two are bound in covenant.
Consider the Scriptural examples. There are, as I count them, exactly six Scriptural examples of young men and women having some kind of ‘romantic’ relationship before they were married... whether it was one or both of them.

Ok, so covenant is the "giving away pieces of your heart" bullshit on steroids. Great. Well, given that Mr. Ohlman (who is a creeper) married his son off to a woman he had known for two hours (removed story on his blog) and they were too nervous to speak to each other before the ceremony, I guess that this should have been obvious. Anyway, the Biblical examples he cites are: 1) Jacob and Rachel, 2) Shekem and Dinah, 3) David and Bathsheba, 4) David and Michal, 5) Amnon and Tamar, and 6) Samson and Delilah. FUCK. Um, first, one of these relationships was adultery (David and Bathsheba), one was a fucking rape (Shekem and Dinah), and one was fucking rape and incest (Amnon and Tamar). Rape is apparently a romantic relationship now. FUCK THIS GUY. Somehow he twists these examples in to this:

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Sakal: So, all of the examples we have from Scripture of pre-marital relationships are negative. They demonstrate the importance of being bound in covenant before thinking of someone as your wife or husband, or having any kind of romantic involvement.

Here's the point where I screamed, "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE" so loud that I woke up Luna, who was, til now, happily sleeping on my chest. Seriously, how does one jump from those examples to that? Personally, I would have run with something like don't fucking rape, but I'm a woman who makes her own choices, so what the fuck do I know? God, I hate this man. Vaughn Ohlman is a fucking creeper. Thankfully, they somewhat skip over youth, so I don't have to write another rant about how Vaughn Ohlman is a fucking creeper who obsesses on young girls' breast development. Moving on, let's do obedience, shall we?

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Sakal: Well then, that is what I mean by ‘obedience’. We are clearly commanded not to ‘wait’ on marriages, but to act toward them: to take wives for our sons, give our daughters in marriage; and ‘let them marry’. Instead we ‘wait on the Lord’ in clear disobedience to His commands!

Prior to this passage, they had talked about courtship having delays for pesky little things like education, ability to support themselves, and compatibility. Apparently, that's disobedient to what God said. Forget using the common sense he supposedly gave us, or waiting for the ability to be able to support your family and the 23874389783 arrows you are supposed to add to your quiver, or even getting to know the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with, no, fuck that, let's get married right away. NOTHING CAN GO WRONG WITH THIS PLAN. God, I hate this man.

Thankfully, that's the end of this chapter. Captain Courtship wanders away to think about all of the new things that he heard from Nosy Busybody, and thank god this is over. Incidentally, for some reason, Vaughn Ohlman (who is a creeper) decided to inform us that Captain Courtship pulled out his cellphone as he was walking off. I'm not sure if this is clumsy foreshadowing, or a snide comment about younger people and their cellphones. I wouldn't put it past this asshole to be condescending about kids today and their phones, because it seems to be a recurring theme with him. Fuck this guy.

Now that Luna is settled in and older, I'm going to try to go back to posting these daily. Here's hoping I manage it.