I am not a person that despises labels and titles. I find comfort in the way I have chosen to label myself. I am a patriotic American. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a good friend. I am a conservative. I am also a Christian.

My faith journey started when I was very young because my mother always thought it was important to have me in Sunday School. I loved going to church and learning the stories in the Bible. I learned very young to love the Lord. Now, as an adult, I have a vibrant, loving, active relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ. I have chosen to embrace the stories I read as a child, and I adore teaching my own children about God’s amazing gift through Jesus.

I love the Christmas story that tells the tale of Jesus’ birth. I love that God chose a young, seemingly insignificant woman to bear His Son. I love that God used a faithful man to be the earthly father of Jesus. I love that three rich, wise men took off two years of their lives to follow a star to find a small child. I love that shepherds witnessed the Heavenly Host. Can you imagine being out in a field, watching your livestock, when the heavens open up for angels singing glory to God? Most of all, though, I love the faith and trust these individuals had in God. They put everything after His plan, and obeyed.

I am not a feminist. I hate liberal feminism. I find atheism extremely hopeless, and I find feminism to be too focused on self.

Knowing all of that, you can probably understand why I am so appalled by this article written by Valerie Tarico, a religion-hating feminist, at AlterNet. Entitled Why Is Rape in the Origins of So Many Religions?, Tarico asserts that God raped Mary, just like the Greek, Roman, Hindu, and Buddhists gods did in their separate mythologies. Yes, you read that right. Feminism has become so incredibly washed up and outrageous that they now say Yahweh raped Mary.

The impregnation process may be a “ravishing” or seduction or some kind of titillating but nonsexual procreative penetration. The story may come from and Eastern or Western religious tradition, pagan or Christian. But these encounters between beautiful young women and gods have one thing in common. None of them has freely given female consent as part of the narrative. Luke’s Mary assents after being not asked but told by a powerful supernatural being what is going to happen to her, “Behold the bond slave of the Lord: be it don’t to me…”)

Who needs consent, freely given? If he’s a god, she’s got to want it, right? That is how the stories play out.

Whether or not the delectable young thing puts up a protest, whether or not seduction requires deception, whether or not the woman already has a husband or love, whether or not she is physically forced, the basic assumption is that the union between god and a woman is overwhelming in an orgasmic way, not a bloody, head-bashed-against-the-ground kind of way. And afterwards? Well, what woman wouldn’t want to be pregnant with the son or daughter of a god?