Effeminacy

Our long-lost friend, BikeBubba, just posted on Nordstrom's latest fashion statement for men. Baracuda Straight Leg Jeans come muddy and stained and the ad copy reads:

Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that's seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you're not afraid to get down and dirty.

Mike Rowe says Nordstrom's $450 jeans are "a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic."

By the way, give me two wishes and the first will be that I never again have to listen to a woman say anything is her "passion." The second will be that I never again have to listen to a man say anything is "ironic."

The past couple of weeks under a variety of posts, we've been discussing effeminate men—men real men refer to as "gay," "soft," or a word beginning with "p" and ending with "y."

With that as the context, a friend just forwarded this article from ESPNFC lamenting the death of "hard men" across professional soccer leagues—especially England's Premier League. Here are a couple excerpts from "Where have football's hard men gone?...

Men's clothes say everything they want to say about themselves, but if someone points out what they're saying, they act shocked. And offended. "How dare you listen to my appearance!"

Everyone knows precisely what the man wants you to think of him because of his carefully coiffed hair, urban-biker leathers, puffy carefully coiffed scarf, and LOOOOKATMMEEEEEE frames. The guy's vanity is screaming at you!

But pity the poor sucker who dares to point out the guy's a bounder and his appearance is effeminate.

Every prior generation of Christian leader would have shamed the Christian leader who presented himself preciously. Whose appearance was vain. Who presented himself effeminately, like a woman. Shoot, Calvin and his company of pastors shamed and disciplined one of their pastors for merely speaking that way. They told him his artsy-fartsy-splashy-philosophical rhetoric was incompatible with preaching. Further, that all the young men training to be pastors who were so enamored of him were being led down a destructive path. He was to cease and desist, disciplining his verbiage to be simple and direct. His words were to stop being vain, calling attention to himself.

Today though, we're so drowning in effeminacy that even vanity of appearance isn't shamed and condemned. Older men are so scared of being mocked by callow youth that we wouldn't think of disciplining Christian leaders' effeminacy...

Remember, the goal of my writing on sexuality is not to demean women and promote male privilege. Every brash woman and effeminate man who hates Baylyblog never stops repeating these accusations, but they couldn't be further from the truth. Manhood is not privilege, but its opposite: responsibility. As Christ died for His Bride the Church, so man takes up his own cross and dies for the mother of his children, his lover, his bride.

The story of marriage is man dying so woman may give life and nurture it. Where that story is not told, marriage doesn't exist. It's not a private story for Christians. It's the timeless, transcultural story of sex written by God in the very DNA of His universe. To preach and live this story is to preach and live the Gospel.

Among the perishing, this Gospel witness is the stench of death. This is why worldlings outside and inside the church never stop scorning, mocking, hissing, and shaming those who try to be faithful witnesses to God's holy heterosexuality.

There can be no middle ground on sexuality, although many of us are frantic...