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A case here has captured the attention of local media and has exposed the pathological world of the closet, and the hypocrisy and jealousy of an anti-gay pastor who allegedly took the life of an North Carolina Central University student Latrese Curtis, who was “in the way” between him and his roommate, who was the object of the Pentacostal minister’s sexual obsession. (WRAL):
Robert Lee Adams Reaves is charged with first-degree murder in the January 2008 stabbing death of Latrese Matral Curtis, 21. rivers discovered her body the morning of Jan. 30, 2008, along Interstate 540 near Louisburg Road. She was stabbed nearly 40 times in the head, neck, chest and stomach. See the autopsy report.
Prosecutors have said in previous court hearings that Reaves killed Curtis in a jealous rage because she was having a sexual relationship with his roommate, Steven Randolph, who had rebuffed Reaves’ advances.
“Bishop” Robert Reaves of Cedar International Fellowship in Durham has had a checkered past that would have raised some red flags in his congregation.
Reaves, Wake County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Lindow said in opening statements, has a long history of trying to mentor young men and make sexual advances toward them.
“Steven was not the first person Reaves made sexual advances on,” she said. “The same pattern about approaching young men started years earlier and ended with the death of what he viewed as an obstacle to that – Latrese Curtis.”
Yes, Reaves must have been preaching anti-gay bigotry even as he engaged in illegal activities that include criminal sexual conduct in Marlboro County, S.C. He was convicted of third-degree sex charges on Jan. 1, 1988. He was also charged with simple assault and battery in 1982 in South Carolina.
Testimony has begun in the trial, and Steven Randolph, who is a former N.C. Central University basketball player took the stand and said that he engaged in a sexual relationship with Curtis, who was separated from her husband, and when Reaves found out about this, it made him fly into a rage, allegedly leading to the brutal slaying of Ms. Curtis.
Apparently Randolph had already been on the receiving end of sexual advances by the closeted pastor and alleged predatory behavior spun out of control.
Hours after Randolph had his first sexual encounter with Curtis, Reaves asked him about his sexual habits and preferences and raised the possibility of his working for an escort service, according to testimony…”He asked me if I was a freak, as far as sexually,” Randolph testified Thursday.
Randolph testified that in the fall of 2007 he did not immediately recognize the pastor’s proposals as sexual advances toward him. But Randolph said once he realized Reaves’ intentions, he told the pastor he was not homosexual or bisexual.
That encounter made Randolph so uneasy, he testified, that he not only left the house immediately to seek refuge with friends, he also got a gun from his cousin to keep in his bedroom.
Randolph told of an unusual string of events in the ensuing months: His girlfriend received phone calls from unidentified young men, threatening to end Randolph’s aspirations of becoming a professional basketball player; his tires were slashed; and weeks later his girlfriend’s tires were slashed outside her home.
In even more sordid detail, Randolph also testified that Reaves, during one of the propositions for sex, told the basketball player that he could live rent-free in the house if Reaves could perform oral sex on him.
Again, here we see a pious man of the cloth, unable to reconcile his tortured worlds of religious indoctrination and his homosexuality, turns into an alleged deviant predator — and murderer.
Legally, it’s not looking good for the Durham pastor — a Wake County sheriff found a knife in Reaves’s car.
“It would have been the very back passenger seat,” Deputy Alfred Sternberg said. “If you go behind that, there’s a rail for where that seat is, and that’s where it was.”
And his DNA was on the murder victim’s steering wheel, according to the forensics experts in Friday’s testimony.
Randolph’s testimony
Rod McCullom has been following this story for a while; check out his take.
News Report on case: http://www.wral.com/news/local…
21 Comments
HopeHere’s hoping this helps wake up the black church to the evils of the closet and the evils of being on the “down low”, and the evils the rabid historical conservatism of the black church has ruined so many lives.
WowMy heart just goes out to her family. What a horrible way to die.
Are you serious?The black church is asleep and has ALWAYS been asleep. It has no intention of waking up to reality. And neither do its parishoners.
Why else do you think that a closet queen like Tyler Perry is so successful?
Lessons to be learned from this1) If you suppress a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy impulse, when it finally emerges, it’s going to come out in a horribly twisted way. We’ve seen evidence of this time and again–so often and so consistently that I honestly don’t understand why so many people can’t grasp it. It really couldn’t be much more obvious.
2) The fact that Reaves is a “Christian” minister clearly contributed to this. One of the core messages of Christianity has always been that pleasure is bad and that conversely deprivation (and even pain) is good. It’s a futile, anti-human world view, and at it’s worst it’s actively destructive–as we see in this case.
David, I just watched ” Madea Goes to Prison”and was blown away by the anti-lesbian sentiment he expressed in the movie. I’d wondered over and over if Mr Perry was a closet case- I’m glad to see somebody else say it (write it) out loud.
of coursemany people will fail to learn that lesson.
They’ll just say he wasn’t praying hard enough and that god didn’t get that “evil demon” [homosexuality] out of his spirit/heart/body/mind/etc.
I’ve never been “The quiet type”especially when a grotesque creep like this is staring me in the face.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the relative lack of homophobic comments on wral.comThe comments section at wral.com, which has followed this case daily, are usually incredibly bigoted in every way, including rampant homophobia. I’ve worn out the alert button and feel as if I have a personal relationship with many of the wral.com moderators, I’ve emailed back and forth with them so many times. But in this particular case, there have been relatively few homophobic comments. In fact, many of the comments have been fairly sensible. I’m tempted to make a broad assumption, and this is it -
Most of the posters who comment on wral.com on any given day appear to be white and very, very right-wing. They’re the ones who unfailingly make homophobic comments, too. Most of those posters have ignored this case, probably because it involves African American people and the right-wing white bigots who infest wral.com comments section don’t care about it much one way or the other. This leaves me to assume that most of the people commenting on this case are either black or non-racist whites. And they haven’t made a big deal about the “gay” angle of this case. I see that as a very encouraging sign.
What a grizzley death, prayers for Ms. Curtiss’ family
Asceticismwasn’t always a core message of Christianity. The ascetic “aspect” of Christianity dates back to influence from Manichaeism, which brought in influences from eastern religions such as Buddhism.
The idea that deprivation and a pain is good, that they should be actively sought, that straining and fasting is good and are to actively sought, as a means to enter a new consciousness was borrowed from Buddhism by Christianity. Look in Zen Buddhism, and you will find many of the concepts of austerity that got infused into Christianity. Of course, the part where the Buddha realised that starving is no better than feasting, that neither one nor the other, would lead to enlightenment and happiness does not seem to have entered into Christianity.
As for it being anti-human, pain and strain are also aspects of humanity. Pain in all its many aspects can be pleasurable. Anything at its worst can be actively destructive, not just deprivation and pain.
Asceticismwasn’t always a core message of Christianity. The ascetic “aspect” of Christianity dates back to influence from Manichaeism, which brought in influences from eastern religions such as Buddhism.
The idea that deprivation and a pain is good, that they should be actively sought, that straining and fasting is good and are to actively sought, as a means to enter a new consciousness was borrowed from Buddhism by Christianity. Look in Zen Buddhism, and you will find many of the concepts of austerity that got infused into Christianity. Of course, the part where the Buddha realised that starving is no better than feasting, that neither one nor the other, would lead to enlightenment and happiness does not seem to have entered into Christianity.
As for it being anti-human, pain and strain are also aspects of humanity. Pain in all its many aspects can be pleasurable. Anything at its worst can be actively destructive, not just deprivation and pain.
Not so.Christian “church fathers” were preaching that pleasure is evil and deprivation good from the earliest times. Origen want so far as to advocate that men should castrate themselves rather than yield to the temptations of sex (though, typically, he declined to castrate himself). Any number of other “church fathers” preached similarly, though not usually to the same extreme. Take a good read of Augustine, for instance. Or even earlier figures such as Ignatius of Antioch, or Clement of Rome, or Polycarp, or the anonymous author the the Epistle to Diognetus (who also tried to claim that the Jewish dietary laws were “really” prohibitions against homosexuality), or any number of others. Can you offer any solid evidence that any of these men were exposed to Buddhism, much less took its teachings to heart? Nothing I’ve ever read has indicated that.
Ok, I GOTTA go here for a minute.Yes, Steven Randolph is a CUTIE!…
Having gotten that out of the way…
The hypocrisy that can be the black church and the homophobia in it keeps taking it’s toll. Or, not just the black church, but any church.
This story is just so sad and what makes me furious is that if only he had lived as an out and proud gay man, Mr. Reaves would probably not be going through this.
And Ms. Curtis would still be alive.
What was the thinking?Did the “reverend” think that getting rid of that poor young woman would make the object of his desires fall into his arms? Was he prepared to do in every rival that came along? Would he not take the hint if all of those rivals kept turning out to be female?
I’m now wondering about Fred (godhatesfags) Phelps. When he takes his tumble, I hope it won’t involve the murder of some poor innocent person.
Love,
Rick
That,or they’ll call it “just one more example of the tragedy that awaits all who pursue the ‘homosexual lifestyle’”.
WRAL.comThe comments section of the story linked at the top has been shut down.
I”m glad you said it first . . .regarding Steven Randolph, but I second the motion, he is fierce!!
But so sad, and very troubling, that a so-called man of God Reaves felt so trapped in his lifestyle and was so intent on controlling the lives and choices of others that he apparently took the life of this young woman.
Unstated or unsourced is what–beyond being a Pentacostalist minister–justifies labeling Reaves anti-gay. Are there anti-gay Youtube videos or a paper trail of sermons that aren’t linked herewith that would lend credibility to this characterization?
He wouldn’t be a good Pentacostal if he had a gay-affirming churchleaving alone the obvious fact that the man was in the closet instead of out and proud…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…
Reaves is a bishop in the Living In Favor Global Network, which is Pentacostal. Uniformly they do not allows LGBts as members and the do not ordain gay pastors, or marry or bless unions of same-sex couples.
Most churches that are within the Pentecostal Movement view homosexual behavior as a sin. The second largest Pentecostal Church in the USA, the Assemblies of God, makes its view clear on homosexuality in a position paper stating “It should be noted at the outset that there is absolutely no affirmation of homosexual behavior found anywhere in Scripture. Rather, the consistent sexual ideal is chastity for those outside a monogamous heterosexual marriage and fidelity for those inside such a marriage. There is also abundant evidence that homosexual behavior, along with illicit heterosexual behavior, is immoral and comes under the judgement of God” [28]
These churches therefore oppose same-sex unions, gay pastors, and would tend to forbid congregants who persist in homosexual practices. Politically, there are likely to support politicians with the same viewpoints. Most Pentecostal churches insist that those who engage in homosexual activity should cease such behavior, as with any sin
blame the Greeks…At least my religion teachers did – basically, the Greek Stoicism movement, and… drawing a blank – the one that said basically that the body was EVIL and the mind/soul was GOOD was pretty popular 2000 years ago, and spread to well-educated peoples who studied them – i.e. Greek Jews like Saul/Paul. Paul was ALL ABOUT the body/soul dichotomy, and the early church fathers followed that path fairly often.
It is always the Sexually Repressed who go whackado on us. Basically because their minds have been warped by religion.
Pentacostalism and anti-gaysThank you, Pam, for the insights and link about this branch of Christianity that, I confess, as a cradle and very comfortable gay Episcopalian I don’t know much about.
That said, I don’t find their condemnation of homosex or their general social political conservativism surprising or exceptionally harsh a la Westboro Baptist or that nutty pastor’s call to violence out in Arizona. Please correct me if mistaken, but isn’t Sarah Palin affiliated with an Assemblies of God congregation in Wasilla?
Obviously this Mr. Reaves must have been terribly confused, conflicted and frightened by the discrepancy between the public teachings of his church and his private, human instincts and natural desires. But does one’s simply being in the closet–even if it’s someone in a leadership position of a staunchly anti-gay church–make that individual implicitly anti-gay? Perhaps, but I’ll have think about that for a bit.
Is it a logical extension that LGBT citizens serving in the military under DADT without disclosing their status are also inherently “anti-gay” or are they exempt? Are there shades of gray for closeted people who live in less-than-friendly neighborhoods, or who work in an indifferent or unsupportive corporate culture or even for businesses with hostile work environment regarding LGBT employees such as Exxon?
I don’t wish to be argumentative; and I welcome input on how others feel about the parameters of “anti-gay”.
For now, I lean toward believing that for an individual to be labeled “anti-gay” then there should be some hard evidence, preferably available in print or media, regarding specific quotes or sermons, employment firings, congregational witch-hunts, or engaging in anti-LGBT activities or campaigns such as have been undertaken by the Rev. Donald Q. Fozard Sr., the Catholic bishops in Maine, Rick Warren, or my local favorite, Bishop Harry Jackson.