Minister Gordon Christopher Resign’s After Arrest in Just Fun Adult Shop
(Gordon Christopher Mugshots)
By: Keith Witchka
Staff Writer
Email: Keith@JRLChartsonline.com
Southern Baptist “Music Minister” Gordon Christopher following his March 9 arrest at Phoenix’s Fun Adult Shop located at 2202 West McDowell Road, tendered his resignation to the church but still can’t shake the criticism of the church followers and local residence.
Back on March 9th, 2010, Phoenix vice police unit caught a disgraced former minister of the First Southern Baptist Church of Phoenix of masturbating in a preview booth at the Fun Adult Shop.
This was headlines across the country. Gordon Christopher immediately tendered his resignation. The longtime employee of the 88-year-old Phoenix church is feeling the head even after a month and a half of his arrest.
Vice cops offered details on Mr. Christopher’s arrest. Police sources inside the Phoenix Police department’s vice unit told JRL that Gordon Christopher was hanging out at the Just for Fun adult shop at 2202 West McDowell Road around 5:45 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. back on a Tuesday March 9, 2010 when a couple of our plainclothes officers walked in to conduct a routine “compliance inspection” of the place.
This is a classic event of being in the wrong place at the wrong time! Gordon Christopher, standing in “arcade number five,” was caught with his pants down masturbating while watching an adult video in the preview booth.
As Officer Jeffrey Gordon stated, numerous customers were in the store and Christopher was masturbating “in a booth which was fully visible from the outside via a mirror.” Mirrors were installed in adult video stores over two decades ago for people to view what was going on in the preview booths. It was suppose to be a deterent to make customers not conduct illegal activity (ie, sex with another individual or masturbating) inside the preview booths.
Customers were ejected from adult video stores for breaking the mirrors that were assigned to the preview booth that they were using in an attempt to avoid arrest by officers coming down the hallway.
Officer Gordon stated that the vice officers flashed Christopher their badge and read him his rights. “He told me that he knew what he was doing was wrong,” Officer Gordon wrote in his report. “He did not know that people could be arrested for it.”
Sure, Christopher saw the big sign at the entrance of the arcade stating that masturbation was prohibited, but for some reason or another, he felt that he could get away with it. Perhaps he felt that officers only inspected the facility on primetime days such as Friday, Saturdays and Sundays.
Gordon Christopher also told officers that he had in deed masturbated before in preview booths but denied ever meeting anyone or having sex with anyone in an adult video store.
“He told me that his religion is very strict and his wife would not understand what he was doing,” the report officer’s report stated. The church, in a statement posted on the Internet, immediately called for Gordon Christopher’s resignation and stating that Christopher’s actions were “tragic because it involves a moral failure.”
Gordon Christopher wrote his letter of resignation to the Church (CLICK HERE). A Church official stated to the press: We will not try to white-wash the events of March 9 and 10 of 2010. But, we also will not be embarrassed or ashamed of looking back and celebrating his life, his friendship, and his ministry.
We do not yet know all that the future holds for Gordon and his family. We do know that we will do our very best to walk with him and his family through this personal and professional tragedy.
We also know that the Christopher family will always have a home here with the “First Family.”
The city attorney’s office dropped sexual indecency charges against Christopher, who agreed to a sentence of 12 months’ probation. This deal was brokered for Christopher to plead guilty to disturbing the peace.
