There’s also a 666 reference toward the back of the shoe … with another number in front of it, alluding to which limited unit it is. Word is, MSCHF/Nike are only dishing out 666 of these puppies to the public … so if you have 6/666, that seems to mean you got the 6th model.

Here’s the kicker … apparently, these shoes will contain one drop of human blood somewhere along the soles. And no, not the metaphorical blood, sweat and tears of the factory workers who will presumably put these together … like, actual plasma-filled red stuff.

This comes after the release of the new video by the gay hip-hop artist, which shows him being seduced by Satan in the form of a serpent going down on him. Then Lil Nas X slides down a stripper poll to Hell to give Lucifer a lap dance, and to position himself to be sodomized by the Devil.

Rolling Stone reports that Lil Nas X means the video as an insult to

homophobes who accuse gay people of going to hell, with the dethroning of Satan as a means of ‘dismantling the throne of judgment and punishment that has kept many of us from embracing our true selves out of fear.’

RS also says that a leader of the Church of Satan, David Harris, thinks the video is awesome:

Indeed, the ending of the video, in which Lil Nas X snaps Satan’s neck and puts the horns on his own head to crown himself as a god, is what struck Harris as “the most Satanic part of the video.” “We view ourselves as the most powerful beings in the world. The fact that he crowned himself as Satan — now, that’s Satanic,” he says, noting it’s especially empowering in the context of Lil Nas X making a statement about his own journey as a black gay artist who has faced bigotry.

As for the infamous intratheistic lap dance, far from being sacareligious [sic], Satanists believe in all forms of consensual sexuality, so “someone giving a lap dance to anyone who wants one is obviously more than welcome within the confines of Satanism,” he says.

So there you have it: Lil Nas X has the Church of Satan’s stamp of approval. As one Lil Nas X fan summed up on Twitter, in response to tongue-clucking over the androgyny and lurid sexuality of the video: “Either you getting piped by satanhimself or u ain’t livin right.”

Either you are being sodomized by the Devil or you ain’t livin’ right. This is pop culture today, and Nike’s all over it, selling shoes that openly glorify the ultimate incarnation of evil.

Lil Nas X knows what he’s doing. Back in January, he told NPR:

Pride.com celebrates the song:

Even through the ridiculousness of it all, it’s definitely a moment for Lil Nas X and gay representation in pop culture at large. The song and video is unabashedly queer (one of the lyrics reads “shoot a child in your mouth while I’m ridin”), and watching a Black pop star strut around in underwear and heels and be embraced by much of the public and his fans feels momentous.

He’s not talking about actually firing bullets at children, but ejaculating. Classy, this guy.

Sign of these decadent times. From Live Not By Lies:

Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called “a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.” Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex.

The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic literature, which found renewal in sexual passion. “The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic,” Billington writes, detailing how the figure of Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians. They admired the diabolic willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one’s desires and to exercise one’s will.

UPDATE: Nike says it did not produce these shoes. They are Nikes, but bought by some other company, which altered them. Don’t blame Nike for this.

UPDATE.2: You readers who are sneering at me and other Christians for being disgusted by this, ask yourself: if Lil Nas X depicted himself being sodomized by Hitler or a hooded Klansman, how would you feel? If Lil Nas X depicted himself being sodomized by the Prophet Muhammad, even though you’re not a Muslim, how would you feel?

Are you sure that your anger is motivated by anything other than hating Christians?

You don’t have to believe in the Devil to see this as a very bad sign. As I wrote above, open Satanism — whether actual Satanism, or a more literary, Romantic Satanism — was a precursor of 20th century totalitarianism in Russia. The Nazi leadership was deeply into the occult (google Himmler sometime). As a Christian, I believe that the Devil is real, and is powerful. But even if you don’t believe that, it’s not nothing to have people esteem the symbolic figure of evil and pure transgression. It is a sign of an underlying disorder.