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A preacher who has spent years using a bullhorn to rile at passers-by... Associated Press

WEST CHESTER, Pa. - A preacher who has spent years using a bullhorn to rile at passers-by on college campuses about "fornicators," "whores" and "sodomites" is accused by a 14-year-old boy of soliciting a sex act.

The boy told police that the Rev. C. Stephen White, 40, of North Philadelphia offered him money to perform oral sex on him. White declined to comment at his arraignment Thursday, but defense lawyer J. Michael Considine Jr. said his client maintains he only asked the boy for directions.

"In all the years I've known him, there's never been any hint ever of going to strip clubs, wanting to have sex with boys, looking at pornography or soliciting sex," Considine said. "I'm shocked and I believe that he is innocent."

The boy told police that a stranger drove up beside him on the street in West Chester on June 26 and asked him if he new of any strip clubs or adult bookstores. Soon after that, the man offered to pay him to commit the act. The boy told police that he said no and walked away, then repeated the license plate number of the stranger's car to himself as he ran to his aunt's house.

The license plate number was later traced to White, and the boy identified the man who approached him using White's driver's license photo.

White was taken to Chester County Prison on Thursday after failing to post $100,000 cash bail.

"Our concern is that because he is a reverend and deals with youth, there may be other victims out there," West Chester Police Detective Stan Billie said.

Considine said White was in West Chester that day to discuss a lawsuit he has filed against the Philadelphia Police Department about several arrests for his preaching. Considine said the suit sought better training for police officers about how to handle that sort of situation.

White has been a fixture on the University of Pennsylvania campus since the early 1990s and also preaches to passers-by at other campuses in Philadelphia and elsewhere. He was a prominent enough figure at Penn that the chaplain's office held a panel discussion about his methods in 1998.

"Sometimes he would bring his own kids along with him," said Ian Sneed of the university's InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Center. "His son would try to be like Daddy, ranting and raving while holding a Bible."

White also runs a youth ministry program in North Philadelphia, where neighbors said he distributed toys to children around Christmas and often held long basketball games in the ministry building.

I think you can do better than calling people here "fundamentalist busybodies" and posting an article about a phony preacher.

Just because you don't agree that this issue is important doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed (besides, you could be wrong on this). We are merely calling people's attention to a moral issue facing our country. Don't reduce our arguments to mere noise about nothing.

Do you actually have a point in posting that article?

This has absolutely no relevence to the CWA article this thread is based on. If you want to create a thread based on this sordid story, you are free to, but don't plop it in the middle of this thread and expect to be taken seriously.

I'm sorry, but I got a little lost with this story. This preacher wasn't associated with these San Fransisco parades, was he? It looks like he's in Pennsylvania??

You're pathetic. In fact...............a pathetic excuse for a human being. You attempt to establish moral equivalence here.........and your attempt is sophomoric, trite, and wholly transparent.

IOW........get bent.