Because She Did Not Scream Out

BREAKFAST BIBLE STUDY

Deuteronomy 22:23–24 (NIV)

1/26/25

“Christian nationalism is just fascism cloaked in religious garb.” – Grace Pecker

I warned Christian that I did not want to do a Bible passage about poetry and love and stuff this week because I knew that those could get public school teachers in trouble. He promised me that he would stick to a law that might not be appropriate for school children. I told him that Grace liked to pick the war stuff. He agreed that the Bible passage would not be about war.

“What’s the law this time?” I asked when I came to the kitchen for breakfast. 

“A law regarding rape,” Christian said.

“We did that last time,” I said. “Grace picks the war stuff.”

“This isn’t about war,” Christian said.

“Is it the one where Lot was going to give his daughters to the Sodom people to rape,” I said. “I know that one. I don’t like that one.”

“I don’t like that one either,” Grace said. “He treated his daughters like meat.”

“The house was surrounded,” Christian said. “He tried to negotiate.”

“With his virgin daughters,” Grace said.

“Were they virgins?” Christian said. “Lot had sons-in-law.”

“Betrothed…or just maybe, Lot was lying about them being virgins?” Grace said.

“That’s a good point,” Christian said. “I always thought that was a contradiction.”

“The story isn’t exactly highly nuanced or high literature,” Grace said.

“See, but I already know this story,” I said. “They were engaged to bad men.”

“It still wasn’t right that Lot offered his daughters up like meat,” Grace said.

“But…nothing bad happened to Lot’s daughters because God blinded all the Sodom people,” I said. “That’s good.”

“Well, that’s not exactly the end of the story of Lot and his daughters,” Grace said.

“And that’s not what the passage is about this week,” Christian said.

“What is it?”

“Deuteronomy 22:23–24,” Christian said.

Grace smiled and kissed the top of Christian’s forehead for some reason before starting on the pancakes because this week was her turn to cook breakfast.

“Read this one,” Christian said, passing his Bible to me.

“‘If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.’”

“In the next passage, the same formula is used, but in the countryside,” Christian said.

“Where nobody might have heard the screams for help,” Grace said.

“Wait, so is the first one rape?” I asked.

“Say it is,” Christian said.

“She should have screamed for help,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“Did you?” Grace said.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said. “I was in the countryside.”

“The law assumes the sex act was consensual,” Christian said. “What if it wasn’t?”

“She would have cried out?” I asked.

“What if she couldn’t?” Grace said.

“Why not?”

“What if she had a knife to her throat?” Grace said.

“What if he knocked her out?” Christian said.

“What if she was too scared to scream?” Grace said.

“But they’ll stone her if she doesn’t,” I said. “She has to scream.”

“What if she doesn’t?” Christian said. “What if she can’t?”

“They kill her anyway?” I asked.

“Why?”

“She didn’t scream?”

“And if she’s the victim?” Christian said.

“She shouldn’t be stoned?” I asked.

“But they have to purge the evil,” Grace said.

“So, it’s not about her being a victim?” I asked.

“I don’t really think the law cared that she was a victim,” Christian said. “That point was moot up until, oh, how long ago, Grace?”

“I’d argue rape still isn’t taken seriously in red states,” Grace said, “or swing states.”

“Wait, but we’re a red state,” I said.

“And rape still isn’t taken seriously around here,” Grace said. “Hell, we have a serial sex offender as Commander in Chief. America has basically shrugged about that.”

“I wouldn’t say America shrugged,” Christian said. “I didn’t shrug, not the second time.”

“You’re not America,” Grace said. “Seventy-seven million Americans didn’t care.”

“He sent scum to try to kill his own VP, and the bastard just pardoned the assholes,” Christian said. “He is garbage, plain and simple, and so is his cult.”

“Wait,” I said. “Are we talking about Trump again?”

“America is backsliding on a lot of values,” Grace said.

“Like hashtag me too?” I asked. “Me too. Dot.com.”

“It’s not a website,” Christian said. “You don’t need to dot.com it. Or hashtag it.”

“You can hashtag it if you want, Cole,” Grace said. “And you’re exactly right.”

“Sheriff Roberts took rape seriously, didn’t he?” I asked.

“But he wasn’t judge and jury,” Christian said.

“What about in holy times?” I asked. “Those times were holy, right?”

“Women were viewed as property of their fathers and husbands,” Grace said.

“I don’t like that,” I said. “That doesn’t sound holy.”

“Maybe not the best passage to be teaching to children?” Christian asked.

“No way,” I said. “Jesus should have crossed that one out in the Pecker Family Bible. Moses probably shouldn’t have even written it down. Wait, but God really told Moses that law?”

“Cole, just last week, we talked about Josiah’s reign, and this being a second—”

“Josiah found a copy of Deuteronomy in the church or something, way after Moses lost that book,” I said. “That’s what the Bible says.”

“Yes, but we talked about how unlikely it would have been for Moses to write a second set of—”

“Just agree with Cole,” Grace told Christian.

“Agreed,” Christian said. “Moses shouldn’t have written down that law.”

“And it’s a good thing that Jesus crossed it out with his crucifixion,” I said.

In state legislatures across the country, Christian fundamentalists are passing laws meant to force the teaching of the Christian Bible in public schools. From the posting of textually inaccurate iterations of the Ten Commandments on the walls of classrooms to the incorporation of the “Trump Bible” across multiple pedagogical disciplines, these laws and mandates are sweeping the reddest parts of this nation.

The height of hypocrisy is banning books in the name of “protecting children” while mandating one particular book rife with numerous acts of sexual violence and scenes of graphic violence and genocide.

Book bans are dangerous. The Bible is worth reading and exists online and in public school libraries across the country, but proponents of mandating its formal teaching in public schools need to know what it actually says.

We don’t do breakfast Bible studies in my books. We have adventures.