Some very scary shit is going down in Texas. Scarier than usual. “Repent Amarillo” is a rabid group of religious nuts—homegrown religious extremists of the conservative Christian variety—and they’re not just going after the gays.
At first, the swinger community was mystified by the attention. On the 60-some hours of surveillance footage the Meads have, a swinger can be heard telling a Repent member that the swingers haven’t done anything to bother them.“You’re going to hell, and it bothers me,” Grisham responds. “What bothers me is you’re going to hell.”
Perhaps the most insidious tactic Repent uses is trying to destroy the reputation of the swingers. In Amarillo, people can be ostracized over a whiff of impropriety. On one tape, Grisham directs followers to get the license-plate numbers in the Route 66 parking lot. “A new couple can be here three or four hours,” says Mac. “Whenever they leave, the Repent Amarillo group will call them by first and last name, know where they live, know where they work, just within a very few hours.”
Randall Sammons says he was fired from his job of 13 years in August after his boss learned Sammons was a swinger from another employee, a Repent member. He believes he’s now as good as blacklisted in Amarillo. “I’m screwed at finding a job,” Sammons says. Russell Grisham, David’s 20-year-old son who has a conviction on his record for hacking the computer system at his high school, has posted the names, photos and workplaces of swingers on the Internet, including one man whose wife works for a school district. (“Family-wise, it will kill both of us,” the man says.) In at least two instances, Repent members called swingers’ employers.
Having successfully harassed a local and very discreet group for heterosexual swingers out of existence, Repent Amarillo’s “warriors” are now planning to go after…
1. Gay pride events.
2. Earth worship events such as “Earth Day”
3. Pro-abortion events or places such as Planned Parenthood
4. Breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” to illuminate the link between abortion and breast cancer.
5. Opening day of public schools to reach out to students.
6. Spring break events.
7. Demonically based concerts.
8. Halloween events.
9. Other events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.
They’re also going after churches they believe to be insufficiently Christian (Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, Unitarians), palm readers, people who practice witchcraft, and anything and everything that might create a “demonic stronghold” in Amarillo. And they’re not just threatening to pray for people: Repent Amarillo’s “actions” include prayer, according to Repent Amarillo’s website, “but [also] may involve more aggressive use of soldiers and prayer warriors.” Check out the group’s locked-and-loaded website. (Please note: Repent Amarillo’s website “is not designed for non-Christians,” or the wrong kinds of Christians, so don’t look long lest you defile the group’s website with your eyes and turn into a pillar of salt.)
Hello? Moderate and liberal Christians? In Texas and elsewhere? Now might be a good time to speak the fuck up. Maybe you could spit out a few press releases, organize a massive, anti-Phelps-style counter-protest, and come to the defense of the people and churches and artists and businesses being menaced by your co-religionists. This calls for something above and beyond mewling in comments threads on liberal blogs about how “we’re not all like that.” Don’t tell us, tell them.
The very least you can do is to join this Facebook group. More info and links at How To Have Sex In Texas.
Dan, Can I look at the website and jack off to it? Or would that defile the website? Or should I mail them my cum rag afterwards?
This isn’t just a time for “moderate and liberal Christians” to speak up, it’s a time for every sane person in this country to speak up. We cannot tolerate this behavior in our country. This is not Saudi fucking Arabia.
Although it’s a drastic strategy, sounds like folks should just up and move out of town. Seriously. Leave these nut-jobs with no one left but each other to practice their moral litmus-tests on. I can pretty much guarantee if that were to happen they’d be on each other’s throats like pit bulls on an infant in about a week.
People always ask me why I moved away from that hell hole (amarillo). Form now on I will direct them to the nuclear powered ignorance and downright fuckwittedness that is the locked-and-loaded amarillo web site. This represents the militant hypocrisy that overwhelms the texas panhandle.
Any West Wing fans out there? This makes me think of the pilot episode, where the President kicks the fat asses of the religious right out of the White House for not denouncing the criminal acts of other religious fucknuts like those described here. It was supremely satisfying to see even a fictional president call them on it, but it makes me sad that no real live moderate-to-liberal Christians take the responsibility seriously.
Sick fucking Christianity. If you expect other Christians who are “moderate” forget it. It’s a sick, twisted religion and it uses hate and murder. It always has and it always will. But someone should sue the fuck out of them instead of whining about how they’ve ruined their lives.
holy shit.
(literally?)
No, Dan. Look, I choose to be active on social justice issues where my more liberal attitudes differ from conservative Christians because those issues are important, not because I’m responsible for their behavior or views. ALL people need to act and speak out because those issues matter, not because you incorrectly imagine certain of those among us are answerable for the behavior of others whose beliefs bear little to no resemblance to our own.
Remember, in this state (WA) you have privacy rights, and people can’t record audio and video without your express permission.
Other than public figures, but being on SLOG doesn’t make you one …
They’re also going after coffeehouses. There are 806 of them in town, and they’re trying to shut them all down because “artists and counter-culture types” hang out there.
Jumped up Jesus on the cross.
Would Vegas even give odds on the leader of this group having a closet packed with skeletons? Classic projection going on there.
I wonder if my church would fall into to the “false idol” category or the “compromised churches” category? I’m thinking the latter, because we are discernibly Christian, even though we read the Bible in context (which means not necessarily literally); we believe intellect, science, and faith can peacefully coexist; and we welcome and value all (and our denomination officially OK’d allowing gay clergy to be partnered and allowing clergy to choose to perform public blessing ceremonies for same sex couples).
Seriously, though…I live in Louisiana. I’ve seen religious insanity up close and personal. I live down the street from the ruins of Jimmy Swaggart’s empire. But Texas…Texas has hold on a whole ‘nother breed of nuts.
And the problem with Christians in the moderate-to-progressive/liberal category is that we are scared to death to rock the boat. We tend to think that the zealots will wear themselves out and just go away. And we are afraid to speak harsh words to those who cast all followers of Jesus in a negative light.
But is that What Jesus Would Do (to ask the cliched question)? The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus criticizing zealots, rebuking the Pharisees, and otherwise speaking the truth. Why can’t we?
For my part, while I may not be the type to lead a movement, I’ve started speaking out in little ways. I took a couple of people in my congregation to task this weekend for some horrible, racist things they said about immigrants – in the presence of a member of the congregation who they know is an immigrant! I may not be able to take on hatred, narrow-mindedness, and hypocracy on a grand scale, but I can do it my little corner of the world.
If only more of my left-of-center brothers and sisters would do likewise…
Moderate Christians are and have been for 40 years, to big of whimps to stand up to the crazies associated with them. From “I Found It” to Reagan, The 700 Club whackos to our own local crazies like Mark Driscol, Casey Treat and Ken Hutcherson. It’s past time for the majority of Christians in the middle to disassociate themselves from the whacked out fringe of their religion. But they won’t do this, because they consider anyone who says they are born again as brothers and sisters in Christ.
It’s great to see The Stranger and other mainstream pubs calling them out. Keep it up. And let’s see more light shined on Mars Hill and Christian Faith Center while you’re at it – you don’t need to go to Texas to find radical right wing Christianity that is ready to oppress our society.
I don’t get it. Is God riding in the helicopter? And why are Christians using a pentacle as a religious symbol?
American Protestants and Evangelicals, I’ve officially given up on you. You do not know how to play with others. Fail.
Just turn the tables on em. I’m sure the leadership of the group includes a couple of cocksuckers, maybe some sodomites, a panty sniffer or two, bdsm enthusiasts, etc. One or two embarrassing public reveals should nip this group in the bud.
Get off your collective ass, Amarillo, and get to work.
@13 – good for you. Maybe while you are examining the actions of your church family you should start to wonder why these folks who supposedly have a close relationship with God and Jesus act and believe in ways completely contrary to what you believe is the moral way to act. Maybe you get your morality from reason, and not from God. Just maybe. Think about it. Christians aren’t necessarily good people. Maybe that’s because there is nothing real about the religion (or any religion for that matter).
@9 When the Islamic Taliban hijaked 4 planes on 9/11 the moderate and liberal Muslim groups of the country stood up and said, “That is not the religion we practice or preach.” Of course, not a lot of people listened, because Islam isn’t the majority here and their numbers weren’t great.
If a Christian group starts terrorizing people of different worldviews because the Bible tells them so, it is the responsibility of liberal and moderate Christians to say, “That is not the religion we practice or preach.”
The reason these wingnuts get the attention they do is because they are screaming at the top of their lungs for it. You need to shut them up by screaming louder.
It’s not fair when one small group makes the majority look stupid, but it happens to every group. The outsiders then judge the group by how the majority reacts- do you give silent consent or loud disapproval?
@17 – You are absolutely right. One of the first things my I can remember my parents teaching me is that good people come in all colors, shapes, sizes, religions, etc., and so do bad people.
And while I’m not going to get into a faith/reason debate – because I can’t convince people who don’t believe that there is anything to believe in, and they can’t convince me that there isn’t (that’s why they call it faith), I will agree with you that my moral code very likely is a product of both faith and reason. For me, they go hand-in-hand and can’t be separated.
@9 -“If a Christian group starts terrorizing people of different worldviews because the Bible tells them so”
IF? The Christians have been doing this for centuries, and it continues today. One example is Ken Hutcherson’s ties to violently anti gay Orthodox groups who have attacked gay pride marches. It’s why the FBI has been watching Hutcherson.
This has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with male power fantasy gone wildly wrong.
@21 and history shows us that religion is the perfect avenue to express male power fantasies.
No, 18, it’s not their responsibility, any more than it was the responsibility of those Muslim groups. They weren’t responsible for the ignorance of people who tried to tie them to other groups they weren’t associated with, and neither am I. My church is active on social justice and environmental issues, etc. because it’s important to our beliefs, not because we’re Pat Robertson’s keepers.
Hey, where’s our resident “Obama the nazi socialist” troll and Loveschild?
Shouldn’t they be here to defend the actions of Repent Amarillo? They’ve been advocating the moral stance behind the RA idiots for quite a while now.
Come out! Come out! Wherever you are! These folks are putting into action your thoughts & attitudes. Stop being cowards & defend RA.
Ugh. More fucking lunatics from the same part of the country that brought you the Minutemen.
I really wish Texas would stop embarrassing me.
Of course if you buy into their weird doctrine of salvation in the least, what they’re doing is perfectly consistent. This is the problem with tolerating religious nonsense in the first place; once you accept its basic axioms, you will always have people who will simply extrapolate out the entirely logical consequences of those axioms. If you really believe that life is transitory and hell is real and eternal, then you do have a moral responsibility to save people.
“Moderate” and “liberal” don’t apply to religion. They only apply to people. You can’t moderate or liberalize religion for people who are fucking nuts like these clowns. You can only use the law to keep them in check. In this case, what they’re doing is six different kinds of harassment and malicious slander, and someone really needs to press charges.
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1154ap…
Up yours, haters.
According to the latest post at ‘Amarillo Citizens Against Repent Amarillo’ (http://www.repentamarillo.net/) the cops are being complete dicks about it (i.e., doing nothing). Great, that’s just what the people need.
Hey, couldn’t kids use their website map to find “sexually oriented businesses”? Who will think of the children?
@23
Listen, if you go into a strip club, it doesn’t matter if you claim you’re only there for the quality of the drinks: People are still going to think you’re gonna be stuffing greasy bills into a g-string.
So you “claim” you’re into social justice & environmental issues. Sure. Great. Well, you still worship a God that has no problem w/ torture, or war, or genocide. How many wars have been fought in the name of the Buddha? I’ll answer that one & tell you NONE. The number of wars fought in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is too many to mention. (And please don’t give me any “Jimmy did it too!” excuses & mention Islam, okay?)
It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you ignore the oceans of blood spilled for your god, and do nothing about the continuing horrors that are perpetuated by Christianity, no amount of your goody-goody guilt-abating actions will make a bit of difference.
@18, that’s a nice out you’ve given yourself. Enjoy being lumped into one big umbrella with these folks! If you want Christians to be viewed as a merciful and socially conscious lot, you have a responsibility *to yourself* to speak up loudly and often against people like this. As has been pointed out here, your occasional actions on social justice are not noticed because these people are louder and more visible than you. *You* have to change that. And there is only one way.
Look at it this way. Say you live in a house with your extended family. You’re not responsible for your fuckwit of a cousin, right? But if he continually climbed up on the roof and pissed on the neighbors every time they had a barbecue, you’d A: make him knock it the fuck off and B: make every effort to assure your neighbors that he doesn’t represent your family and you’re doing everything you can to prevent a repeat (including maybe kicking him out – a hint the church might take for the Repent Amarillo peeps). It’s the same dealio. These people live in your house, like it or not, and they are pissing on your neighbor’s barbecue. Do something about it.
Dammit, that comment was for @23. Sorry, @18.
#23 – before you get too hepped up on the “peaceful” buddhists, you may want to read “Zen at War” by Brian Victoria. Japanese leaders had very little problem turning so-called “Imperial-Way Buddhism” into a vehicle for rabid emperor-worship and support of something that would be called fascism in any western country. Remember, “kamikaze” means “divine wind”, not “secular wind”. And did you know that the first elected president of Sri Lanka was assassinated by a buddhist “priest”? The history of that poor country illustrates very well the fact that eastern religions are hardly immune to the extremism we tend to identify with certain strains of islam and Xtianity.
Oh 29, I love it when liberal non-Christians decide to agree with Southern Baptists about who god is and what Christianity is about when telling liberal Christians what’s what. Also, make up your mind, I’m either ignoring things and doing nothing or taking goody-goody action, but you can’t have it both ways.
They have some 24 hour phone numbers posted on their website. I suggest calling those numbers and testing them on their scripture.
– Find out if they wear fabric blends.
– Do they treat their bodies as temples of Christ? Not if they’re eating McDonald’s they’re not!
– How about shellfish?
– Have they hurt anyone?
– Did any of them fall down the stairs while pregnant?
– Ever covet anything? How about your neighbors flat screen?
Call them in the middle of the night, call them at 5am, call them whenever you want to call them! What the hell? It’s TOLL FREE!
John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
Do a little bible research and then we’ll see how they stand up in the eyes of God!
Jesus NEVER caused anyone hurt, pain, or suffering. Jesus never got anyone fired from their job. Jesus never ridiculed people. Jesus hung out with the prostitutes and the thieves! Jesus loved them, and spoke kindly to and of them.
Here are just some examples of love in the bible, that you can use ‘against’ them.
Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…
Matthew 19:19 “… ‘love your neighbor as yourself…”
Romans 12:10 “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”
Sigh….. this is so depressing – what a horrid group. Hopefully they will implode like most nut case organizations do. I am just glad to be moving to Australia by the end of the year and leave all these whack jobs behind.
30, I don’t act on social justice issues to earn some kind of PR points or liberal cred for my religious community, I do it because there’s a need, just like everyone else should. What is it about acting on issues because they’re important that’s so hard to understand?
@29 and 30. Thanks, exactly what I was trying to say.
I am a pagan, I understand there are stupid teenagers out there that do stupid things and try to say, “I’m pagan, so if you call me out you’re being repressive.” When I see these stories, you’re damn right I’m gonna be loud and clear telling everyone I know that these are stupid kids doing stupid things, and it doesn’t represent the majority of pagans out there. Because if I don’t, then those people that know nothing of paganism are gonna use these stupid kids as models of all pagans.
It’s the same on the Christian side. The reason so many people are leaving the Church is because they don’t want to be lumped into association with stupid kids like the ‘Repent Amarillo’ group. The stupider Christians looks, the worse it is in the long run for Christianity.
@23 You don’t have to be Pat Robinson’s keeper. But the longer you keep quiet, the less people will listen to you when you do valid social work.
@23: If you refuse to take on that responsibility, you don’t get to get upset or act surprised when you get tarred with the same brush as the extremists. Your choice.
@36 Imagine the “need” if abortion is outlawed.
@30 – The problem with the “kicking them out” idea is that they pretty much already are out. This group does not belong to a particular denomination like Catholics or Presbyterians or whatever, so there is not kind of quasi-judicial internal action the rest of Christendom can take against them.
But you are right. Those of us who call ourselves Christian and think people like Repent Amarillo are in the wrong have to start speaking up loudly against them. And we have to be louder than them, which is a real challenge given the tactics they use (and that I hope we wouldn’t resort to). But, and this may be either naivete or the fact that I belong to a pretty liberal congregation talking, I have to believe that Christians who believe in a gospel of love and peace far outnumber those who preach hatred and intolerance. We should be able to out-loud them with sheer numbers. Unfortunately, complacency has a strong foothold.
No 37, people who want to lump me in with Pat Robertson are responsible for their own ignorance. If I decide to officially state my distance from them, that’s my choice, but it is not my responsibility. The responsibility I have to act on social justice is the same human responsibility we all have. This is not high school, and the work that I do isn’t about what people think of me.
@12: (from http://amarilloindy.com/wordpress/?p=418…)
“Why they do it: Saved through an epiphany
David Grisham said he led a dissolute life before he was saved.
“I am an open book in that area”, he said. “Now, there are some things I won’t discuss because I’m not very proud of them and they’re between me and God.”
He said he was sexually irresponsible, committing fornication and adultery and drunkenness. He is on his fourth marriage, but the other three were before he was saved and it will stick, he said, ‘Till we’re dead or raptured. I prefer rapture.”
Really, 38? Not willing to be responsible for conservative Christians means I can’t disagree with being assigned responsibility for conservative Christians? Really?
Can we get Janet Reno on this?
@44 – that’s DJ Janet Reno to you … she retired.
@30 & 37 etc
Telling a group of people that, “If you don’t renounce these people right now we’re going to assume you support them!” is pretty much the definition of baiting. Basically, you set some ridiculous standard that “good” Christians (or liberal leftists or whoever) have to satisfy in order to prove that they’re really the good kind and not the bad kind. It’d be sort of like saying that gay men who don’t protest NAMBLA loudly enough shall forever be considered child molesters themselves.
So, while not a Christian myself, let me just take this opportunity to say, “Fuck, you,” to Dan Savage, whose protestations against NAMBLA have never been strong enough for my tastes, and who would clearly be more vocal in his protests if he were not secretly sympathetic to the appetites of child molesters. Not to mention, of course, all the mothers who have failed to renounce Susan Smith, the politicians who have failed to renounce George W. Bush, the Muslims who have failed to renounce 9/11 and so on. Your failure to protest against the bigoted stereotypes of your detractors clearly proves that your enemies are right about you, and have been all along.
See also, “On the Waterfront”
Sounds like people are being punished for living in Texas. I see nothing wrong with this.
Can’t we just get Texas to secede already? Please???
Would the rest of us really miss it if it did?
OK, so now Cienna has posted about a church group that is trying to help rehabilitate felons in the Central District. IMO, that is a nice example of something good and positive that a group of Christians are doing, ostensibly compelled by their beliefs.
But…
I doubt that they will get even a small fraction of the attention (from non-Christians) for doing something good that the Repent Amarillo group is getting for doing something bad. Now you tell me, is that the fault of moderate/liberal Christians? If so, how?
@47: Yeah, but it’s not like some people have a choice. Plenty of people didn’t decide to live in Texas; they were just born there! Being Texan isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s an identity, part of who people are.
This reminds me of the quote from the Holocaust that I can’t remember exactly, but it goes “First they came for the Jews, then they came for the X, then they came for the X, then they came for me.”
How horrible for the people targeted by this group. Of course, it’s Texas, so I doubt the authorities are getting too hot and bothered about this clear-cut case of harassment. Try this in Jersey, and well, um, never mind. No one here’s THAT crazy, even if it is a polluted, overpopulated shithole. I think it’s stories like this that keep things like MTV’s Jersey Shore from driving me out of the state.