This is one for the Vox record books. The liberal site — which purports to “explain” the news — is now trying to explain why some conservative Christians are sharing Beyoncé lyrics and passages from Fifty Shades of Grey in response to the Trump tapes. Their explanation? Christians view dirty words and sex assault as basically the same because, well, read it for yourself:
As I wrote last year when discussing why Christian conservatives are so likely to blame pornography for other, seemingly more serious sins (like adultery), at its most literal level, Christianity views all sins as equally bad. In the eyes of God, whether you’re murdering someone or telling a white lie is roughly equivalent, because both are sinful.
This makes the whole conservative Christian philosophy uniquely susceptible to slippery slope arguments. If a sin is a sin is a sin, saying the word “pussy” is on a direct line with assaulting someone. The former might be legal and the latter illegal, but it’s all one long downward spiral of sinfulness.
No, just no. Christians do not believe all sins are equally bad. We believe all sins separate us from God, but all sins are certainly not “equally” bad in their moral gravity or their earthly consequences. I’ve never met a rational living Christian who believes it’s just as bad if their spouse drops the “f bomb” on occasion or commits adultery or assaults their children. Honestly, this is pretty basic stuff, Vox. Do better.
So why are Christians equating pop culture and Donald Trump? First, many of them are making the mistake of presuming that he’s not talking about terrible things that he’s actually done, but rather just engaging in “crass” or “rude” talk. In other words, they don’t think he’s necessarily confessing to sexual battery or attempting to seduce a married woman but instead trying to somehow impress Billy Bush. I think it’s far more likely that he’s talking about actual conduct, and that makes the tapes particularly damaging.
Second, regarding pop culture, it’s not that pop culture is just crass — it celebrates perversion. Fifty Shades of Grey seems to describe its own sexual assault. Here are key passages, via Rod Dreher:
“No,” I protest, trying to kick him off. He stops.
“If you struggle, I’ll tie your feet too. If you make a noise, Anastasia, I will gag you.”
And:
“How did you feel while I was hitting you and after?”
“I didn’t like it. I’d rather you didn’t do it again.”
“You weren’t meant to like it.”
I’m not even going to attempt to quote Beyonce’s lyrics. They don’t describe sexual assault but instead a quid pro quo-style sex relationship where she grants all kinds of favors to men she has sex with — the kind of relationship that women have forever rightly condemned as sexual harassment. I’m sure that they’ll argue the great and infallible Queen Bey was artfully subverting perverse and sexist cultural norms, but in reality it sounds an awful lot like celebrating the use of power for sexual exploitation.
At the heart of the conservative critique, however, is something very real — calling out a Left that has helped sexually debase our culture to such an extent that only one moral norm remains, and even that’s truly optional in the right context. All the Left cares about anymore is consent, but its icons (like Bill Clinton) get a pass even then, and if a novel gets popular enough — like Fifty Shades of Grey — then it exists in its own exempted, subversive category. Heather Mac Donald says it well:
A routine objection to Trump is that he makes, in the words of the New York Times, “gutter attacks on women.” But why should women be exempt from Trump’s gutter attacks on anyone he wants to humiliate? Trump’s gratuitous nastiness to men and women alike, kicking people when they are down, unfits him to serve as the premier civic role model for the nation’s children. But the feminists can’t have it both ways: declaring that women should be equal to men in all things and then still demand a chivalric deference to female’s delicate sensibilities. Either women are the same as men or they’re not. It is particularly galling to see the selective resurrection of Victorian values from the same crowd that has been pushing transgender locker rooms on the world, in an effort to destroy the last shred of girls’ innate sexual modesty.
And:
But Democrats are the most shameless in their outrage over the Trump braggadocio, having dismissed Bill Clinton’s White House and gubernatorial escapades for years, and standing as the party of maximal sexual liberation, unlike the Republicans. The New York Times rejects the relevance of Clinton’s predatory White House behavior on the ground that “Mr. Clinton is not running for president.” But the Times did not find Clinton’s behavior significant when Clinton was in office, either.
Yes, that’s because Clinton would keep abortion legal, and the consent crowd celebrates the act of ripping children apart without their permission. So long as a Democrat advances the right policies and keeps the right people in power, then he or she all too often gets a pass. That’s the lesson of the Clinton years. And I’ll keep reminding them of their own “principles” each and every time I see a crocodile tear rolling down a hypocritical leftist face.