SHOULD WOMEN VOTE?November 14, 2025

Last Sunday, we saw the Broadway road-show musical “Suffs” about the suffragist movement. The Tony Award®-winner made a powerful and entertaining case for the 19th Amendment, ratified on June 4, 1919. Yet some (many?) Christian nationalists oppose women’s right to vote.

On October 9, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat interviewed Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho (“He Believes America Should Be a Theocracy. He Says His Influence Is Growing”). 

Wilson, a Calvinist/Presbyterian and Christian nationalism supports voting by household. The vote decider? The husband. Single women heading a household, Wilson concedes, would retain their vote.

Wilson espoused similar views according to a June 25, 2024 article on churchleaders.com (“Douglas Wilson Argues That Giving Women the Right To Vote Is the Result of ‘Men Becoming Spiritual Eunuchs’.”) Reported Dale Chamberlain, “Wilson said true masculinity requires that a man represent ‘his household to the other governments established by God,’ that is the church and the civil government.”

Was Washington established by God?

The family, Wilson said, not the individual, is supreme. “‘For example, when women were granted the right to vote, the nation had already accepted the lie that a nation is nothing more than a collection of individuals. And so the matter was framed this way: Men, as individuals, can vote, so why cannot individual women do the same? We were so muddled, we thought we were giving the franchise to women when we were in fact taking it away from families.’”

Added Wilson, “The willingness of men ‘to embrace that responsibility at the level of each household is biblical masculinity. Refusal to do so at the level of each household is covenantal castration.’” 

Should a household of seven swing more electoral weight than a household of one or two or three? A single person?

Wilson cites the Bible to support his position. I wonder how he reckons with the roles played in families by the Hebrew matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel. In their stories—democracy didn’t exist then—these tenacious Jewish mothers manipulate their husbands, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (who had two formal wives), to advance their sons as the next leaders of the monotheistic mission. 

On October 28, 2024, right before the presidential election, a Trump advisor went further. The headline in people.com tells that story: “Trump Official Turned Project 2025 Leader Draws Backlash for Joking He Wants ‘M-A-L-E’ Only Voting.” 

John McEntee, a senior advisor for Project 2025, which developed a detailed policy for Trump in the White House, posted a video on X. McEntee said, “So I guess they misunderstood when we said we wanted mail-only voting. We meant male m-a-l-e.” Reporter Ingrid Vasquez: “Project 2025 did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.”

I wonder why.

The 19th Amendment faced fierce opposition from men—and some women—a century ago. But Jane Addams, an early suffrage proponent, put it well: “I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance” (crusadeforthevote.org).

If Doug Wilson wants to tell the women in his family they can’t vote, fine. I suggest he not insult the women in mine.

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