Unisex

by Pastor Jack Hyles (1926-2001)
(Loyal Pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana for over 42 years)


Sunday Evening Sermon December 2, 1973

       “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:  Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever, Amen.”  Romans 1:24, 25

I am going to read now the progression of man’s downward trend as we approach the end of the age.  Notice, first of all, that we do not glorify God and do not give thanks to God.  Romans 1:21 says, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful.” Second, we become vain in our imaginations. “But became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”  (Romans 1:21b)  Third, we become wise in our own eyes.  We go to school, read a few books, and think we’re smart.  “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:22)  We get a degree and think we’re smart.  A few people call us intellectuals, and we become wise in our own eyes; however, the Bible says we become fools.  If you ever say, “I just can’t see a God who would…” then you’re an idolater.  A person who builds his own image of God in his mind has built an idol just like that one who has built an idol out of wood.  Then, we make a false religion. “And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image make like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.” (Romans 1:23)  That’s false religion.  Last of all, we worship the creature, not the Creator.  “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:  Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 1:23,25)  That’s the final step.

As soon as you get to the place to where you think you’re smart without God and you can formulate your own philosophy about God and who God is, then the next step is your worship of the creature.  Why?  You’ve got to worship the creature if you think you can figure out who God is.  If you draw up in your mind your own concept of God, you’re putting yourself before God.  You’re worshipping your own mind in the place of God, and the next thing is that you worship the creature or the body.

Worship of the body is where our nation is tonight.  All this open sex, nudity, free love, and body worship is the final step in the downward trend of our nation.  “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections:  for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.” (Romans 1:26) Now, you listen to me!  When a nation gets to the place where nudity is prevalent, what else does it look for?  One reason God intends for folks to wear clothes is because the unknown gives you added property to explore.  Don’t snicker when I say that!  However, when we get to the place where we strip off our clothes and nudity becomes commonplace, then man begins to search for something other than the natural man-woman relationship.  To what does he turn?  First, he turns to sex perversion or unnatural acts.  When that runs its course, to what does he turn?  He turns to women committing sex with women and men committing sex with men.  Now, that is as low as you can get.  Here is the order again:

1. We do not glorify god or give thanks to Him
2. We become vain in our imaginations
3. We become wise in their own eyes
4. We make a false religion
5. We worship the creature instead of the Creator

Let me say a little more about that third point- becoming wise in our own eyes.  I’m not against going to a university, but let me tell you something.  If you went to a university and got a degree and now think you’re better than your grandpa who didn’t go past fifth grade, then you’re an idiot!  There’s nothing in this world any more sickening than for one hunk of flesh who’s worth only $1.98 chemically, a sinner who ought to go to Hell; if you’re fortunate enough to have trusted Jesus, then you’re saved by His grace.

There’s not one good thing in this world about any of us.  “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:12b) “There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10) “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)  On and on the Bible goes to tell us that there is not one good thing about any of us for one of us to set himself up above the rest of us as being a scholar or an expert or of a particular sphere or caste system.  It’s heathenism, it’s paganism, and it’s a result of turning from God.  As soon as you do that, you become wise in your own conceit.  You think you’re smart.  You’ve been to college, you have your degree, so you think you’re above the common man.

Next, you begin to worship the mind and then you begin to worship the body.  After that, you go into sins of the body, and the last step is the step that Sodom and Gomorrah took when God said He’d rain fire and brimstone on them.  Let me tell you something, and you hear me well!  There are three people who wear britches and have short hair and would be called men who sit in this room tonight who are homosexuals, and I know it.  You have said, “Don’t let Brother Hyles’ preaching upset you.  God wouldn’t have made us this way if He hadn’t intended for men to love men.”  Oh, you pagan heathen!  God didn’t make you that way!  Don’t you blame God for your sin! Don’t you blame God for your rejection of God’s Word!  You’ll burn in Hell forever and ever and ever unless you get born again and get delivered of that wicked sin!  It’s not normal!  It’s pagan!  It’s iniquity!  God hates it!  God goes so far as to condemn to everlasting torment the soul of every person who is homosexual!  Check your Bible!  That’s the last step in man’s downward progression.

One of the great signs of the end time is the fact that the unisex movement is sweeping this country.  Dr. Joyce Brothers said, “The melting together of the sexes is upon us.”  Dr. Ralph Greenson, of the Gender Identity Clinics, called it the “sexual thinness.”  Vance Packard calls it a “sexual wilderness in our country.”  Herbert Marcuse calls it “sexual desublimation.”  In the Barton County Community College in Kansas, enrollment cards were filled out.  The question was asked on the enrollment card, “Are you male or female?”  Two percent wrote “undecided.”  Last year at Northeastern University, a 140-pound football player was named the “Winter Carnival Queen.”  Judith Anderson is playing Hamlet.  Mia Farrow plays Peter Fonda’s brother in “Some Like It Hot.”  Olivia Hussey has played Romeo.  (A lot of other hussies have been playing those parts, too!)  There’s a TV show called, “My Brother, the Bride.”  If you haven’t got enough decency to turn that thing off, sell your television set!  Better still, break it in pieces!  Some of you watch that kind of garbage!  Some of you even let your children watch it!  You turn homosexuality and pagan unisex programs on in your living room or den and say to your children, “Watch it!”  You’re asking for heartbreak as sure as I’m behind this pulpit!

A book has been written by Patricia Sexton called The Feminized Male.  Half of America’s guns are owned by women.  Long Island has a firegirl in their fire department.  The military academy is now co-educational.  There are now girls in the Boy Scouts.  On the board of the Y.M.C.A. there are four women.  One social expert has said, “By the year 2,000, Father will do the dishes and wash the diapers while Mom washes the car and mows the lawn.”

Along with this trend is the trend of naming boys and girls the same names.  Now I don’t mean to be unkind, but if you are going to name a girl “Jack,” put an “i-e” on it and make it “Jackie” or add an “a-l-y-n” and make it “Jacalyn.”

When a little boy is born, we let him grow long hair and look like a girl, (now I’m going to make someone mad here) we name him Francis, (and one of the best friends I have in this world is named Francis) we curl his hair and put him in what we call a diaper shirt, (which is no more than a dress) and then we wonder why he turns out to be a sissy!  Brother, when a boy gets home from the hospital, put him in blue jeans and cut his hair!  If you don’t, he’s going to grow up and look like some of you Samsons sitting here in this room tonight!

We are facing a concentrated effort in this nation to try to de-emphasize the difference between the sexes.  People ask, “Brother Hyles, are you opposed to this or that?” I’ll answer this way:  You can name anything you want to name, but I am opposed to anything in the world that de-emphasizes the line of difference between the sexes.  I believe that ladies ought to be feminine and sweet and lovely and charming.  I believe men ought to be strong and masculine and decisive.  I’m opposed to anything that makes a man and a woman act alike, look alike, dress alike, or talk alike.

There are some of you whom I don’t know how to describe.  I want to say men, but that’s not right.  I want to say males, but that’s not right.  You whatever-you-are who put “M” under sex like you’re a male but you talk like a woman, I’m against it!

What is the Devil’s strategy?  What is the Devil’s plan of action for bringing about the unisex movement?

1. The Devil is using clothes to break down the barrier between the sexes.

Now, fasten your safety belts; you’re in for a rocky ride for the next few minutes!  If you want to vote me out of this church when I get through, you just go right ahead, but I’m going to tell you the truth.  Some of you pants-wearing ladies, I hope God will get you so under conviction tonight that you’ll hit the mourner’s bench before you go home!  Let me tell you something.  You ladies who wear your “britches,” don’t you laugh at me while I’m preaching the Bible to you.  The Bible says a woman should not wear that pertains to a man.  In this heathen generation, you ladies who wear pants have fallen prey to the unisex philosophy.  You are a part of the unisex movement!  I’m going to prove it to you.  You won’t believe it because you want to go ahead and be a part of it.  You don’t want to be different.  You’re not willing to buck the trend, but you’re hearing one preacher tonight who is happy to buck the trends even if he loses his job because of it.  I started 27 or 28 years ago what I believe, and I am preaching the same thing tonight.  If you get my sermons and listen to them, I preach the same things tonight I preached 28 years ago.  I preached against ladies wearing britches 28 years ago, and I’m not going to stop it just because you can’t find a skirt in a department store any more.

It’s time for some of you deacon’s wives to look like ladies instead of men.  It’s time for some of you deacons to yank them up and say, “Put a skirt on and take those ‘britches’ off!” It’s time for some of you who teach Sunday school classes in our church, to look like ladies and not like men.  The Devil is trying to break down the barrier between the sexes.  When you do anything to aid it, you’re a part of his work.

You say, “Brother Hyles, I heard you on the radio. I didn’t expect this!  You come on saying the radio saying, ‘A happy hello to all of our friends in radio land.  It’s a great joy to meet you this morning.  Maybe the burden is heavy and load is light.  We come on the broadcast not with a kick in the pants but with a pat on the back’” That the broadcast, honey.  In the pulpit, it’s a kick in the pants and not a pat on the back!  The back-pattin’ is on Monday morning, but the pants-kickin’ is on Sunday night!  The Devil is using clothing.  Whether you believe it or not, the book of Deuteronomy is in the Bible and Deuteronomy 22:5 says it is wrong for a woman to wear that which pertaineth to a man.  “Well,” you say, “in those days, the men wore long, flowing garments.” I don’t care what they wore, there was a difference between men and women.  I mean it’s up to the man to decide what he wears.  You say, “My husband is not going to do that!”  Well, you Jezebel, I am!

Tell me why it is that the unisex movement and the pants-on-women movement have been growing at the same rate in our country?  I’ll tell you exactly why.  It’s because the pantsuit movement and the pants-wearing movement in this nation is a part, as sure as I’m an inch high, of the Devil’s desire and Devil’s efforts to make one sex in this nation.

Faubion Bowers, in Saturday Review, January 9, 1971, said this, “In Manhattan is a shop called ‘His or Hers’ or ‘Two of a Kind’ boasting a stock of clothing wearable by either sex, including panty hose.”  Did you know you can buy panty hose for men in shopping centers in the city of Hammond?  I’m sorry; for males- I’m sorry, for “its”?  Hold it!  Tell me a Scripture that says it’s wrong for a man to wear panty hose.  How many of you think it’s wrong?  I do.  Tell me why.  It’s wrong then because panty hose are ladies’ clothing; is that right?  Then the same philosophy will change your pants to skirts!  If it’s all right for a woman to wear britches, then it’s all right for a man to wear panty hose is because it’s women’s clothing and a man’s not supposed to wear women’s clothing.  I say again if you teenage girls and ladies can wear your slacks, then it’s okay for men to wear panty hose.  It’s the same philosophy.  It’s the same logic.  You cannot be logical and refute that statement.

Let’s go a step farther.  In Manhattan, a boutique named “A Man and a Woman” offered multi-sexual clothes.  Designer Bill Blass is trying to get away from the unisex connotation by referring to his fashions as “dress alikes.”  Cerutti euphemistically ascribes “the couple look” to his and hers cowboy hats.  Betsy Bliss wrote in the Chicago Daily News, February 3, 1968, “Perhaps those look-alike fashions simply show that we’re all puppets of designers…”  (That’s what most of you ladies are tonight!)  “…who want us to look like their roommates.  But it may be that, in fact, the sexes are switching roles, the women getting too aggressive and the men becoming milque-toast weaklings.”

Montgomery Ward in Munster is selling panties for men!  Oh, you’re shocked! Show me a Scriptural reason why it’s wrong.  There’s not one Scriptural reason why that’s wrong unless that’s a woman’s clothing!  Then, using the same logic, your slacks are wrong!

There are people in this room tonight who love me.  You’re glad I’m here, you pray for me, you love me, and you thank God for me, but you take lightly the fact that you let your daughters wear pants.  Your daughters come to see me and in practically every case where you’ve taught your daughters not to agree with me on this subject, your daughter has gotten rebellious and won’t agree with me on other subjects too; that’s because you’ve taught your daughter not to obey the preaching of this preacher.

Every trouble-making girl to whom I’ve talked who has gotten in trouble and maybe has gotten expelled from school, in almost every case, one parent or the other has said, “I just don’t think Brother Hyles is God.”  Well, may I ask you a question?  Who does?  But I am the man about whom Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey them that have rule over you.”  You’ll be a lot better off to tell your girl she can’t wear her slacks because the preacher says it’s wrong- by the way, it won’t hurt her not to wear them- than if you just go ahead and let her wear them.

I have an advertisement for a unisex clothing store.  It has a picture of a male and female- I guess- and it says, “Hey baby, the big news is happening Tuesday!  Experiment One sets up shop on Lex and 57th.  The same clothing for male and female!”

There’s an article in today’s paper in the Parade magazine called “Rock Cosmetics.”  “Rock stars exercise a great influence on their followers.”  For example, once the Beatles grew long hair….”  (By the way, that’s where the long hair fad started- with the Beatles.) “In September, when the Rolling Stones appeared on American TV, Mick Jagger introduced a new cosmetic look for young males.  He wore heavy blue eye shadow, bright red fingernail polish, and purple lipstick.”

Hold it now!  If it’s okay for ladies to wear slacks, then it’s okay for men to wear lipstick.  You say, “Don’t you get off on that?”  I don’t intend to get off that for about ten more minutes!  Show me a Scripture that says it’s wrong for a man to wear lipstick.  There’s not one.  Show me a Scripture that says it’s wrong for a man to wear eye shadow.  There’s not one, unless it is a woman’s regalia.

Now, if it is all right for ladies to wear men’s clothing, then it is all right for men to wear ladies’ clothing.  (I came awfully close to putting skirts on every one of these men on the platform tonight.  If I could have found dresses big enough, I would have done it!  I just couldn’t find a size 63 waist for Brother Sully!)  You hear me!  A man has as much right to wear a skirt down the street as a woman does to wear pants.  Sit still!  When I see you ladies on the street and you’re wearing pants, you know I treat you courteously.

I am never purposely unkind to anybody who dresses contrary to the way I preach.  But I’ll say this much:  You’re going to face God for being a part of the unisex movement just as much as a man who wears makeup.  Let’s read a little further.  “How many Rolling Stone fans will use makeup in the months to come is difficult to tell.  Jagger and his wife, Bianca, believe in unisex makeup.  Several months ago she prevailed upon Gucci, the Italian leather maker to come up with a walking cane for both males and females.  She carries it wherever she goes.  In Europe, it’s catching on with girls who say it offers a measure of protection.”  Here’s a picture of a male and a female, and you can’t even tell which is which.  Now hold it!  A man wears makeup and lipstick and eye shadow and from the shoulders up you can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.  Now let me ask you a question.  Is it any worse not to be able to tell which is from waist down?  I mean, after all, who has a right to say which end has to be different?  Who has a right to say, “From the shoulders up you can’t be alike, but from the waist down you can be alike.”  You know it’s true that if you’re walking down the sidewalk behind some couples, it’s hard to tell which is the male and which is the female.

In Calumet City, on Burnham Avenue, there is a unisex store called “Adam and Eve.”  That is in our area!  It’s a place where male and female both buy the same type of garments.

In tracing history, Agnes DeMille puts such fashion shifts in a new perspective.  She notes that 1890 was the first time girls, even infants, dressed like boys in pants or even loose, sexless garments.  The bare-legged sack look of the 1920’s marked the first time adult women and their daughters emulated boys.  Today, mothers continue to work their way steadily back toward babyhood, trying on the looks of baby doll, little soldier doll, and little boy doll.”  Let me stop and say a word about this.  I don’t mind your boys having little soldiers to play with, but don’t give your boy a doll to play with.  She goes on to say, “Simultaneously the teenage boy, the source of all this feminine emulation, was revolting against his father in the strongest way he could find to express disapproval- unmasculinity.  Ornamented in fancy clothes, the young men now seem to dress as young women, masquerading as boys.”  That’s not a Christian person saying that; that is the world saying that men and women dressing alike is part of the unisex movement.

Some of you mothers are saying right now, “Well, I just don’t see it and my daughter will keep wearing her slacks in public.”  Yeah, and you have a daughter who’s in trouble, too.  Nine times out of ten she’s in trouble about something else, too.  Girls come to my office in deep trouble, and practically every one who does has been told by her mother or dad, or in some cases by both, “Brother Hyles isn’t God.  You don’t have to do everything he says.”

There’s a girl in this room tonight who has been kicked out of school and she’s in deep trouble.  I and many others have tried to help the girl.  The daughter has told me that her mother told her, “There’s a swimming pool over here.  Why don’t you go swimming?”  That was a mixed bathing pool and her mother wanted her to go swimming there!  The girl said, “Mother, you know that I can’t do that.  Brother Hyles doesn’t approve of mixed swimming.”  Yet the mother encouraged her to do so.  You mothers and fathers had better listen to me.  You’re not going to go home, break down everything I preach behind this pulpit, and keep your kids out of trouble.  There is a reason why kids get in trouble.  You ought to go home and build up what I say.  I’m trying to straighten out your kids; you ought to build me up in their minds.

Dr. Ralph Grimson is a clinical professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A. School of Medicine; he told the American Medical Association, “I believe one of the reasons that young males and females wear their hair alike and dress alike stems from their fear of the opposite sex.  Long-haired boys and girls seek a twin, not a sweetheart or a lover.  They are only secure with someone who resembles themselves.”  This is not a fundamentalist preacher!  It’s a U.C.L.A. psychiatrist who says that the reason boys and girls dress alike is because they’re afraid not to dress alike.

I’ll just say it again. It’s time some of you Christians dress like fundamentalists.  In fashion, men’s magazines and clothing trade journals herald men’s mini-skirts- can you feature it?  Can you feature Jim Vineyard in a miniskirt?  That would set burlesque back two generations!  Get this now.  There are harem lounging pajamas.  Did you know that there are lingerie shops for men, where men can buy silk, satin, and lace gowns and pajamas?  You’re horrified, aren’t you?  Yet you wear your “britches” to the store tomorrow!  Men’s magazines and clothing trade journals herald men’s miniskirts, harem lounging pajamas, earrings and necklaces.  One manufacturer is showing men’s shifts- a rather straight-line dress worn by women.  Their colors, psychedelic prints, are soft pinks.  (Can you imagine Sully in a pink shift?)  Fashion designers admit they are using ladies wearing men’s clothing and men wearing ladies’ clothing as a part of the trend to make America one sex.  You haven’t got enough sense to know it! “Now,” you say, “Preacher, what are you saying?”  I’m saying that God wants there to be a difference between the sexes.  I’m saying, in our generation, ladies ought not to wear whatever men have worn, and men ought not to wear whatever ladies have worn.

You know, I think I’ll just go ahead and get really mean.  I detest these lace shirts on men!  I had to have a tuxedo for a wedding and I went over to a formal shop.  They brought me a shirt that had lace right down the middle- I mean ruffles!  They said, “What size?”  I said, “No size of that!”  They said, “This is the latest thing.”  I said, “That’s one of the reasons I don’t want it.”  Listen, Don’t get mad at me!  I know most of you boys who have worn a tuxedo have probably worn on of those lacy things!  You say, “Why?”  You may not like me and you many not agree with me, but you’ll have to admit one thing.  For 14 years and 3 months there has been a man behind this pulpit.  I may be mean and stubborn, and I may be bigoted, and I may be right-winged- in fact, I happily plead guilty to all of those things- but there is one thing you have had for all of these 14 years.  You’ve had a fellow whose tail you couldn’t twist!  This country is in dire need of men!

You put ruffles, long hair, and makeup on your boy, then you come to the preacher 15 years later and say, “I don’t know what’s happened to my boy!”  Nothing happened to him; you never had a boy!  You had a little girl!  Young men have come to my office who have had surgery and taken hormone shots to develop feminine bodies with bosoms who have grown up in some of the finest families in this church!

This morning I was talking about those kids who were fighting out in Denver.  One little kid got knocked down seven times, and I stood there and watched it as he said, “Mister, don’t stop the fight because I’m going to get up and beat the fire out of him in a minute!”  I let him fight!  Some of you ladies gasped when I said that.  One of the finest things that could have happened to your big, 18-year old punk would have been for somebody to have beat the living fire out of him when he was about 8 or 9 years old.  You don’t like that?  You have no choice.  When I was a kid, if I didn’t have a fight before I got home from school, it was an unsuccessful day!  I’m not suggesting that boys go out looking for fights, but I’m not suggesting that any boy run from one either!  I don’t believe anybody ought to be a big bully and go around picking fights.  I don’t believe you ought to want to fight.  But I’ll tell you one thing!  I don’t believe a boy ought to open his purse and get out scented tissue to wipe his tears because he is afraid of the big bully in the school!  In most of the cases here where your wives wear these slacks, it’s very appropriate because she wears the other pants in the family, too.  Men!  That’s the need of this nation.

2. The Devil is using long hair on men to break down the barrier between the sexes.

It is considered by experts that long hair is nothing more than a part of the unisex movement.  In Manhattan, there is a barber shop with a placard in the window that says, “For men and women: unisex haircuts.”  In this area, we have unisex barber shops.  What are those young men with long hair really saying?  Marshall McLuhan asked theoretically, “In what may seem a ludicrous statement, they are sending a message to all who will listen: ‘We are no longer afraid to display what you may call feminine.  We are willing to reveal that we have feelings and weaknesses’”

“Well,” somebody says, “what about Jesus?  He had long hair.”  You’ve got to be kidding!  “Well,” you say, “in all the pictures I’ve seen of Him, He had long hair.”  What kind of camera was used to take that picture?  Was it a Kodak?  You know where we got those pictures?  We got them from sissy artist who had long hair.  If I drew a picture of Jesus, He would be balding!  If Charlie Bell drew a picture of Jesus, He wouldn’t have a hair on His head!  Some sissy, long-haired, effeminate, homosexual decided to draw a picture of Jesus and he drew Him long hair.  Brother, don’t think for a single minute that our Lord would go against Corinthians 11:14.  “Well, how about the Nazarite?  Didn’t the Nazarite have long hair?”  No, the Nazarite shaved his head.  Sometimes, he would let his hair grow for a few weeks.  However, when you’re bald, you can let your hair grow quite a while before it’s long hair.

Did you know that false religion is usually built on the breakdown of the sexes?  The Greek Hermaphroditus was divided at the waist; the top half was female, the lower half was male, and both were worshiped.  Heathen religions often worship a god that is half male and half female, split vertically down the middle; one side has a woman’s breast and the other side has a man’s body.  In Asia, men hold hands. Why?  They do it because pagan religion is in Asia.  In Russia, men kiss each other on the mouth!  Boy!  I’d go to the electric chair first!  The latest rock hits have titles like, “Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls,”  or the Beatles’ record, “Girl, You’ve Been a Naughty Boy.”  I love you shaggy-headed males, but you are falling right into the hands of the unisex crowd.  You are pleasing this crowd that is trying to make one sex.  I was watching a basketball game the other day.  The announcer came on, and he was a doll!  You men who cover up you ears with your hair, you’re pitiful!  It just curls around so only your beautician knows!  Ladies, if your boy doesn’t want to show his ears, cut them off!

Paul Jones, who portrayed the tortured, young singing idol in the recent film “Satire of Pop Culture Privilege,”  actually looked lovelier at times than his film mistress, the famous model, Jean Shrimpton.  Paul McCartney, the choir boy of the Beatles, has soft eyes, a full mouth and a page-boy look.  By the way, a lot of this stuff started with little old Twiggy, who came out as the idol of the females with a physique that would make Wilt Chamberlain jealous.

Look, if you don’t want to go to Indianapolis, why don’t you stay off of I-65?  If you don’t want to got to Munster, why do you want to travel south on Calumet Avenue?  If you’re against the unisex and homosexual trend in our country, why don’t you quit participating in the things the Devil is using to further it?  You high school girls ought to go home tonight, take every pair of slacks you own, and destroy them.  A lot of them would if you mothers would keep you noses out of their business in that respect.  You grown women ought to go home tonight and do the same.  If many of you were to tear up all your “britches,” you would have to wear a barrel to the store to get something else to wear.  The way you look in them, a barrel would fit you perfectly, too!  There’s not a man in this room tonight who wonders why it’s wrong for a woman to wear slacks, unless he thinks it’s okay to examine a woman like you would a pig at a county fair.  You know it’s true!

It’s time you ladies decided to look like ladies when you go to the bank or the grocery store.  “But,” you say, “Brother Hyles, it’s cold.”  It’s no colder than it was in 1935!  There are people in this room who were shocked the first time you saw a female in slacks.  I haven’t changed; you have!  You don’t want me to change, do you?  You don’t want me to compromise.  You want me to preach my convictions, right?  All right, then why do you want to change?

I can tell you right now there are some girls in this church who are never going to be feminine enough to offer a boy love and tenderness.  One of the main reasons is you women.  I love you, and God knows I do.  I’m not trying to make you mad, even though I know I do make you mad.  In fact, I’m preaching on this because I love you.  I want these girls in our church to be as soft as lace and as sweet and precious and feminine as they can be.  Do you know what?  We ought to have more girls at this meeting on Thursday night to learn how to be gracious and feminine than we have at any other activity in this church, apart from soul winning.  You mothers ought to insist that your daughters get up here and let someone teach them how to walk and sit.  I go to Hammond Baptist High School sometimes an, even though the skirts are long enough, you can see as much when the girl sits down as you can see when a girl is wearing a miniskirt.  Why? They have not been taught how to sit.

Let me tell you one reason why I’m against a female wearing slacks.  A female in slacks can sit like a man with one leg up on the other knee, and they do it.  No female ought to sit like that!  This pants-wearing crowd is sapping the femininity of our girls.  That’s why they show their thighs when they put on a skirt; they don’t know how to sit because they wear pants most of the time. I’m saying, “Go home and burn your britches!” You say, “Brother Hyles, I’ll just pack up and go some place where a preacher doesn’t preach like this.”  Well, good!  It will keep us from borrowing two and three quarters of a million dollars. You can do it, but you know that the unisex crowd is pleased with your trousers.  It’s time we had an old-fashioned altar call about women wearing britches, just like we do about drinking and smoking and gambling and everything else.

You say, “Brother Hyles, I don’t agree with you on this.  What should I do?”  Trust me. Let me ask you a question.  Is it a sin not to wear britches?  No.  Then you can’t go wrong, can you?  The safest route is not to it because you’ll never be sorry if you’ll try to rear your daughters to be little ladies.

In this class, on Thursday nights, they have the girls bring an encyclopedia.  Do you think they study that encyclopedia?  No.  They put it on their heads and the girls learn to walk like girls.  (Any boy who can take three steps without dropping is not right with God!)  A girl ought to know how to walk like a girl.  Girls are not “one of the guys.”  Don’t walk like one!

While I’m at it, let me just pay my respects to the women’s liberation movement.  I think everyone in it is right.  They’re not women; they ought to be liberated!  I think they’re right; they’re not Miss or Mister or Mrs.  They’re just Ms.!  I’ll be honest with you.  I’ve seen that gal in charge of it on television and she is a Ms.!  She’s not a Mrs. or a Miss or a Mister; she’s somewhere in between!  You girls ought not to use language like boys.  You ought not to say to other girls, “Come on, you guys.”  You’re playing right into the hands of the unisex crowd.

Then you fellows, for Pete’s sake, or Harry’s sake, or anybody’s sake, don’t walk like a girl- swinging your hips and being prissy as you walk!  If I walked like that, I would go down to some Texas ranch and ride the wildest Brahma bull they had.  You say, “I might get thrown off!”  That’s exactly what I had in mind! You say, “He might stick his horns right through my gizzard!”  You’ve got my second idea too, but at least I would come back a man!  I would rather my boy have a bull’s horn through his gizzard and bury him tomorrow than for him to priss across the platform like Miss America.

We have some young men coming into my study now, and I thank God for them.  I’m teaching grown men how to walk.  I’m teaching them that a man doesn’t lean back when he walks; a man bounces when he walks and walks like he’s going somewhere.  I wouldn’t have to teach them if you moms and dads would teach them when they were kids.  Cut their hair!  Take the makeup off of their faces!  Take your dresses off their bodies!  Put some blue jeans on them!  Let them get in a fight every once in a while!  Make boys out of them, and I won’t have to try to correct them when they grow up!  God bless these poor fellows who have been victims of circumstance. Even if that happened to you, that’s still no reason for you to be a sissy.  Learn how to be a man!  Our nation is crying out for men!

Dear people, I beg you not to be fooled by the Devil into helping further the unisex movement.  Ladies, dress like ladies.  Men, look like men.  Do what you know would please God in this matter.

Let us pray.

 


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“I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion, that has warmed this cold world's heart for two thousand years.” Billy Sunday