James Bevel

The PR team at the Unification Church, the cult that worships Washington Times publisher Sun Myung Moon, is obsessed with Martin Luther King, Jr. Obsessed.

The New York Times has likened Moon to the Emperor Caligula. The Moonies liken him to MLK.

Rev. Moon cheated on his taxes, spent 12 months in prison, funded white supremacists, and resides in an opulent palace near Seoul. Rev. King protested segregation, was jailed in Birmingham for it, and was murdered 40 years ago. Same thing, say the Moonists.

Sadly, at least two of Martin Luther King’s legendary lieutenants, James Bevel and the late Ralph Abernathy, have bought the line, and championed Moon’s cause, for cash. In the 1980s, Abernathy went neocon, and formed the right-wing American Freedom Coalition, formed with help from $5 million in Moon bucks, working with top conservative players, like Richard Viguerie.

And Bevel, as part of Moon’s PR push in the 1980s, handed out flyers asking, “Are Moonies the new niggers?” Now, at 71, he’s being charged with molesting his 6-year-old daughter in the 1990s, for Warren Jeffs-like religious reasons.

From the AP:

“You ain’t made the decision not to (fornicate),” he told his daughter in vulgar language. “You can’t know who you are until you decide not to (fornicate).”

At another point in the conversation, Bevel says the encounter increased his knowledge of how men and women interact, and improved his ability to teach others about proper marital relations.

“I want to thank you for contributing to the body of knowledge,” Bevel tells her in the October 2005 conversation, which was recorded by the Leesburg Police Department.

Bevel says during the call that it’s his duty to teach the world the difference between “emotional-sexual romance and constitutional intimacy.”

During the call, Bevel constantly compares his actions with his daughter to his actions in the 1960s, when he was a leader in the drive to desegregate the South. Frequently when his daughter asks a question, he responds by asking her about his efforts during the 1965 march in Selma, or his confrontations with notorious Birmingham lawman Bull Connor.

Bevel has said of the Rev. Moon’s holy book, the Divine Principle: “If people have trouble with the Principle, they have trouble with the Sermon on the Mount.” (The Divine Principle calls for restoring human goodness through three-day sexual rites designed by Moon.)

Decide yourself: from Time magazine, here are some of Moon’s best-loved aphorisms, including “I am your brain.”