Blogaround

1. Why Christians Should Be (the Best) Landlords (January 4) This is a post discussing the idea that a Christian landlord should never evict anyone. I think this is a really interesting and complicated moral question- and this writer is correct in saying the unique thing about the landlord-tenant relationship is it's so personal.

My opinion is (and I'm not an expert on any of this, so I'm probably missing some parts...), as a landlord, you should have some amount of compassion and understanding, and give people a little extra time even though legally you're within your rights to evict them. But if we really believe landlords need to do that, then that means landlords should take that into account from the very beginning when they're deciding whether to become a landlord. Like do a calculation "odds are, once every X years, I'll have someone who stops paying the rent, and I'll be a little nice to them and let them not pay for Y months" - you need to figure out the math of how "nice" you are going to be, and determine the price you should charge for rent based on that. (And also this depends on the laws where you are- I think most places have laws that you have to wait some number of months before evicting people.) And, yikes, if people are really arguing that a landlord should "never" evict anyone, then that means the landlord needs to be okay with getting paid 0 rent, indefinitely? (I don't know if anyone is literally saying this or not- maybe I'm misrepresenting them.) If that's the case, you should just not become a landlord in the first place. That risk is too great. 

Unless you decided to become a landlord as, like, a charity project. Instead of as a way to make money. Honestly this is not a good idea. I can easily imagine someone going into this very naive, like "I'm going to be a landlord who charges less rent, so I actually lose money, in order to help people" and then you discover that your renters are complex imperfect people, not the simplistic "people in need" stereotype that you had in your mind, and you begin to get mad at your renters for not acting grateful enough, or whatever. Or, maybe what I'm saying is, it's likely that someone who decides to become a landlord not for money but to "help the world" has some subconscious assumptions about how they want the recipients of their "charity" to act. They think they're okay with losing money and getting nothing in return, but actually they're not- they expect to get an "I really made a difference in someone's life" feeling in return.

And, I think some people are unhappy about the idea that landlords feel they need to make money. This baffles me... Well, actually, I think it's because there are people whose financial status is "I need to have enough money to survive" and people whose financial status is "I already have enough money, I want to make it into more money." It's very easy for people in the "need to survive" group to view the "I want to make more money" desire as completely invalid. I feel like... yeah the difficult thing is we are weighing "I want to survive" against "I want more money." You should rule in favor of the "survive" side- but then you have to know that the "make money" group will factor that in when they do the math on how to invest their money.

2. Why Is a Christian Book Trying to Coerce Wives into Sending Nude Photos? (January 6) Wow, yes, this is a very important post. I have heard ex-purity-culture women saying they were given "marriage advice" to do a boudoir photo shoot so their husband could have the photos, and that would prevent him from watching porn. (I personally never heard this advice myself when I believed in "purity," but yeah, it fits.) I'm really glad to see Sheila Wray Gregoire writing about this- and telling married women that *you* being uncomfortable with doing some sex thing is a GOOD ENOUGH REASON to say no- even if it's not "a sin."

Also, she treats the possibility of divorcing- and then being in the horrible situation where your ex still has your photos- as a REAL THING. Normally, Christian marriage advice treats divorce like some faraway threat that would never really happen if you follow the rules correctly. I've NEVER seen Christian marriage advice along the lines of "maybe DON'T make yourself vulnerable to each other in this way, because it could turn really bad if you divorce." The Christian marriage advice I always heard was, finally you can stop holding back, finally you can fully give yourself to your partner, be completely vulnerable in every way, you accept and love each other unconditionally, there's nothing to fear now, because you're committed for life.

And the way she "fixes" the story by changing it to "he realized he was replacing porn with his wife and decided to go to therapy"- that just totally blew my mind. The Christian marriage advice I've always heard was, basically, yes, men should replace porn with their wives (though they didn't say it in these words exactly). They said that was good and normal in marriage. They said men are like that.

Also this bit at the end: "I’ve been focusing on the coercive aspect of that passage, but there are so many other weird bits. Is it good for a man to be sexually aroused all day at work? How does that affect his colleagues? His work performance? How would you feel knowing a colleague was in a state of semi-arousal all day?" GOOD POINT. I, too, have read Christian marriage books which talked about how cool it is for a husband to be aroused at work all day, looking forward to coming home to his wife, and now I'm like... this seems more like a fanfiction trope rather than something that's actually a good idea in reality.

I really want to read Gregoire's book The Great Sex Rescue and write a review of it. :)

Also from the same blog: 2 Kinds of Marital Rape that Evangelicalism (Inadvertently) Enables (November 14) [content note: rape] Oh wow, this is a very good post. It connects real personal stories of women who have been raped by their husbands, with the Christian marriage teachings that say this is how normal marriages work. The comment section is full of women in this exact situation.

These teachings are VERY REAL. I VERY MUCH believed that as a wife, I have a "duty" to have sex with my husband, because he "needs" it. I remember hearing a lot of Christian marriage advice about why this reason or that reason are not good enough reasons to say no to your husband. (This is rape culture.)

Luckily, my husband is not a Christian.

3. Not Dead Yet [UPDATE: Meachen Responds] (January 6) I heard some people on Twitter mention something about "an author faked her own death"- well here's the story.

4. Cycles of extremism: NGOs suspend services after Taliban bans female staff (December 26) "In a series of moves surprising no one, the Taliban government in Afghanistan this past week banned women from universities, and also locked girls out of primary school (essentially ending education to female persons across the board), before also banning women from work in any local non-government organizations (NGOs)."

5. Youth-led climate change lawsuits are increasing across the country (April 2022) "In Montana, youth claim that state lawmakers have consistently prioritized fossil fuel infrastructure and profits to the detriment of their future. They argue that the state's actions have violated their constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment."

6. The Desire for Twins Is Putting China’s Mothers in Danger (January 9) [content note: pregnancy loss]