C.S. Lewis, as someone whose ideology overlaps with contemporary evangelical thought to a large extent, naturally argues in Mere Christianity for an inconsistent sort of sexual prudery that treats all sexual expression outside of a legal marriage as Biblically illegitimate. Having elaborated somewhat on his stances towards sexual morality, it is marriage that he next moves to. Here, even more of his stupidity is exposed. Lewis openly advocates for the complementarian idea of wives unilaterally submitting to husbands and husbands unilaterally leading when disputes break out between them without any consideration for the logical fact that this trivializes the leadership and character of women while forcing men to take on needless, potentially enormous responsibilities that he is not obligated to bear.
First, he talks about the concept of a "head" in a marriage:
"The need for some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent. Of course, as long as the husband and wife are agreed, no question of a head need arise; and we may hope that this will be the normal state of affairs in a Christian marriage. But when there is a real disagreement, what is to happen? Talk it over, of course; but I am assuming they have done that and still failed to reach agreement. What do they do next? . . . If marriage is permanent, one or other party must, in the last resort, have the power of deciding the family policy." (113)
First of all, it does not follow from a lack of agreement that the husband or wife specifically gets to make a decision because of his or her gender, as Lewis soon says about husbands. Second, a truly rational couple will not have any significant disagreements at all because they will not make assumptions about philosophy or each other. There is no evidence that most couples, Christians or not, care more about truth, reason, and morality than they do about each other, and there is a plethora of evidence supporting the exact opposite. If there is a need for a "head," though, it is the more rational and just person alone who could deserve to lead, but this has nothing to do with gender. Lewis pretends otherwise:
"If there must be a head, why the man? Well, firstly is there any very serious wish that it should be the woman? As I have said, I am not married myself, but as far as I can see, even a woman who wants to be the head of her own house does not usually admire the same state of things when she finds it going on next door." (113)
There is not even any attempt to disguise the fact that this is nothing other than an appeal to the subjective, malleable preferences of random people. This "observation" is epistemologically and morally meaningless because reason and moral obligations have nothing to do with human preferences. If Lewis is merely using this pathetic statement to argue for a complementarian understanding of Ephesians 5:22, he needed only to read the verse right before it to see that mutual love is already the context, not some special love or authority spouses have because of their genitalia. More importantly, the idea of gender stereotypes, whether a person thinks they are positive or negative, is inherently illogical: there is no logical connection between being born with a penis or vagina (along with the other bodily characteristics of men or women, as gender is purely physical) and having certain psychological traits or moral authority.
Unsurprisingly to rationalistic readers, Lewis next makes a variety of outright assumptions--and false ones at that--about the nature of gender, marriage, and family in order to seemingly justify his complementarianism:
"The relations of the family to the outer world--what might be called its foreign policy--must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally, almost, in a sense, rightly, their claims override, for her, all other claims. She is the special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife." (113-114)
What nonsense! There is no such thing as an inherent gravitation of men or women towards any particular moral, personality, or spiritual characteristic, and only people who knowingly or unknowingly believe non sequitur fallacies are valid would think otherwise. Furthermore, Lewis completely ignores abusive, selfish, and neglectful mothers, which are no less evil than abusive, selfish, or neglectful fathers. If he did acknowledge that even a single aspect of human desires and moral responsibility have nothing to do with gender, of course, he can only make arbitrary exceptions. When reason refutes all gender stereotypes, not just some, such arbitrary exceptions can only be irrational.
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