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

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on November 7, 2025.

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.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.