"Why I Believe Mistreatment of Women is Number One Human Rights Abuse" by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter: Why I believe the mistreatment of women is the number one human rights abuse  ..."First of all is the misinterpretation of religious scriptures, holy scriptures, in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Quran and so forth, and these have been misinterpreted by men who are now in the ascendant positions in the synagogues and the churches and in the mosques. And they interpret these rules to make sure that women are ordinarily relegated to a secondary position compared to men in the eyes of God.

2:01This is a very serious problem. It's ordinarily not addressed. A number of years ago, in the year 2000, I had been a Baptist, a Southern Baptist for 70 years -- I tell you, I still teach Sunday school every Sunday;I'll be teaching this Sunday as well -- but the Southern Baptist Convention in the year 2000 decided that women should play a secondary position, a subservient position to men. So they issued an edict, in effect, that prevents women from being priests, pastors, deacons in the church, or chaplains in the military, and if a woman teaches a classroom in a Southern Baptist seminary, they cannot teach if a boy is in the room, because you can find verses in the Bible, there's over 30,000 verses in the Bible, that say that a woman shouldn't teach a man, and so forth. But the basic thing is the scriptures are misinterpretedto keep men in an ascendant position. That is an all-pervasive problem, because men can exert that power and if an abusive husband or an employer, for instance, wants to cheat women, they can say that if women are not equal in the eyes of God, why should I treat them as equals myself? Why should I pay them equal pay for doing the same kind of work?..."