Ok. Let's get this show on the road. 

Luna status: helping daddy adult in the office.

Wine status: still no. I'm drinking unsweetened almond milk instead. SO not the same. :/

New character today! Pat, AKA Salesman Headship. Artist's rendition (thanks @OnceUponATime!):

We start today's clusterfuck at Nosy Busybody's house. I know I said something about this before, but this interaction enrages me:

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Pat: That was a great dinner, thanks!

Sakal: No problem. We were glad to have you over.

Pat: It was really nice to invite all of us over.

Sakal: Well, when you have eight children, adding four or five more people to a meal is no big deal. 

YES IT FUCKING IS. Ok, so this afternoon, I planned this weekend's dinners. Part of this process is pulling out the relevant amount of meat from my freezer. So, I pulled out four pork chops and three boobs of chicken. I am NOT prepared for more people to show up and want to eat my pork chops or chicken dinners! Also, after I read this, I walked into the office and told mister destiny that if he ever invited five fucking people over to dinner without giving me at least five hours of notice that he was going to be on my shitlist for the rest of the fucking century (unless there's an emergency of some nature - things happen). He just stared blankly at me and asked why the fuck anyone would do something so fucking rude to their wife. His complete lack of actual care and compassion for the people in this life is just appalling. Basic human courtesy seems too complicated for this fucker. Granted, that's the least of my complaints with this chapter, so let's move on to the things that make me stare longingly at my wine fridge, shall we? 

Salesman Headship and Nosy Busybody decide to take a walk. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, if these two have another long ass conversation about fucking and don't actually SAY sex I'm gonna lose my shit. Again. Salesman Headship waxes philosophical about how he had all these thoughts about how courtship should work, and what qualifications a man would have to have to marry his daughter, and now he's just super confused because Nosy Busybody has been spreading his bullshit all over the fucking park. Nosy Busybody makes a crack about how a large part of the church is confused. Um, not that I am a stranger to having unpopular opinions, because I have some, but if the majority of the church disagrees with you on matters of theology, isn't it possible that you are wrong, not everyone else?

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Pat: Well, no, not really. It seems like forever ago that I told him he couldn’t court Maydyn.

Sakal: And, why was that, anyway?

Pat: Well, since it is just the two of us, I guess I can tell you. You see, I’m not completely convinced about his thought life.

Sakal: Oh?

Pat: It seems to me that he is a bit too eager to get married, if you see what I mean. 

Oh for fuck's sake. He wants to have sex. There's nothing wrong with that. I hate how fundies take something fun and awesome and ruin it. Orgasms are fun, and wanting to have them doesn't make you a terrible person. I hope. Otherwise, we have yet another reason I am going to hell here. Nosy Busybody makes a gross crack about how he wouldn't let his daughter marry someone who HAD conquered lust, cos he wants grandchildren. Ugh ugh ugh. 

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Sakal: Perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that you wouldn’t let a young man who was struggling with mental fornication... one who, when he looked at a beautiful young woman, was tempted to undress her with his eyes... that I wouldn’t let someone like that marry my daughter.

Pat: That is what I mean! I wouldn’t let him in my house!

Sakal: Then you had better keep Andrew out.

Pat: What?

Sakal: Let me put it this way: I want to give my daughter to a young man who will bless him, sexually. You remember Proverbs five? 

Sigh. For the record, there is many a pretty man that I have considered undressing with my eyes. That said, because I'm not a fucking asshole, I've never so much as touched a person without their consent, let alone made an unwanted sexual advance. Just because I can't always keep my thoughts from turning dirty doesn't make me a bad person. I hate this emphasis on purity of even thought - hell, I hate purity culture in general. I did crack a smile at the 'keep Andrew out' bit though. It's probably the first time this fuckfest has made me even slightly amused, so yay! Then I had to read the bless him sexually part and it was all just back to rage. The amount of obsession that this fucker has on his kid's sex lives is beyond disturbing. I can almost see him wanting to watch to make sure they are doing it right or some other creepy thing that we stopped doing hundreds of years ago. This guy needs professional help of some nature. 

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Pat: Wow. But what about, I mean... don't you want her to be happy?

Sakal: Of course, but that is not my primary goal. Happiness is like health: if you make it your primary goal you end up sick. It is precisely when we stop focusing on her happiness, and focus instead on what she should be doing, what her God given goals are, that she will arrive at the happiness God has for her.

I want my daughter's goal to be to glorify God. And in marriage, I want her primary goal to be to be a blessing to her husband, to glorify God in that way. When a young man comes for my daughter... or when his father comes presenting him, I want my primary thought to be, "Can my daughter serve God by serving this man? Does she have what he needs?" We see in I Peter 3 a wife blessing a man who ‘obeys not the word’. Our daughters do not serve God merely by marrying the best man in all the world, the most Godly man on the planet; they do it by marrying the man that needs her, the one God has created her for. 

Oh. My. God. I can't even come up with anything pithy to say about this. It's just so sad and horrifying that I don't even know where to start. He's treating his daughter like fucking chattel. Her only job is to serve and fuck her husband, and fuck if she's happy, cos it doesn't matter. How could anyone do this to their child? I literally have nothing more to say because I'm crying again. Fuck. Break time. 

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Pat: And the young man's father, should he be thinking the same thing?

Sakal: Well, sort of. The young man's father will, I hope, be thinking, "Will this young woman be able to meet my son's needs. Will she be able to bless him sexually and in every other way; and will their union meet our family goals of glorifying God?"

Pat: That, that's not what I meant! I meant, should the young man's father be thinking about how his son can bless his wife?

Sakal: That should be what he has trained him for, but it isn't what he should choose her for. She is being chosen as his helpmeet, not vice versa. I happen to believe that God has made women, in general, to be good helpmeets. I don't think that there are any such things, in the end, as bad matches. A father should be looking for the best wife for his son, the one with the most strengths etc.

But I don't think that should be the girl's father's goal. I see Scripture as saying that his goal should be to answer the question, "is my daughter equipped to be a helpmeet to this young man, to bless him all of his days?"
As fathers of sons, we are to train our sons to love their wives, to give honor to them as the weaker vessel, and to guide them spiritually. But that is simply what we have trained them to do, it doesn’t affect which particular girl they are to marry. 

(bolding mine)

Oh god. Once again, I can't come up with anything to say. Just.....FUCK. 

They go back and forth on the wrong / out of context biblical "support" for this horrific method of forcing marriage, and it's all shit we have heard before so I won't bore you with it. It was bad enough the first time, yes? Salesman Headship admits that he hadn't conquered lust before he married Mrs. Salesman Headship, and Nosy Busybody uses that as a HAHAHAHA SEE NO ONE CAN / HAS, and then blessedly, they are back to Nosy Busybody's place and this chapter is fucking over.