Introduction
So then, Ultra Right Beer has released a “Conservative Dads Real Women of America” pin-up calendar – you know, twelve months of PG-13 cleavage, swimsuits, and slightly naughty poses in the kitchen. But don’t worry. It’s all completely “conservative” cleavage. None of those boobs ever voted for a democrat. But of course that is what these so-called “conservative women” are being presented as: boobs and butts and legs. Oh, and apparently one gal has guns. And all absolutely REAL, we are told breathlessly by the used car salesmen. And at the very same time, if those insults weren’t enough, piles of “Conservative Dads” are being mocked as nothing but cocks.
OK, maybe that’s not all they are, but the clear message is that a little bit of lust is just fine. A little bit of lust is human. A little bit of lust is conservative. And if you have a problem with this little bit of lust, you’re probably jealous or you’re a fundamentalist neanderthal or both. And we can’t win with puritanical prudes like Jenna Ellis or Meg Basham and Allie Beth Stuckey. If conservatism doesn’t have a little bit of lust it will be the party of nerds and losers.
Not to be left in the dust of Mammon, Zondervan quickly announced that they have a “Conservative Dads Real Women of the Bible” devotional calendar releasing shortly, featuring Bathsheba partially submerged in her rooftop bathtub on the front cover with the verse “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys” (Song 2:1).
Ok, not sure about the Zondervan calendar, but the Ultra Right Beer calendar is real. Real lame, but I digress. UItra Right Beer was launched last year by one Seth Weathers apparently as a response to the Bud Light suicide commercial featuring the crossdressing gonzo Dylan Mulvaney up to his waxed chest in a bubble bath. While folks familiar with the conservative world will recognize a number of the names of the women who chose to have their bodies ogled by conservative lust, the one that is likely to register to most folks is Riley Gaines, the former NCAA competitive swimmer who has courageously objected to men participating in women’s sports. The calendar even heralds its own virtue by donating 10% of the profits to the Riley Gaines Center to protect women’s sports “from extreme leftist ideology seeking to destroy real women.”
This is like a Cancer Society calendar celebrating chain smoking. This is like an NBA basketball calendar with twelve months of midgets. This is like a Drivers Ed calendar for Conservative Teens with twelve months of pictures of teens happily drinking and driving. This is like calling government money for private schools “school choice.” Heh. You can’t fight extreme immorality with a little less immorality.
El Problemo
Seth Weathers responded somewhere with a picture of a woman in a hijab, only her eyes showing, saying that having heard all the complaints against “calendargate,” this Muslim lass would be the January 2025 model. Jenna Ellis vocally condemned the calendar and received all kinds of ridicule, including piles of normal pictures that she has posted of herself doing ordinary things. And regardless of whether I would have personally recommended every one of them (having a pretty overactive pastoral vibe-o-meter on selfie-posting), there is nevertheless a massive difference between a photo op of Bathsheba in her skivvies on the rooftop and the occasional selfie on the run. And this is why conservatives, up to this point, really can’t have nice things.
Amid the cries that there’s nothing wrong with a little cleavage, what are you, some kind of pervert? Another good woman protested that the calendar was clearly celebrating the sexualization of these women rather than celebrating their true glory: motherhood and homemaking — where are all their children and strollers? And then, as if to prove that the point of the calendar was in fact lust, a Twitter mob began shrieking as though she was suggesting that children be included in the lust calendar. Ah. So the point is lust, then isn’t it? You can’t have it both ways. Either the point is sexual or it isn’t. And it clearly is.
As I have pointed out previously, there are many on the conservative right who are not really interested in conservatism; they just don’t want the extreme excesses of the left. They want to return to a point earlier in the story where no one knew that the seeming nice man (introduced in chapter 3) was actually a grotesque villain (as came out in chapter 7). But the problem, el problemo, as we call it in the biz, is that this is like running the wrong way up the escalator and thinking you have solved some significant problem. But at best you’ve only delayed the inevitable outcome. You cannot deal with gross immorality by returning to an earlier stage of the lust. You cannot deal with a mass abuse psychosis (with thousands of middle school girls contemplating hormone suppressors and mastectomies) by returning to an earlier stage of the grooming. What is needed is full repentance. The sin must be repudiated utterly.
And yes, the grooming was the pinup calendars of the 1950s. It was the grooming of lust that said you can harbor adultery in your heart and that won’t impact your families, your churches, or your nation. And here we are, a near corpse of a nation, like the concubine raped all night and left for dead at the Levite’s doorstep, and these so-called conservatives want to go back to the beginning of the night with the cat calls and leering looks. Of course many Christians cannot even fathom really going back to the 1950s. Many Christian communities would be horrified for one of the ladies to show up to a church picnic in her bra and underwear, but if there’s water within hundred yards, feel free. And if you don’t act like a stripper like all the other girls, you’re probably a Islamofascist. And many “Christians” for fear of being thought weird, buy the $90 scrap of fabric that publicly proclaims you’re primary value is sexual. And incidentally, that has been happening for decades as women have been convinced that they have to sacrifice their modesty in order to swim very fast and win medals. We invited the lust of men into women’s athletics a long time ago with many of the required uniforms.
It’s actually been quite encouraging to see all the pushback on this calendar. 1950s “conservatism” is a dead end. Jesus said that adultery begins as lust in the heart. Men and women who do not honor the marriage bed and marriage vows and Christian modesty cannot be trusted to honor their vows to uphold the constitution or anything remotely resembling biblical justice or prudence.
Collision of Religions
What we are seeing in real time is the collision of two rival religions. One is the religion of the Enlightenment that introduced a fundamental bifurcation between ultimate, transcendent truth, goodness, and beauty and this world’s public good, and Christianity, which says that you cannot have public good apart from transcendent truth, goodness, and beauty. One says you can have freedom and happiness apart from Christ, and the other says, how’s that working out for you? In other words, modern secularism has claimed that you can believe whatever you want privately and practice whatever faith you like in your heart or in your free time, but when it comes to the public square and the public good, everyone must assume neutrality and agnosticism. And that means, that you can do whatever you want in your private life, including lust, including adultery. But you can’t practice lust in private and get fidelity in public.
But if the resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Holy Spirit is anything, it is the public announcement that Christ is King of this world. This is the dominant message of the book of Acts. What the public officials did out in public, God reversed in public with many witnesses: “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; whom God hath raised up… This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:23-24).
The message of the Christian Church is the message of Pentecost, and it is a public message for all to see and hear. It is a message of repentance for all: kings, judges, senators, law enforcement, business men, pastors, seminary professors, journalists, brewers, and everyone. The son of David has been coronated King, and His throne is in heaven, over all kings and lords and authorities.
In other words, there’s a sense in which we will either have the obscenity of Christ in the public square, or else we will have every other kind of obscenity in the public square.
Conclusion
In the early 1800’s, Alexander de Tocqueville wrote, “Of the world’s countries, America is surely the one where the bond of marriage is most respected and where they have conceived the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness.” Elsewhere he explains how he sees religion having its most significant impact on the state: “It is in regulating the family,” that religion “works to regulate the state” he wrote.
Many Americans want our nation to return to Christ, but they do not understand that faithful marriages are central to that project. And the only way to have faithful marriages is for every form of lust to be repudiated and repented of. This does not at all mean a nation of hijabs. What a silly argument. We are Christians. There is a colossal difference between the adorning of a godly woman who is not hidden under layers of burlap and a striptease on the sidewalk or a calendar.
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