Programs bankrolled by evangelical churches promise to change them. Not their guns β their holsters were slung in a corner of the roadside motel room. For this sting operation, the detectives were armed with iPhones, texting their way into the coming frenzy. Police in Texas and many parts of the United States regularly conduct these operations to catch men buying sex. This is, after all, a country in which consenting adults selling and buying sex remains illegal everywhere except in 10 counties of Nevada.
I had just finished my tally when the room suddenly came alive. Sgt Paul Mahoney, the officer in charge, grabbed my wrist and led me into the bathroom. There, he and his largest officer strapped on their gun holsters and selected a pair of handcuffs. Gene and another detective waited silently behind the motel room door, opened by a female cop in jeans and ill-suiting makeup. She was dancing to the words of the district attorney, who had strictly warned Mahoney that a foot has to be inside the door for an arrest to stick.
Once the guy had stepped in, the moves were precise. By the time I made it out of the bathroom, the john was in cuffs and his pockets were turned out. Pissing himself would only be the first in a series of humiliations for Fernando, and thousands of guys like him caught in john stings around the country.
Fernando is another casualty in a moral panic that is destroying lives in order to save souls. Mills has been running this john school β a mandatory education programme for men convicted of first-time solicitation offences β since , through Jesus Said Love, a not-for-profit organization that he runs with his wife, Emily.
Class rules were read out: sleepers and phone-checkers get one warning before being asked to leave the room; anyone showing up drunk, high or late will be kicked out of the program altogether. If Mills had his way, the class would cost 20 times more than it already does, so that the johns would feel the true weight of their crime. Go to a bar and meet someone! The guys had been arrested in a series of police stings, which are increasingly taking place across Texas.
