The Troops of Gilead are On the Move
Pete Hegseth lays it out in the open. He wants women out!
In The BC Bible, I explored how literalist religion has spent centuries perfecting the art of locking women out of the decision-making room and into the chastity belt of “purity.” In The Making of a Monster, I’ve been tracking how American democracy is now incubating evangelicals who market “toxic empathy” as a scripture as they dispense with the core ideals like “Love Thy Neighbor”. So when U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video of Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson arguing that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote — complete with the pious caption “All of Christ for All of Life” — my Gilead radar kicked into meltdown. The Christian nationalist troops are moving quickly while they have the opening, and the Western world would do well to snap out of it!
Wilson’s “one household, one vote” scheme is the sort of policy you’d expect in the dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale — and I can’t believe how often that parallel is coming up these days. The man leads; the woman cooks, cleans, breeds, and thanks him for his leadership. It would be funny if the idea wasn’t being actively scaffolded by people with government badges and budgets.
Hegseth — bearer of crusader body markings and, mind-bogglingly, the current U.S. Secretary of Defense — didn’t just hear this; he amplified it, effectively giving it a Pentagon endorsement. And he’s not alone. Inside the administration you’ll find Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025, which reads like a Christian nationalist wish-list for gutting the civil service and replacing it with loyalists. In Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson wraps theocratic goals in “Judeo-Christian values,” while allies at the Alliance Defending Freedom slip model bills into statehouses to restrict reproductive rights, roll back LGBTQ protections, and privilege Christian applicants in hiring and contracting — all sold as “religious freedom.”
From the outside it might look like a collection of pet causes, but together it’s an ecosystem: Government HR rules tweaked to favor the faithful, “In God We Trust” banners mandated in classrooms, and abortion bans framed as moral rescue missions. The Christian nationalist troops are moving through the institutions, room by room, policy by policy, until one day you look up and realise we are all living in a Theocracy.
Writing The BC Bible reminded me that once you strip out the nuance, religion can be an efficient delivery system for control: the editors of Yahweh quietly erased the female voice in favour of a fantasy of male domination. Yes, I’m a man, and I get that there are some bros out there feeling disaffected and lost in a world where they don’t come home to a baked dinner and an ego massage. But growing up in the relative utopia of Australia in the ’90s, I was under the obviously deluded impression that we’d moved on from ape-man culture. Personally, I have no interest in revisiting the days of dragging partners and daughters around by the hair.
Hegseth’s post isn’t an isolated quirk. It’s part of a slow-motion rollback: first the language shifts, then the laws follow. Rights don’t vanish overnight — they erode under the constant drip of “tradition” and “order.” By the time you notice the holes, the roof’s already gone.
Writing from Australia, we have the privilege of distance — the rule of law here still mostly applies without excuses. Yes, there is corruption, but when it is exposed, people are accountable. The US has already slid into mafia state territory. We have a president who openly accepts bribes in exchange for executive favors. For everyone in a stable democracy there is an obligation right now to speak plainly about what’s happening in the U.S. and to support the writers and journalists inside it who are working
The U.S. Justice Department, now openly weaponised for retribution, has made dissent a hazardous profession. Those who continue to publish the truth deserve our active support.
Americans — and the rest of us, because this toxic mindset doesn’t respect borders — must decide how much more of the clock we are willing to run out before standing up. Hegseth’s post is yet another wake-up call that these clowns are doing real damage. History is taking notes.