Sexy ‘woke-free’ calendar featuring Riley Gaines and Dana Loesch sparks debate among Christians with some calling it ‘soft porn’ and immoral for evangelical movement

A calendar launched by a ‘woke-free’ beer company featuring conservative women in pinup poses has sparked a controversy over right-ring morals. 

Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right Beer teamed up with women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines to sell a ‘Real Women of America’ 2024 Calendar. It features Riley Gaines, Dana Loesch and a host of others in red, white and blue, bikinis and other sexy poses. 

After its release in time for the holiday season, the product received backlash from some Republicans who felt looking at pictures of women in seductive poses goes against Christian values at the core of the conservative movement.

‘I just don’t see the value in marketing what’s basically, in some photos, soft porn to married (or unmarried) men,’ said evangelical commentator and podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. 

However, others such as Megyn Kelly have pushed back and said the conservative movement in no longer solely based on Christian values and that women can be ‘sexy.’

The controversy dubbed ‘calendargate’ comes as conservatives debate the future of the movement. The party has grown more secular in recent years as Trump has served as president and is making another run for the White House.

Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right Beer was launched to compete against Bud Light following its disastrous partnership with trans Dylan Mulvaney. 

Along with Gaines, many other well-known conservative women including Kim Klacik, Sara Gonzales, Ashley St. Clair, Josie The Redheaded Libertarian and Peyton Drew are featured in the calendar.

In the calendar, St. Clair is posed with her hair in an Audrey Hepburn-esque updo and pearl necklace, similar to Mulvaney’s Bud Light ad.

But, the calendar drew outrage from some Evangelicals such as Stuckey.  

‘You can probably guess what I think about a calendar branded for “conservative dads” filled with pictures of women, many of them married and many of them very scantily clad. Hate it.’ 

‘I also find the discourse ridiculous, as if we’re all supposed to pretend we don’t understand the purpose of a calendar of posed, full-body pictures of women,’ Stuckey said.

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis said, ‘This is the problem with conservatives who think they can act just like the secular world. If conservatives aren’t morally grounded Christians, what are we even “conserving?”‘

‘This whole calendar thing is a no from me, but it’s not surprising given the current state of the movement.’

The calendar is the first to ‘specifically showcase the most beautiful conservative women in America,’ the company claims. 

The collaboration pledged to donate 10 percent of sales to ‘the Riley Gaines Center’ – a foundation created by the swimmer that aims to ‘protect’ women’s sports from ‘extreme leftist ideology seeking to destroy women’s athletics’.

Christian activist Morgan Ariel said, ‘A conservative beer calendar sexualizing women in our movement and marketing it towards married conservative men is DEMONIC.’

‘Question for women: When are you going to desire to be loved, cherished and valued by a man as opposed to being sexualized and objectified by them? Your integrity should be worth more to you than a check received for a photoshoot that devalues you.’

Some have said the calendar is degrading to women and goes against the Christian values in being a conservative that are about modesty and faithfulness in marriage.

Madeline Kearns said in the National Review, ‘Either the sexual revolution was fun and games until a bunch of overzealous feminists and LGBT activists ruined it, or the sexual revolution was doomed from the start and the ’90s-style smut found in advertising, movies, and calendars isn’t much removed from our present degradation.’

‘What needs conserving is not the liberalism of yesterday but timeless virtues and norms: a courtship culture, one that emphasizes male and female sexual complementarity, abstinence before marriage, fidelity within it, openness to the gift of children, as well as the cultivation of a culture in which beauty is prized over the vulgar and obscene. Lust, however lucrative, undermines this project.’ 

Former Ron DeSantis speechwriter Nate Hochman said in a piece for The American Conservative, ‘The narrow ideological frame that the right operates in permits only a long, unending line of “conservative alternatives to [X],” reproducing the values and animating assumptions of the dominant culture with a thin coat of right-wing policy priorities painted on top.’

‘An anti-trans Bud Light is still, in essence, Bud Light. An anti-woke Playboy is still, in essence, Playboy.’

Critics of the calendar represent a divide at the heart of the conservative wing that is seeing a growing split between evangelical Christian values and a raunchier side of the party illustrated by the rise of Trump and online culture. 

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian who has studied evangelicalism and masculinity told The New York Times, ‘As with so many things with Trump, it’s a longer history, but he has also changed the game.’ 

‘Against that backdrop, it’s a wholesome thing for a boy to be lusting after a very sexy woman.’

Seth Weathers, 39, who founded the ‘woke-free’ American beer said: ‘Beer companies used to be about great beer, American patriotism, fun, fast cars, and beautiful real women. We’re bringing back all these things, but better than ever.’

Megyn Kelly – who once posed seductively for GQ – challenged the notion from critics that it is against conservative values to pose in seductive photos.

‘Conservative can be saucy, why are conservatives, why do we have to be all stuffy and like not sexy?’ said Kelly.

Michael Moynihan, co-host of The Fifth Column podcast said, ‘Not everything has to be the way forward, something could be just staying right in place or not having any lateral or backwards motion.’

‘The only thing that matters here Megyn, and you know this as well as I do, is if they are hot. If they are hot, then it’s fine. If they are not hot, then I’m opposed to the calendar.’ 

Political commentator Tim Pool said on his podcast with singer Phil Labonte, ‘Republicans are complaining about a calendar while Democrats just removed Donald Trump from the ballot in Maine.’

‘I’m seeing these tweets about Josie and they’re like “it’s demonic,” and I’m like “what?” She’s wearing a sundress and an apron and she baked a pie.’

Labonte said, ‘I understand there are people that have serious religious convictions, shut the hell up with this stupid s**t.’