Vision Forum staff writer Mark Stubblefield offers the following insight from yesterday’s headlines:

By Mark Stubblefield
In yet another tragic story from the war in Iraq, our nation is faced with the passive neglect of male responsibility and the perversion of the roles in both the home and on the battlefield: Sgt. Angela Carey and her 19-year-old daughter Spc. Courtland Ball both serve with the 39th Infantry Brigade in Iraq: Sgt. Angela is a front-line medic and her daughter is in military combat training. Husband and father Dr. Martin Carey remains at home in the states, safe from harm as his wife and daughter fight in the combat zones of Iraq.

“I’ve asked her ‘Do you ever have to pull rank?” said Carey’s husband, Dr. Martin Carey. “She says, ‘No, no, I’m a mom. But I always could if I needed to.”

Jeremy Ball, Courtland’s husband, said his wife relies on her mother for support.

“Her mom just being over there is pretty much the only way she can make it through,” he said. “Being able to see her helps more than anyone can imagine.”

When asked about the role that his wife had taken in the military, Mr. Carey commented that “the weekend work made her feel she was doing good”. Mr. Carey also said that his daughter Ball saw the change in her mother and sought the same for herself. Ball joined the National Guard when she was 17 and a junior in high school.

“My wife’s a mom and she doesn’t want her daughter put in danger,” he said. “It may be OK for her to do it, but she doesn’t want her daughter put in the same kind of danger.”

Mr. Carey said his wife worries about her daughter in their daily phone conversations.

Friends, this is a grievous example of the perversion of roles in the household and its manifestations on the battlefield. As fathers condone sending their wives and daughters to die on foreign battlefields, we as the body of Christ cannot remain silent. We must recognize these perversions, teach our sons and daughters to understand that boys do indeed protect girls, and not the other way around, and that we must stand in the gates of the land and hold our leaders accountable when they are unwilling to “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry,” [Psalms 2:12]

If you have not already done so, I recommend that you read our newsletter: Are They Coming to Draft Your Daughters?