Harry wrote:
He Who Casts the First Stone

Texas Observer

A little over a year ago, Amarillo’s swingers geared up for their New
Year’s Eve party at Route 66 Party and Event Rental, a downtown business
owned by a prominent couple, Mac and Monica Mead. Few in this
conservative, church-heavy city knew about the weekend parties, and the
swingers liked it that way. “Everybody in the lifestyle has to be very,
very discreet,” says Mac, a leather-skinned truck driver with a shaved
head, piercing blue eyes and an earring.

The Meads enforced strict rules at the members-only club: no drugs, no
single men, no audio-visual equipment. Most couples, even ones who had
been in “the lifestyle” for years, are on a first-name basis only. The
location of the club is (or was) “to be kept strictly private.” So
imagine the swingers’ surprise when they arrived at their New Year’s Eve
bash to find two dozen protesters, local media in tow, holding signs and
singing songs. This was a most unwelcome coming-out party.

Some protesters, mostly young men in their teens and early 20s, wore
black hoodies and military fatigues. The men, Amarillo would soon learn,
were foot soldiers of Repent Amarillo, a new, militant evangelical group
that advertises itself as “the Special Forces of spiritual warfare.”
Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility
Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. “We’re here to
shine the light on this darkness,” Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News.
“I don’t think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is
wrong. There’s no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how
many abortions.” The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the
swingers’ souls, but to shut the club down.

Dim lights Embed

It’s hard for the swingers to drum up powerful allies in Amarillo, where
real men worship Jesus at one of the biggest cowboy churches in the
world and conservative politics run deeper than the Ogallala Aquifer.
Citizens of Amarillo will tell you, with a certain pride, that their
city is the biggest little town in Texas. For all the open space, it can
seem like the walls are closing in.

For the past year, this Bible Belt city of 200,000 has been consumed by
a culture clash between Repent Amarillo and their targets, a list that
includes everything from gay bars to liberal churches. For the Route 66
swingers, Grisham’s “special forces” have been a near-constant presence.
Jobs have been lost, families estranged, assault charges filed and
businesses shuttered. So far, no public official has stood up to defend
these businesses, which operate legally. To the contrary, Repent
Amarillo has managed to turn the city’s own laws and employees into an
effective weapon. Amarillo, it turns out, doesn’t have the stomach to
stick up for gays, swingers, strippers or even Unitarians. Absent a
peacekeeper, the conflict might end up being settled the old-fashioned
way, frontier-style. “This will not end until somebody gets hurt, either
us or them,” one swinger warns.

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My favorite part:

"Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility
Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action."

Gee, should *that* alarm anyone? :)


These dimwitted christian fundies need to be treated just like the
taliban that they are...why send troops to Afghanistan to rid it of
taliban when for much less money we can rid Amarillo of taliban?

Practitioners of this sort of religious fundamentalism *hate* America.



Oh gee. Another of your favorite haunts coming under scrutiny. Thanks
for the inside poop.