One quick niggling contextualizing comment off to the side. John Knox’s famous missive, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, has been mentioned a couple times in the comments of this discussion about Sarah Palin.
John Knox wrote the booklet, aiming it at Bloody Mary, a vicious persecutor of the saints who held to the Reformed faith in England. But as the booklet was released, in a striking comedy of bad timing, Mary died, and Elizabeth took her place. In short, Knox was aiming at Mary and hit Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was a protector of the Protestants, just as Mary had been an assailant of them. Because of Elizabeth’s attitude toward the Reformation, Knox was more than willing to accept Elizabeth as a godly Deborah, and wrote to Elizabeth, telling her so. But Elizabeth could have her prickly moments, and took personally what Knox had intended for someone else entirely.
So, although he addresses the Deborah argument in his booklet, his rejection of it is in the context of Mary, an ungodly Deborah. He was quite happy to accept the Deborah exception when the rule being exercised was righteous. In short, Knox cannot be enlisted in the ranks of those who exclude women in civil office across the board.