Yesterday I tested your creepy Christian pedo-dar. I asked Sloggers if this teacher—arrested for soliciting one of his 12-year-old students for sex—solicited a male student or a female student.

The results of the vote...

And a majority of Sloggers got it right: It's a girl...

A First Baptist Church School teacher is accused of soliciting a 12-year-old student for sex. Charleston County Sheriff's investigators charged Charles "DJ" Fishburne Rhodes III of Charleston with criminal solicitation of a minor.

An affidavit says the victim told investigators that Rhodes began text messaging her on her cell phone after school let out for the summer. The two talked through texts for about two to three weeks when Rhodes wrote and asked her to "come over." One text asked her to perform oral sex on him, the affidavit says.

Rhodes waived his rights and admitted in a statement that he engaged in the sexual conversation with the student, the affidavit says.

So it turns out that Sloggers' creepy Christian pedo-dar is pretty accurate. Congrats!

Yesterday some Slog commenters insisted that both of the creeps in the latest installment of Youth Pastor Watch were "homosexuals preying on teenage boys" even though there was no info about the sex of the victims in one of the cases. Care to put your pedo-dar to the test, Slog commenters? This guy is a teacher at a Christian school, and he was arrested yesterday for soliciting one of his 12-year-old students for sex:

Was the kid this alleged creep is alleged to have solicited a 12-year-old boy or a 12-year-old girl?

So how's your pedo-dar? I'll post the answer later today...

Tennessee:

A Knox County youth pastor is charged with two counts of rape of a child and sexual exploitation of a minor. Officers with the Knox County Sheriff's Office arrested 45-year-old Randall Thomas Hollifield at his Powell home Tuesday night, after conducting a search warrant at the house....

A press release from the Sheriff's office says Hollifield is the youth pastor at New Beverly Baptist Church, and works for Match Maker Inc.

California:

A [youth] minister and music teacher who molested three boys he met through church mentoring programs was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months in state prison. Jimmie Xray Robinson, 48, pleaded guilty in April to three counts of lewd acts on children. He also admitted having substantial sexual contact with the victims and committing prior felonies.

Robinson was associated with five churches in San Diego and Riverside counties.

Indiana:

Clinton Vaught, the 22-year-old youth minister at Resurgence, also got his first tattoo, a heart and bats, before he was a Christian. "I was 17 and I thought it was sweet," Vaught said with a grin. He later had his camouflaged. "It just looked really bad."

Now he has several Christian and secular tattoos, including "Dead to the World" on his arm and "Honor the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy" on his leg. "I get a lot of compliments," Vaught said. "Sometimes I feel people are judging me, too."

"I'm using these tattoos as part of my ministry," he said.

CNN reports:

Scientific tests prove bones housed in the Basilica of St. Paul in Rome are those of the apostle St. Paul himself, according to Pope Benedict XVI.

"Tiny fragments of bone" in the sarcophagus were subjected to carbon dating, showing they "belong to someone who lived in the first or second century," the pope said in a homily carried on Italian television.

"This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains of the Apostle St. Paul," Benedict said in Sunday's announcement.

The tomb also holds "traces of a precious linen cloth, purple in color and laminated with pure gold, and a blue colored textile with linen filaments," the pope said.

The tests were carried out by inserting a probe into a small opening in the sarcophagus, "which had not been opened for many centuries," the pontiff said. The probe "also revealed the presence of grains of red incense and traces of protein and limestone."

After I linked to a shockingly moronic post on David Klinghoffer's blog at Beliefnet—gay marriage harms women because what straight guy can resist "smooth-skinned boys"—some Slog commenters made their way over to Kingdom of Priests, where they proceeded to comport themselves like true Slog commenters. Today Klinghoffer notes...

Oh, now I know where all the incredibly nasty and vulgar commenters came from who joined our discussion when I posted Joshua Berman's reflection on the threat gay marriage would pose to women. It was linked by editor Dan Savage at The Stranger, one of our two local alternative papers here in the Seattle, on his blog.

The Stranger can be amusing but Savage himself is a shockingly vulgar writer, so much so that I won't link you back to his link from this blog which, after all, should be readable by your whole family.

Speaking of families, I've heard Savage on the radio talking about his "marriage" to another man with whom he has adopted a son. Who knows what Savage is like as a father. Maybe he's a model dad—as well as being a wonderful, faithful "husband." Let's stipulate that he is both. I do know, however, that I would never publish anything that I wasn't comfortable with my kids reading. The idea of any father engaging in such public displays of vulgarity—well, it could hardly be a worse advertisement for the societal stamp of approval on homosexual activity that Savage himself ardently seeks.

First, allow me to link you back to my post linking Klinghoffer's original post about how legal same-sex marriage would result in straight men giving up sex with women in favor of sex with boyish twinks: "Once You've Had Crack You Never Go Back." There's just a single profanity in my original post ("asshole"), you'll note, which is pretty tame by Slog standards (can't you say "asshole" on TV now?). And you can read the Slog-tainted comment thread at Kingdom of Priests here.

And second.... gee... it sure was nice of Klinghoffer—so very Christian of him—to refrain from putting the word "son" in scare quotes along with "marriage" and "husband" as he speculated about my family life. Klinghoffer is willing to concede that my son exists, unlike my marriage (legal in Canada and six other states) or my husband (who is not a figment of my imagination), and that's better than nothing, I suppose. But you have to wonder about a guy who believes that no adult should write or publish a word that isn't fit to be read by children. We all can't write children's books or Jeebus blogs. And David? I kind of doubt that whole families are gathering around computers at night to read your "insights." Just sayin' you could probably let the occasional profanity rip on the ol' blog without corrupting minds any tinier than your own.

And finally: I'd like to welcome David Klinghoffer's blog to Friends of Slog. Hopefully our commenters will be joining the discussion at Kingdom of Priests on a regular basis.

...by our meticulously planned murder rampages.

Timothy Carter told investigators his 56-year-old father called him at Radford University, about 90 miles away, and said his mother needed to speak to him. When he arrived home in the rural community of Axton, his father said his brother was sick and was downstairs in the basement of the brick ranch-style house. As Timothy Carter walked downstairs his father shot him in the back, Spence said.

"Timothy turned and begged for his life," Spence said, "and his father shot him again."

Spence said it appeared that William Carter had already killed his wife and older son before Timothy Carter arrived home late Saturday. The older son lived in Danville, about 25 miles away.... Timothy Carter [played dead before fleeing] to the home of a neighbor, Deborah Akers, who awakened to hear him beating on the door.

"He was just distressed, calling for help," she said Monday. Akers said she tended to Timothy Carter's wounds as best she could and called 911. Akers said she had known the Carters for more than 20 years and had never seen signs of trouble in family. "They were good family people, good Christian people," she said.

Soccer games and secularism are to blame, writes Charlotte Hays. Could be those twin evils, I suppose. But guys like these—and these and these and these and these and this—could be depressing enrollment.

Tennessee:

A Clarksville youth minister has been charged with having sexual contact with minors. Jonathan Tyler Giles, the former youth minister at Spring Creek Baptist Church, has been charged with three counts of statutory rape by an authority figure, sexual battery by an authority figure and two counts of soliciting a minor.

"Everyone is concerned when allegations like these are made," said the Rev. Paul Bunger, senior pastor at Spring Creek Baptist on Trenton Road. "We are praying for all of the parties involved."

Wisconsin:

A former youth pastor was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday on charges of sexual intercourse with a child younger than 16 in the mid-1970s. Russell J. Lesser, 64, of Bryson City, N.C., had pleaded guilty April 14 to a felony charge of sexual intercourse with a child younger than 16. Two others charges were dismissed but read in. The former pastor began his advances during a "trust" game, victim Laurie Asplund said, but then sexually assaulted her more than 40 times from summer 1974 to spring 1976. She was 14 to 16 years old.

Kentucky:

The death of a 13-year-old boy has accusations swirling around a Kentucky youth minister. James "Jamie" Mitchell was killed in a car crash, but his family is demanding answers after finding out there was much more to the accident than they were first led to believe.... On June 6 during an overnight outing with a church youth group, Jamie was killed in a terrible car crash. The man who the family says was in charge of a dozen teens during the camping trip was 24-year-old Ronald Derek Coulter, the youth minister at Big Springs Assembly of God Church in Bloomfield. Coulter told police and family members he was driving his Chevy Blazer in which Jamie and a 15-year-old boy were passengers. Coulter allegedly said a deer jumped out on a curvy stretch of Old Bloomfield Road, causing him to swerve....

But Jamie's family says the whole truth did not come out until three days after the funeral. That's when the 15-year-old boy who was in the vehicle with Jamie and Coulter went to police and told detectives Coulter wasn't driving at the time of the crash—Jamie was.... "He said, 'Derek told me at the scene of the crash not to tell anybody because both of them would get into trouble,'" Abby claimed. Detectives tell WAVE 3 when they questioned Coulter, he admitted making up the story about the deer.

What if I want to be left alone, Joel?

Of course I'd rather be proselytized by a "gay-affirming" church than attacked by an anti-gay church. But what I'd most like—what many of us non-religious types would like—is for religious people and institutions to leave us alone. Don't attack our families, don't march under our windows waving banners "welcoming" us. Leave us alone. I'm aware of the Anglican church, thanks, and I know that I can get my gayness affirmed at some locations. I'm still not interested.

As for the "copious coverage" of anti-gay preachers in the Stranger and on Slog: we take swings at "anti-gay rights pastors" because they're taking swings at us. If they left us alone, we'd leave them alone.

And speaking of religion...

A man who told authorities he is a church elder called a 13-year-old boy over to his car in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Central Islip Sunday evening—and offered the boy money for sex, police said. The boy, who was riding a bicycle, got a description of the car and noted the license plate and called police.

Suffolk County police found the car and at about 7:45 p.m. arrested Rosemberg Berrios, 42, of Whitetail Lane, Central Islip. Berrios told officers he is an elder in a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Patchogue, police said.

South Carolina:

A youth minister at a West Columbia church as been arrested and charged in a sex crimes case involving three victims. William Ralph Wilson, 30, of Irvin Jumper Road, Gaston, is the former youth minister at Chapel of Redemption Church, 5181 Platt Springs Road. He was arrested Thursday and charged with two counts of committing a lewd act on a minor under the age of 16, the Lexington County Sheriff's Department said. Wilson also has been charged with two counts of disseminating harmful materials or exhibiting harmful performance to a minor.

Florida:

A Miami County man charged earlier this week with raping a girl younger than 13 worked as a youth leader and director of children's church at Vandalia Baptist Temple, according to the Miami County Sheriff's Office. Shawn Rickert, 38, is charged with rape and gross sexual imposition over alleged contact with a girl beginning in 2005.... The girl told an adult that Rickert abused her while discussing inappropriate touching.

Georgia:

A youth pastor has published a book with life-saving tips for young people. In his new self-published Christian book Success Killers, Jerome Baker exposes nine things that most youth will encounter that can ruin their life.... Success Killers is available to purchase online at www.jeromeabaker.com.

The idea that attracts me to the continental philosopher of the moment, Quentin Meillassoux...
...that God does not exist, but He/She might exist in the future. That idea solves all of my theological problems. It is the right or best way to think about the big other.

When Brian Neiswender made his first appearance in Youth Pastor Watch in June of last year—the Pennsylvania youth pastor was accused of sexually abusing teenage girls—his supporters insisted in the comments thread that Neiswender was innocent because 1. he’s simply too good, too full of the spirit of Jesus Christ, to have done such a thing and 2. his accusers were so ugly that no man—youth pastor or not—would ever want to molest one of them and 3. Neiswender's wife is hot and 4. SATAN!!! Not even a tape recording of Neiswender apologizing to one of his victims could convince them of Neiswender's guilt. "I hope (but my hope is in vain)," wrote Jen, "that when he is proven innocent of all charges that you will run another story giving the facts."

If Jen was hoping to see Neiswender make Youth Pastor Watch again, her hopes were not in vain. If she was hoping to see Neiswender proven innocent of all charges, well... she hoped in vain:

A former youth pastor pleaded no contest Monday to charges he inappropriately touched teenage girls in Luzerne County. Brian Neiswender was accused of inappropriately touching teenage girls while working at the Christ Community Church in Kingston. At a hearing in August, three of his alleged victims testified that between 2004 and 2006, Neiswender touched them inappropriately during youth group meetings and private music lessons....

The no contest plea means Neiswender does not admit to the charges of indecent assault and corruption of minors, but he also does not deny them.

Neiswender faces up to 19 years in prison but is likely to get little more than a year. His sentencing hearing is sentenced on July 20.

The Westboro Baptist Church delegation outside of Garfield High School this morning wasn't claiming moral purity. “I sin and have sinned,” said Jael Phelps, granddaughter of Westboro’s pastor Fred Phelps. So what sort of sins are they sinning? I asked Phelps to describe them: if she has had sex before marriage, or like, if she has slept with the hot guy behind her, and whether she gets drunk. “We would never whisper them to you,” she said. Could she yell them to me? “No.” How about write them on a sign? “No.”

They came to Garfield because the students are “little brats,” but, when asked what she hopes to teach them, Phelps said, “Our goal is not to get them to see or understand.”

Across the street, pride-flag-waving girls, African-American boys, respectably dressed older gentleman, and even-more-respectably dressed nuns (who were men) mobbed the sidewalk. It was 7:12 a.m., and every time a yellow bus would stop, the teens cheered; students got off the bus, and the ranks swelled. They were winning the volume contest.

The students turned out mostly in solidarity with gay students, but unlike Seattle’s lilywhite gay pride parades, the crowd was half nonwhite. “I ain’t got a problem with gay people,” said Jaevon Lozan, 14, an African American freshman. “What they are doing is discrimination.”

Alexa Lagazo, a junior, held a sign that said, “You’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” referring to Westboro’s base in Topeka. She resented the homophobic messages, but she was also befuddled by another central message: People will soon be “killing and eating babies.” Seriously, what’s with the baby eating? I crossed the street to engage with Phelps, who stood behind a steel barricade with several police shooing away people who were also trying to engage with her.

“Before all is said and done, you are going to be eating your own babies, you will be eating you own children.” (I’m a fag, Jael, I have no babies.)

“I didn’t have anything to say to them,” said Hanna King, 15, co-president of the Gay Straight Alliance and organizer of the Garfield protest. “They are crazy. They just gave us a reason to rally for diversity and our community.”

Photos of students by Kelly O; photo of Phelps, the hot guy, and their matching brimstone-and-fire signs by me.

A church music director was charged today with crossing state lines to have sex with minors. David Zobel, 32, of Ann Arbor was arrested by the FBI today and charged in federal court in Ohio with performing sex acts with two girls ages 12 and 13, the FBI said in a news release.

Zobel, a former pianist with the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club who is listed on the glee club's Web site as chorus master and music director at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Ypsilanti, could not be reached for comment.

Tennessee:

A Robertson County youth minister and substitute teacher is accused of sexual assault after incidents involving one of his underage students. Police said Timothy Felts, 43, was arrested after encounters with a 16-year-old girl in March. Felts was charged with five counts of sexual abuse by an authority figure.

Police said four of the encounters happened at the North Springfield Baptist Church where he is a youth minister. The fifth incident happened at another church property. Warrants filed against Felts indicate he forced the alleged victim to touch his private parts and fondled her breasts under her clothing.

The official spokesperson for the Spokane branch of the Church of Satan rejects a sex offender's claim that he is a member in "good standing."

The Church of Satan’s view on sexuality, our appreciation of sexual freedom for consenting adults demands that we are even more strongly against anyone who abuses others sexually. There is nothing weaker, more cowardly, more irresponsible and utterly disgusting than a sex offender. Mr. Schertz would do well to remember that Satanists do not believe in forgiveness, and we have none for him.

Ouch.

Key words: 5:30 pm, Grey Gallery, beer, Mars Hill Jesus freaks trying to save your soul.

The horror, the horror.