When tone-policing masks grotesque sexual exploitation

By Brandon Showalter, Opinion writer and social commentator Friday, March 20, 2026

A recent dissenting federal court opinion, authored by an Evangelical Christian judge, employs the phrase “swinging dicks” to make a point about a state law that enables lascivious sexual exploitation. 

Frankly, while some might say such language is unbecoming of a Christian or a federal judge, it nevertheless conducts a clinic in exposing a well-worn manipulation tactic that far too few Christians discern and detect. And that tactic is how evil, sinister forces tone-police while furthering something enormously worse.

What elicited the judge's use of that salty phrase? First, some brief background.

The case in question is Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, and it pertains to a Washington state anti-discrimination policy that allows individuals to enter what should be single-sex spaces on the basis of their so-called “gender identity,” a disembodied category that was added to the state’s legal definition of sexual orientation. A man by the name of “Haven” (Caleb) Wilvich helped make the change happen, thus allowing men to enter the state’s lone, traditional Korean, female-only nude spa, the owners of which are Christians, and he bragged about it on social media. 

The spa sued the state on several grounds, including religious liberty and free speech. The district court ruled against the spa, as did a 3-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. To be sure, there are murky aspects about the way the particular statute in question is written, and it can be compellingly argued that, in light of the statute's confusing wording, the judges technically applied it accurately, given the claims at hand. Even so, given what Wilvich persuaded the state government to do, the law now enables voyeurism and indecent exposure. An astute amicus brief in the case from Women's Declaration International rightly noted how unworkable the non-discrimination policy is and described it as on a “collision course” with criminal statutes prohibiting indecent exposure and voyeurism.

The “swinging dicks” phrase appeared in a spirited dissent from Judge Lawrence VanDyke, in a petition arguing that the 9th Circuit should rehear the case en banc, meaning before the whole court, not just a 3-judge panel. The full appellate court refused to rehear it and, irritated that his colleagues ruled that way, VanDyke wrote in the first line of his opinion that “swinging dicks” was what this case was about. In response to his colleagues who chided him for his choice of words, he wrote: 

“You may think that swinging dicks shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion. You’re not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa — some as young as 13 — to be visually assaulted by the real thing.”

All considerations about appropriate judicial rhetoric aside, there’s a lesson to be learned. 

Christians, this is exactly the problem with how too many of us tend to think. I speak from tremendous, boiling frustration here, after having spent years in the grisly trenches of transgenderism, seeing horrifying medical atrocities on the bodies of children and hearing gut-wrenching realities that people still refuse to name truthfully, opting instead for softer-sounding euphemisms -- "gender-affirming care" being the most obvious one. Somehow, in the minds of many kind-hearted believers in Jesus, a strange preference for polite winsomeness that glosses over despicable wickedness has become the pinnacle of all the Christian virtues. 

Ask yourself honestly: Which is more morally grievous, and which alarms you more? A federal judge using a coarse phrase in a dissenting opinion or a fetishistic pervert being legally allowed to expose himself to a 13-year-old girl and see her naked? Because the latter is what Washington state law permits.

Is it not more offensive that judges refuse to acknowledge the truth and effectively defend the fictitious "rights" of deviants while chastising the judge who colorfully highlights this? 

Do you truly not see the inversion occurring through language manipulation? Do you not see that those who argue that they occupy the moral high ground are endorsing a warped anthropology — an almost assuredly porn-addled dude can be a woman if he says so — while at the same time acting performatively scandalized because of an impertinent locution from a judge with the temerity to call a spade a spade? Do you not see the black-robed, unmitigated gall? My gut tells me that the judges who refused to rehear the case and chided VanDyke for his tone wouldn't allow their own 13-year-old daughters to go to that spa if they knew naked men were going to be in there and there was nothing the owners could legally do to kick them out. 

I won’t pretend to be so clairvoyant as to say why Judge VanDyke used the language he did. Some suggest that it’s a Supreme Court audition. 

But perhaps it’s as simple as some understandable, smoldering angst that, after years of cultural madness at the highest levels of government, someone has to tell it like it is in a forum where it needs to be heard, however impolitely. The insistence on masking an issue with politeness when something much more terrible is happening is a key part of the whole problem. Or perhaps VanDyke thought that a crude phrase might break into the media, jolt the public out of their stupor, and force the masses to realize that we have ideologically rigid judges who, by refusing to rehear the case on its merits, are committed to the legal degradation of the basic human dignity of women and girls. If the latter was his goal, he succeeded.

My central point, particularly for Christians here, is this: When language is deliberately used to lie and obfuscate, never use or lend credence to it. Learn to discern and note the slippery tactics people with ill motives employ, because you do not have to pretend to esteem those who tone-police your speech when they are practicing manipulation and supporting a disgusting form of sexual exploitation.

It may be inconvenient and unpleasant to hear ugly truths without the deceptive lingo that we have been psychologically conditioned to think is neutral and mainstream. And there has been no greater con in this regard than our cultural saturation with gender ideology. 

Because I’ll remind everyone for the umpteenth time that it is not normal for men to demand to enter women’s private spaces and expose their genitals. It is not normal to harvest forearm tissue to construct non-functional penises for women. It’s not normal to use a swatch of bowel tissue to fashion fake vaginas for young men. It is not normal for 12-year-old girls to have their physically healthy breasts amputated. It is not normal to block the natural puberty of confused children with high-powered cancer drugs like Lupron and put them on the path to permanent sterility. And it is not normal to transfer male sexual offenders and murderers to be incarcerated with female inmates, which laws like California’s SB 132 legally sanction.

All of what I've listed there is the result of many depraved ideological forces converging, and it has been allowed to continue for so long because of our collective, polite refusal to use truthful language when we speak. But finally, a federal judge found a creative and unconventional way to say: Enough!

In his dissent, Judge VanDyke also mused that the owners of Olympus Spa might inquire: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

That’s a line from Psalm 11. One thing they can do? They can pray that God elevates more unvarnished truth-tellers to help those of us out who are beyond exhausted of stating the painfully obvious and being told that it’s bigotry. While they’re at it, they might intercede that He dethrone wicked leaders and pray that Christians, of all people, stop falling for Orwellian linguistic machinations.  

Because no one who defends the supposed right of a man to expose himself to women and girls in a female-only space is truly so offended by the use of “swinging dick” in a legal opinion.  

You might even say that Judge VanDyke wasn't dicking around — and his dissent wasn't a swing and a miss.