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Title: EXCLUSIVE: Presiding bishop of fifth largest Christian church in US - and member of President Obama's religious advisory council - fights back against claims he is a 'gay pedophile' who has 'taken thousands of dollars in kickbacks'
Source:
Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... ousands-dollars-kickbacks.html
Published: Dec 15, 2015
Author: Martin Gould
Post Date: 2015-12-15 09:18:39 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 539
The head of the country's fifth largest Christian church has hit back at one of his own pastors by suing him for repeatedly being accused of being a gay pedophile who has received thousands of dollars in kickbacks, Daily Mail Online has learned exclusively. Bishop Charles Blake, the Los Angeles-based presiding bishop of the six-million-strong Church of God in Christ, says he has finally had enough of the charges from Pastor Earl Carter. 'Mr. Carter's misconduct is extreme, outrageous, and beyond all bounds of decency,' Blake said in newly filed court papers. Blake, who President Obama appointed to the White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is suing Carter asking for $75,000 along with an order to stop his crusade against him. Scroll down for video Bishop Charles Blake (left), head of country's fifth largest Christian church has hit back at Pastor Earl Carter by suing him for repeatedly being accused of being a gay pedophile who received kickbacks Blake, who President Obama appointed to the White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is suing Carter asking for $75,000 along with an order to stop his crusade against him. Allegations include he slept with underage boys on trips to Africa Thousands of the Pentecostal faith's leaders were stunned when Carter viciously attacked gays at the church's annual meeting — called the Holy Convocation — in 2014. 'I wish - if you really want to be a woman - you should get the whole package,' Carter ranted at the meeting in St. Louis. 'Meaning a woman's monthly bleeding from your butt.' The church - which goes by the acronym COGIC and preaches against homosexuality - was appalled by the ferocity of Carter's words and after a media backlash, Bishop Blake publicly apologized on behalf of the church, leading Carter to claim he 'threw him under the bus.' Carter has been vociferous in his accusations and unapologetic. Ever since Carter, 65, has turned his venom on the bishop, who has twice been elected to four-year terms at the helm of the church, accusing him of being gay, molesting under-age boys during trips to Africa, having sex with a now-dead openly gay Harvard professor and receiving kickbacks of $60-a-room from hotels where delegates to the annual convocations stayed. p class="mol-para-with-font">He claimed that Blake regularly goes to South Africa 'because little boys are accessible and you can't go to jail. They won't charge you.' Blake is president of the Pan African Children's Fund which helps children with AIDS on the continent 'Why is he going over there? To lay with those little boys, all right?' Carter said in one video. 'He's part of the gay manifesto.' He even claimed Bishop Henry Ford, a former COGIC presiding bishop, who died in 1995, referred to Blake as 'Charlene.' Carter also alleged that basketball great Magic Johnson - a member of Blake's LA church - gave Blake $20 million for the apology. Johnson's son EJ, who appears on the E! reality show Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, is gay, and Carter linked that fact to his claim that Johnson paid the bishop off. In a YouTube video posted in September, Carter said of Blake: 'He used the power of his office to bring destruction to my ministry in the Church of God in Christ. Now I've been teaching in the Church of God in Christ for 46 years. That's how I make my living. 'He wants my family to starve to death,' added Carter, who was given one day in jail in 1995 after pleading down a third-degree felony charge of aggravated assault with intent to kill. 'The man is diabolical. He is ungodly.' Carter also alleged that basketball great Magic Johnson gave Blake $20 million for the apology. Johnson's son EJ, who appears on the E! reality show Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, is gay, and Carter linked that fact to his claim that Johnson paid the bishop off 'I will fly on my own dime anywhere to give evidence for Bishop Blake,' COGIC Pastor Derrick Hutchins (pictured on a YouTube video) told Daily Mail Online during in an exclusive interview Tens of thousands of people have now seen his videos piling on the attacks on Blake whose West Angeles Church of God in Christ has a membership of some 25,000. But Blake, a 75-year-old grandfather of eight who is regularly included in Ebony Magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential African Americans, insists none of it is true. 'Mr. Carter has viciously used the Internet to falsely profess to the world, that, among other things, Bishop Blake is immoral, homosexual and a pedophile,' claim his court papers filed on Friday in Carter's hometown of Orlando, Florida. 'Mr. Carter's goals are to destroy Bishop Blake's stellar reputation, interfere with his relationship with Church of God in Christ, Inc. and drive visitors to Mr. Carter's websites where he seeks to illegally profit off of Bishop Blake's good name,' the papers added. Even those who Carter names as his witnesses say his accusations are lies. 'I will fly on my own dime anywhere to give evidence for Bishop Blake,' COGIC Pastor Derrick Hutchins told Daily Mail Online during in an exclusive interview. Carter claims Hutchins, who lives just five minutes from him in Orlando, has said that Blake is gay. 'It's lies — all lies,' added Hutchins. 'I have never said that to anyone. I admire Bishop Blake to the highest degree. What Earl Carter says is just false.' 'Mr. Carter has viciously used the Internet to falsely profess to the world, that, among other things, Bishop Blake (pictured right) is immoral, homosexual and a pedophile,' claim his court papers filed on Friday in Carter's hometown of Orlando, Florida Hutchins said he employed Carter to preach in his New Life Church, giving him $1,000 for each monthly sermon. 'That is something that is unheard of,' he said. But after a year, he said Carter wanted more money and the arrangement was terminated. 'Since then, he has said so many things against me, accusing me of idolatry, and said I was in cahoots with others. He doesn't have any basis for anything he says, but he says it in such a way that it sounds like it's the truth.' Carter said COGIC Associate Bishop Patrick Wooden of Raleigh, North Carolina, had referred to Bishop Blake for at least 15 years as a 'faggot.' Wooden could not be contacted, but Hutchins said he too had denied ever saying such a thing. Carter also claimed that another pastor told him that Professor Peter Gomes had told him he had had sex with Blake. Gomes, — described in his New York Times obituary as 'a thundering black Baptist preacher and for much of his life a conservative Republican celebrity' — shocked his followers by coming out as gay in 1991, and spent the last 20 years of his life on what he described as a mission to address the religious causes of homophobia. Hutchins told Daily Mail Online he was with Blake when a team of COGIC leaders visited Gomes at his home in Massachusetts and knows for a fact that Blake went straight back to his hotel room after dinner, the time that Carter claims the two had sex. COGIC general counsel Uleses Henderson told Daily Mail Online that Carter's words had cause 'immeasurable' pain and suffering to the Bishop's family, and he was now 'compelled' to file the suit. He described Carter's claims as 'preposterous, entirely unfounded and patently untrue.' 'Bishop Blake refrained for several weeks from taking action against Mr. Carter hoping that Mr. Carter would have a change of heart and would, on his own, retract his false and defamatory accusations and apologize for the harm he has caused his family. 'Mr. Carter has not done that and, instead, has escalated the nature of his false accusations, such that they are now extremely inflammatory and reckless.' Carter refused to comment. 'Go ahead and run Bishop Blake's story,' said a woman who answered his phone.
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