And That's the Way It Is for Women in Today's World

Jimmy Carter Resigns as Member of the Southern Baptist Church Due to Their Treatment of Women:

Former President Jimmy Carter issued a statement Sunday announcing he is leaving the Southern Baptist Church due to their treatment of women. Carter has been a devout Southern Baptist for more than sixty years, but differs ideologically on points where the religion justifies the subordination of women.

Carter calls "on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women."

Carter sees women's inferior position within religion as a problem among many faiths. He wrote that , "the male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses."

He also says that religion justifies male superiority and promotes "the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime...[and] also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities."

Carter says that it is time to challenge the Southern Baptist Church's views on women because "the evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for everyone in society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school."

And This Item from the Jerusalem Post today:

A serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks. Asked about his own role in the brutal crackdowns on the protesters, whether he had been beaten demonstrators and whether he regretted his actions, he answered in part:

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.

Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food.

By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

"I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

Returning to the events of the last few weeks, and his decision to set free the two teenage detainees, he said he "honestly" did not know why he had released them, a decision that led to his own arrest, "but I think it was because they were so young. They looked like children and I knew what would happen to them if they weren't released."

He said that while a man is deemed "responsible for his own actions at 13, for a woman it is 9," and that it was freeing the 15-year-old girl that "really got me in trouble