By : DR. BOYCE WATKINS
PASTOR Craig Lamar Davis
looks like any other healthy, happy, heterosexual pastor with good family
values. He was once a preacher at the
Full Gospel Baptist Church in Atlanta and a pillar of leadership in the
community. Also, like a lot of men at
the front of the church, the pastor had a thing for the ladies.
Another thing you might want
to know about Davis, according to authorities, is that the pastor is HIV
positive. He also didn’t seem to care
who else became HIV positive after he slept with them.
The pastor was arrested for
reckless conduct after police found that he was sleeping with several women
with whom he was not married. A woman by
the name of Ronita McAfee says that she met the pastor on Facebook and began
sleeping with him.
Ronita says that she became
concerned when one of the pastor’s ex-girlfriends called to say that she had
HIV. She claims that the pastor then
counseled her (presumably leaning on the word of the good “lawud”) and told her
to get tested. McAfee then says that she
believed that, based on her observations, the pastor himself was not interested
in getting treatment or changing his sexual behavior, in spite of his
status. This is what prompted her to
seek out a warrant for his arrest.
Ronita is, by our best
guess, the first person to file for the arrest of someone who was found to be
having unprotected sex in Clayton County, GA while knowing that he is
HIV-positive. McAfee says that when the
investigation began, another woman in the church leadership stepped forward
with her confession about interacting with Davis. The woman even claimed that she’d been
celibate for 15 years before meeting him.
She too is HIV positive.
Ladies, please take a good
look at this man, because the fact is that you probably know him. He’s the nice, smooth, good-looking man that
makes you want to get naked on the third or fourth date.
You trust him because you’ve
been raised to believe that a man of God would never hurt you. In fact, he might be the man that your church
has had you waiting for because he is well-grounded in the Christian faith and
knows all the religious buzzwords (“I’m saved,” “in the blood,” “God’s favor,”
etc.).
He can easily get into your
head, because he knows that one defining characteristic of nearly every black
woman in America is her deep and unshakable commitment to the church – in fact,
the personality traits that make for a good pastor also happen to be the same
ones that make for an exceptionally gifted pimp (although not all pastors are
pimps).
As a man who’s written
extensively about other sad creatures like Bishop Eddie Long (who also hails
from Atlanta, aka the bible-thumping Sodom and Gomorrah), I find Pastor Davis’
case remarkable for several reasons:
First, the courage of these
women to step out and publicly reveal the pastor’s deception has saved
lives. I wish there were a day where
every 30 and 40-something year old black woman who has caught HIV, Herpes,
Syphilis or some other disease would speak out about what happened to them, so
that younger women don’t end up falling into the same trap.
Countless women have died
from catching something that their man brought home to them after fulfilling
his “interpersonal needs” someplace else. Unfortunately, the relentless shame
thrust upon “the good Christian girl” with a venereal disease keeps many of
these stories from ever being told.
Also, modern feminist
thought sometimes leads women to think that it’s OK to run through as many sex
partners as the very worst of men. Many
of these women end up paying a significant price for this mentality.
Secondly, the pastor’s denial
of his condition and unwillingness to go to the doctor is quite common. Many women are accustomed to getting regular
STD screenings as part of their annual checkup.
Men are not raised in the same way.
There are men I know who sleep with literally dozens of women every
single year and haven’t been to the doctor since MC Hammer had a hit
record.
Even worse, many women don’t
ask and certainly don’t confirm the man’s HIV status as much as they check the
size of his bank account or the magnitude of his “swag” factor. The fact is that if you think he’s got swag,
then a lot of other women do too.
Men like Pastor Davis are
allowed to prey on unsuspecting women for at least three reasons:
1) Many women value style
over substance – if you look good, then you must be good. I am amazed at how superficial traits are
valued more than more meaningful factors, like the content of a man’s
character. Mind you, men make the same
mistake, since they falsely believe that when a pretty girl offers you sex,
you’re supposed to take it.
2) Many women falsely
believe that men who go to church are better than men who don’t. Bishop Eddie Long should help you to know
better than that. Unfortunately, people
consider each case of a pastor doing dirt to be an exception to the rule,
without realizing that there are men like Davis all over the country. Davis is not the man you need to fear; actually, you need to fear all the Craig
Davises that you still don’t know about.
3) Many women don’t ask
questions and will gladly sleep with a handsome playboy without checking and
confirming his STD status. If he doesn’t
mention the other women he slept with before he came to her house, it’s as if
those women don’t even exist. Even worse is that the fixation on HIV leads us
to forget about how many women have had their wombs corrupted from all the other STDs that you can get besides
HIV. Many people will brag about having
a negative HIV test, but won’t get a full STD screening from the doctor – a
researcher in Philadelphia told me that he randomly tested 20 men in an inner
city barbershop and found that over half of them had Chlamydia.
What’s the result of the
aforementioned factors all coming together, conjoined with intense denial in
the black church and a commercialized hip-hop culture where both men and women
glorify female degradation and irresponsible hyper-sexuality? An HIV explosion like you would not
believe.
So, every time you hear
about folks going from one short relationship to the next or the man with five
babies with four different women, just remember that, while all this is
happening, viruses, germs and bacteria are being shared with every romantic
interaction. Even worse, because the men
aren’t getting their reality checks from the doctor, it’s all “out of sight,
out of mind” as fancy clothes, exciting parties and bottles of Chirac cover up
the epidemic occurring behind closed doors.
Take a note from the lessons
of these women and realize that another Pastor Davis likely lives in your own
community. But also note that the Pastor
Davis-types of the world are allowed to do their dirty work because all of us
continue to empower and excuse the devilish snakes in the pulpit. A person can do all the evil he wants in the
world, and as long as he asks for God’s forgiveness in public (providing no
further confirmation that his behavior has changed), we invite him right back
into the church and pretend like it never happened. Just go ask R. Kelly.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the
founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary
delivered to your email, please click here. To check out Dr. Watkins in the
Janks Morton Film, Hoodwinked, please visit this link.
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