Of ire and brimstone
Churchgoers, strippers protest one another in Coshocton County
Monday, August 9, 2010 02:54 AM
By Holly Zachariah
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
KYLE ROBERTSON | DISPATCH
A dancer who identified herself as Lola appreciated churchgoer Stan Braxton, who prayed for her salvation.
Foxhole strip-club dancers protest in front of the
New Beginnings Ministries church as the congregation leaves after Sunday service.
WARSAW, Ohio -- Strip-club owner Tommy George rolled up to the church in his grabber-orange Dodge Challenger, drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 in the morning and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled himself.
Pastor Bill Dunfee stepped out of a tan Nissan Murano, clutching a Bible in one hand and his sermon in the other, a touch of spray holding his perfectly coiffed 'do in place.
Inside the New Beginnings Ministries church, Dunfee's worshippers wore polyester and pearls.
Outside, George's strippers wore bikinis and belly rings.
Both men agree it is classic
sinners vs. saints. But George says it is up to America to decide which is which and who is who.
Dunfee says God already has chosen.
"Tom George is a parasite, a man without judgment," Dunfee said. "The word of Jesus Christ says you cannot share territory with the devil."
The battle that has heretofore played out in the parking lot of George's strip club - the Foxhole, a run-down, garage-like building at a Coshocton County crossroads called Newcastle - has shifted 7 miles east to Church Street.
Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George's joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand.
They videotape customers' license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.
Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.
It's just that they've come wearing see-through shorts and toting Super Soakers.
They bring lawn chairs and - yesterday, anyway - grilled hamburgers, Monster energy drinks and corn on the cob.
They sat in front of the church and waved at passing cars but largely ignored the congregation behind them.
Likewise, the churchgoers largely ignored the dancers. Except for Stan Braxton. He stopped and
held hands with Lola, a 42-year-old dancer who made $200 on her Saturday night shift, and prayed for her salvation.
Lola, who wouldn't give her last name, said she was grateful for Braxton's prayers and his time.
The women don't come here, after all, without their own version of religion. They bring signs with Scriptures written in neon colors:
Matthew 7:15: Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing
Revelations 22:11: He that is unjust, let him be unjust still
Greg Flaig is executive director of the
Ohio Owners Coalition, a group of showbar and club owners. He called the women's protest extraordinary, saying he's never heard of anything like it in the country.
George said the protest has been a long time coming.
He sued the church in federal court several years ago, claiming a violation of his constitutional rights, but he lost. Now, he said, turnabout is fair play.
"When these morons go away, we'll go away," George said. "The great thing about this country is that everyone has a right to believe what they want."
He said his club operates within the law. Dunfee said it does not, that it must close at midnight instead of its regular 2 or 3 a.m. Coshocton County Prosecutor Bob Batchelor said Friday only that he, the sheriff and the city prosecutor are "aware of the situation."
Gina Hughes spent the morning soaking up the sun in her striped bikini, mostly oblivious to the fire and brimstone being preached in the tidy church building.
The 30-year-old married mother of six said she has danced at the Foxhole for a decade and holds the title of "house mom." That means that even though she still dances, she also watches out for the six other women who work there.
She said she makes $2,000 a week.
"These church people say horrible things about us," Hughes said. "They say we're homewreckers and whores. The fact of the matter is, we're working to keep our own homes together, to give our kids what they need."
Dunfee said it's not that simple. He said he consistently offers the women help, a chance at redemption.
"I tell them, 'I will put a roof over your heads, and your bills will be paid, and your children's bellies will be full,'" he said. Yet they don't come inside.
The first few weeks, Dunfee piped the sermon outside. But that "agitated" them, he said, and made them dance in the streets.
He said
their presence has united his church members and reinvigorated their mission to shut down the club.
"They have now seen the evil firsthand," Dunfee said. "This has just made us stronger."
George laughed at that notion.
"They're just mad," he said, "because their wives won't let them come to my club."
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/lo ... stone.html
Bikini-clad strippers protest church in rural Ohio
Supporters of The Fox Hole strip club, Elizabeth Smith, left, and Brittany Johnson, both of Mansfield, protest against New Beginnings Ministries Church in Warsaw, Ohio.
By The Associated Press
August 27, 2010
WARSAW, Ohio -- Strippers dressed in bikinis sunbathe in lawn chairs, their backs turned toward the gray clapboard church where men in ties and women in full-length skirts flock to Sunday morning services.
The strippers, fueled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work. The dancers roll up with signs carrying messages adapted from Scripture, such as "Do unto others as you would have done unto you,'' to counter church members who for four years have photographed license plates of patrons and asked them if their mothers and wives know their whereabouts.
The dueling demonstrations play out in central Ohio, where nine miles of cornfields and Amish-buggy crossing signs separate The Fox Hole strip club from New Beginnings Ministries.
Club owner Tommy George met with the preacher and offered to call off his not-quite-nude crew from their three-month-long protest if the church responds in kind. But pastor Bill Dunfee believes that a higher power has tasked him with shutting down the strip club.
"As a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil,'' Dunfee said. "Light and darkness cannot exist together, so The Fox Hole has got to go.''
New Beginnings is one of four churches in this one-traffic-light village of 900 people, 60 miles outside Columbus. There's one gas station and a sit-down restaurant that serves country staples like mashed potatoes with gravy and Salisbury steak.
On Sunday, four of The Fox Hole's seven strippers and more than a dozen supporters garnered both scorn and compassion from churchgoers -- and quite a few honks from pickup trucks and other passing vehicles.
One woman offered her skills as a hair dresser to the dancers: "If you or your kids ever need a haircut, give me a holler.'' Another woman from the church waited on the protesters with plates of noodles and chocolate cake.
Laura Meske -- known as Lola, stage age 36 but really 42 -- hid behind a sign proclaiming, "Jesus loves the children of the world!'' as the preacher extended his hand for a shake.
Two nights earlier, Dunfee and more than a dozen churchgoers stood outside the club, one of them calling out Meske's stripper name.
"He who casts the first stone ... ,'' Meske said Sunday.
The pastor cut her off and repeated, "Lola, Lord bless you.''
"Everybody has sinned, and that doesn't mean I'm not gonna get into heaven,'' she said, the stud piercing in her chin shimmering in the sunlight. "I believe in Jesus. I don't believe what they preach. They preach hate.''
Debi Durr, who attends the church, disagreed. "You don't stand up there for four years for hate. That's not hate. That's love,'' she said. Durr left Meske with a copy of Jeremiah 3:13 -- a Bible passage that urges sinners to acknowledge their guilt.
Inside the church, voices from the 121 congregants seemed to float to the cedar rafters as they sang lyrics projected on a screen. Outside, a man strummed a guitar and sang, "God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes.''
Dunfee has offered to help the strippers pay for food, rent, utilities and gas if they leave The Fox Hole. But many of the women say their jobs are only a stopover on the way to work in cosmetology or the medical field -- a meal ticket that shelters them from another stigma: welfare.
"No little girl is growing up like, 'I wanna do a pole trick,''' said Anny Donewald, a former stripper who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., and ministers to dancers, prostitutes and porn stars.
She and other Christian groups that work with women in the adult entertainment industry have criticized Dunfee's methods of ministry as a means of putting the strippers on the defensive instead of showing support.
"I never saw Jesus with a picket sign,'' Donewald said.
Community advocacy groups, including Citizens for Community Values in Cincinnati, support Dunfee's protests. But the group's president, Phil Burress, said the strip club has a right to be there.
"It's a legal business whether he likes it or I like it or not,'' Burress said.
The club operates in a white plywood box of a building. Beer cans and a dollar bill peaked out from the grass like Easter eggs last Sunday.
The Fox Hole encourages customers to check out its $30 private dance special, promoting it on the kind of sign convenience stores use to advertise cheap milk and cigarettes. Out back, letters on a bulletin board have faded away so that "No touching'' now reads "ouch.''
It's here where dancers strip down to panties and pasties for cash. Meske -- a tattooed mother of four -- said she made $30 instead of a couple hundred dollars last Friday with the protesters outside.
"I'm not the most beautiful woman in the world,'' she said. "I go out there and I try to make my money.''
A few houses and a ribs joint called Peggy Sue's separate the club from another white building, a church where some of the strippers donate blood during drives for the American Red Cross.
"I got a church 900 feet down the street that causes me no problems,'' club owner George said. "And I got this moron nine miles down the street that causes me more headaches.''
Rae Anderson, who heads New Castle Ministries with her husband, says her church believes Dunfee is doing what the Lord called him to do, but her parish takes a different approach.
"You can share the truth, but you can't make anyone believe what you believe.''
www.wvgazette.com/News/weirdnews/201008270429
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. Meine Sorge ist vielmehr taktischer Natur: Wenn wir Spezialisten einkaufen die nicht ohnehin sich für unsere Sache engagieren, sondern nur für unser Geld tätig werden, so werden diese sich jederzeit gegen uns wenden, sobald sie von anderer Seite mehr dafür geboten bekommen. Ich halte es nicht nur für gefährlich die Strukturen religiöser Aktivisten auch für uns zu erträumen, sondern vor allem kann ich keine Notwendigkeit dazu erkennen.
