Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 10, 1993                   TAG: 9305100298
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GALLIMORE TESTING THE LIMITS OF MAN'S LAW

Here is a middle-aged, married preacher who has taken another woman - a girl, in fact, at 16 - as a second wife while he remains married to his first wife.

Normally, you'd expect the law to prosecute him for bigamy, and win. But Gallimore, an unordained minister of the Evangelistic Tabernacle, didn't take Sabrina Simpkins as his lawfully married wife. He's cleverer than that. She's just his wife "in the eyes of God."

No protection there for Sabrina.

Normally, you'd expect the social mores of church members would make such a living arrangement impossible. Most God-fearing churchgoers would find their minister's actions so repugnant that their outrage would force him to change his ways or be driven from the church.

But Gallimore decides what God's will is for his congregation and, as it turns out, God's will pretty much falls in line with Gallimore's. So anything he does seems OK with his followers.

No protection there for Sabrina.

Normally, a teen-ager's parents would intervene, forbidding the preacher any access to their daughter, and persuading the child with the weight of their concern for her well-being that such an arrangement isn't in her best long-term interests.

But the parents, in this case, are among the Evangelistic Tabernacle's true believers. If Gallimore says this "marriage" is sanctioned by God, they sanction it, too.

No protection there for Sabrina.

It's reasonable to ask, at this point: Does Sabrina want protection? Apparently not. She says she's content with the arrangement.

OK, then, does Sabrina need protection? Here, the answer must be "yes." She's in the sway of a charismatic spiritual leader. She's happy to be his "wife in the eyes of God" - but woefully naive about egotism and exploitation. She is left vulnerable, too, because she lacks a legal claim of marriage to Gallimore. Above all, she is a minor.

Unfortunately, because these circumstances fall so far outside the norm, the case against Gallimore is strange, too. He is charged with "seduction."

Floyd County Commonwealth's Attorney Gino Williams will be testing more than the legality of Gallimore's behavior when he prosecutes this case. By hauling out an anachronistic, post-war (that's Civil War) statute, he's putting the law itself to a constitutional test. It's hard to imagine it will pass. Written in 1887, this law makes it a crime for a man to seduce a virgin with a promise of marriage.

Fortunately, Williams is not basing his whole case on this. The preacher also faces two charges of taking indecent liberties with a child by a person in a custodial or supervisory relationship.

It is apparent from his own admissions that Gallimore is guilty of selfishness and self-aggrandizement, but neither of these is a crime. Whether he has broken a law - one that will stand up to a constitutional test - is for a court to decide. But not all bad deeds fall under civil authority.