Controversy over Conservative Dad Calendar Featuring Riley Gaines

“Conservative Dad's Real Women of America Calendar is a celebration of conservative women who are fighting woke extremists to preserve real women,” the website says, adding that 10 percent of sales “will be donated to the Riley Gaines Center to protect women's sports from extreme leftist ideology seeking to destroy real women.” The calendar features the “most beautiful conservative women in America,” according to the website, and also includes Dana Loesch, Kim Klacik, Josie The Redheaded Libertarian, Catalina Lauf, Brittany Jean, Bethany Bartlett, and Peyton Drew.

Author and podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey was one of the first conservatives to criticize the calendar. 

“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,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “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.

“You can call me a prude, puritanical, or jealous of these women’s beauty -- whatever makes you feel better. I just don’t see the value in marketing what’s basically, in some photos, soft porn to married (or unmarried) men. Of course, these women are gorgeous, and of course, I’m all for celebrating true femininity in an age that can’t define ‘woman.’ In my view, this doesn’t accomplish that at all.”

Some of the models in the calendar are “doing great, courageous work” for conservatism, Stuckey added. But Stuckey said she is not alone in opposing the project. 

“I happen to know that there are many Christian conservatives who share this same perspective behind the scenes, and I wanted to give them a voice,” Stuckey wrote. “The polarization between Christian and secular conservatism is only going to grow, my friends, so buckle up!”

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…

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) December 27, 2023

Bethel McGrew, a social commentator and writer, wrote in a World Opinions column, “You can’t fight alien deviance with Playboy lite. You can’t fight the new decadence with old decadence, draped in red, white, and blue.”

“The explicitly named target audience is men who have wives, who may have daughters,” McGrew wrote. “This is what they’re being encouraged to hang on their wall and look at all month, all year. To make things even worse, some of the women are themselves married, including Riley Gaines. It’s especially disheartening to see Gaines lend her image to this product, given her costly and courageous public stand against trans activism. She is an admirable, beautiful woman who has used her talent to set an example for little girls everywhere. But the example she and the other women in this calendar are setting is anything but ‘conservative.’”

McGrew added, “Increasingly, Christian conservatism and secular ‘conservatism’ are going to have to part ways. A surface-level shared alliance against ‘wokeness’ is not enough.”

Columnist Rachel del Guidice wrote at The Daily Signal that “conservatives, representing a movement that is pro-life, pro-family, and pro-civil society, should never be inviting lust in any way, shape, or form.”

“Women are sexually exploited to sell everything, from movies to food to clothes to alcoholic beverages -- you name it, it’s been done,” she wrote. “As conservatives, we shouldn’t stoop to that level.”

Denny Burk, professor of biblical studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also criticized the calendar. 

“I am a conservative myself, and I want conservatism to flourish in our country because I believe it is an approach to politics aimed at preserving the permanent things. I can hardly imagine a better antidote to our cultural malaise than a fresh jolt of the good, the true, and the beautiful,” Burk wrote in a column for World Opinions. “... Christians must recognize that a calendar designed to excite the sinful lusts of fathers is hardly a quest for preserving the ‘permanent things,’ much less a faithful discharge of our duty under Christ. The answer to gender confusion and LGBTQ affirmation on the left is not the endorsement of heterosexual immorality on the right. And make no mistake, trying to lure fathers into leering at barely dressed women is exactly what Jesus has forbidden to His followers: ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matthew 5:27-28).”

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Political tribalism, Burk added, is leading people away from biblical truth.

“What I’ve written here should not be controversial to Bible-believing Christians. It really is Christianity 101 and not very complicated,” he wrote. “And yet, I am concerned that political tribalism may be obscuring for some Christians what their duties are under Christ and what is otherwise very clear in Scripture. For some, ‘no enemies to the right’ means withering public condemnation of sinners on the left and whataboutism for sinners on the right. This is not morally serious, and everyone can see the blatant hypocrisy.”

Photo Courtesy: @Getty Images/Jason Davis / Stringer/Cropped and edited.
Video Courtesy: Megyn Kelly via YouTube

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.