My fiance and I both attend a Presbyterian church that has a pastor and a co-pastor. The latter of which is a woman, which is no big deal to me and my fiance at all. They share church duties and one covers for the other if they are sick, out of town, etc. She is a wonderful pastor, is sincere, caring, and very involved with the church. My parents raised me for about half my life in a fundamentalist, CREC, get-married-at-16-and-make-30-babies, women-can't-be-church-officials-or-have-real-jobs church. Needless to say, I did the typical thing girls do after such an experience: I went to a liberal arts college and became a feminist (which apparently they think is some sort of man-hating cult...).
Anyway, so it turns out by luck of the draw that the male pastor of my church is out of town for my wedding, and the female pastor will be officiating. Obviously this is fine with me, but my parents have been really ugly about it. Ironically, my mother has been the most obnoxious. They're wonderful people, in their way, but I'm getting sick of hearing about how I need to have my (morally reprehensible, womanizing) cousin as a reader so "we will have a man up there, at least". I got pretty bitchy at my mom about it, saying that if having a penis is the only requirement for officiating at a wedding, she is setting the bar pretty low. And she ignored the entire statement and only latched onto the fact that I had used the word penis in a sentence and how I'm juvenile and gross... Yay.
I abhor patriarchal ideas about "a woman's place" because I've seen first-hand how oppressive and limiting this is to women and girls.
Anyway, since the wedding is drawing closer, my parents have become less and less diplomatic. They will angrily proclaim that they're over it and that it's only a 25 minute ceremony, but they continually bring it up, and then get ticked off at me for reacting defensively. I was without religion through college because I had had such a terrible experience in my childhood and early teens, and have only recently found home in this church. I am still on the fence about religion and how it relates to women, but I find the routine comforting. Sometimes they insist on going with me only to complain about how "wordy" and "fluffy" and "feminist" the female minister's sermon was (it was a pretty rote sermon about generosity in the context of Jesus sharing the loaves and fishes with the multitude...sheesh).
This is driving me nuts. How do I get my parents to respect me enough to just shut their mouths? I don't need them to agree with me. I just want them to can it and let me have a nice wedding, with, *gasp* a female officiant that I respect.
My colors are "blood of my enemies" and "rage".