Somehow I missed that one of the most colorful characters of far right Christian fundamentalist anti-Communism died in late Nov. The Economist in their XMAS issue I saw today has a nice two pg. obit. w/ the spicy details of his bisexual sex scandal w/ students. One st8 couple on the night after they were married discovered that both of them had done the wild thaaang w/ Billy. Great quote from Hargis in the piece, "I was guilty of sin, but not the sin I was accused of."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhargis.htm
6) Kevin Lambert , Scandals in Eden (1997)
Billy James Hargis, now in his 70's, built a career howling against the usual things that irritate the umbrageous right; sex, permissiveness, drugs, communism. A flat faced Oklahoman with the porcine eyes of a prison guard, he went from nowhere to top billing on 140 tv and 500 radio stations. He founded a Christian college and a newspaper which attained a circulation of 200,000. He got rich, of course, but as the bible tells us, money isn't everything.
In the mid-seventies, two students from his Bible College testified that the Reverend had officiated at their wedding ceremony, gone along on the honeymoon, and took his turn with the bride. And then with the groom. Then it came out that Hargis had been bringing college choir boys to his farm. Exhorting them with the biblical passage about David's friendship with Jonathan, and threatening them with blacklisting if they talked, Billy took them into his bed and did his devilish business with them. (The name of the choir was the "All American Kids.")
Confronted with these accusations, Hargis admitted it all, blaming it on "Genes and chromosomes." That confused his critics for a moment. Billy James had never been the kind of guy to trot in scientific arguments, so he stepped things up. He withdrew his confession and bounded back to the college. He claimed that the Lord had forgiven him, and, just in case He hadn't, held on to the mailing lists. He blamed his barnyard buggery on "Liberal subversion" and "The forces of Satan out to silence anti-communism." Before you laugh, bear in mind that this sort of Christian logic has elected more than a few American politicians.
(1) Billy James Hargis, The Far Left (1964)
The entire left-wing movement is of the devil. As Christians, the first way in which we can recognize the devil and his presence is that he is a liar. He speaks lies, he uses lies, his conspiracy is built on lies. Hear the words of Jesus and His controversy with the Jews: “Why do you not understand my speech? Even because you cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it, and because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” What are the lies that are confronting the American people today as a result of this internal Communist conspiracy, and in connection with this murder of the President of the United States? The first lie is that there is no conspiracy, that the Communist conspiracy does not exist, and there are not thousands upon thousands of trained Communist agents in this country today, some of them trained, as Lee Harvey Oswald obviously was, to be expert killers. The murder of the President of the United States was one of the most skillful acts of killing imaginable and could have been accomplished only by great training, and now the facts show that Oswald received such training inside the Soviet Union, while he lived there as a citizen.
It is a lie hatched in hell that the so-called “right-wing extremists” are guilty of the murder of the President of the United States. That lie was put out as official Communist Party propaganda in the first flash of Tass News Agency in Moscow as reported in this country within minutes after the President was killed. Tass, the Russian Communist News Agency, said it was believed that “right-wing extremists” were responsible for the murder of the President, and specifically branded General Edwin A. Walker as being one of those guilty.
-- Michael Pugliese