News
2006-01-13
Lewdness charge
filed against ex-pastor
An
Oklahoma Baptist minister who has spoken out against
homosexuality was charged Wednesday with propositioning an
undercover
An
Oklahoma Baptist minister who has spoken out against
homosexuality was charged Wednesday with propositioning an
undercover male police officer.
The Reverend Lonnie Latham, 60, was charged with
a single misdemeanor count of offering to engage in an
act of lewdness. If convicted, he faces up to a year
in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. Latham was released from
jail on $500 bond on January 4, the day after his arrest. As
he was leaving jail he said, "I was set up. I was in
the area pastoring to police."
Latham has resigned as senior pastor of South
Tulsa Baptist Church. He has also stepped down from
the board of directors of the Baptist General
Convention of Oklahoma and the executive committee of the
Southern Baptist Convention.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Latham
never should have been arrested. "Reverend Latham
appears to have done nothing more than to invite
someone to a hotel with him for consensual sex. That's not a
crime," said Joann Bell, executive director of the ACLU of
Oklahoma Foundation.
Latham's attorney, Mack Martin, said his client
will plead innocent.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Latham
propositioned a plainclothes police officer who was
patrolling an area in Oklahoma City that had been the
focus of complaints about male prostitution.
Latham has spoken out against same-sex marriage
and in support of a directive urging the Southern
Baptist Convention's 42,000 churches to befriend gays
and lesbians and try to convince them they can become
straight "if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and
reject their sinful, destructive lifestyle." The
convention is the nation's largest Protestant
denomination. (AP)
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