Matthew 10:28

Do not fear him who can kill the body. Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

“This is a pretty long list of what we might rightly call “sexual indiscretions” or “perversities.” So you can imagine all the eyebrow-raising I did while reading post after post lambasting Hefner written by people … who literally … adore … Trump.

It just seems like there’s cognitive dissonance going on here. If you believe the objectification and sexualization of women are bad for society, then why would Trump be your candidate?

The only difference I can see between Christian treatment of the two men is that Trump persuaded white evangelicals to vouch for his character. It didn’t matter that Trump has denied asking God’s forgiveness, not wanting to bring God “into that picture,” or that he proudly pledges to hit back 10 times harder against anyone who first hits him. (Astute readers will spot the big difference between Trump’s maxim and the one we learned from Jesus and also our preschool teachers.)

What mattered to a whole bunch of white evangelicals in the end was that some of their most well-placed leaders assured them that actually Trump was repentant and that actually Trump was a baby Christian and that actually Trump was forgiven for his many, many sexual perversities because God forgives people. (Except for, it seems, Bill Clinton, who admitted to sexual transgression, and except for, it also seems, his wife, who literally had nothing to do with that but hey, she’s a woman, so screw her.)

All of this brings us back full circle to the relationship of Hugh Hefner and Trump, which is forever memorialized in a picture of a picture.”

Last fall we were darkly warned that the Church would die at the hands of Hilary Diocletian and that Trump was the New Constantine who alone could save her (Jesus apparently having retired to Trump Tower to watch porn).

Nope. Clinton could never destroy the Church. No persecutor can. But Christians can (and, in the case of Trump supporters, have) put all their efforts into destroying their credibility and wrecking the Church’s witness.

Yesterday, due to his moral proximity to the Sex Predator-in-Chief,

the Good White Christian Family Values Culture Warriors at the Federalist, who used to pretend they cared about Bill Clinton’s sex life, leapt to the defense of St. Hugh Hefner and claimed that he was celebrating sexual complementarity! Translation: This fleshmonger wasn’t gay! So he’s a Culture War Hero!

One of my readers then pointed out that Hefner was, in fact, embarrassed to have had Trump on the cover.

So it has come to this: Hugh Hefner had a greater sense of shame than the leaders of the Religious Right:

The Religious Right are the people the Religious Right warned you about twenty years ago. – Russell Moore