Fashion such as that modelled above upsets Bishop Blair.

Jamaica's most prominent evangelical pastor, Bishop Herro Blair, yesterday told young women that their current styles of skimpy, form-hugging clothes, such as midriff blouses, miniskirts and hipster trousers were invitations to rapists.

Males who wear sagging trousers, exposing their underpants - a style popular in Jamaica's dancehall and US hip-hop culture - attracted homosexuals, even if unknowingly, Blair said in a fiery sermon in which he inveighed against the current fashion trends.

Blair argued that such styles, common in the streets of Kingston and other Jamaican cities and towns, were evidence of Jamaica's moral decay, and said that he was sickened by the trend.

"The way some of you dress it sickens me to my stomach and I feel like regurgitating," he told the congregation of his Faith Cathedral Deliverance Centre on Waltham Park Road in Kingston.

Blair's statements carry weight for his position as head of a influential church with substantial outreach programmes in inner-city communities. But they also have added importance because of his prominence as political ombudsman, a job that makes him arbitrator of disputes between political parties.

However, yesterday's comments are likely to infuriate women activists, who often insist that a way a woman dresses can never be an excuse for rape. They are also likely to gain the ire of an increasingly confident gay community that has been winning support from the international gay rights movement over allegations of anti-homosexual violence in Jamaica.

Blair's church has a membership of 3,500, a substantial portion of whom were present for yesterday's service. The congregation was conservatively dressed.

Teenage girls wore long dresses, and older women mostly wore hats. Some had their heads covered with scarves.
Boys were dressed mostly in shirts and ties and men wore suits.

None of the clothes against which Blair complained was evident in the church.

In fact, Blair recounted an incident on August 1 when he "turned back a girl" who came to the church wearing a midriff blouse that exposed her belly-button.

"I said to her, 'You can wear those clothes, but not in here'," he recited.

"I told the young lady, 'you are a prime candidate for a rapist'," he added. "It is a serious situation and is nothing to laugh about."

He received thunderous applause from his congregation.
Saying that the Church needed to rescue Jamaica from its "moral decay", Blair urged young Jamaicans to stand up for righteousness and avoid the crowd mentality.

He also urged Jamaican women to stand up like beautiful Queen Vashti in the Old Testament book of Esther, who defied her husband, King Ahasuerus of Persia, who wanted her to parade her beauty. In Blair's interpretation of the scripture that takes up the first chapter of Esther, Vashti was supposed to parade in the nude.

For her defiance, Vashti was dethroned and Esther, who eventually became the protector of fellow Jews in the Kingdom, was selected to be queen on the basis of a beauty contest.

"Women, you can stand up like Queen Vashti," said Blair. "She did not [bend] and as a result paid a heavy price. But she kept her honour."

He added: "Some of you may say we are not going that far, but some women today are literally walking in the nude. I cannot describe what I feel when I see that - the words have not been invented yet."

On the issue of young men with their low-riding pants, Blair remarked that this was how homosexuals in prisons identified themselves, and warned that those on the streets may find themselves "inviting company to come home with them".

"The way that some of them are walking with their pants down on their hips, they are heading for it," he said. "Homosexuals like to see the bottom of men. Anything you drop from the waist down then you are going down."

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