Why cannot the "captain" be the woman, if it pleases both parties?  But male-female relationships are much more complex than one or the other being the "decision-maker". If one is suppressing the other's wishes, then it may just be the case that the couple is mismatched. True love involves compromise and cooperation in cases where there is disagreement. If you can learn to work out differences, it is far better than having one or the other be dominant by default. In the end, neither the male nor the female should end up feeling a loser in the relationship. But that is an ideal that is really hard to achieve in a real relationship

Thanks Mom.  I never said that relationships are that simple.  I am just saying that in a situation where there are two contested, mutually exclusive courses of action, then one person in the marriage must submit or the marriage will fracture.  I think that in certian areas the man should submit, and in others the woman should.  But I think overall that the man should be the head of the household.

Should the man be "head"? Only if he is willing to take ALL the responsiblily. Then he should never blame the wife for any failures.

I agree with this.  The man should be the head of the household, and be ultimately responsible for it in the end.  I don't think he should take all the responsibility, just certian ones, such as economic support.

Hmmm...  I think the woman should be submissive to the man. period.
Now lets try some rational argumentation.  I think the woman should be submissive to the man because in a situation like the one I stated above, there must be a person that has the final say.  It could be the woman, but I think God designed it to be the man.

Another point I just thought of is there have been alot more divorces and broken homes since the Women's Liberation Movement(alot of which was good), which was the main driving force towards "equal partnership" in marriage.  What I am saying is this: it is not working.  Marriage is in crisis in America.  Also consider this; we don't have two presidents for a reason.  In every other social institution among people, there is always one final leader, who has the final say.  Maybe it is this way because it works this way.  Why should not marriage be like this?

Now lets try some rational argumentation.  I think the woman should be submissive to the man because in a situation like the one I stated above, there must be a person that has the final say.  It could be the woman, but I think God designed it to be the man.

I think that the male-dominant attitude stems from a time when women were considered more like children than adults, and they were treated as legal property of the male spouse.  Society takes a much different view of relations between spouses in modern times.  Even if you can find a woman to agree with you that God wants your decisions to prevail, don't expect that agreement to last over the long term.  

Another point I just thought of is there have been alot more divorces and broken homes since the Women's Liberation Movement(alot of which was good), which was the main driving force towards "equal partnership" in marriage.  What I am saying is this: it is not working.  Marriage is in crisis in America.

But is the crisis because we have departed from ancient attitudes or because we are struggling to break free of them?  I think the latter.

...Also consider this; we don't have two presidents for a reason.  In every other social institution among people, there is always one final leader, who has the final say.  Maybe it is this way because it works this way.  Why should not marriage be like this?

Consider this, then.  We no longer favor monarchies and dictatorships as the best way to run a country.  They are inherently unstable forms of government because they suppress the needs of the ruled in order to satisfy the desires of the rulers.  Our form of government was designed to limit executive powers.  The President cannot behave as if the courts and the legislature exist only to do his or her bidding.

I disagree. Do you have to have the final say with your friends? Business relationships? How about one country vs another? Of course not. You work things out. Same with a marriage.

Your analogy fails because a friendship is not the same thing as a marriage.  If you rip apart a good friendship, you might just tear the skin off.  If you rip apart a business partnership, it might be a little worse.  But marriage should be such a deep and intimate joining that if you rip it apart,  you should tear yourself in half and die.  If a marriage is not this intimate, then it never should have taken place.
My friends and I are separate entities.  Marriage is supposed to be the joining of two people into one flesh, and one mind.  All of the examples you cited do not accurately refer to the institution of marriage.  I think this is a good example.  Our country and the civil war.  When our country first was founded, most of the states did want to outlaw slavery then.  But a few didn't, and the ones that did let it slide.  A few decades down the road, that one difference that should have been dealt with in the beginning is spiraling out of control.  The country is being torn apart.  The south is adamant about keeping slavery legal.  The north is vigorously opposed to it.  There are only three courses of action:  The North submits, allowing slavery to continue, the South submits, agreeing to ban slavery, or the country splits in two.  

Now, I know the civil war was more complicated than that and there were more reasons for the split.  This just illustrates my point pretty well.  The states should have dealt with all of their major differences before they got "married"

I think God designed them to be equal.

I think a basic reading of the scriptures would show that this is not true.
But, you bring up something I have been wishing to address.

There is much confusion and misuse of the the word "equal" these days.  You and I, Cimics, are equal before the law.  That is a good thing.  The law should not favor one of us because of a difference in race, color, or creed.  But you and I are certianly not just "equal"  You are better at somethings than I am.  I might be better at somethings than you are.
Heck, you might be better at everything in the world than I am(though not likely )  I wouldn't be your equal then, would I?  

My point is that even though the man is the head of the household, this does not mean that he is supierior to the woman, especially before God.
The man should be the head simply because that is the way God designed it.  If the man thinks that this makes him supieror in all respects than he does not deserve a wife.

To the extent that equality allows/encourages women to flee abusive men, that's a good thing. To the extent couples break up because of a lack of commitment to work things out, that's a moral failing unrelated to equality.

I agree that women should flee abusive men, that is a good thing.  Yes it is a moral failing, often in the form of the man failing to love his wife more than himself, and the woman failing to submit and trust his judgement.

We don't have two presidents, but the president's power is balanced by Congress and the Supreme Court. No one of those branches has ultimate power. Plus, you are naively referring only to a presidential system. In parliamentary systems, negotiations are critical to forming governing coalitions. But let's take it a step further: the church. The pastor does not have the final say in most protestant congregations. Ultimately it is the congregation itself. So, give and take, without a final arbiter is a pervasive part of life.

Yes, the president's power is checked by Congress and the the Supreme Court, but in every possible situation, there is someone who has the final say.  The president has these powers:  The court has these powers:  The congress has these powers:  Everyone has authority in an area where the others do not.  They do not have "equal" powers.  Everyone has his or her "place" in the institution.

I disagree. Do you have to have the final say with your friends? Business relationships? How about one country vs another? Of course not. You work things out. Same with a marriage.

Your analogy fails because a friendship is not the same thing as a marriage. If you rip apart a good friendship, you might just tear the skin off. If you rip apart a business partnership, it might be a little worse. But marriage should be such a deep and intimate joining that if you rip it apart, you should tear yourself in half and die. If a marriage is not this intimate, then it never should have taken place.

All the more reason there should be equality.  Equality is a sign of respect, and one should respect one

What I am saying is this: In every social intitution, there is NEVER any ambiguosity as to who has the final say.

You are either just plain wrong or equivocating what you mean.  With respect to some things there is ambiguity even now, in our presidential form of government on who has the final say about certain things.  When a serious clash occurs on those subjects, a constitutional crisis can occur.  Take the court packing incident in the 30s for example.  

And then there's the business world.  If you have a partnership involving two partners, which of them has the final say?

And you DO overlook or misunderstand the parliamentary system.  We'll get to that below.

Who has the final say may vary from situation to situation, but it is clear. Don't even try to tell me that Parliament doesn't reach a decision until everybody agrees. Some people must always submit if they don't agree.   In this case, the entity that has the final say is the majority.

But there is not always a majority.  Many countries with parliamentary systems have numerous parties, no one of which can control parliament and choose a prime minister on its own.  Negotiations then become paramount in determining what combination of parties will form a ruling coalition.

This is not going to work for marriage, though. Marriage and family is more comparable to the crew and officers of a ship. The father being the captian, the mother being the first mate, and the children being the crew. You are not going to have the crew vote on things and have this override the captian. The crew's feelings definitely matter, but the captian is the captian for a reason.  The captian should also listen to the first mate. It is a foolish captian that never listens to the first mate.

It is not analogous because the woman is a partner in the marriage. Marriage is more analogous to a business partnership of two people that may also have subordinate employees.  The children would be subordinate, but the partners are equal, and that means they have to work things out if the partnership is to remain viable.

That link you gave me was a lame attempt to skirt the obvious message of the bible. Obviously help from God is coming from a higher, supierior place. This doesn't allow us to make the blanket statement that all help comes from a higher place or person.

As far as I can tell, it is serious scholarship that you shouldn't lightly dismiss.  The point is that the word translated as "helper" does not necessarily denote an inferior relationship.  The NET bible translates it as "companion" for example.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Genisis 3 16.  How about that one?

That was AFTER the fall, when Eve showed herself to have poor judgment as a leader.  One question would be whether Eve's mistake was carried on to future generations of women.  The text doesn't say that, so if you're a literalist, you could not necessarily assume it.  If you're not a literalist, one could still argue that the fall was rectified by Christ's sacrifice allowing for a restoration of the relationship as it was originally intended.  

But at any rate, the passage supports my position that they were ORIGINALLY created as equal partners.

Even the language of the bible shows male leadership. Genisis refers to Adam and Eve as the "Man and his wife."
This is very different from the "Woman and her husband"

That's in a passage about being naked and not ashamed.  Of course, man was created first, so the reference to man and his wife could simply be a grammatical construction reflecting that.  Or it could be a reference to the preceding passage regarding the unity that a man forms with his wife.  It does not necessarily mean that the wife is subordinate.  And finding connotations from tenuous textual references translated from another language is perilous.

"All the more reason there should be equality. Equality is a sign of respect, and one should respect one

Atheist Heratic, are you a woman?  I am guessing you are so of coarse you want the woman to have equal partnership.

David,

If those questions are directed at me, the answer is yes.