Any Port in a Storm

I can’t remember when I saw the first billboard emblazoned with John Guest’s sickly mug, but I can vividly recall the feeling of impending doom which accompanied it. Soon these advertisements spread like a legion of cold sores; on bus stops, billboards, placards, no area of greater Pittsburgh was free of his uneasy stare. To say Guest has a face for radio is putting it mildly. It’s not that he’s extraordinarily ugly, rather, it’s the sinister vibe he unwittingly gives off: an insincere smile stretched across a pallid face, with deep set, red-tinged eyes that are barely perceptible through his swollen lids. If eyes are the window of the soul, Guest appears to be harboring some monstrosities. The topper is his road kill toupee, plopped precariously on his head, with no attempt made at imitating what a head full of hair should look like. 

Facial unpleasantness notwithstanding, Guest touts his radio talk show and home base of Christ Church at Grove Farm in Sewickley, PA with the zeal of a hungry hyena and the bank account of a robber baron. Christ Church was founded after splitting off with the more traditional St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, of which Guest was formerly a rector. It achieved some notoriety in 2003, when reverend David Valencia was charged with, and subsequently found guilty of, deviant sexual intercourse and assault of a seventeen year old girl who was in his care for counseling. Despite having been discovered viewing graphic pornography on a church computer, Valencia remained on the job and in contact with minors. The father of the assaulted girl holds Guest partially responsible, since he chose to quietly reprimand the dirty reverend for his dodgy sexual proclivities, instead of reporting him and taking him out of rotation. The father of the victim claims he was also made aware of the reverend’s computer activities and questioned Guest as to whether it was safe for Valencia to continue counseling his daughter. The man claims that Guest reassured him that his daughter was safe in Valencia’s care, and shortly thereafter the girl was raped and brutalized.

The preceding information is rendered a touch more disturbing when considering Christ Church’s proclivity for youth ministries. The church helped develop Silver Ring Thing, an abstinence program involving a pledge taken by youngsters vowing to remain celibate until marriage. The same year that Valencia had his legal troubles, the Silver Ring Thing was privy to a $70,000 federal grant to further expansion. The program was turned down for refunding by the government in 2005, after Bush & co. took considerable heat for their various faith-based initiatives.

Programs like Silver Ring Thing often make bogus claims about the dangers of contraception. Program founder Denny Pattyn is notoriously anti-condom, even implying that he would counsel youths not to use prophylactics when engaging in extramarital sexual activity. No logical reason is given; there are vague lamentations about the effectiveness of condoms, citing speculative sources and hearsay, a fervent belief that a teenager will listen to you when you tell them not to do something, and the bizarre concern that a condom doesn’t protect your heart from the emotional distress of coitus. Every healthy human being wishing to remain free of both disease and child, while still partaking in the various joys of sex, should drop to his or her knees and fellate whomever invented the condom. The protection they afford against many types of STDs, as well as pregnancy, is certainly worth the price of admission.

Incidentally, abstinence only sex education has been known to have an adverse effect on, yet not diminish, sexual activity. Teens exposed to chastity vows and the like frequently do not use contraception when they ultimately succumb to their prurient instincts. Some seem to believe the bible will be sufficient in keeping Nancy Sue’s legs closed until she gets married, wherein she will be biblically sanctioned to spew child after water-headed, homeschooled child until the flagging economy topples under a metric ton of mongoloid children conceived in cars up on blocks on people’s front lawns. Condoms cast quite the shadow on the glory of god; those greasy pieces of rubber have alleviated more pain and suffering than any of god’s various pet projects. Much like evolution,  religious types are willfully rejecting common sense and tangible evidence in the name of god’s decree, which they must be paraphrasing. The creator of the universe surely cannot be this stupid.


When he’s not ruining young people’s lives, Guest will be found scoring big time speakers like Col. Oliver North, a bona fide American hero, at least in the fictional sense. I’m astounded by the continuing love fest that is directed at Oliver North, but the reasoning behind it finally occurred to me. To bovine America, Ollie North is the living personification of a G.I Joe action figure. While we slept peacefully in our beds, North was playing cops and robbers with a motley assortment of terrorist types. Never mind that North could have been conceivably tried for treason, or that he was found guilty, but let go on a technicality since the prosecuting counsel used his immunized testimony in the proceedings (North was aided in this pursuit by the ACLU, proving once again that they are on the side of fucking evil), or that he may have been indirectly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers by supplying the weapons that killed them. Hell, he looked good in a uniform and quoted the bible, what more could a red blooded American ask for?

And that’s possibly the reason why North retains any sort of cultural relevancy, now reinvented as a Christian/conservative author and blowhard. North cleverly stroked the egos of the moral majority with his recitations of biblical verses during his trial. It shored up his image as the brave Christian warrior, a fantasy that gets every bible-banger in a ten mile radius baying like a wild animal. In reality, what would a man like North have to say to church full of repressed tee totalers?  A hired mercenary and drug dealer like him is hardly the type of person I would think of when listening to people babble on about Jesus’ epic sense of peace in love. I don’t recall Jesus ever selling weapons and drugs to violent criminals in that epic book of fables.

Religion certainly attracts some seedy characters. Radical Muslims herald prolific serial killers; fanatical Christians revere immoral slobs clever enough to shroud themselves in the cloak of religion to advance whatever agenda they see fit; Latter Day Saints worship polygamist pedophiles and offer up their very children as tithings to fanatical cult leaders that control every aspect of their lives. The most criminal, conniving, untrustworthy elements in society are embraced by various religious factions for innumerable reasons and without the slightest hint of irony. Let’s say god is that great; a stretch for a dogged atheist, but let’s traipse on down this path, regardless. Human derived expectations for life usually involve peace, happiness, kindness towards those around you, contributing more to society than you take way, etc. God’s expectations of human beings are obedience, loyalty to him alone, punishment and/or alienation of those different from you, dogged adherence to ancient colloquial dietary practices and other atavistic traditions from our intellectual infancy, all of which is derived from interpretations of god by men. It doesn’t seem as though anyone is capable of living up to the standards of the bible. God seems like that stern, unloving parent, never satisfied, no matter how hard you try, always looking down his nose with disappoint when considering the miserable example you set on a daily basis.

I happen to believe that John Guest is a dangerous man, although the jury is still out on whether or not I believe that he harbors malicious intent. Most likely, he is just misguided in his personal beliefs and perhaps charismatic enough to cobble together a congregation. I don’t think John Guest the individual is as important as what he represents, namely the ease in which religious types are getting a free pass by too many and the virtual absence of protest regarding the integration of religion and politics.