Brownwood: Beware the Wolves in Sheeps Clothing.....

Pastor convicted of soliciting sex from teenager
Associated Press

WEST CHESTER, Pa. - A Philadelphia pastor who has condemned homosexuality and was known for using a bullhorn to preach to passers-by at colleges was convicted Wednesday of soliciting sex from a teenager.
Jurors deliberated for 3 1/2 hours before convicting the Rev. Craig Stephen White of criminal solicitation to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses.
White, 40, who faces a minimum of three years on the most serious charge, showed no reaction, and neither did his wife. His mother wept and said, "He's innocent; he's innocent."
Chester County Judge Anthony A. Sarcione revoked White's $20,000 bail and sent him to Chester County Prison.
"He's a preacher, and he has access to children," Sarcione said. "This jury has spoken. He has been convicted of attempting to lure a child into a vehicle" for sexual gratification.
Defense attorney Robert J. Donatoni said he was "disappointed but not surprised." "This was a very difficult case for everyone," said Donatoni, who suggested that the teenager was mistaken, confused or just seeking attention.
On June 26, White, who was driving a Ford minivan, stopped in West Chester and asked a 14-year-old boy for directions.
The boy said White also asked about strip clubs or adult book or video stores, asked him to get in and help the driver find the regular video store, and later came back and offered him $20 for taking part in sexual activity.
White denied that he made any sexual proposition and said he asked directions to a video store because he wanted to buy the movie "Shrek" for his children.
White, who moved to Philadelphia in 1991, started a Temple University campus group called Soldiers for Christ, worked at a youth ministry in Gloucester County, N.J., and began the Philadelphia Gospel Outreach Center in North Philadelphia.
He was a fixture on the University of Pennsylvania campus and preached to passers-by at other campuses in the Philadelphia area. He was a prominent enough figure at Penn that the chaplain's office held a panel discussion about his methods in 1998.
White preached against homosexuality and atheists, using a bullhorn to rile at students and faculty about "fornicators," "whores" and "sodomites."
Assistant District Attorney Kimberly A. Callahan called White a threat to society. "I'm relieved the jury believed the victim and understood the seriousness of the case," she said.
White supporter Michael A. Marcavage called the verdict "an outrageous travesty" and said the community should be alarmed. "Citizens should be concerned about how a man can be tried and convicted on the testimony of a 14-year-old," he said.
Pat Noordewier said she worked with White and a youth group for years and that he often stayed at her home. "This man is innocent," she said. "His ministry is kids."
source: http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/7717427.htm
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Philadelphia Inquirer, PA, January 14, 2005
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/10640442.htm
Flaunting his faith, bullhorn in hand
Michael Marcavage's tactics have brought the Lansdowne evangelist some legal
scrapes - and national attention.

By Kathy Boccella, Inquirer Staff Writer
The video shows a young man with a bullhorn and guitar surrounded by pink-T-shirted marchers blocking his way with large pink banners. The man presses on, negotiating with police as to where he and his followers can go. Finally, he lies down on the ground. "If they're going to eject us, they're going to work for it," Michael Marcavage, of Lansdowne, said with a laugh while watching a video of the Oct. 10 ruckus at Outfest in Center City.
The high-profile case has put Marcavage, a 25-year-old who looks like a baby-faced Keanu Reeves, on the national evangelical Christian radar. He's as in-demand for interviews, including Fox's O'Reilly Factor and ABC's Good Morning America, as a televangelist with a tell-all book. As founder of Repent America, a conservative Christian organization, Marcavage
has clashed with many different groups, including homosexuals, non-Christians, and his own family. "There's always a battle between darkness and light," he said in an interview this week in the spacious home where he lives alone.
That battle has defined his life so far - and may get him a lengthy prison term if he is convicted of criminal charges from the gay-pride event. It's also, he believes, how he'll get into heaven. But others say he is spreading hate, not the word of God.
"Hate has many faces," said Kevin Lee, an openly gay Lansdowne Borough councilman who has faced off with Marcavage.
•
Marcavage founded Repent America after graduating from Temple University with a degree in broadcast journalism in 2001. But the seeds of his ministry began long before that. He grew up in Simpson, a blue-collar town near Scranton. His mother died when
he was 3, an event that "propelled me to search for meaning in my life." That search took him from Catholicism to more fundamentalist beliefs while he was still in high school, where he was involved in theater, Boy Scouts and community service.
As a senior he created such a stir when a teacher wanted to show the groundbreaking episode of the sitcom Ellen, in which the main character says she is a lesbian, that the principal was quoted in the local paper calling him a"religious zealot."
Then in college, when the theater department staged Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, which depicts a gay Jesus figure, Temple officials said Marcavage became so distraught during a Nov. 2, 1999, meeting with a university vice president that they ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Marcavage maintains that he was calm and has a doctor's report to prove it, and he has sued the vice president and a campus security official for unlawfully restraining him. During college he switched career paths, from journalism to religious ministry, and now sees himself going into politics or starting a church. He runs Repent America from his home with income from three rental properties and donations from Christian groups. In a short time, Marcavage's free-floating outrage has resulted in nearly as many lawsuits and confrontations as a rosary has beads. In San Francisco, he was arrested for protesting same-sex marriage. In Bridgeport, Conn., he sued police after they stopped him for driving a truck plastered with pictures of fetuses.
In Springfield, Delaware County, he scuffled with police at an abortion rally and won a $2,500 settlement from the township.
Chris Purdom, of Philadelphia, remembers Marcavage shouting into a bullhorn, setting off sirens, and asking personal, sexual questions at a gay Christian event in August at Holy Trinity Church on Rittenhouse Square. "He yells at people at Christian services, and he's now claiming he's being persecuted for being a Christian," said Purdom, a Presbyterian elder. That's not what happened, Marcavage said. "I was simply preaching the Gospel." He says he did turn on sirens to get people's attention.
Brian Fahling of the American Family Association, which provides free legal services, said Marcavage "takes the First Amendment seriously and also takes being a law-abiding citizen seriously." And his friend, Jason Storm, a fellow evangelist, said that Marcavage is "a good man" who once took in a homeless man for a week and got him a job. Most people react negatively to his preaching, Marcavage acknowledged, but once in a while someone sees the light. On a mantle in his living room is a framed
letter from a woman thanking him for preaching in the parking lot of a strip club near Scranton. He's had less success in his current hometown. When he moved to Landsowne three years ago, he didn't know it had a growing gay and lesbian community.
"God's providence" brought him there, he said. "There's a lot to do in that town." Part of that work is keeping out more homosexuals. At a Borough Council meeting in July, he brought the issue up and began reading from the Bible. The council president adjourned the meeting, and Marcavage was later arrested for refusing to leave the building. Said Lansdowne Councilman Lee: "The Bible is a beautiful and complicated document, and it can be interpreted any way you want. I don't know who christened him the one to do that for all of us." Marcavage also has had run-ins with residents. When John Kerry visited a Lansdowne home during his presidential campaign, Marcavage got into a scrap with the homeowner's daughter, who squirted him with a hose. He's suing.
And he got kicked by a woman at a Methodist Church for denouncing the then-pastor's "false teachings." "It's such an unconscionable, unethical way to live," said the Rev. Timothy Thomson-Hohl, the new pastor of Trinity Lansdowne United Methodist Church. "For someone who's supposed to be Christian, it's appalling." One minister whom Marcavage is in accord with is the Rev. Craig Stephen White, a fiery Philadelphia street preacher who was convicted in March of trying to
solicit sex from a West Chester teenager. Marcavage put up his house as collateral for White's bail, testified as a
character witness, and offered a reward on his Web site for information leading to White's acquittal.
"I believe he's innocent," said Marcavage, who met White at Temple. "I've been charged with many crimes, and I've been acquitted later on."
. Next week, Repent America will take its antiabortion road show to Washington, hoping to steal some of the spotlight from the inauguration. It won't come as a surprise if there's a dust-up, an arrest, a lawsuit. It may or may not save souls, but it's a great way to stoke a ministry or start a political career. "People are headed to eternal damnation. I'm out there warning them that there
are consequences," Marcavage said. "We're all going to stand judgment before God."
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Contact staff writer Kathy Boccella at kboccella@phillynews.com or
610-313-8123.Posted on Thu, Jan. 15, 2004