Claims to fame: Former senior pastor, First Baptist Church, Anadarko, Oklahoma; big-spending strip club habitué
Moral apex: Spent “thousands of dollars” in a strip club, until he was finally caught on tape by reporters from Oklahoma City’s Fox 25 News, who had staked him out for some six weeks before releasing this damning video report. (more…)
Because we could spend 24/7 tracking the sins of right-wing religionists (especially “youth pastors”) and never get caught up. Of the following, the more interesting cases will probably end up with their very own Conservative Babylon entries.
Arrested: William Bendert, pastor, King of Kings Lutheran Church, Lake Orion, Michigan, in an online sting. An FBI agent posing as an 11-year-old girl and her mother says Bendert offered “sexual training” to the fictitious 11-year-old, the complete details of which are spelled out in the agent’s affidavit (which also mentions that two of Bendert’s previous AOL accounts had been terminated for transmitting child pornography), available from The Smoking Gun. See also: MLive.com, September 13, 2010; WXYZ.com, September 13, 2010 (more…)
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Believe it or not, the following cases are not the worst among the Boy Scouts of America; tragically, these stories are almost mundane in comparison to others — which we’ll get to, in short order. (more…)
Claims to fame: Former pastor, Reeders United Methodist Church, Reeders, Pennsylvania; adulterer; suspected wife-killer (or wives-killer)
Moral apex: Arrested September 13, 2010, and charged with murdering his second wife, Betty Jean Schirmer, in 2008, and staging a car wreck to make her death look like an accident. (more…)
Because we could spend 24/7 tracking the sins of right-wing religionists (especially “youth pastors”) and never get caught up. Of the following, the more interesting cases will probably end up with their very own Conservative Babylon entries.
Captured: Miguel Cala, 37, in Virginia and charged with sexually assaulting a child under 12 years of age. Until May, 2010, was a longtime music teacher at St. Andrew’s Catholic School, Coral Springs, Florida. Police say Cala has confessed. Story: Miami Herald, September 8, 2010 (more…)
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Background checks are no guarantee a child molester will be found out before he’s allowed to work with children; there’s a first time for everything, and many youth volunteers who end up convicted of crimes have no criminal background.
But background checks don’t hurt, and often do turn up information that ought to give parents, and the organizations to which they entrust their children, considerable pause. (more…)
Before we turn to the molesters and other miscreants we haven’t featured before, let’s look at a relatively brief recap of prominent Conservative Babylonians with deep ties to the Boy Scouts of America:
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Jeffrey Bartleson, Republican political consultant who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign in Colorado, was a youth counselor in his church and Boy Scout leader.
In recognition of the final settlement of the lawsuit brought by six men sexually against the Boys Scouts of America (and its co-defendant, the Mormon church), in a case that ended in April, 2010 — which, ironically, coincides with the 100-year anniversaries of both the Boy Scouts of America and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — Conservative Babylon hereby begins an ongoing series about sexual abuse within the entirely anti-gay, anti-female, anti-freedom-of-religion — and largely Mormon — Boy Scouts of America. (more…)
(That should be “Mormon barley farmers,” but “Mormon beer farmers” just sounds more catchy.)
Who: Idaho’s Mormon barley farmers.
What about them? The barley they grow is used to make beer.
So? So, Mormons can’t drink liquor, or they go to Hell. Or at least they get a black mark on their records, and can’t enter their temples to wear their bakers’ hats and green aprons, trade club members-only handshakes, say secret code words through a curtain, and chant “Pay, lay, ale.” (Hmmm… “Pay”? “Ale”?)
Isn’t that…? Hypocritical, to make their money from the production of The Devil’s Nectar, while thinking they’re still “pure”? It certainly is.
That would be like… Like a vegetarian bleating about how much healthier he is than you are, and, more importantly, what a better person he is because he doesn’t eat poor, defenseless animals — while he makes his living as a butcher.
How do the Mormon barley farmers rationalize their actions? With the “somebody’s gonna grow it, so it may as well be me” defense.
Wouldn’t that be like…? A police officer who supplements his income on the side with a marijuana farm? Why, yes. Yes, it would be just like that.
What’s this about Mike Crapo? The Republican senator is trying to cut taxes, and prevent new taxes, on beer- and winemakers, because his fellow Mormon barley farmers would take a hit.
What’s Crapo’s rationalization? He has none, really, except to say that he “won’t impose his own religious beliefs on others.”
Is that true? Only when it’s convenient to Crapo’s own agenda. Crapo certainly imposes his own religious beliefs on others with regard to every other issue; he’s 100% anti-gay rights, anti-choice, anti-affirmative action, anti-immigrant… In fact, Crapo runs so far to the radical right, he makes Genghis Khan look like a blissed-out peacenik. (It also appears that extreme homophobia runs in the family.)
Claims to fame: Constitution Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio, 2010; “family values” Teabagger; steward, Bear Creek Church of the Brethren, Dayton, Ohio; Cub Scout leader; husband; father of three; accused sexual molester
Video after the jump. (more…)
Claims to fame: Youth pastor and son of pastor Les Gill, Word of Life Church, Boyle, Alberta, Canada; convicted child molester
Moral apex #1: Sexually molested a young girl — who, with her family, belonged to the Gills’ church — for nearly seven years, beginning when he was 16 years old, and she was just five. Reported the Edmonton Sun, “Gill attacked the girl at her home, at his home and on the ‘Bible Bus,’ (more…)
Because we could spend 24/7 tracking the sins of right-wing religionists (especially “youth pastors”) and never get caught up. Of the following, the more interesting cases will probably end up with their very own Conservative Babylon entries.
Probation hearing scheduled: Perez Blackmon, 42, newly elected pastor of Rosinvick Missionary Baptist Church, Blakely, Georgia, to determine if Blackmon’s new role as church leader violates the terms of his probation after his conviction of of statutory rape in 2005. Notes one vocal opponent, a court order specifying the conditions of Blackmon’s probation mandates that Blackmon “shall have no contact whether directly in person or indirectly through any means of communication or employment, volunteer activity or otherwise with any child under the age of 18,” and that pastoring a church violates this condition. Story: Albany Herald, September 1, 2010; sex offender registry page (more…)
