Rev. Mr. Tinsey farther gave his opinion as to the comparative uselessness of woman. He was able to conceive of no good reason for her creation, aside from that of burden bearer in the process of reproduction, saying:
Woman is that part or side of humanity upon which the great labor, care and burden of reproduction is placed. We can conceive of no good reason for making women aside from this. Man is certainly better suited to all other work.
After discussion, the ministers present generally agreed that, because of motherhood, woman should be debarred from such official recognition.
The final ground of women’s exclusion as delegates to the General Conference, is most noticeable inasmuch as appeal was ultimately made to the State. Upon the seventh day’s session it was resolved to suspend the rules and continue the debate on the admission of women as lay-delegates. So anxious were men to speak that forty-one delegates at once sprung to their feet and claimed the floor. Judge Taylor, a lay delegate from the St. Louis conference, walking down the aisle with a number of law books under his arm, proceeded to argue the question on constitutional grounds, saying:
It would do much harm to admit women at the present time. There are bishops to be elected and other important matters to be voted on, and if women are admitted and allowed to vote, and it should subsequently be decided that women should not be entitled to seats, the acts of the present General Conference would be illegal and unconstitutional.
While claiming, personally, to favor women’s admission, he quoted law to sustain their rejection, and wished the question to be submitted to a vote of the church. The “vote of the church,” as shown by the adoption of Rev. F. B. Neely’s amendment, signifying the ministers present at annual conferences.[25] The vote upon this amendment, which excluded women from seats in the General Conference, submitting their eligibility to the decision of ministers of the annual conferences, was adopted 237 to 198. It thus requires three-fourths vote of the members present and voting at the annual conferences, this vote to be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the General Conference in order to woman’s acceptance as lay delegate to such General Conference.[26] Aside from the fact of an appeal to the civil law for the exclusion of woman, thus showing the close union of church and state, one other important point must be noticed. In the declaration that the church should be consulted in regard to such an important matter, that body was defined as the ministers of the annual conference, laymen not here ranking as part of the church. The lay delegates, unnarrowed by theological studies were, as a body, favorable to woman’s admission. Nor did they refrain from criticising the clergy, declaring that the episcopacy did not interpret the law of the church, this power resting in the General Conference. But one more favoring vote would have tied the question. Gen. Samuel H. Hurst, dairy and food commissioner of Ohio, the first layman to gain the floor, defended the right of women to admission. He alluded to the opponents of the women as “old fogies.” He criticized the bishop’s address.
The episcopacy does not interpret the law of the church, but the General Conference does. Woman does not come here as a strong-minded person demanding admittance, but she comes as representative of the lay conference. The word “laymen” was interpreted to mean all members of the church not represented in the ministry. That is the law, and if women are “laymen” they are entitled to admission.
The Southern Baptist Association, meeting in New Orleans in July of the same year, refused to admit women by a vote of 42 to 40. The church as of old, is still strenuous in its efforts to influence legislation. An amendment to the National Constitution is pressed by the National Reform Association, recognizing the sectarian idea of God; another placing marriage and divorce under control of the general government by uniform laws; while priestly views upon the political freedom of woman are thrust into the very faces of our law makers.[27] The following portions of a sermon preached at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston, February 21, 1886, by the Rev. Father J. P. Bodfish, were printed and distributed among the members of the Massachusetts Legislature that spring by the opponents of woman suffrage:[28]
Not that I would have woman step out of her sphere; the man is the natural protector, the father, the lawgiver, of his family; not would I counsel wives to usurp the places of their husbands at the polls. I believe this to be one of the errors of modern times, to try to unsex woman, and take her from the high place she occupies and drag her into the arena of public life. What has she to do there? We might as well try to drag down the angels to take part in the menial affairs of this world as to take woman from the high place she occupies in the family, where ’tis her privilege and duty to guide, to counsel and to instruct—to lead that family in the way of righteousness. It is but offering her a degradation; Almighty God never intended it. The charm, the influence of woman, is in that purity that comes from living in a sphere apart from us. God forbid that we should ever see the day that a man, a husband or a father, is to find his will opposed and thwarted at the polls by his daughter or his wife. Then farewell to that reverence which belongs to the character of woman.
She puts herself on an equal footing with man when she steps down from that place where every one regards her with reverence, and becomes unsexed by striving to make laws which she cannot enforce, and taking upon herself duties for which she is altogether unfitted.