Pastor Craig Lamar Davis looks like any other healthy, happy,
heterosexual pastor with good family values. He was once a preacher at
the Full Gospel Baptist Church in Atlanta and a pillar of leadership in
the community. Also, like a lot of men at the front of the church, the
pastor had a thing for the ladies.
Another thing you might want to know about Davis, according to
authorities, is that the pastor is HIV positive. He also didn’t seem to
care who else became HIV positive after he slept with them.
The pastor was arrested for reckless conduct after police found that
he was sleeping with several women with whom he was not married. A
woman by the name of Ronita McAfee says that she met the pastor on
Facebook and began sleeping with him.
Ronita says that she became concerned when one of the pastor’s
ex-girlfriends called to say that she had HIV. She claims that the
pastor then counseled her (presumably leaning on the word of the good
“lawud”) and told her to get tested. McAfee then says that she
believed that, based on her observations, the pastor himself was not
interested in getting treatment or changing his sexual behavior, in
spite of his status. This is what prompted her to seek out a warrant
for his arrest.
Ronita is, by our best guess, the first person to file for the arrest
of someone who was found to be having unprotected sex in Clayton
County, GA while knowing that he is HIV-positive. McAfee says that when
the investigation began, another woman in the church leadership stepped
forward with her confession about interacting with Davis. The woman
even claimed that she’d been celibate for 15 years before meeting him.
She too is HIV positive.
Ladies, please take a good look at this man, because the fact is that
you probably know him. He’s the nice, smooth, good-looking man that
makes you want to get naked on the third or fourth date. You trust him
because you’ve been raised to believe that a man of God would never hurt
you. In fact, he might be the man that your church has had you waiting
for because he is well-grounded in the Christian faith and knows all
the religious buzzwords (“I’m saved,” “in the blood,” “God’s favor,”
etc.).
He can easily get into your head, because he knows that one
defining characteristic of nearly every black woman in America is her
deep and unshakable commitment to the church – in fact, the personality
traits that make for a good pastor also happen to be the same ones that
make for an exceptionally gifted pimp (although not all pastors are
pimps).
As a man who’s written extensively about other sad creatures like
Bishop Eddie Long (who also hails from Atlanta, aka the bible-thumping
Sodom and Gomorrah), I find Pastor Davis’ case remarkable for several
reasons:
First, the courage of these women to step out and publicly reveal the
pastor’s deception has saved lives. I wish there were a day where
every 30 and 40-something year old black woman who has caught HIV,
Herpes, Syphilis or some other disease would speak out about what
happened to them, so that younger women don’t end up falling into the
same trap.
Countless women have died from catching something that
their man brought home to them after fulfilling his “interpersonal
needs” someplace else. Unfortunately, the relentless shame thrust upon
“the good Christian girl” with a venereal disease keeps many of these
stories from ever being told. Also, modern feminist thought sometimes
leads women to think that it’s OK to run through as many sex partners as
the very worst of men. Many of these women end up paying a significant
price for this mentality.
