In his latest campaign ad, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) pulled a Breitbart — he edited video of his opponent Daniel Webster to make him appear to be saying something other than what he really said. factcheck.org has the details: Rep. Grayson Lowers the Bar.

In a new ad, Grayson accuses his Republican opponent Daniel Webster of being a religious fanatic and dubs him “Taliban Dan.” But to make his case, Grayson manipulates a video clip to make it appear Webster was commanding wives to submit to their husbands, quoting a passage in the Bible. Four times, the ad shows Webster saying wives should submit to their husbands. In fact, Webster was cautioning husbands to avoid taking that passage as their own. The unedited quote is: “Don’t pick the ones [Bible verses] that say, ‘She should submit to me.’”

The full context of Webster’s statement is interesting, though:

Webster: So, write a journal. Second, find a verse. I have a verse for my wife, I have verses for my wife. Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘She should submit to me.’ That’s in the Bible, but pick the ones that you’re supposed to do. So instead, ‘love your wife, even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it’ as opposed to ‘wives submit to your own husbands.’ She can pray that, if she wants to, but don’t you pray it.

It’s true that Grayson went way over the line and turned this into something it wasn’t; he may have lost himself the election with this stunt.

However … what Daniel Webster’s actually saying is that if women choose to make themselves subservient because the Bible tells them to, that’s just fine with him. He’s not saying that nobody should use those verses, he’s just saying men shouldn’t do it. I guess he thinks it’s rude or something.

It’s kind of a soft patriarchalism. He may not want to force women to become chattel, but he doesn’t have to; they’re supposed to choose it themselves.