"Christianity is gay": a not-too-short note on evolutionary memetics

A Church impotent

Today’s memetic environment is steeped in questions of sex and gender; specifically, the female ones. The protagonism of biopolitics already is a key feature of 21st century culture. It will be even more so as soon as the demographic crisis looming hits, especially if we keep focusing in technical solutions for it. Science and technology have a tendency for creating at least as many new problems as they solve: this is what makes them an accelerationist force. Advances in assisted (artificial?) reproduction will only make sex, and biology in general, increasingly more relevant in the coming years, both in public and in private life (as William Gibson says, "the street finds its own uses for things".

Christianity has often been condemned by feminism as a force inimical to women. Specifically, Roman Catholicism is seen as a particularly oppressive religion, a fact evidenced by its doctrinal opposition to abortion, the pill, and gender ideology. It is interesting to note, however, that Christianity has also suffered strong criticism for its feminine nature, a point made both from the so-called “Left” and the “Right”.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, various proposals to allow women’s suffrage were introduced in Spanish politics. First, a Conservative Party motion in 1877 (restricted to widows and heads of the household); later in 1907 and 1918, both times by Conservative Party congressmen and with the propagandistic support of the Church. Conservative dictator General Primo de Rivera finally made women’s entrance into political and public life a reality in 1924. All of this was of course not unmotivated: women were notoriously more religious and prone to Conservative tendencies, or so was believed. The Leftist and most Progressive factions, consequently, were opposed to women voting because of the perceived clout the Church had over the female mind.

According to American author Leon J. Podles, the Church does indeed belong to an anti-masculine bloc. In his book “The Church Impotent: the Feminization of Christianity”, he presents the anti-Catholic violence present in successive Spanish revolutions as a rebellion of males against a matriarchal force. The often abject brutality of these revolutions, in which nuns and priests were raped, lynched, or both, was not based on religious or political issues. On the contrary, they were manifestations of masculine rage, a display of macho fury against effeminate clergymen and their castrating influence over women, cast through words whispered accross the confessional's grid.

The derisive term “cuckservative”, which was so prevalent in alt-right circles a few years ago, seems to respond to this same perception of a link between Conservatism and anti-masculinity. The related and far less prevalent term “Cucktianity” specifically pointed in the Church's direction, criticizing Christianity as an enemy of males in general and white men in particular. Christianity is interpreted as a vehicle for matriarchal social impulses, of which multiculturalism is only a particularly pernicious one.

The prefix "cuck" is a reference to the word "cuckold", the husband of an adulterous wife who invests his resources in raising somebody else's offspring. In different contexts, males are seen as being cuckolded figuratively (and sometimes literally) by the Church, the Welfare State, immigrant minorities... Adding insult to injury, porn streaming platforms, through opaque algorithms, seem to be pushing cuckoldry into the mainstream as a socially acceptable fetish, a fact interpreted as just another humiliation campaign by the Globalist propaganda machine.

In any case, the "Church impotent" meme seems to be a rapidly-replicating isolate of Evolian ideas, themselves a bastardized variety of Nietzsche’s. It is a memetic strain optimized for insertion in the mind of young males thirsting for rites of passage, adventure and rebellion; in other words, normal young males. That this meme is shared by 2010s American alt-righters and 1930s Spanish Reds suggests the evolutionary link between both cultural memeplexes.

Spartans and Nazis

Identification of Christianity as a negative influence over Western civilization is not exclusive to revolutionaries in the so-called “Left”. The connection was also made by members of the alt-right’s precursors in Europe, the 1970s French Nouvelle droite. The movement, exemplified by authors such as Alain the Benoist and Guillaume Faye, combined the tactics of the Gramscian New Left with identitarian and Traditionalist ideas such as those spoused by Julius Evola and René Guénon. It longed for a return to an “Archeofuturist” Europe. This vision included a revival of Pagan forms of worship, not affected by Christianity’s multiculturalist and egalitarian temptations. Roman Catholicism was seen, thus, as a Semitic entity artificially grafted into Europe.

The Nouvelle droite had a particular way to regard to the question of feminity. It drew a line between supposedly Western attitudes to women and sexuality, characterized by the right to pleasure and sexual emancipation; and Middle Eastern ones, where sexuality was “dramatized”. The Aryan v. Semitic; politheistic v. monotheistic dichotomies were essential to this notion. The Abrahamic religious environment was considered at the root of women’s relative devaluation compared to the male.In the case of Christianity, it was seen as leading to a pathological exaltation of the Sterile Virgin archetype (v. the Fertile Housewife-Mother). In the words of Alain de Benoist and Joël Lecrozet: “an unequal conception of the world is necessarily based on the recognition of diversity, (...) the other sex has always been considered in Europe as an enrichment and not as a curse, cause of an original sin.” -Eléments, n°14-15, p.12.

These dichotomies had a similar meaning in the Third Reich, which established its criticism of Christianity in similar terms. The triumph of this meme led into the kind of Spartanism both the German National Socialists and the Nouvelle droite defended: clearly defined and separated gender roles, but given a filogynistic and complementarian interpretation. Again Alain the Benoist: “(…) This system defines a complete society, where the woman is not only “admitted”, but honored, because that the view-of-the-world expressed there establishes the relationship of the sexes from an angle of complementarity. (...)” -Vu de droite, op. cit., p.350.

Certain factions of current identitarian movements are to a certain extent heirs of this memeplex, with criticism now directed less towards Judaism and Christianity and more towards Islam, as befitting the latter’s increasing demographic weight in the Western world. Curiously, early 20th c. Traditionalists such as the aforementioned Evola and Guénon had a quite positive view of Islam, seeing it as a superior spiritual Tradition. Guénon even embraced an esoteric interpretation of the religion later in his life, changing his name to Abd al-Wahid Yahya.

Blue Moon unrest

As we have seen, revolutionary movements from Spanish Civil War Anarcho-Communistis to Nazi and Nouvelle Droite Spartanists have all seen in the Church an emasculating force, weakening the mind of men and exerting a powerful influence on women. In this contexts, violence against religion and its representatives was seen as more or less justified, and even a necessary purifying act.

But in the face of this hypothetical anti-Catholic (anti-Feminine?) violence, there have also been those willing to put up a fight. A most surprising thing is that the American Catholic Church has emerged as one of the most prone to confrontation. In this sense, it has taken the path of the Polish Catholics who confronted the Prussian state of Bismarck in the 1870s. This was the original edition of Kulturkampf, the cultural (thus memetic) warfare that has been going on and off between the secular state and the shredded remnants of Christendom.

Today Catholics represent the largest religious minority in the United States, mostly due to immigration from Latin American countries. The USA will be one of the main Catholic world powers of the 21st. Certainly, fantasies about an Integralist America espoused by the likes of Adrian Vermeule, or even Rod Dreher and Ross Douthat, are far-fetched. Reality does not work like that, and nominally Catholic immigrants are not necessarily the most loyal upholders of doctrine. A good marker for this is their support for loaded subjects, such as abortion, which is widespread among American Catholics. A particularly notable example of this is Joe Biden, whose claims to devout Catholicity contrast with the policies he aims to implement in case he were elected.

This Catholic tendency to progressive stances contrasts with that of Evangelicals, mostly aligned with Trump, precisely because he is against abortion. In other words: quite paradoxically, immigrant, culturally-Catholic converts to Protestant denominations might be more adherent to the Church’s teaching regarding specific subjects. Given this reality, it is interesting to note that Donald Trump has decided to take an active part in the controversy, siding with anti-abortion activists in repeated occasions. In this sense, he has carved a memetic path to the category of the first “Catholic” president of the United States, even openly attending an anti-abortion rally.

Adding another twist to the screw, it must be said that the most conservative sectors of the US Church, led by Cardinal Raymond Burke, mostly sided with Trump since the beginning. At the same time, Cardinal Burke’s more traditionalist positions have led him to clash with Pope Francis, particularly regarding the dubia he participated in against the Encyclical Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis, himself a Latin American, has also been portrayed by the media as criticising Trump’s administration on its treatment of immigrants.

Steven K. Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and a Catholic, disapproves of the Pope’s positions on ideological matters, accusing His Holiness of being a Liberation Theology-type socialist and being coy about Europe’s Islamisation. This latter subject is particularly important, as it intersects with the role of women in European society and is at the same time the central point driving identitarian and euro-skeptic movements within the EU, both religious and secular.

While Bannon’s attempts to build an Anti-Globalist (thus, Trump-friendly) Coalition in Europe have so far seen little success, the battle is not over. Most recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo picked another quarrel with the Vatican when he demanded a harsher stance towards China and the Communist Party's role in Bishop nominations. The Pope declined meeting Pompeo so close to an election, to avoid being again pulled into the fray. Meanwhile, the BLM riots have only contributed to increase Trump’s appeal to Latinos, still mostly Catholic, exploiting the chasm between them and African Americans. For the first time in history, Hispanics will surpass blacks as the largest minority share of voters.

This essay would not be complete without mentioning the recent unrest in Poland: precisely after the Law and Justice-aligned Supreme Court ruled abortion unconstitutional. Law and Justice has been the ruling party in Poland since 2015, and its right-wing populist policies have been the main reason behind the country’s enfant terrible reputation in the EU. Like Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, the Catholic country has become the poster boy of what Brussels’ bureaucrats call illiberal democracies, scandalizing globalists worldwide with their reactionary, anti-Open Society antics. Poland is adamant in its intent to take Germany’s role as America’s beachhead in Europe, something neither the Germans nor the Russians are too excited about.

The final movements of this global game will remain hidden for a while, but some signs have become apparent. Banners, signs and graffitti in Polish churches, carried by abortionists who wave coat hangers at priests. Murders and decapitations in France, the Eldest Daughter of the Church, carried out by the masculine messengers of the Religion of Peace. The election of a New American Emperor. Rumors of war, conquest, death and pestilence loom large accross the world in All Hallow's Eve. Prepare for the Blue Moon.