This weekend I happened upon a video that by now, most of you have seen. It’s a crazy man verbally attacking teenage girls about how they’re dressed. Most of the articles read he “confronted” the women, but this looked more like a verbal assault rather than a confrontation. Confrontation usually involves two parties, and one party feels wronged by the other party based on bad behavior. You could say that this is exactly what happened… but the young women had done nothing wrong—especially to our beach preacher—so there was no confrontation here. We have one man trying to slather his own issues all over innocent bystanders—or sunbathers as the case may be. That was verbal assault.
Of course the overarching irony here is a man telling women how they ought to dress and behave in public. Now before I am accused of the very same thing, this article is about the man: his behavior, and his logic.
I had an Evangelical upbringing all throughout my youth, and even embraced it into my adultery… ahem… adulthood, so I know these arguments intimately. The pun wasn’t intended here, but I’m all for a good pun, so let’s pretend it was. This is why I feel so compelled to talk about it—because it’s insidious. Most of us know that, but we don’t necessarily know why. So let’s break down the article.
Logan Van Dorn starts out making the argument:
Take young eyes into consideration. They don’t need to see pornography right in front of them. You’re flaunting your stuff.
It this right here, believe it or not, that is the crux of his argument and the crux of the purity movement in general. Sexuality—particularly female sexuality—is bad and any woman who would dare to express any contentment with that sexuality is a temptress, sent by Satan to lure young (and old) men astray into the abyss.
Then notice how he escalates his rhetoric. He jumps immediately to “pornography” to describe their ‘behavior?’/’dress?’/’persona?’ Logically it’s confusing, but he makes the leap. Something about them is “pornographic.” There isn’t even room for other terms, like titillating, erotic, exotic… nope! He jumps right to pornographic. And I think he escalated to this level on purpose. It’s the worst word he can think of, and if he’s going to shame them, then he must choose words that will bring about that end result.
Full disclosure, I have a saying:
There are two types of Evangelical men in the world: those who watch porn, and those who deny they watch porn.
The point he seems desperate to make, so much so that he keeps repeating himself, is that female sexuality is bad. Very bad. Several times in the video he calls out the women for ‘showing their bodies.’ Something that is wrong to him, as he goes on to say:
If men of God don’t stand up, then our society’s gonna go down the drain because there’s no morality
Again, this is the story of the Evangelical. It’s the MAN that defines the will of God. It’s up to MEN to stand up to ‘wanton’ women and protect our fellow men from popping a hard-on. He invokes his young boys in the video as well, but if they are traumatized, it’s not by the women, but by their father and the so-called adults in their lives.
This is another tragedy of the Evangelical, though. The only yardstick by which they can define morality is feminine sexuality (and gay sexuality, but that’s because it looks so ‘feminine’ to them). Based on the picture of Dorn, he appears to have tattoos. Of course quoting Leviticus 19:28 is cliché at this point, but it’s still lost on him.
So let’s peek behind the curtain here. “If men of God…” This references the idea of man’s ownership of women but advocates something even more sinister. And believe it or not, this idea is post-Christian era. Women and their sexuality are the cause of sin… While Hebrew scriptures do posit women as property, and Paul had a rather strong misogynist streak, it was the early church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo who starting associating women and sexuality with sin (particularly original sin). In Confessions, Augustine calls his female character a barrier, an obstruction to the spiritual life of a Christian (man I presume). In his Letter to Laetus he says:
Watch out that she does not twist and turn you for the worse. What difference does it make whether it is in a wife or in a mother, provided we nonetheless avoid Eve in any woman?
~ Letter to Laetus (Letter 243.10)
His assertions were carried on and magnified by other church fathers: men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas… these men all helped formulate the doctrine that it was Eve, the woman, who introduced sin into the world, is therefore responsible for the sins of man.
For woman seems to be a creature somewhat different from man, in that she has dissimilar members, a varied form and a mind weaker than man. Although Eve was a most excellent and beautiful creature, like unto Adam in reference to the image of God, that is with respect to righteousness, wisdom and salvation, yet she was a woman. For as the sun is more glorious than the moon, though the moon is a most glorious body, so woman, though she was a most beautiful work of God, yet she did not equal the glory of the male creature.
~ Martin Luther
I seriously doubt that Dorn has any idea what he’s doing here or how he’s perpetuating the idea that women are the stumbling blocks to men. He might, in fact, even try to deny that this is what he’s doing. Which brings up another challenge with Evangelicals. They are unable to be introspective. Which becomes obvious in his response to the viral video.
In his own defense, he claims that he was introduced to porn at a young age and that later he was addicted to porn. “It destroyed me” he said in the video.
I’m not going to question his ‘addiction’ per se, since addiction is real and has some profoundly significant consequences. However, this is where my Evangelical training kicks in. we were taught from a very early age that sexual feelings were bad, were sin, were evil. And when I say ‘early age,’ I mean before we even knew what sex and sexuality was. When I was in junior high, I made a joke about a guy who peeled out in front of us: “Hey, no need to burn rubber on Main Street…” I was chastised for this joke, even though I had no idea why.
For my entire teenage life I was told that masturbation was an addiction. Not just from my parents, but from Evangelical psychologists as well. Hey, it was in impulse, and I couldn’t stop. Wet dreams meant that Satan had entered into my mind at night and that I needed to have demons exorcised from my body. The very fact that I found others ‘attractive,’ meant that I had ‘sinned in my heart,’ and dishonored the name of God.
Of course in my case I was a gay man which is still, to this day, the worst sin of all.
To be honest, I don’t remember when I choose to be gay, but I think I was about ten years old. I was looking in my underwear drawer trying to decide between the Batman or Superman Underoos and I thought, “You know what? My life isn’t messed up enough. I’m going to be gay so that God and everybody will hate me.” Why else would I be wearing a superhero around the batarangs and bat gun?
Meanwhile, the real immorality—the immorality that Jesus found so reprehensible goes unquestioned. Abuse of the poor, lying, hypocrisy, anger, violence… they don’t even enter into the Evangelical lexicon of immorality.
What these women experienced, and we all watched, was Logan Van Dorn trying to slather his own illness and misgivings (and the illness of the ages) onto them and make his problems their fault—and then—just because he’s Evangelical, he had to make a dig at transgender people. I think it’s in the Self-Righteous Arrogant Blowhole Guide for Dummies, which he appears to have memorized.
It all reminds me of a story told in the synoptic gospels. Since Matthew and Luke copied much of their gospel from Mark, it’s likely that Mark’s was the first version of the story. In Matthew and Mark, it’s told as the story of Jesus cursing a fig tree on his way to clear the temple. In Luke, it’s told as a parable and there’s no curse involved.
Mark tells it like this:
The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
~ Mark 11:12-14
On the surface this just seems silly. Why would Jesus even expect fruit out of season? Oh but the symbolism. Figs and fig leaves. When Adam and Eve sinned, the first thing they realized was they were nekked… and they covered themselves with fig leaves.
And according to modern scholars, that’s exactly what Jesus was talking about. Those who see morality only through the lens of sex and sexuality. Which is where Evangelicals stop… they see only the fig leaves and ignore the fact that the tree is bereft of fruit, sustenance. They excuse that by saying, “it’s not growing season yet,” even though it is, but they can’t see that. Another way to put it might be “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.”
When his disciples question him, Jesus goes on to give us the famous “you can say to this mountain, ‘be thou removed’…” it would seem that he sees the barren tree as an obstacle… a powerful one… so much so that he compared it to a mountain.
Jesus is hungry. He wants more than just the show—he wants actual nourishment. Real substance. He’s seen the fig leaves. He knows we’re nekked. That’s of little interest to him. He wants us to be out there doing something. Something that brings life into the world.
Logan Van Dorn and his ilk are the fig tree. And no, Jesus isn’t asking us to literally curse them. He’s simply reminding us to acknowledge who men like Dorn are, and not to back down from them. We recognize what they themselves can’t see that they’re simply a waste of time/space. But I also think he wants us to continue to pressure “men” like Dorn and remind them they aren’t in God’s favor… and here’s why…