adminAS a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, the Zimbabwe Government has adopted a plethora of policies that redress past imbalances and ensure that women enjoy equality before the law.
The sad reality is that while the Government has done much to create equality between the sexes, women seem to have totally misunderstood the concept of equality or equal rights.
Listening to ongoing debates and seminars on gender issues and perusing through feminist literature, one gets the impression that women are waging an undeclared war against men. What feminists reveal in their literature is not only thought-provoking, but does not leave one to any imagination whatsoever as regards to their goals and objectives.
First and foremost, feminists aver that marriage — a relationship in which a husband and wife have specific roles to play — is archaic and, by its very nature, oppressive, since the woman is always at the bottom in submission to her husband. They openly challenge the age-old maxim that a woman can only be accepted within the marriage institution as long as she remains subservient sexually, submissive and obedient to her husband.
In the vanity of their self-professed scholarly minds, protagonists of the equal rights movement now advocate a change in partnership, cohabitation or same sex relationships as alternatives to life-long commitment in marriage.
Today, the air is pregnant with protest and revolt against anything that appears to discriminate against women. In no grievance is revolt so widespread as that against the Christian church. Feminists have rejected God and poured scorn on the Holy Bible, arguing that it oppresses them.
In the modern rebellion against just about everything that appears to discriminate against women, feminists are turning more and more, to impulse and unbridled desire.
Disturbingly, perceptions of what is right and wrong have become blurred. Faithful commitment to moral integrity with marriage itself is rare, ridiculed and divorce is on the increase.
It is important to mention that in the 1960s, before the onset of the so-called sexual revolution, divorce was a rare phenomenon because men and women knew their rightful places in the home.
Marriage was a life-long commitment. When couples took their marriage vows in church, it was always “till death do us part.” My own family was typical. I never heard of a broken home or a divorce in our family or relatives.
When the winds of change blew across the country, a small number of women began to protest openly against alleged discrimination of female workers at the workplace.
A legion of sympathisers soon jumped on the protestors’ bandwagon and today one can hear the growing chorus of the voices of women’s rights groups vibrating in one’s eardrums — voices clamouring for what they regard as equality, not only at the workplace, but in virtually every facet of human activity.
It is this scribe’s considered opinion that while women’s quest for social and economic justice is a noble cause, it has now not only lost direction, but has also been hijacked by charlatans whose apparent motive is to stage a coup d’etat against the man and usurp his God-given role as father and head of the family.
In their fervent desire to reverse roles in the home, some of these misguided women have already started to position themselves as heads of their families, thereby taking over their husband’s role.
One does not have to be a mathematical genius to see that feminists are fanning flames of rebellion which, if not controlled have the potential to obliterate marriage and the family unit.
The crusade against marriage and the family unit has been accorded impetus and validity by some who now question the institution of marriage.
Who started the marriage custom and when? Since according to evolution mankind is merely the biggest evolvement of the animal kingdom, when, in the progression from lower animal into man, did marriage start?
They ask. In their educated ignorance, they erroneously suppose that somewhere along the evolutionary trail, perhaps millions of years ago, mankind started marriage as a custom.
One should state here that scholars in institutions of higher learning rely on academic freedom in their pursuit of knowledge. In fact, science as a whole and higher education has exercised this so-called academic freedom to postulate the existence of a creation without a creator.
They have totally rejected the existence of God or anything outside the realms of the material. Having rejected and cut anchor from the source of all life, God and his instruction manual (the Holy Bible) modern education is adrift on a turbulent sea of false premises and hypotheses, driven by the winds of fluctuating trends and fashions.
Evolution has gained acceptance in the field of higher education and students in our institutions of higher learning are taught to accept it without question. They do not examine the plain biblical evidences of special creation with the same seriousness that they accord the evolutionary theory.
Within the academic fraternity, it is a badge of intellectual status to accept the evolutionary hypothesis and a stamp of ignorance to doubt or dispute it.
Be that as it may, it would be foolhardy to negate the fact that evolution was invented by human minds in a futile attempt to explain the presence of a creation without the pre-existence of a Divine Creator. Evolution has been the eyeglass through which all questions pertaining to the origins of fauna and flora have been viewed.
However, the tragic irony is that it remains an unproved hypothesis. In fact, Charles Darwin, one of the originators of the evolutionary theory, died unsure of his theory. But his colleagues, Haeckel and Huxley fought vigorously to promote the Darwin theory into public acceptance.
In rounding off this discourse, it is pertinent to state that marriage and the family unit were not instituted by mankind, but were devised and ordained by God for a special reason that has remained an enigma to the “wise” of this perishing world. While marriage is a physical union, it is a divine institution which was established for purposes of procreation and to provide a conducive environment for the training, protection and security of children.
Human babies are born helpless and need that tender care, loving instruction, patient training, discipline and the warm affection and love of a father and mother. That is one of the fundamental reasons why God created and instituted marriage and the family unit.
Online Reporter