Sexuality

Well, That’ll Knock Diana Out of The Headlines

Bloody Lawyers, Corruption, GLBT rights, Sexuality, UK politics
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Move over Al-Fayed and the Daily Express, there’s a new scandal in town:

Royal ‘target of sex blackmail’
GARETH ROSE

A MEMBER of the Royal Family has been targeted in a “sex and drugs” blackmail plot, it was reported last night.

Scotland Yard was contacted after the alleged blackmailers threatened to go public with a video that they claimed showed the Royal – who cannot be named for legal reasons – engaged in a sex act.

A demand of £50,000 was put forward but a police sting led to the video being seized and the men arrested, it was claimed. According to the Sunday Times, the Royal household was first contacted on August 2 when the caller only identified himself by his first name.

He said he was aware that another man who worked on the Royal staff was in possession of an envelope containing cocaine. He claimed it had been passed to him by the Royal and that the envelope was embossed with the Royal’s personal signature.

It was also alleged during the conversation that a videotape showing the aide giving someone oral sex existed. The recipient of the sex act was indicated to be the Royal.

According to reports, the video also contained unsubstantiated allegations about other members of the Royal Family, including the Queen.

The caller then left his mobile phone number and asked for the Royal to phone them back. During subsequent calls the blackmailers claimed the video showed the aide snorting cocaine. The blackmailers guaranteed that no one else would ever see the video, which was stored safe in their flat.

According to the newspaper, a senior legal adviser to the Royal called back and agreed with the blackmailers that he would see the tape before handing over the cash.

A Whitehall security official was reported as saying: “He said he wanted £50,000 from the Royal for the tape.”

More…

Who ever can it be?

My first pick would be Prince Edward, for reasons that have been plain to see for years, But that’s too obvious, It could be Harry – I get the impression he’s a bit of a lad and up for anything. But that being so, it wouldn’t be much of a scandal would it? Certainly not worth half a million fifty grand… [I need my eyes testing, the zeroes are blurring together.]

Hmmm. My money’s still on Edward….but I don’t think he’s worth half a mil fifty grand either.

Squeaky-clean heir to the throne William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton might well be camouflage for other interests (I won’t call her a beard, that would be defamatory and unkind), in the mould of Edward’s Sophie Rhys-Jones: a nice middle-class gel with ambitious parents who’re socially unsure enough to make no fuss about a very rich royal husband who’s that way. They know the deal, unlike Diana. Money and position buys hypocrisy and discretion.

Whoever it is, I don’t really bloody care except as I care whether Britney Spears gets custody of her kids or not. It’s just gossip and sleaze. Come out already and draw the poison. Jeez.

Blackmail and scandal, while amusing for those of who like to take the piss and also vastly profitable for the newspapers, is really a bit pathetic in these openly hedonistic times, when the Sultan of Brunei’s daughter goes to her wedding in a solid gold Rolls Royce covered in diamonds. When Britney’s minge makes the front page while thousands dying in Iraq barely make page 2, what’s a bit of blow and a blowjob in the broom cupboard?

If we must live in a monarchy, let’s at least have one that’s openly libertine, instead of all this squalid huddling in palace corners with the servants (or rather agency temps).

Dammit. we want a royalty we can properly condemn, one that practices its vices out in the open like any other hedonistic, overprivileged sleb, instead of this buttoned-up, ass-clenched, Marks & Spencers version of royalty with its Hyacinth Bucket sense of public propriety.

Perhaps this’ll cut through the fuzzy pink, soft focus glow that surrounds the Queen and we’ll finally get just how bloody stupid the whole idea of royalty is. Perhaps. In the meantime I’m revelling in the thoiught of the right royal piss-take the whole thing is bound to provoke from Graham Norton.

[Edited slightly to correct my misreading]

More Hallowe’en Homemades

Culture, Religion, Sexuality
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Martin has complained that the disgusting recipes are making him nauseous, so I’ll hold on the meathead for a while for fear of upchuck.

Here are some costumes instead.

Have you guessed what they are yet?

Mind you, there’s always one who has to go and take the theme that little bit too far.

Now that’s taking willy-waving to silly extremes.

Here Comes Another One, Just Like The Other Ones – But Not Quite

Religion, Sexuality, Wingnuts
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El Dr. Sergio G. Alvarizares es el Pastor y fundador del Ministerio Internacional El Shaddai en la ciudad de Pórtland y de las iglesias “El Shaddai” del Noroeste de USA, y ahora Pastor General del Ministerio Internacional Casa del Padre, Inc

Portland pastor arrested on suspicion of rape
[..]

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
WADE NKRUMAH

Portland police have arrested the 38-year-old pastor of a Northeast Portland church on accusations that he raped or sexually abused eight women at Father’s House, a church ministering to Portland’s Spanish-speaking population.

Sergio Alvarizares was arrested Monday at his home in Ridgefield, Wash., as part of a two-week investigation that started when officers responded to a disturbance call at Father’s House, 1725 Northeast Alberta St.

[…]

Northeast precinct officers arriving at Father’s House on Sept. 30 learned that several members of the church had confronted Alvarizares about allegations of improper sexual contact. Later that night, six women reported sexual assault to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. During the investigation, police identified two more victims.

Alvarizares is facing one count of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree attempted rape and 10 counts of first-degree sex abuse.

Schmautz said other than Alvarizares’ association with the church and the accusations, police know little about his background.

He has been quoted a number of times on issues of concern to the Latino community. In May 2006, he spoke about how some workers feared to march in demonstrations against a crack-down on immigrants.

“I talked to my congregation on Sunday,” Alvarizares said. “There were some who were intimidated by employers and afraid to leave their jobs.”

The church Web site, www.casadelpadre.com, says Alvarizares is founder and pastor of the international ministry El Shaddai in Portland and of El Shaddai churches of the Northwest U.S. and is now pastor general of the international ministry Casa del Padre Inc.

There are 1,268 congregations worldwide in a network called Red Apostolica & Profetica Mundial CDP, the Web site says, including in the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America, Cuba and India.

The Web site says Alvarizares is from Guatemala. His wife, Mayra, is listed as a pastor on the Web site.

In 2002, Alvarizares was senior pastor at Mission International El Shaddai on Northeast Sandy Boulevard. That year, he was part of a church group that planned to go to Cuba and Colombia to train church leaders and to visit Ecuador for a leadership conference.

The investigation continues. Police request anyone with information call Detective Jeff Sharp at 503-823-0453.

Wade Nkrumah: 503-294-7627; wadenkrumah@ news.oregonian.com

Casa Del Padre list one of their primary beliefs as ‘”If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad. (1 Corinthians 12:26 NLT)” Maybe this is a way of making every church member suffer?

This arrest is slightly different than other evangelical sex offence arrests, being as it is a Latino fundy pastor accused, rather than some redneck, boondocks self-ordained nutjob ‘reverend’. But it’s the fundy bit that’s important. And Alvarizes is no ordinary fundy.

Evangelical charismatic churches are steamrollering their way throughout South and Central America Casa Del Padre has churches all over North and South America and is firmly in the vanguard of the Latino fundy wave, both in the US and abroad.

Latin America is undergoing what David Stoll, author of Is Latin America Turning Protestant? calls a new Protestant Reformation.

Nowhere is this so evident as in Central America, where in the last 15 years fundamentalist Christianity has spread with prairie-fire speed. In Guatemala a third of the population are evangelicos, or non-Catholics. And 10 to 15 per cent of Salvadorians, Hondurans and Nicaraguans now belong to the evangelical community, which is expanding three times faster than the population.

The Catholic hierarchy in the region calls it “the invasion of the sects” and places the blame squarely on the United States. The Honduran bishops accuse the CIA of covertly financing evangelical growth and the Guatemalan church hierarchy brands the evangelical movement an imperialist conspiracy to block revolutionary change and maintain US political and economic dominance.

Casa Del Padre also works in concert with other evangelical, charismatic churches that specifically aim to convert Moslems to Christianity:

Ministry History

In 1997 a missionary from Costa Rica joined Global Teams, followed by another in 1999. Both have been working in a Muslim country since that time. In 2001 Global Teams was invited by several Costa Rican churches to hold a mission conference aimed at recruiting missionaries and mobilizing churches. Four new missionaries joined Global Teams as a result and went to the Muslim world to explore long term service in 2002. Global Teams works closely with La Casa Del Padre (House of the Father), partnering to build a bridge for Costa Ricans to the unreached, especially in the Muslim world.

They also have churches in Costa Rica and El Salvador in partnership with “Red Apostolica & Profetica Mundial CDP” including in the USA, Mexico, Cuba and India.

It’s big business. This isn’t just another fundy: this is the hispanic James Dobson.

These hispanic evangelical churches are in the forefront of pushing US protestant hegemony in South and Central America and they’ve worked hand in glove with the Republican religious right to further their political aims.

But political campaigns are merely the respectable side of religious revolution in Guatemala. Numerous evangelical groups co-operated with the military in its bloody counter-insurgency war begun during the Rios Montt regime. Groups like the US-based Youth with a Mission and Christian Broadcasting Network joined with the Reagan Administration to support Rios Montt’s crusade to mop up leftist insurgents. These evangelicos worked closely with the military to establish ‘model villages’ on the ashes of Indian communities destroyed by Rios Montt’s legions.

The bloody counter-insurgency campaign razed over 400 Indian villages in the early 1980s. But it still failed to eliminate the insurgents – most of whom were poor Indian peasants. The transition from military to civilian rule in 1986 temporarily raised popular hopes for peace and improved socio-economic conditions. But the army never lost power and human rights abuses are again on the rise.

The battle for the beautiful north-western highlands of Guatemala has prompted the most intensive co-operation between the military and the fundamentalist right. In its ‘Operation Whole Armor,’ Bible Literature International claims to have distributed over 70,000 Bibles to Guatemalan soldiers and paramilitary patrols. The Summer Institute for Linguistics pitches in with interpretation services for the army’s civil-affairs and psychological operations teams. Others sponsor food distribution and educational programs in contested areas.

It is not hard to find evidence linking the explosion of evangelical churches – mostly the Assemblies of God church or highly emotional neo-pentecostal sects – with Washington and right-wing forces right across the region. The campaign to overturn the Sandinistas in Nicaragua attracted a stream of US evanglicals to the contra camps on the Honduran border. They passed out Bibles and supplies shipped to Central America on US military aircraft and banana boats.

Politics is also behind the hand-out programs that US evangelicals sponsor in many Honduran communities. Alan Dansforth, the US director of World Gospel Outreach, explained that food hand-outs are used as a bait to attract poor families to church services. He said that evangelicalism ‘can be a powerful tool to head communism off at the pass’. In El Salvador US missionaries are regularly invited to deliver anti-communist sermons on military bases. The right-wing Paralife International recently sponsored the tour of a Vietnam veteran who told Salvadoran troops that killing in the fight against the communist Anti-Christ was the ‘duty of every Christian’.

I’v a feeling this rape arrest is likely to be the tip of an iceberg for Casa Del Padre.