Kink – Stephen Bradford Long

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In 2022, a couple of evangelical stud muffins posted a startling video to TikTok. In an intimate space charged with emotion and prayer, Christian influencer Ryan Foley nervously confessed his love of trans porn:

Sixth grade, I jumped into some weird categories, man. This is tough. Transgenders having sex with chicks. And why am I watching this stuff? Well, because I’m opening myself up to spirits the more I watch the porn, and I don’t even realize it. And you know, as it gradually goes, it gets darker, and I was watching (groans) transgenders having sex with transgenders, and then dudes. And I’m like, “why am I watching this stuff?” Eventually, the porn’s not going to be enough, just like Ted Bundy – eventually the porn wasn’t enough for Ted Bundy. And he started actually doing the acts, and I started doing the acts. Never, ever thought I’d be doing something like that, know what I’m saying? That’s my quick testimony on porn and how it just dragged me to a dark place.

The answer, Ryan then explained, is submission to Jesus, and realizing that porn was standing between him and God.

“Amen dude,” says his companion, “powerful testimony, dude.”

I don’t hold Ryan’s sexual preferences against him. Trans porn is one of the most popular categories on the internet, and a lot of guys are into it. There’s also enough sexual pseudoscience and fear-mongering in his short testimony to occupy an entire article. Set all that aside for now.

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Last week’s article “Mysticism Is Like Sex” argued that self-transcendent experiences are comparable to sex in that they are both hardwired into the human body. They don’t necessarily need to be attached to religious beliefs to be enjoyed and experienced.

As I explored in the article, my fascination with altered states of consciousness started when I was young. I was raised in a Charismatic Christian family that regularly spoke in tongues, and this revealed to me that interesting states of mind were always just around the corner. This provoked a lot of feedback from my audience on my discord server, and a number of people shared their own experiences with speaking in tongues.

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