A conservative Christian website advises husbands that if the wife is resisting during sexual intercourse, the best course of action is to carry on and avoid looking at her face.

Claiming that men “should not tolerate refusal,” a post on the conservative Christian website BiblicalGenderRoles.com advises married men that they should not look at their wives’ faces during sex if she is engaging in intercourse “begrudgingly.”

The Christian website advises wives who do not enjoy sex with their husbands to “fake it” and offers the following advice to husbands when wives refuse to “fake it”:

Your beautiful bride’s face becomes ugly during this sinful time that she is grudgingly giving you sex as she grimaces wanting you to ‘just hurry up and get it over with’… Focus your eyes on her body, not her face. Focus on the visual pleasure you receive from looking at her body and physical pleasure you receive from being inside your wife. You want to connect with her physically AND emotionally during sex. But your wife is the one refusing to connect with you emotionally, so you have to concentrate 100% on the physical side.

In other words, to maximize pleasure, a husband should try not to look at his wife’s face while he rapes her.

In essence, the author of the post justifies what amounts to marital rape by invoking “the Biblical concept that sex is both a gift and a duty in marriage” and referencing several Bible quotes.

This is not the first time the popular conservative Christian website has endorsed what amounts to marital rape. A previous post argued that “it is impossible” for a man to rape his wife, while patiently explaining to a distraught Christian wife why marital rape is acceptable from a Biblical perspective.

Reporting for Raw Story, Vyckie Garrison, a former adherent of the Quiverfull movement who also blogs at No Longer Quivering, offered the following comment on the conservative Christian website:

I wish I could say the teachings at “Biblical Gender Roles” are a rare and extreme interpretation of biblical manhood and womanhood in American contemporary Christian community, but while the anonymous fundamentalist writer lacks much of the subtly and sugar coating of more established and prominent ministries, his interpretations and instruction are not misrepresentative of the “biblical” advice which married couples who seek Christian counselling for relational problems encounter on a daily basis.

Garrison is correct. The feeling that Christian women must submit to their husbands sexual demands is more mainstream than some would like to think. Earlier this month, disgraced Duggar family matriarch Michelle Duggar had some awful advice for newlywed women:

Be “joyfully available” to your husband’s sexual needs at all times, whether you feel like it or not, because a wife must always submit to her husband’s sexual desires.

Of course, it should be noted that not all Christians agree that wives should submit to marital rape. However, as is usual with most forms of religious fundamentalism, it is the women who suffer the most, while men are given permission to treat their wives not as people, but as property.

Bottom line: It’s the 21st century, but for some women, the sick and twisted Christian patriarchy is alive and well.