Rep Michelle Bachmann Faces Questions About Being a Submissive Wife in Iowa
Rep Michelle Bachmann may have won the Straw Poll in Iowa last week, but she faced some tough questions on the way to that victory. One of the most difficult questions, which the presidential candidate still hasn’t really answered, is how she’s going to deal with the fact that her religious beliefs dictate that she be “submissive” to her husband.
So what does a vow to be submissive to your husband mean in this day and age? And how exactly does a woman who chooses to submit to her husband intend to balance that life choice with being the President of the United States of America?
Byron York of the Washington Examiner, a conservative columnist, was booed by the audience for even asking the question. Bachmann just smiled and said, “Thank you for that question, Byron. What submission means to me—if that’s what your question is—it means respect.”
Submission means, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary:
1: a: a legal agreement to submit to the decision of arbitrators b: an act of submitting something (as for consideration or inspection); also : something submitted (as a manuscript)
2: the condition of being submissive, humble, or compliant
3: an act of submitting to the authority or control of another
Now, hopefully you’d have respect for someone you submitted to, but respecting someone and submitting to them are not the same thing. Even Representative Bachmann’s own descriptions of how her husband has influenced her decisions over the course of their lives together make that clear.
She opened this can of worms by telling the story of how her husband insisted that she go into tax law, which she says bored her and she had no interest in at the time during a campaign speech. In the same speech in 2006 she also described her reluctance to run for congress, which her husband “helped” her overcome with two days of prayer and fasting.
If the very decisions that put Rep Bachmann on the path to run for President were made by her husband, not her, can the American people trust that Michelle Bachmann would be making her own decisions as President? What do you think? Can a woman be both a submissive wife and the leader of the free world at the same time?
