The chapter opens by defining feminism as the belief that women deserve equal rights and argues that some Christian nationalists are presented as opposing it in ways that reinforce traditional gender hierarchies. Throughout the Bible, women are described as facing forms of subordination, often considered unclean or treated as property with limited legal rights. Genesis 3 is cited as describing Eve’s punishment as painful childbirth and male rule, a passage that has been used in some interpretations to justify female subordination.

Biblical-era society was patriarchal. Fathers controlled daughters until marriage; husbands controlled wives afterward. Women had virtually no property rights, inheritance passed through male lines, and they were excluded from most religious roles. Biblical misogyny is presented as falling into two categories: viewing women as property or as “icky.”

As property, wives are listed alongside livestock in the Ten Commandments. Exodus includes passages interpreted as permitting the sale of daughters into servitude. Deuteronomy contains laws that have been interpreted as requiring rape victims to marry their rapists after payment to the father. Non-virgin brides are described in some texts as facing punishment such as stoning. Numbers and Deuteronomy describe taking virgin girls as war spoils. Theologian Keith Giles explains that biblical marriage is presented as functioning as a business contract between men, with limited emphasis on romantic or sacred dimensions.

Regarding menstruation, Leviticus declares menstruating women ritually unclean, along with anything they touch. This is described as contributing to long-standing stigmatization of women’s bodies. Modern Judaism has largely moved beyond these views, but Fugelsang notes that some contemporary Christian contexts continue to invoke such ideas in debates about women’s bodies.

Jesus is presented as violating cultural norms by treating women as equals. He spoke publicly with women (forbidden), taught them (strictly forbidden), and included them in his ministry. In John 4, Jesus has his longest recorded private conversation with a Samaritan woman—someone marginalized both ethnically and socially. He reveals himself as the Messiah to her first, and she becomes the one who spreads the word.

In the story of Martha and Mary, Jesus defends Mary’s choice to study at his feet rather than perform domestic work, which Fugelsang presents as affirming women’s access to learning. When the bleeding woman—ritually unclean for 12 years—touches his robe, Jesus calls her “daughter” and affirms her healing, which Fugelsang interprets as a moment of dignity and inclusion.

Jesus saves the “adulteress” from stoning and refuses to shame the “sinful woman” who anoints his feet, while addressing the judgment of those present. His opposition to lenient divorce laws is presented as offering protection for women in a context where they could be left economically vulnerable. In Luke 11, he rejects praise for his mother’s childbearing abilities, which Fugelsang interprets as shifting emphasis toward women’s choices and faith. Luke 8 indicates that women, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, provided support for Jesus’s ministry.

After Jesus’s death, Paul is described as reintroducing patriarchal views, commanding wives to submit to husbands “in everything” and prohibiting women from teaching or speaking in churches. Yet Paul also praised female leaders like Phoebe (a deacon), Priscilla, and Junia (an apostle), which Fugelsang presents as reflecting tensions within his writings.

Mary Magdalene was never called a “prostitute” in the Bible. This claim is traced to Pope Gregory I in the sixth century, who is described as having conflated her with other women. She was a key disciple, witness to the crucifixion when male disciples fled, and is described in some accounts as among the first to see the resurrected Jesus. The chapter suggests that this reinterpretation functioned to weaken perceptions of women’s authority in the early church.

Early church fathers Clement, Tertullian, and Augustine wrote texts that express strongly negative views about women, calling women temples built over sewers and sources of sin. Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin are presented as continuing similar perspectives. The chapter links this legacy to modern figures like Pat Robertson, Mike Pence, Stephen Wolfe, and Pastor Joel Webbon, who have advocated positions such as repealing women’s suffrage.

The Catholic Church still bars women from the priesthood, and Fugelsang refers to statements in 2010 clerical guidelines that compare the ordination of women to serious institutional violations. Some bishops have used Communion denial against pro-choice female politicians.

The chapter concludes with five “slut-shamed” biblical heroines. Tamar (Genesis 38) disguised herself as a “prostitute” to secure her rights after her father-in-law Judah broke his promise, then escaped execution by revealing Judah as the father. Bathsheba is presented as a figure affected by King David’s abuse of power, though later interpretations often cast her as a seductress. Rahab the “prostitute” protected Israelite spies and saved her family during Jericho’s fall but remains defined by her profession. The unnamed “concubine” in Judges 19 was abandoned to a mob, subjected to sexual assault, and later died from her injuries. Ezekiel 23 uses graphic sexual allegory to condemn idolatry. Significantly, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus includes Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba—women whose stories involve social stigma yet who are presented as part of Jesus’s lineage.

The chapter argues that Jesus does not explicitly condemn same-sex relations despite their prevalence in Roman and Greek culture, while some Christians who oppose LGBTQ people are presented as overlooking Jesus’s core teachings of love and acceptance. Fugelsang suggests that same-sex attraction is natural, while hostility toward it is socially learned.

The claim that same-sex marriage will lead to bestiality is examined and challenged; Fugelsang critiques Speaker Mike Johnson’s 2004 comparison. Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed’s argument about “special rights” addressed by noting that marriage equality is framed as extending existing civil rights, while tax-exempt churches are described as holding certain institutional privileges.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) is examined. A mob demands to rape Lot’s angel-visitors; Lot offers his virgin daughters instead (the supposed “hero” of the anti-gay story). God destroys the cities, but Ezekiel 16 is cited as identifying Sodom’s sin as arrogance, lack of hospitality, and failure to help the poor—not consensual same-sex relationships. Jesus references Sodom multiple times without mentioning homosexuality.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 call male-male sex an “abomination” punishable by death. However, Fugelsang argues that many Christians do not follow other Levitical laws, including dietary restrictions, clothing rules, and Sabbath observance. Most of Leviticus 18 prohibits incest, leading some scholars to interpret verse 22 within that broader context. Jesus’s New Covenant is presented as shifting emphasis away from strict adherence to Mosaic law (Galatians 3:24–25).

Deuteronomy 23:17’s “sodomite” originally translated the Hebrew “Qadesh,” referring to male temple “prostitutes” in pagan rituals, not gay relationships. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is cited as criticizing selective use of these verses while overlooking broader biblical commands to care for strangers.

The relationship between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel is characterized by deep love, covenant-making, kissing, and David declaring Jonathan’s love “more wonderful than that of women” (126), which Fugelsang presents as meaningful for some LGBTQ interpretations.

In Matthew 19, Jesus is not opposing same-sex marriage but lenient heterosexual divorce laws that left women destitute. When disciples protest that permanent marriage is too hard, Jesus introduces three types of “eunuchs”: those castrated, those celibate for religious reasons, and those “born that way” (128)—which Fugelsang interprets as suggesting that some men may not be oriented toward women.

The story of Jesus healing the Roman centurion’s servant uses the Greek word “pais,” which can refer to a servant or a young male companion. Given Roman culture in which officers often had young male companions, and the centurion’s extraordinary public plea to heal this particular servant, Bishop John Shelby Spong suggests a possible intimate relationship, and Fugelsang presents this interpretation as highlighting Jesus’s lack of judgment toward social outsiders.

Paul’s letter to Romans describes heterosexual men “changing their natural use” (132) to engage in same-sex acts within a broader discussion of idolatry. Romans 2:1 immediately warns against judging others. Other Romans commands often ignored by anti-gay Christians include blessing persecutors, paying taxes, and greeting fellow believers with a “holy kiss,” noted as often overlooked in selective readings.

In 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the Greek terms “arsenokoitai” (possibly Paul’s invention) and “malakoi,” whose meanings scholars debate. They are often interpreted as referring to exploitative or abusive practices rather than consensual relationships. “Homosexual” did not appear in English Bibles until 1946. Martin Luther’s German translation used “Knabenschänder” (“boy molester”). Bishop Spong also raises the possibility that Paul’s views on sexuality were shaped by personal and cultural factors.

The chapter notes that the Bible does not explicitly condemn lesbian relationships. The single verse used against them (Romans 1:26) vaguely references women changing their “natural use,” which Fugelsang interprets within the same idolatry context. Meanwhile, Ruth’s vow to Naomi—“Where you go, I will go” (138)—uses the same Hebrew verb “dabaq” found in Genesis and is often read at weddings.

Regarding transgender people, Jesus teaches in John 9 that a man born blind was not being punished for sin, with emphasis placed on the manifestation of God’s works. Paul writes in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ “nor is there male and female” (141), which is presented as emphasizing spiritual equality. The early church’s inclusivity is demonstrated in Acts 8, where Philip baptizes an Ethiopian eunuch despite earlier exclusion under Deuteronomy 23:1.

The chapter concludes with a series of questions aimed at challenging anti-LGBTQ interpretations, including where Jesus explicitly condemns homosexuality, how such interpretations align with his teachings on love, and why selective readings of scripture are prioritized over broader ethical principles.

The chapter opens by noting that Southern Baptist Convention president Wallie Amos Criswell stated in 1973 that life begins at birth, not conception. Fugelsang argues that the Bible never forbids abortion, and Jesus never mentions it despite the practice existing in his time. The chapter suggests that the modern political focus on abortion contributed to the re-mobilization of conservative religious and political groups following civil rights and the Watergate era.

Contrary to modern claims, evangelical Christians were not uniformly anti-abortion before Roe v. Wade. In 1968, Billy Graham’s Christianity Today affirmed abortion could be appropriate. The National Association of Evangelicals passed a 1971 resolution recognizing the need for therapeutic abortions. The Southern Baptist Convention was officially pro-choice throughout the 1970s, passing resolutions supporting legal abortion in 1971, 1974, and 1976. Even Ronald Reagan had signed California’s liberal abortion law as governor.

The galvanizing issue for evangelicals in the 1970s was also linked to debates over the loss of tax-exempt status for racially segregated schools. Jerry Falwell did not mention abortion in sermons until five years after Roe v. Wade. The political shift occurred by 1980, when Reagan and George H. W. Bush (formerly pro-choice) embraced anti-abortion positions. Theologian Kristin Kobes Du Mez explains that abortion gave the conservative agenda a moral foundation, making voting Democratic “unthinkable” for evangelicals raised in post-1980s Christian communities.

The chapter challenges biblical arguments against abortion. Exodus 21:22-25 is presented as distinguishing between harm to a pregnant woman and the loss of a fetus, with different forms of compensation or punishment. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is cited as interpreting the Hebrew text as indicating that the fetus does not carry the same legal status as a person. Genesis 2:7 and other passages define life as beginning with first breath, the “neshamah” or breath of spirit.

Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” [150]) is interpreted as referring specifically to Jeremiah’s prophetic role, with the emphasis placed on his individual calling rather than a general statement about all fetuses. Later, Jeremiah wishes he had been killed in the womb, which is presented as indicating awareness of such practices. Psalm 139’s poetic language about God knitting together a person in the womb does not address abortion’s legality or morality.

Numbers 5:11-31 describes a ritual where a priest forces a woman suspected of adultery to drink “bitter water” that will cause her womb to swell and “her thigh shall fall away” (153)—a divinely sanctioned induced miscarriage. Abortion was practiced throughout the ancient world using herbal abortifacients and other methods. The Talmud (Mishnah Oholot 7:6) explicitly permits abortion to save the mother’s life because “existing life comes before potential life” (154).

The chapter highlights passages in which violence, including against children and unborn life, occurs within biblical narratives, including the deaths of Midianite infants (Numbers 31), references to violence against pregnant women (Hosea 13:16), and the destruction of all living beings in the flood narrative. It also refers to the Passover account, in which Egyptian firstborn children are described as being killed as part of divine judgment.

Christian extremists have murdered abortion providers, including Dr. David Gunn (1993), Dr. George Tiller (2009, shot in church), and perpetrators of the Brookline clinic massacre (1994) and the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting (2015). The chapter notes that South Carolina and Texas Republicans have filed bills proposing that abortion be treated as a capital offence, and Fugelsang presents this as being in tension with Jesus’s teachings on nonviolence.

After the 2022 Dobbs decision ended Roe, over a dozen states banned abortion, forcing women in nearly a quarter of counties to travel over two hundred miles for care. Reports describe cases in which women experienced serious medical complications after being denied or delayed access to treatment, including situations involving miscarriage, nonviable pregnancies, and pregnancies resulting from rape. A JAMA Pediatrics study showed an 8 percent increase in Texas infant mortality post-ban which the chapter associates with restricted access to abortion in cases of severe fetal conditions.

The chapter notes that pregnancy and childbirth are statistically more dangerous than abortion, over 90 percent of abortions occur by 13 weeks, most abortion patients are already mothers (59% facing poverty), and argues that many in the Christian right oppose programs—such as comprehensive sex education and contraception—that are associated with reducing unintended pregnancies.

The chapter concludes by noting that while Catholics are divided on the issue (slightly more than half support legal access), some bishops have used Communion denial against pro-choice politicians like John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi—while similar measures are not consistently applied across other political or ethical issues.