Neddy Merrill over at The Edge of the American West has pointed out just how shabby that pretense really was:

Worst non-ex-Muslim ever
[...]
What makes this story so interesting is that he’s terrible at playing a Muslim. Or, more accurately, that he got as far as he did while being so terrible. Check out these videos, posted by one of the bloggers who’s been on this for a while: he gets the Shahada wrong. He thinks there are 40 days in Ramadan. He confuses “insha’Allah” and “alhumdulillah.” The Christian equivalent would be like saying Jesus rose on Christmas– just a straight-up, WTF howler to anyone who’s even casually Muslim.

I’m trying to imagine what the atheist equivalent would be. It would have to be like saying, “I’m an atheist, but Jesus loves me anyway.”

Despite this, a few other evangelical apologists like Norman Geisler, co-author of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (which our friend Deacon Duncan has recently finished demolishing), are sticking by him.

From Jezebel:

Florida State Senator Mike Bennett is anti-abortion. And yet, during a floor debate on a bill requiring abortion seekers to pay for an ultrasound, the cameras caught him looking at topless pics on his laptop.

Debate over the bill — which has no exceptions for rape, incest, or endangerment of a woman’s life — has been heated, but it failed to hold Bennett’s attention. Just as Senator Dan Gelber, a Democrat, was saying, “I’m against this bill, because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida,” Sunshine State News service’s cameras caught Sen. Bennett looking at a photo of topless girls, and then watching a video of a dog shaking itself dry.

Eight-term Indiana Rep. Mark Souder announced his resignation Tuesday after admitting to an affair with a female aide who worked in his district office.

Souder, a Republican, will will step down on Friday. He said in remarks obtained by Fox News that he “sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff.”

“I wish I could have been a better example,” he said. “In this poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain. I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process. … We are a committed family but the error is mine and I should bear the responsibility. Not only am I thankful for a loving family but for a loving God.”

Multiple senior House sources indicated that the extent of Souder’s affair with the staffer would have landed him before the House Ethics Committee. Sources told Fox News that the aide, identified as Tracy Jackson, a woman in her mid-40s, would accompany the congressman to events and to record ads at a Christian radio broadcast station.

It gets better (or worse). Mark Souder produced a video promoting abstinence… with his mistress:

Here is how this hypocritical douchebag voted on issues:

Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. (Nov 2007)
Voted YES on Constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. (Jul 2006)
Voted YES on making the PATRIOT Act permanent. (Dec 2005)
Voted YES on Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. (Sep 2004)
Voted YES on protecting the Pledge of Allegiance. (Sep 2004)
Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
Amend Constitution to define traditional marriage. (Jun 2008)

Glad to see him go — the way he left is just icing on the cake.

Update: Video fixed; Mark removed the original, but he should know that you can never beat the internets!

Politician caught lying.

Blogger phones in a post.

Anti-gay activist caught soliciting gay sex.

On April 13, the “rent boy” (whom we’ll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.

That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.

Rekers, who I’d never heard of before, has been quite an important member of the anti-gay community:

For decades, George Alan Rekers has been a general in the culture wars, though his work has often been behind the scenes. In 1983, he and James Dobson, America’s best-known homophobe, formed the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based, rabidly Christian, and vehemently anti-gay lobbying group that has become a standard-bearer of the nation’s extreme right wing. [...]

He has also influenced American government, serving in advisory roles with Congress, the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services and testifying as a state’s witness in favor of Florida’s gay adoption ban. A former research fellow at Harvard University and a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, Rekers has published papers and books by the hundreds, with titles like Who Am I? Lord and Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.

“While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people,” says Wayne Besen, a gay rights advocate in New York City and the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which investigates the anti-gay movement. “His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals.”

Of course, we’re so used to this it’s not even surprising. The only thing new to come from this is a new euphemism:

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (Medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

He needed help “lifting his luggage,” if you know what I mean. It replaces “hiking the Appalachian Trail” and “wide stance” as the newest euphemism created by a sex scandal.

(source)

(via)

To the Back of the Bus, Please

Great men of God like Jerry Falwell notoriously blame floods and fires on the Lord’s wrath over women who want to work. It seems God doesn’t have time to punish big sins like slavery, pollution, greed, genocide, war, racism, violence, or child brothels when homos are brainwashing our kids with cartoons like Spongebob and the Teletubbies.

Falwell, cofounder of the Moral Majority, says the call for Christian conservatism was ignited when abortion was legalized. That’s when fags and feminism took over our Christian heritage. These groups couldn’t be called minorities, like God-ordained groups of real humans like blacks and Hispanics, Falwell said, because these were fake lifestyles of sin that rejected Biblical patriarchy.

The Nation’s Max Blumenthal writes that Falwell’s recollection is revisionist, for his mission was built long before gay rights were born. Falwell’s early church, built in a “backwater bottling plant,” was built on “rabid” segregationalism.

Falwell was born in 1933 to a bootlegger, and after college, he started a church in Virginia. The big issue facing Christians in 1956 was that Christian schools were weeding out separatism. White-only schools were losing tax-exempt status, and Falwell didn’t like this one bit.

“The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line,” he said in one sermon. In another: “The true Negro does not want integration. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race.”

Falwell claimed integration would “destroy our race eventually.” He complained about a couple “of opposite race live next door…as man and wife.”

The Birth of the Immoral Majority

In 1979, the Moral Majority was born, spurring Christians into political action. “The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country,” he bellowed in a ’76 sermon. (There was no mention of America’s original animist faiths.)

By 1983, the U.S. News and World Report named Falwell one of the 25 most influential Americans. Not great, since the rev was outspoken in support of apartheid. He called for Christians to reinvest in South Africa, opposing economic sanctions. He called the African National Congress a “communist front” and Bishop Desmond Tutu a “phony.” He opposed Nelson Mandela’s release from prison because he was a “communist.”

But as the ‘90s dawned, racism was becoming unpopular, so Falwell changed his focus to gays. “Gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you,” he said. He called a new wave of Christian gays, the Metropolitan Community Church “brute beasts” and a “vile and Satanic system.” He called a lesbian talk show host “Ellen Degenerate.” He also said the preschool program for kids, The Teletubbies, was “role modeling the gay lifestyle,” which was hurting “the moral lives of children.” The stuffed alien Tinky Winky was “purple — the gay pride color.” His antenna was — gasp — a triangle, and he carried a red bag.

You didn’t have to be gay to provoke Jer Bear’s wrath. Billy Graham was “the chief servant of Satan.” The National Organization of Women was actually the “National Organization of Witches.”

And the evil American Civil Liberties Union was “to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.” Jerry wasn’t fond of Jews, though. “Jews can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose,” he grumbled, not content with his considerable fortune. The antichrist? “Of course he’ll be Jewish.”

Geography Lessons

His Bible said so, and the “Bible is the inerrant … word of the living God … infallible, without error in all matters … such as geography, science, history.” Somewhere in that Bible, there was something for labor unions, too. “Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers.”

Most famously, Jerry Falwell said that hurricanes and disasters and the 9/11 attacks were divine retribution for homos.

In the Bible it also says gluttony is sin, and maybe 9/11 attacks happened because the rev was breaking the scales. In any event, a series of artery blockages and infections did him in, 2007, at 73.

Falwell was inducted last fall into the Christian Hall of Fame. In the company of Calvin, Apostle Paul, and Luther, Falwell is one of 124 inductees. “Falwell is honored for having been one of the great heroes of the faith in the last century,” said Rev. Mike Frazier at the ceremony. “…Perhaps he has done more for God than any other man in our generation.”

Early Wednesday morning, State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Calif.) was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Sources report that Ashburn — a fierce opponent of gay rights — was driving drunk after leaving a gay nightclub; when the officer stopped the state-issued vehicle, there was an unidentified man in the passenger seat of the car.

Ashburn has issued an apology for the incident:

“I am deeply sorry for my actions and offer no excuse for my poor judgment. I accept complete responsibility for my conduct and am prepared to accept the consequences for what I did. I am also truly sorry for the impact this incident will have on those who support and trust me – my family, my constituents, my friends, and my colleagues in the Senate.”

Well isn’t that nice that he accepts the responsibility and is prepared to accept the consequences? I’m sure he’s not hiring lawyers and trying to weasel his way out of anything!

Ashburn’s voting record shows that he’s voted against “every gay rights measure in the State Senate since taking office including Recognizing Out-Of-State Same-Sex Marriages, Harvey Milk Day and Expanding Anti-Discrimination Laws.”

Sometimes, when I get cynical, I think there’s a private gay club where all the anti-gay Republican representatives are members…

Both Daniel and I have had our fun with Pat Robertson, particularly over the horrendous things he said about Haiti. Robertson’s religious cluelessness can make him almost seem comical – at least if his cluelessness wasn’t so ugly. But Mark Hulsether over at Religion Dispatches wants to remind us that there are some more solid reasons why Robertson is a worrisome figure on the right. Here are his top five:

5) Robertson plays his part in the Iran-Contra scandal.
During the Central American civil wars of the 1980s, Robertson helped fund “cities of refuge” in Guatemala (what were called “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam), and camps for Nicaraguan Contras. Though trivial in scale compared to the policies of Bush and Cheney, allies of Reagan, funded illegally through the Iran-Contra connection and related schemes, were carrying out sadistic massacres in parts of countries they considered to be too leftist.

[...]

4) Robertson fuses with News Corp.
[...]
This story has two morals: The first is that Fox News and Robertson’s “news” deserve about the same degree of respect from journalists. Second, critics have raised questions about the legality of financial transactions related to Robertson’s business empire.

[...]

3) Robertson becomes a leading presidential candidate.
In the 1988 presidential primaries, Robertson was the early Republican front-runner—a classic case dramatizing his centrality to the NCR and the NCR’s centrality to the Republican Party.

[...]
2) Robertson publishes an anti-Semitic screed and neo-conservative allies yawn.
Robertson’s 1991 book, The New World Order, recycled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and stated that George Bush Sr. was part of a conspiracy to institute “an occult-inspired world socialist dictatorship” (through his work with the United Nations in the first Gulf War). This caused few of Robertson’s neoconservative allies to break with him in any decisive way—although one former neocon, Michael Lind, denounced him in a major exposé in the New York Review of Books.

Hulsethe’s top pick is actually something that Robertson shares with many far right religious figures. Robertson seems to believe that political authority is only really legitimate when it accords with God’s will – or rather, Robertson’s interpretation of God’s will. Robertson sometimes seems to encourage and celebrate rebellion against the US government. Hulsethe describes one example, “In Robertson’s End of the Age (a book that restates his argument from The New World Order in the form of a novel), a heroic Christian general lies to the president and secedes from the United States with several nuclear bases.”

As Frank Shaeffer said, speaking about his father Francis’ book A Christian Manifesto, “… my father was practically calling for the overthrow of the United State government. If his words had come out of the mouth of anyone other than a white American it would have been called sedition. Instead, we were invited to the White House and I went swimming in Michael Ford’s pool.”

But now some are questioning his luxurious lifestyle:

One former staff member who says he was close to Young but wishes not to be identified, described it this way: “The lack of accountability. The lavish lifestyle that keeps increasing, while the attendance keeps decreasing.” [...]

And, like good ‘ol Benny Hinn, he has a private jet:

Young recently replaced his chief financial officer and replaced him with his personal attorney, business partner and fishing buddy, Dennis Brewer Jr.

With Brewer’s help and a complex series of business creations and transactions, Young is now jetting around the country in a French-made Falcon 50 private jet; estimated value, $8.4 million. [...]

Those who hear him preach every Sunday have never been told about the aircraft.

“The staff members are told that there is no plane, and several staff members who have actually been on the plane have denied that there is a plane,” said the former employee source.

He also makes some serious cash:

News 8 has also learned that Young’s 10,000 square foot, $1.5 million estate on Lake Grapevine is not listed on the tax rolls in his name, but rather in the name of “Palometa Revocable Trust.”

Records show that Young was paid $240,000 a year as a parsonage allowance; that’s in addition what sources say is a $1 million yearly pastor’s salary.

And on top of that, he has been creating numerous for-profit businesses based on the non-profit church:

In the past few years, Young and his attorney, Dennis Brewer Jr., have created a number of for-profit companies generating money apart from Fellowship Church, including: Creative Pastors, CreativePastors.com, Creality Enterprises, Creality Publishing, EY Publishing, Ed Young Resources and UOI Resources.

All the businesses list the fifth floor of Dennis Brewer’s law office in Las Colinas as their office address.

But the resources used to generate the profits come, in part, from the not-for-profit Fellowship Church. For example, Ed’s favorite sermons that were delivered at the church.

Young might not be breaking any laws, but as the article says, “perhaps he is violating the covenant of honesty with his congregation.”

Body Count

The Bible says not to “touch God’s anointed,” and that’s how faith healer con artist Benny Hinn gets away with murder. Kings and prime ministers welcome him as royalty, giving him the poorest countries so he can take whatever Indian farmers or Kenyan coffee growers have left. The Pentecostal prosperity pastor is filthy rich, now raking in around 100 million a year.

He has zero issue asking for what he wants: in one case, for a $36 million dollar jet. People drop dead at his Miracle Crusades, but with that kind of income, his audience pays his settlements. Skeptic Magazine (Vol 14, #4, 2009) reported that Ella Peppard fell down at a revival, and was denied medical intervention by Hinn, who declared God would heal her. She died.

Hinn settled out of court with millions paid for by the hopeless and the gullible desperate for God to bless them if they give. Hinn has a trail of people who have died or been injured at his crusades the globe over. Skeptic also noted that in 2004, three patients left their hospital beds in hopes of a miracle at a rally, and all died during the revival. Hinn didn’t even bother trying to heal them. At that same event, ten fell out of trees where they were hoping for a better view of God’s anointed. All were badly hurt with broken bones. Hinn did nothing except ask for their money. Then there were the cancer victims who gave up treatment to trust in the Lord, and they also died.

Death Threats

Despite Hinn promising doctor’s notes and other proofs, investigators have not found one who has truly been healed. But Hinn threatens critics like myself with death. “I curse that man who dares to speak a word against this ministry… ” he said to thousands. He also said, “I speak this under the anointing of the Spirit… Don’t touch God’s servants; it’s deadly… You’re going to pay.” He has threatened to harm the children of his critics, all under the “anointing” of course.

No one really knows much about Toufik Benedictus Hinn, born in Jaffa (now Israel). He was part Greek and part Armenian, and moved to Toronto in his youth. He was born-again in 1972. The Lord healed him of a childhood stutter, and he decided to be a miracle maker. “Everything I say happens,” Hinn has also said. In October, Daniel reported on Hinn’s failed prophecies — that God told him the homos would burn, Castro’s death, and other things that did not come to pass. Who was lying — Benny or God?

DOA

Some things are just plain weird. Hinn has said if we placed the hands of the corpses of our beloved on the TV screen during his crusades, there would be a mass resurrection. He says God literally enters him to perform healings and prophecies, and says he doesn’t remember the things he says or does when he is “drunk” on the holy spirit. He also speaks to the dead. Weirder still, two in his inner circle died from heroin overdoses. On the night of one OD, Hinn was shown on video passing a pipe of something intoxicating to his brother in Christ.

Then there was another brother in the Lord caught having gay sex with the chauffeur, and also the case of PI Mario Licciardello. The former cop was hired to help Hinn root out corruption. Mario saw so much of it that he threatened full disclosure. He died suddenly of a mysterious heart attack before his story got to court. Hinn allegedly settled with Mario’s widow — but why? And then, there was the worthy orphanage cause that never materialized, for which Hinn bilked the masses. Without flinching, Hinn said God told him not to build it after all.

Psycho

I’m no shrink but Hinn is mentally unhinged. But it would be unfair to equate him with other sufferers of schizophrenia, because Hinn is also a psychopath. He has learned to mimic human emotions, which he does not have, to further his own power and profit. He fancies himself Hitler in sheep’s clothing.

His biggest rush is not the jet or the hotels, but the millions of minions bowing their heads to the lord their god Pastor Benny. We still live in terror of questioning even obvious abuses of the gentle words of Jesus, for fear of eternal hell. Only in this environment could a deceiver like Hinn thrive. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Lorette C. Luzajic writes about all kinds of interesting people at Fascinating People.

Since spring, e-mails had been trickling in alerting him to extensive similarities between the first three pages of the edition’s introduction and “A Brief History of Charles Darwin,” which Guffey wrote in 1997 for UT’s first Darwin Day event. He wrote the biography, handed out on campus each February and available through the Darwin Day website, “to make Darwin accessible to people who thought Darwin was a devil, to make him human.”

It seems to have appealed to New Zealand-born evangelist Ray Comfort, who wrote a 50-page introduction for Florida publisher Bridge-Logos’ reissue of Darwin’s treatise on evolution. Bridge-Logos lists dozens of titles by Comfort in its catalog, including some co-authored by actor Kirk Cameron, who also co-hosts a television series with Comfort. Guffey is not acknowledged in the book, but the introduction begins with his biography of Darwin. A few sentences were chopped or shortened, and a paragraph on Darwin’s youth was rearranged and reworded, but most of the passage appears taken directly from Guffey.

Now Guffey is considering legal action. Here are some parallels (courtesy of AIG Busted):

Ray: On returning to England in 1836, Darwin set to work examining and disseminating the extensive collection of specimens he acquired during the voyage. He quickly established a reputation as an accomplished naturalist on the London scene. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. That same year he published his journal of the voyage of the Beagle, which brought him immediate celebrity among London’s intellectuals. In 1842 he and Emma moved to Down House in Kent. It was there that she bore ten children and she and Charles spent the rest of their lives.

Stan: On returning to England in 1836, Darwin set to work examining and disseminating the extensive collection of natural history specimens acquired during the voyage. He quickly established a reputation as an accomplished naturalist on the London scene. In 1839 he married Emma Wedgwood, and saw his journal of the voyage of the Beagle published. In 1842 he and Emma moved to Downe house, Kent where Emma would bear 10 children and she and he would live for the rest of their lives.

Ray: During his great adventure as the Beagle’s naturalist, Darwin had studied certain aspects of the morphology and biogeography of the many species of plants and animals that he had observed. He eventually concluded that species exhibited varying degrees of similarity because they were to varying degrees related.

Stan: On his great adventure as the Beagleʼs naturalist Darwin had noted and begun to ponder certain aspects of the morphology and biogeography of the many species of plants and animals that he had observed. In particular, he had begun to explore the possibility, and eventually concluded, that species exhibited varying degrees of similarity because they are to varying degrees related.

Ray: …[Y]oung Charles showed less interest in studying than in hunting, natural history, and scientific experimentation. In 1825, he enrolled at Edinburgh University.

Stan: Early in his youth he demonstrated predilections for hunting, natural history, and scientific experimentation. In 1825, after public school education, he enrolled at Edinburgh University.

And there are other sources he copied word for word:

Ray: During the Voyage he had ample opportunity to see the cruelties of slavery and wondered how god could allow such inhumanity to exist. He also could not accept that a kind god would allow humans to live in such a wretched state as the natives of Tierra del Fuego. Why would god allow such suffering in the world was an internal conflict Darwin could not resolve.

Source: During the voyage he had ample opportunity to see the cruelties of slavery and wondered how God could allow such inhumanity to exist. He also could not accept that a kind God would allow men to live in such a wretched state as the natives of Tierra del Fuego. The issue of why God would allow such suffering in the world was an internal conflict that Darwin could not resolve.

Ray: He continued to give support to the local church and help with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church.

Source: He continued to give support to the local church and help with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church.

Ray: As a clergyman, he would have the free time to follow his real intellectual love: natural history. Darwin was a passionate student of nature, and while still in school he had amassed a considerable beetle collection as well as other specimens.

Source: As a clergyman, he would have the free time to follow his real intellectual love: natural history. Darwin was a passionate student of nature, and while in school he amassed a considerable beetle collection as well as other specimens. [from the introduction to Charles Darwin's autobiography!]

I knew Comfort wasn’t intellectually honest, but I didn’t know he was this intellectually dishonest. It’s a shame the Bible doesn’t provide him with a better moral framework — perhaps we can recommend him a better holy book to follow and defend?

Update: There’s a line-by-line comparsion over at RationalWiki. Here is Guffy’s original handout, and here is Comfort’s. There is even more similarities than RationalWiki shows, parts are just rearranged.

One of the disadvantages of growing up Episcopalian is that I’m ignorant of a lot of the things going on in the Evangelical subculture. Since Evangelicals are one of the largest Christian groups in America, that means that I just don’t understand certain things that are going on around me.

Here’s a problem that I’ve just noticed. Many Evangelicals are big on “moral absolutes.” I used to listen to right wing radio shows on a Christian station, and not a day went by when someone didn’t rail against “moral relativism,” and insist that morality should always be objective and absolute.

One guy’s favorite example of something that was always wrong, no matter what, was torture. This was a decade ago, and I wonder if he’s still sticking to that line.

Well, apparently one of the implications of this insistence on moral absolutes is that lying is always wrong. As Fred Clark over at Slacktivist recently put it:

Thanks to the popularity of this garbled deontology, “moral absolutes” has become, for most American evangelicals, a buzzword meaning, roughly, “opposed to legal abortion.” The upshot of all of that is that for many American evangelicals, the idea of that it might be necessary in a given situation to tell a righteous lie — such as by lying to the Antichrist himself to prevent his slaughtering your entire community — is tied up with the collapse of all morality, all truth, all meaning. Any concession that rules might sometimes need to be broken could, in their minds, lead directly to a slippery slide down the slope to gay abortionist indoctrination camps for preschoolers. Man was made for the sabbath, after all.

So, alright, lying is always wrong, no matter what. But just recently I was listening to an episode of This American Life, entitled “Bait and Switch.” They interviewed a former Evangelical named Dave Dickerson about the various fronts that Evangelicals will put on in order to convert the unbeliever.

I have always known that some Evangelicals could get a little bit deceitful when trying to attract the attention of the un-churched. Take the evangelical tracts that look like money. Making your message look like a $20 bill is one way to make sure someone picks it up. It’s a little annoying, but it only makes me angry when some idiot leaves one as a “tip” to the wait-staff.

But Dickerson talked about throwing mock beach parties with girls in bikinis in order to hold people’s attention long enough to deliver their message. Alright, it’s not “flirty fishing,” but it’s still a bit seedy and dishonest. He also mentions a trick where they’d pose as students giving a religious survey on campus. They’d use it as a starting point, and follow it up with an invitation to visit their church.

What am I missing? Is this a case where I’m seeing two different factions of the diverse Evangelical population? Or is this just blatant hypocrisy?

Blame it on “The Man”

Tony Alamo, 74, is convinced that a demon possessed FBI and the pope are behind the plot to put him in prison, but this defense didn’t exactly impress the judge who sentenced him to nearly two centuries of hard time.

Despite vivid descriptions of nonstop pederasty, mind control, dehumanizing, threats, deprivation, and violence inside the cult of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, Tony claims his victims were paid off by the FBI or the Roman “whore of Babylon.” After wrestling with the law for 4 decades, he was put away last week for marrying a bevy of 8 year old girls.

The cult leader claims to be the “strongest fundamentalist Christian” in the world, and points out that all of the prophets were polygamous with young wives. God told him to marry them. But at the same time he denies it all and says evil, corrupt cops made it all up.

Who is this Tony Alamo? He has churches all over the world, with followers (“Alamos”) worshipping him as a “holy man of God” and prophet. A closer look at this chosen one reveals one of the weirdest and most terrifying cult leaders of all time.

Hearing the Voice of God

Pullquote: Using beatings, brainwashing, starvation, deprivation, sex, and other hallmarks of cult tactics, Tony managed to maintain a hive of worker bees, and a constant supply of children with whom God told him to sleep.

A Jew of Romanian ancestry, he was born Bernie Hoffman. But Italian crooners were all the rage, so he chose the name Tony Alamo with hopes of making it in singing. One day, while meeting with some music biz execs, he had what some would call a psychotic break. “Suddenly my ears went completely deaf. I could not hear any noise from the crowd in the room… I heard a voice… all around me…The voice said, “I AM THE LORD THY GOD. TELL THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COMING BACK TO EARTH, OR THOU SHALT SURELY DIE.”

It was not the first time. He’d been hearing and seeing things since childhood. (Not long after this vision, he saw hundreds of flying saucers.) He went to tell his friend Susan about hearing God. Susan was a Christian Jew so Tony knew she would relate. To make a long story short, they got married, and went into the ministry, preaching to hippies in the ‘60s. They also sold rhinestone jackets, a fitting gig for a preacher who then looked like Disco Stu.

Behind the scenes things were getting freaky. Inside compounds, Alamos who dedicated their life to Tony were increasingly cut off from the outside, and trained to believe that everyone else but them worshipped Satan. Using beatings, brainwashing, starvation, deprivation, sex, and other hallmarks of cult tactics, Tony managed to maintain a hive of worker bees, and a constant supply of children with whom God told him to sleep. Those who tried to even use a phone without permission, were beaten half to death.

One ex-Alamo reported in Los Angeles’ Press Argus, “The living conditions were disgusting. We slept body to body in sleeping bags on the floor… The bathroom conditions were worse. The toilets were always full because we were told that if we flushed them, the leaching field wouldn’t hold it all. So about every two or three days they were flushed … water was always cold. I took a shower about once a week.”

It Ain’t Over ‘til It’s Over

Pullquote: Tony told his people that his wife was going to be resurrected. 24 hour prayer around her corpse was everyday life for six months.

It gets even weirder. Susan died in 1982 of cancer, and Tony told his people that she was going to be resurrected. 24 hour prayer around her corpse was everyday life for six months. Eventually, the law ordered her coffin sealed, but the Alamos still kept vigil at her mountaintop casket. It was more than a decade before Susan’s family was able to locate and procure her body for burial.

Tony was outspoken about government conspiracies against him. He was very paranoid, but the reality was that the FBI was indeed following him. After all, he committed frauds and tax evasions of nearly 20 million dollars. Now Tony claims he is just another persecuted follower of Christ, imprisoned for the gospel.

He says the government raided and kidnapped the cult children. The judge “ordered that all the Christian children of my church should be taken from their parents and be adopted out to homosexuals, lesbians, child molesters, and numerous other wicked and satanic, obnoxious people.” This same government brainwashed the victims, too. “Deprogramming is a nice word for hypnosis, brainwashing, mind-control, voodoo, black magic. Their testimony is not to be believed because it is not true, and they are not in their right mind. They are under a hateful spell of witchcraft.”

He says he will continue to shepherd his flock from behind bars.

I guess they think putting a smiley face after it makes their bigotry and hatred okay.