WARSAW, Ohio – Strippers dressed in bikinis sunbathe in lawn chairs, their backs turned toward the gray clapboard church where men in ties and women in full-length skirts flock to Sunday morning services.The strippers, fuelled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work. The dancers roll up with signs carrying messages adapted from Scripture, such as “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” to counter church members who for four years have photographed licence plates of patrons and asked them if their mothers and wives know their whereabouts.The duelling demonstrations play out in central Ohio, where nine miles of cornfields and Amish-buggy crossing signs separate The Fox Hole strip club from New Beginnings Ministries.Club owner Tommy George met with the preacher and offered to call off his not-quite-nude crew from their three-month-long protest if the church responded in kind. But pastor Bill Dunfee believes that a higher power has tasked him with shutting down the strip club.“As a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil,” Dunfee said. “Light and darkness cannot exist together, so The Fox Hole has got to go.”New Beginnings is one of four churches in this one-traffic-light village of 900 people, 60 miles outside Columbus. There’s one gas station and a sit-down restaurant that serves country staples like mashed potatoes with gravy and Salisbury steak.Last Sunday, four of The Fox Hole’s seven strippers and more than a dozen supporters garnered both scorn and compassion from churchgoers – and quite a few honks from pickup trucks and other passing vehicles.Laura Meske – known as Lola, stage age 36 but really 42 – hid behind a sign proclaiming: “Jesus loves the children of the world!” as the preacher extended his hand for a shake.Two nights earlier, Dunfee and more than a dozen churchgoers stood outside the club, one of them calling out Meske’s stripper name.“He who casts the first stone . . . ,” Meske said.The pastor cut her off and repeated, “Lola, Lord bless you.”
(AP)
