Posted on 05/30/2002 11:52:00 PM PDT by Sabertooth
"Jesus loves the little children," the classic Christian ditty goes, "all the children of the world." All of them except the one whose mom works as a stripper.
That seems to be the moral of the story of nude dancer Christina Silvas, whose 5-year-old daughter was recently expelled from kindergarten when the school found out about her mother's stripping. A single mom, Christina danced at a gentlemen's club in Rancho Cordova, California to pay the $400 monthly tuition at Capital Christian School, operated by one of America's biggest Assemblies of God churches. School officials declared stripping violated the "Christian Commitment/Philosophy" Christina signed when she enrolled her daughter, and they gave the 24-year-old an ultimatum -- stop stripping or we'll stop teaching your daughter.
Christina and the private religious school eventually reached an accord. She consented to stop dancing for the last three weeks of her daughter's school year, and Capital Christian will allow the girl to finish kindergarten. Christina did not, however, say she wouldn't pose for Playboy.
When we learned about this tale of lack of Christian charity, we tracked Christina down. She had no qualms about our offer to pose, and she was soon on a plane to Playboy headquarters in Chicago. During a break in her shooting, we chatted with Christina and asked her to strip down the controversy for us.
Playboy.com: Once your daughter is finished with kindergarten, will you return to dancing?
Christina Silvas: That's not my intention, but I have not closed that door.
PB: Does the club want you back?
CS: The club can't wait for me to come back. They said that if I decide to return they'll throw me the biggest welcome back party the city has ever seen.
PB: When you were dancing there, did you ever see anyone from the church or the school at the club as a patron?
CS: Absolutely.
PB: How many?
CS: What goes on at the club stays at the club, so I can't comment about that.
PB: Rick Cole, the church's senior pastor, said God thinks stripping is demeaning. Do you agree?
CS: I think it's demeaning to have a day care raise your child while you're working.
PB: So he is off the mark?
CS: I don't feel that anything I did brought anything negative to my daughter.
PB: Cole is implying that stripping is a sin. Do you see it that way?
CS: It's definitely a difficult job, but the reason I was doing it was to provide the best life for my daughter that I possibly could, and I don't believe that is a sin.
PB: As a Christian, has this whole episode tested your faith?
CS: Life is a test. I believe that in that line of work you definitely have to be a strong individual. You use that occupation or it uses you.
PB: And you used it?
CS: Yes I did, and I think my strength of character to do that came from God.
PB: Your dancing was a sacrifice for your daughter. Do you think God was pleased with your sacrifice?
CS: I believe God sees our heart and looks at why we are doing what we are doing as opposed to solely our actions, and I believe that my actions were absolutely honorable. I was trying to provide for my daughter. I didn't have the luxury of looking for something else to do. It was very sudden that the financial responsibility of providing for my daughter fell onto my shoulders, and this was the first opportunity that seemed like it would help me accomplish my goals.
PB: How shocked were you when you found out about the expulsion?
CS: I was absolutely, totally, completely shocked. When I received the phone call that they were expelling my daughter based on my occupation, I did not believe it.
PB: Has this traumatized your daughter or has she been shielded from all of this?
CS: I have shielded her as much as I could. She caught a glimpse of the news and asked why her school doesn't want her to come back. I immediately reassured her that everybody loved her and that everything was going to be OK.
|
CS: She is an extremely intelligent child. I've sacrificed almost six years to be the best parent I can be and I fully believe she has the foundation to overcome any obstacle. PB: Will your daughter return to Capital Christian for first grade? CS: No. I was deeply disappointed with their actions throughout this entire situation. PB: Did you enjoy dancing at the club? CS: It was an extremely positive experience. It helped me accomplish the goals that I think are important, which is spending time with my daughter and providing the best that I can for her. PB: Was it fun, though? Did you enjoy doing it? CS: I enjoyed the challenge of it, of doing the best job I could. PB: Did you have a certain style or a signature move? CS: I was good with the pole. Everyone asked if I was a gymnast. PB: When this story broke, it was reported that people were coming forward to offer you other jobs so that you would not be violating church policy. Has anything panned out? CS: I want to take the next three weeks to find myself and my daughter a new church to attend, a new school for her to go to next year and hopefully a new occupation. PB: What would you like to do? CS: I have many interests. I got straight As in high school and great grades in college, so I have unlimited possibilities and opportunities. PB: Why pose for Playboy? CS: Before all of this happened, I was extremely interested in posing. I have the utmost respect for the entire company, and I believe posing for Playboy is the American dream for a woman. PB: What do you think the church's reaction will be to your posing? CS: I think they will believe that my intentions throughout this entire process were for self gain and that I had evil intentions. But I can't help what other people believe. I can't change other people's thoughts. PB: Are you prepared for the fallout? CS: I am. I have to live my life for me. I can't live my life for the public or the church. |
No.
I never said that nor implied that.
Why do you have such a hard time with what I did say, that you resort to twisting my words?
BTW: I am glad to see that you've stopped using that green box around your posts.
It always gave me the creeps.
Even if she did, how does that make it right?
What exactly makes it 'wrong', other than your beliefs?
What if it ends up costing her far more than the trifling she was paid?
What, you mean, like, 'her soul'? What if you have dreadfully misapprehended the message?
What will it cost her little girl - who will likely be the one to pick up the tab for her mother's indiscretions?
Huh? Oh, you mean whenever she encounters tremendously critical and judgmental folks, like those who have been posting to this thread? Most folks I know would say, 'More power to her'.
It's not that everything she says is automatically a lie because she is a stripper and everything said about her is automatically true because it is said by church people.
And I don't "condemn" her for harming one of "us", but I don't think it is hard to conclude she is harming her daughter, engaged in an immoral vocation, and playing up the situation for publicity and money while veneering it all with concern for her daughter's welfare.
It is the obvious hypocrisy on her part that makes her word not credible.
Of course there are hypocrites and pharisees in churches. There always will be. But there is no evidence these particular church people are such, and nothin at all unreasonable about them having a private school with a consensual morals clause for those they associate with, and nothing shocking or pharasaical about them choosing to enforce their consensual, mutual clause.
It is important to read this story, and any story, through the facts IN THE STORY, not through the template of the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold cliche. Said cliche is part of the unconscious myth of our secular culture -- it originated as a perversion of the biblical story of the Harlot Who Washed Jesus' Feet, (there is almost nothing in Western thought and culture that is NOT biblical).
The tale is regularly regurgitated from the collective psyche and passed around to comfort those who want to sin but feel warm in their hearts. The stripper is simply mining this tired old template, for fool's gold.
Is it productive to spend all day teaching a child about Christianity, only to have the mother undermine it every evening? As you correctly pointed out, it is the mother who has the chief responsibility to raise her child. If she is acting at cross purposes to the school, the child does not benefit.
So, you feel that the influence of this mother will cancel out all of the day-long lessons learned at the school?
Do you doubt that there are cases where children have developed a higher morality than their parents, due to the influence of christian education?
Could you not see the daughter even being a spiritual help to her mother at some point?
Yes, I agree with you.
I think the school and the parents have a perfect right to enforce the agreement they all signed. And it is important to counter all the nonsense that somehow dancing naked in front of strangers is o.k. if you use part of the money for your daughter's tennis shoes.
But you make the excellent point that the school would serve the child's welfare better, by their own definition of her welfare, if they kept her in the school and used their influence to teach her to save her virginity and modesty for her future husband.
Since when are stripping and prostitution the same thing?Since the beginning of human history, if you are talking about it in the same context as dancing lewdly, nude, before a sea of paying men to sexually stimulate them for money, "pole dancing" and "table-" and "lap-dancing". But hey, don't take my word for it. Ask your grandmother. It is only our leftist, liberal, de-constructionist, revisionist, latter 20th Century mores that have re-defined what used to be summarily regarded as whoring.
Somehow I get the idea it is a priori impossible to prove to you that God ever said anything.
Since the beginning of human history, if you are talking about it in the same context as dancing lewdly, nude, before a sea of paying men to sexually stimulate them for money, "pole dancing" and "table-" and "lap-dancing". But hey, don't take my word for it. Ask your grandmother. It is only our leftist, liberal, de-constructionist, revisionist, latter 20th Century mores that have re-defined what used to be summarily regarded as whoring.
Boy...that was a fastball out over the plate that you took downtown.
When that question that you answered is even asked.... we know that the "I'm okay..you're okay....tolerance" bunch have won.
That is this Church's opinion in this case. They are free to hold the opinion. They want to work with families that will reinforce their message, not contradict it.
Do you doubt that there are cases where children have developed a higher morality than their parents, due to the influence of christian education?
Not at all.
Could you not see the daughter even being a spiritual help to her mother at some point?
Sure. The point here is that this mother agreed, as a condition of her daughter attending school, that she would work with the school, including some type of morals clause. She broke her contract and the school is within its rights to dismiss her child.
I don't know the entire situation, but it is possible or likely that the school is subsidized by the Church. In this case, it makes even less sense for the church and school to spend their resources for a student who has little chance of having its lessons reinforced at home.
No school has unlimted resources. Perhaps there is a child who would be better served by the school and her mother, than the stripper mom's kid.
SD
Dan
Somehow I get the idea it is a priori impossible to prove to you that God ever said anything
And there you would be wrong. God could prove it. You, Kevin, ppaul, or any other human being could not. (Think before you respond. You'll realize that is the only way it could be - for me, for you, or anyone else. You will also realize the absolute impossibility of imparting that knowing to another.)
She not only broke the original contract... but then after the school agreed to let her child finish the term, she broke the spirit and intent of the new agreement by running to playboy before the term was finished.
1 Corinthians 5 is very clear how the church should handle this. It isn't even in doubt.
I suppose the reason I'm not laughing at this part of the joke is that I lack the niavete to accept her expressed concern to "shield her daughter" at face value.
It's not usual to see sophistication cloaked so skillfully as niavete. With a moment to adjust, though, I'll aspire to your peculiar -- no, unprecendented -- combination of niavete and learning, that I might laugh more.
Such is your belief system; there is no rational, objective criteria for such an analogy.Hey, you're in the majority anyway.
That is exactly the argument legal deconstructionists (which is the prevailing ideology of most of American law schools) would use against these words embraced by dead, white, slaveholders:
"Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."
LOL-- how inane.
Oh, I'm sorry, I've set fire to your straw-man...
And yet, you are conversing with us.
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