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.
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.
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.
Repent has made it clear that its crusade won't end with the
swingers. Last January, community theater group Avenue 10 was set to
open Bent, a play about the persecution of homosexuals during
Nazi Germany. The day before opening night, the fire marshal, police and
code enforcers showed up, tipped off by a Repent associate, according to
Sirc Michaels, co-founder of the theater. Avenue 10 didn't have the
right permit for holding events, and the space was shut down.
What's next for Repent? They've posted a Warfare Map on the
group's Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip
clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent
believes the 600-acre prairie park's Walmart-funded Earth Circle,
used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list
are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture
types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (Allah is a false god),
and compromised churches like Polk Street Methodist
(gay-friendly).
Police discover sex dungeon in Devon village (on the first floor
of a semi-detached home)
A
sex club has moved into an art gallery with the stated aim of helping visitors
to a Gustav Klimt exhibition confront their sexual inhibitions.
