MAGA Guys Are Going to Men-Only Gyms to Avoid “Distraction.” Welcome Back, Ancient Greece

Christians are starting men-only gyms in order to supposedly protect gymgoers from lust — and no, that’s not the logline for a niche gay fetish film. This is a real thing. The independent Baptist publication Baptist News Global published an article about the phenomenon last week, which quickly became fodder for several viral posts on X and TikTok. There seem to be two main examples of this phenomenon thus far: Proverbs 27:17 Fitness in Oklahoma and The Remnant Gym in Denver. In a pinned post on the Instagram page for the former, Jeff, the founder, explained his rationale for opening “a men’s only fitness & ministry center.” “One of the most common places affairs and infidelity begin is the gym. I’ve lived that reality,” he wrote in the caption, adding that God “called me to create a different kind of space… where men can grow stronger physically and spiritually, without the distractions of lust and temptation.” Ah, yes, because Christian men, famously, never succumb to lust or temptation for men, especially not at the gym.While Proverb 27:17 mostly just comes across as a kind of cringe, The Remnant espouses actively anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. For the time being, it’s just a concept, with the goal of opening during the first quarter of 2027. In a founder’s letter on The Remnant’s website, founder Mitch Parsons writes that Christians in Denver “have to fight for our faith and pray for our communities more than most places in the country because we live in a city that is putting litter boxes in high schools, that tried to decriminalize prostitution, that protests for our children to have permission to mutilate their bodies to fit description of an imagined gender, that mourns it can’t kill babies.”Parsons said in his letter that he specifically wants to start The Remnant in order to avoid having to exist in the same space as those pesky women. “I was tired of having nakedness shoved in my face every time I walked into a gym to train,” h