Sex, porn, bikinis, health care, hunger and Great Gatsby depravity

Those of us who grew up in white evangelical schools and churches are used to being coerced into submission under the threat of exile. In what we experienced as a theocracy, these institutions held total control over our lives, including what we did in the privacy of our own homes.

If we didn’t submit to our school’s authority, we’d be expelled. If we didn’t submit to our church’s authority, we’d be “handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” Men always were the authority, women always were their helper or their threat, and virtually every rule always related back to sex.

The independent Baptist world I grew up in used to be considered fringe. These were extremist outliers who were laughed at by the supposedly more liberal world of Southern Baptists. But as conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention, their fundamentalist impulses continued to fester until the authoritarianism once considered fringe became mainstream.

So imagine what might happen when these patriarchal white evangelical authoritarians embrace Christian nationalism, gain control of the U.S. government and start shaping our policies.

Obsessed with sex

Most of the rules we had to follow in the schools and churches I was a part of were designed to avoid any experience of sexuality. For example, we couldn’t listen to any form of contemporary or rock music because the authorities claimed that emphasizing the second and fourth beat of a measure of music as opposed to the first and third beat was mimicking the sex act.

“Most of the rules we had to follow in the schools and churches I was a part of were designed to avoid any experience of sexuality.”

We called it “the sex beat.” Thus, contemporary music was evil because it was considered sexual. Even married couples who could have sex couldn’t listen to rock music because it would be considered defiling the marriage bed.

The girls in my high school and college never were allowed to wear pants. In fact, one year my high school compromised during an especially frigid week by allowing the girls to wear loose fitting wind suit pants for softball practice as long as they wore culottes over the top. The boys thought it was hilarious, while the girls were humiliated. Again, the reason these rules existed was to avoid any experience of sexual desire.

While the girls constantly had to meet to talk about not tempting boys, the boys had to meet to talk about avoiding masturbation. When I asked my teacher during class one day what we should do when we’re aroused, he said we should go outside and play basketball. And then when I asked him what I should tell my parents when I’m going outside to play basketball at midnight, he said I was being argumentative.

When I was a student at Bob Jones University, I couldn’t walk on the bridge in the center of campus with a female student by myself. I also got scolded by a faculty member once for pausing in front of the women’s dorms after an event for 30 seconds to say goodbye to my date. And often when male students would go into the dean of men’s office to get permission for something, the dean of men would take the opportunity to ask them if they masturbated.

Remember, in this world, God gives men a mission with women as their helpers. And Satan can jeopardize their mission by turning women into threats who cause men to masturbate. Thus, our entire lives in this world revolved around rules that controlled what women did to protect men’s callings by disconnecting all of us from anything related to sexual desire.

Identifying with women in porn

So of course, porn becomes like the pink elephant you can’t stop thinking about because you’re constantly being warned not to think about it. Typically when conversations about porn come up, a lot of people are processing the topic through lenses that have been shaped by many of these wounds. So they miss some of the subtle nuances that authoritarian men may be pushing. This is why it’s so hard for me to write about porn. Because typically when we’re talking about porn, we have no awareness we’re actually talking about other things.

For example, “This is a generation that is totally sexually dysfunctional, I think, because of pornography,” white nationalist and Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes said in his now infamous interview with Tucker Carlson last week that is splitting the MAGA movement into a civil war over antisemitism. Most of the commentary has focused on Fuentes’ comments about Stalin and Hitler. But as I wrote last week, one glaring topic getting missed is how they blamed all society’s woes on women in an attempt to justify their own power over women.

Carlson added that porn “seems like it’s making a lot of people gay too.”

“Yeah, and trans,” Fuentes replied.

Suddenly, the idea is being planted that being gay and trans are ultimate evils to be avoided. So while people think they’re having a conversation about porn, they’re actually using porn as a way of pushing other agendas.

“There’s multiple kinds of transexuals,” Fuentes asserted. “One kind of transexual is somebody who likes the idea of seeing themselves as a woman. … And I think one of the theories for that is you watch a man having sex with a woman that isn’t you so much, you kind of achieve an identity with the woman in like a weird sick way. You almost identify with the woman.”

But why is it weird and sick to identify with women? Your answer to that may differ based on the degree to which you embrace the agenda of patriarchy.

From there, Fuentes and Carlson transitioned into the defense of patriarchy I discussed last week where they promoted men being the head and getting to call all the shots. So what’s happening here isn’t a conversation about sexual desire and wholeness, or about the dignity and value of women. Instead, it’s a conversation that uses conservative Christians’ aversion to porn to discourage identifying with women for fear of becoming gay or transgender and upsetting the created order of male headship and absolute power.

Bikinis as softcore porn

Thanks to the rise of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the fringe movement of Doug Wilson is now in power at the Pentagon. So what did Joshua Haymes, who was one of the pastoral interns at the church Hegseth was a member of prior to moving to Washington, D.C., post this week?

“Bikinis are soft core porn,” he claimed. “The inventor of the bikini, Louis Réard, couldn’t get any self-respecting woman to model it for him, so the first woman to model the bikini was a stripper named Micheline Bernardini.”

And what does Haymes suggest we do about bikinis?

“They were also illegal to wear in public until the 1960s, because they were indecent,” he suggested. “These laws were good and right, and we should do our best to reinstate them.”

He doesn’t take any responsibility for his own mindset or actions toward women. Instead, he wants to control women, which is a feature of patriarchy.

Controlling women in health care

With medical insurance premiums set to skyrocket, many people are concerned they’re no longer going to be able to afford health care. One way conservative Christians attempt to deal with the high costs of health care is through a plan called Medi-Share.

“Tired of expensive health care costs?” their website asks. “With Medi-Share, you get affordable, quality care that won’t compromise your values, and connects you with a biblical community who want the same thing.” It’s regularly advertised on conservative Christian radio.

But when you look at their membership agreement, there are strings attached. And as expected, they have to do with sex.

“Members agree that sex should be exclusively within Biblical Christian Marriage,” the agreement says in a section titled “Pregnancies of Unwed Mothers.”

“Thus, maternity medical expenses for newborns conceived outside of marriage are ineligible for sharing. Pregnancies resulting from rape reported to a law enforcement authority are the only exception.”

There’s nothing there about men losing their health coverage. There’s no acknowledgement that some women may not report their rape for a variety of reasons. All the responsibility falls on women.

And lest we call out their hypocrisy for claiming to be pro-life while not caring for these babies and their mothers, they claim, “In order to encourage and support the preservation of the lives of these unborn children, Christian Care Ministry is dedicated to assist in arranging for maternity and adoption services through Christian organizations.”

So if you become impregnated by anyone other than your husband, they’ll essentially take your baby.

Starving kids while blaming their moms

The other major concern right now is the 42 million Americans losing access to food due to the Trump administration’s refusal to fund the SNAP program. Many of these millions are children.

So how does Steven Anderson, the independent Baptist pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix, respond?

You guessed it. By blaming women over something to do with sex.

“But, but SNAP goes to FAMILIES with CHILDREN!” he mocked on social media.

Then he added, “You mean single moms who fornicated and produced bastard children with multiple dads? Are those the families you speak of?”

This is where he reveals his motive. He concludes, “People who legitimately need help should get it from family members and/or churches, who will actually hold them accountable.” In other words, we should allow any children to starve whose single moms won’t submit to an evangelical church run by men.

Trump’s Great Gatsby party

The pattern is clear. Men are the authorities who are given a mission from God. Women are either their helpers or their threats. So men wield absolute control by creating the rules that protect their territory. Then anything that doesn’t promote the power of men gets seen as evil and blamed on women, while the consequences get passed down to single moms and children.

“The patriarchy uses porn to promote their own power.”

They talk about how porn rewires your brain. But what they don’t mention is how they are rewiring people’s brains to connect everything with sex in such a way that sexual desire is constantly brought to our attention, linked to fear and toward a response of total submission to them. In other words, the patriarchy uses porn to promote their own power.

So how do we make sense, then, of these Christian nationalists promoting Donald Trump and participating in his Great Gadsby Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago that featured women in bikinis dancing seductively in giant martini glasses? If women are so dangerous and bikinis are so tempting, shouldn’t these Christians be the ones calling Trump out?

One reason they’re being silent about Trump’s bikini dancers is they’ve so idolized their patriarchal mission of power they’ll ultimately ignore anything that jeopardizes it. They don’t want to be seen as hypocrites or have their party compared to something from Epstein Island. So just like they do in their sexual abuse coverups, they’ll occasionally pretend there’s nothing to see.

Trump’s depravity as a deterrent

But rest assured, their fear of bikinis hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there. And perhaps that’s what’s most concerning of all in this conversation.

Many of us are rightly disturbed by Trump’s treatment of women. Trump is the guy who brags about walking into underage girls’ dressing rooms while they’re naked. He’s the one evaluating women’s bodies and then bragging about assaulting them. If anyone is totally depraved, Trump fits the bill.

But in a weird and sick way, what if Trump’s depravity is actually a deterrent that is protecting the rest of us from authoritarian Christians gaining the power to place on the nation the very strict rules we experienced in their schools and churches? If Trump weren’t so obsessed with women’s bodies, who would stop these authoritarians from banning bikinis, turning our nation’s health care system into one that enforces their values of sexuality by abandoning women who get pregnant out of wedlock, and starving kids while blaming their moms?

Trump’s getting old. Even if he finds a way to run in 2028, at some point, he won’t be around and his depravity no longer will be standing between us and authoritarian Christians’ sex-obsessed quest for control. So maybe we shouldn’t be dependent on Trump’s depravity to deter authoritarian Christians from creating the theocracy they crave.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.