'Hell has just frozen over'

When news broke Thursday morning about the arrest of Christian Action League of N.C. executive director and Cabarrus County Commissioner Coy Privette on six charges of aiding and abetting prostitution, the widespread reaction in Raleigh was disbelief. Most folks I talked with were dumbfounded that the former Republican candidate for governor,retired Baptist minister and former president of the Baptist State Convention could be charged with anything like that.
"Hell has just frozen over," said defense lawyer Wade Smith, a former chair of the N.C. Democratic Party, when he heard the news on a Raleigh street corner.
That's much the same reaction in the N.C. General Assembly, where Privette for years was a member of the state House and, earlier, an outspoken opponent of legislation to allow the sale of liquor by the drink. He was associated with many conservative social causes over the years and was regarded as a personable, voluble advocate for many causes and against all things sinful. His cheerful greetings in the halls of the legislature were always prefaced by "Hello, Brother" and accompanied by as warm and engaging a smile as you're likely to see in this old state. His bio in the NC Manual said, among many other things, that he was a member of the National Consultation on Pornography, so the charges had most folks flummoxed.
Smith, one of the best defense lawyers in the South, recalled that he once represented Adam and Eve, an Orange County distributor of sexual aids and such things as condoms, in a court case. Adam and Eve won the case, and later, Smith said, Privette asked Smith what he had done with his fee from winning that case. "I told him, 'I gave it to the North Albemarle Baptist Church and they built a new parsonage with it,'" Smith laughed.