Genesis 19 for Back Door Sluts 9.

Atheists have done-’n-gone pissed off dem Christians AGAIN.

Their campaign is genius in its simplicity: got smutty reading material? Want smutty mags instead? If you answered yes and yes to these questions, the student atheist group at the University of Texas at San Antonio has your back and will take your Bibles at your discretion.

Does this debacle accomplish nothing? Will it inevitably foster the binary opposition between atheists and Christians? Eh. Perhaps. However, this discussion–what constitutes pornography, and are religious texts exempt–needs to be had, though preferably not in the medium of Fox News’ America Live with Megyn Kelly. Dear Megyn covers the story, in the fair and balanced tradition of Fox News: “The atheist group is giving away pornography, but it’s not just the porn–it’s what they’re trading it for that has most people–ah, well some people, very upset.”

I suppose I would give Megyn credit for begrudgingly correcting her bias-slip–if I was grading on a curve. But I’m not grading on a curve, and she’s a shitty journalist.

If Megyn was not a shitty journalist, she would have done plenty of research on the subject matter before reporting on such a volatile story. I’m not a journalist, and I’m pleasantly (and legally) buzzed on Merlot. Allow me, Megyn, to do your work pro bono.

Where to begin? First book of the Bible? Genesis, chapter 19:1-11. What’s not a setup for a contemporary non-con scene in this little doozy? Our dramatis personæ: Lot, Abraham’s brother, the Ron Jeremy-esque protagonist of this sick fuckfest, housed in Sodom. Two gorgeous angels (most likely gay-for-pay), sent down to investigate the cesspool of moral filth that is the city of Sodom. A crowd of the vile denizens (led by an unrecognizable Danny DeVito), that drives most of the gangbang narration. Finally, Lot’s two virgin daughters–their youthful appearances force five-second interval marquees to flash at the bottom of the screen: “ALL MODELS ARE 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER.”

Lot, a man of outstanding moral fiber, spares the angels from an impending anal excavation by offering (you guessed it!) Ms. Jail and Ms. Bait to the ravenous crowd: “Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

It is important to note that Lot is the good guy. That is not an anachronistic concept–he is the one praised by God and ultimately spared from the destruction of Sodom for his “decency.”

Need something more insidious? Infanticide as glorified by God in Psalm 137. Permission to “plunder” women and commit genocide in Deuteronomy. The brutal and eroticized death of the pagan queen Jezebel in Kings. Paul-sanctioned misogyny in his letter to Timothy. Another highly stylized and erotic consumption of a Whore (an allegorical whore, but a whore nevertheless!) in Revelation.

If fictionalized rape and other kinks in contemporary pornography are “smutty,” then the Bible features (and espouses!) smutty acts. These Christian protesters are half-right: there is a difference between porn and the Bible, but it’s not a difference they’re recognizing. Christians present the Bible as a dogmatic truth. The sex industry presents porn as crude fantasy and a feasible go-to for whittling away the long hours of the day.

Which, then, is more offensive?

“I don’t understand how [pornography] equals at all..to the word of God..they’re definitely opposites,” says Monica Coronado, a devout Christian. Devout Christians today, apparently, do not read their Bibles.