MAGA men are fleeing women for all-male gyms — and somehow calling it straight

This story originally appeared on Them.

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,” he said. “I had to choose between honoring the Lord, honoring my wife, and guarding my eyes, or training my body.” According to The Remnant’s website, some of the amenities of the space will include a golf simulator, a “Brotherhood Lounge” and a sauna, none of which sounds gay at all. (Well, OK, the golf simulator is pretty straight but everything else about it sounds, frankly, like a gay bathhouse.)

Membership to The Remnant will also require signing a contract called the Rule of Life, which includes such tenets as "marriage as one man and one woman,” “two genders, given by God at creation,” and “active fight for the orphan, the widow, and the unborn.”

As Baptist News Global points out, it’s worth noting that both projects align with the current white Christian nationalist vibe of inspiring right-wing men to become leaders and fight “evil.” For example, the New York Times reported on Freedom Con in Washington State last month, which encouraged conservative Christians “to rise as statesmen.” Totally not a terrifying prospect. But hey, at least we’ll always be able to make gay jokes about them to cope.

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