As I have done some blog touring during this political season, I have come across a category of “conservative” blogs that try to adhere to what is called Rule 5 by a number of these blogs. I think the rule was formulated by Stacy McCain (theothermccain.com), offering to teach you how to get a million hits on your blog. The idea is to periodically post pictures of bikini babes in order to juice the traffic to your blog — so that people can read your defenses of Western civilization and lust after hotties at the same time.
The theory appears to be that any attention is better than no attention. But there are two basic metrics when it comes to attention, those metrics being “quantity” and “quality.” A girl can certainly get more attention by leaving her blouse mostly unbuttoned, and she will also get more “hits.” If traffic were the only thing that mattered, well, then. But perhaps she may have noticed that the caliber of men attracted to her . . . has gone down somewhat? She is now a real hit with the subscribers of one-handed magazines. Surprise. When you lower your standards, you will find men down there.
Quantity is not the only thing that matters. Traffic is not the only thing that matters. Sexual decorum is one of the foundational building blocks of Christian culture, and I would divide this decorum into three basic categories: authority, reciprocity, and modesty. Authority means headship and submission in each appropriate sphere, reciprocity means one man/one woman, and modesty means that a lady doesn’t advertise what she doesn’t have for sale.
This kind of “conservative” is like Penelope in the Odyssey — weaving by day, and unraveling what she has done by night. The only real difference is that Penelope knew what she was doing.