If those gay people in Iowa weren’t getting married stuff like this wouldn’t be happening.

A Focus on the Family employee was jailed in Jefferson County after being arrested in Lakewood on suspicion of arranging to have sex with an underage girl.

Juan Alberto Ovalle, 42, started chatting online Thursday with someone he thought was a girl under the age of 15 but was actually an undercover police officer, according to the arrest affidavit filed with the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office… Ovalle works as a Spanish producer at Focus, translating radio broadcasts and other Focus content for Spanish-speaking audiences, said Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger…. A brief biography of Ovalle on the Web site of Audio Bible, which sells the Reina Valera Bible, says he is a native of the Dominican Republic who was saved when he was 14 and has served as a pastor in the United States and Latin America since age 19.

Or maybe it was those gay people getting married in Spain that drove him to it.

67 replies on “I Blame Iowa”

  1. i think the entire point here is that the high and mighty christian right constantly labels gays as horrible, promiscious threats to our children while painting themselves as perfect and as some sort of standard of behaviour. All Dan does is use stories in the mainstream media to demonstrate the absolute hypocrasy of this position. If an above poster was correct and 70 children a week are being abused, that is the real epidemic not gays. Bible thumpers can’t go around claiming they are the keepers of America’s morality when there is a serious problem of abuse between clergy and young children. Sure its unfair for Dan to captialize on the explotation of kids at the hands of christian fundamentalist, but its also extremely unfair for them to have hypocritical standards and push their beliefs onto everyone else through scare tactics.

  2. @49: Dan can go after whatever enemies he wants, it’s his forum. Why, oh why do people expect a BLOG to be an unbiased news source? It’s all opinions, people; and if you don’t know the leaning of Dan’s opinions by now you’re tone-deaf. I’m sure there are some nifty pro-church blogs out there that are just as biased about gays. Don’t be naive.

  3. Soooo @47, you’re arguing that the rampant child sexual abuse that goes on inside churches isn’t as bad as it seems – because only SOME of it is being done by clergy & staff? Does that mean volunteers, who presumably are members of the congregation, get some sort of special dispensation to rape children inside churches because, well, they’re JUST volunteers? And you consider THIS particular factoid as somehow relevant to your stance on denying Gay people the right to get married?

    That is so fucked up.

    Damn, why don’t you just hang a big old sign on your front door that says, “Child Rapists, Inquire Within”?

  4. Normally I’m down with blaming Focus on the Family for any evil. They really and truly are evil. But this guy isn’t clergy, he’s a voice actor. He might be a practicing Zoroastrian for all we know.

  5. 52

    Right-o!

    When I am on slog I wear my ‘Asshole Prevaricator Provocateur’ hat and vomit up any crap, lies, hate and distortion I want. The gang laps it up! (credulous hacks…)

    When I am at The Stranger I wear my ‘Responsible Editor Journalist’ hat and people will look to me for Truth, Justice and the American Way!

    Who needs Daily Papers?

  6. Churches reflect the society they exist in. No one there is perfect, if they were they wouldn’t need church.
    Many of the people attending church struggle with issues and are trying to improve but sometimes fail. Some undoubtedly are cynical exploiters taking advantage of the atmosphere of trust that exists within a community of faith for their own evil purposes.
    The same can be said of volunteers, staff and clergy; to one degree or another.
    The same is also true of any organization staffed by humans.
    The article Rob of Baltimore posted @24 shows that churches are working hard to root out those who pose a threat to others. The articles Dan posts show that they have more to do.

    Churches try to help their members. sometimes they fail, sometimes they fail terribly. But more often they succeed.

  8. @ 56

    but the very point is that churches hold themselves up as a standard of what people should do. if they can make judgements about anyone else, they must meet their own standards. having clergy or members exploiting children is hardly meeting the standards they shout about protecting children from the homos.

    it was jesus that said he who is innocent can cast the first stone. and yet, churches have cast a whole lot of stones at gays and lesbians and what is worse, have claimed to be morally suprerior while doing so.

  9. @ 47

    That one-in-a-thousand figure was for 2000 only; I thought you weren’t supposed to bear false witness.

    “Since 1993, on average about 1 percent of the surveyed churches reported abuse allegations annually. “

    “The peak year for allegations was 1994, with 3 percent of churches reporting an allegation of sexual misconduct compared with just 0.1 percent in 2000. But 2001 data, indicates a swing back to the 1 percent level…”

  10. @50 entrapment rules are weird. the cop can actually offer first if they feel that’s obviously why the person is communicating with them. cops just cannot persuade the person. those cases could be more difficult to prosecute. in this case, we don’t see any of the kids dialog — which could have been as crude as the adults — so we don’t know what sort of case for entrapment there might be.

  11. @50: Even that’s not correct – in general, cops can make the first move, provided that the nature of that move is such that it will only attract those who are disposed to act in that fashion given the opportunity. So a cop can approach a car and offer sex for money, since a normal hooker would do that, but a cop who posts an ad on craigslist talking about her secret fantasy of having a man pay her for sex and offers to return the money after the act would be in trouble, because that’s not normal hooker behavior.

  13. The excellent article Rob in Baltimore linked above @24 gives the best information yet on Slog about the prevalence of clergy abuse of children.
    It said that only 25% of those incidents in churches involve clergy or paid staff, the other three fourths involving other members.
    It also said churches had taken extensive measures to reduce incidents and had reduced occurance to as low as one incident per 1000 churches in 2000, which would mean that only one out of Four Thousand churches had an incident involving a clergy or paid staff member.
    Even one occurrence of child molestation or abuse occurring anywhere is unacceptable but this article places the scope of the problem in clear view.

    Everyone who reads slog should check out the article.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0405/p01s0…

  14. The trolls should rent the movie Elmer Gantry. It would explain so much to them about why religion is so unpopular with mainstream Americans nowadays.

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