WHY A GOAT? Judge Punch thought making a goat-head mask was "a lot of work."

Rachel Bevilacqua is a long way

from homeless. She's back in Spencerport, New York, where she grew up, and where her parents still live in a modest frame house, nestled among trees on the banks of the Erie Canal. Sitting in the tiny office there, she talks while her father blogs, while her sisters play, and her mom cleans the kitchen after dinner, periodically stopping to show off family pictures.

Bevilacqua — known as Mary Magdelen to thousands of "worshippers" in the Cleveland-based, satirical Church of the SubGenius — has come home to get her son.

She's been in Spencerport since January, attempting to prove herself innocent so that 10-year-old Kohl can live in her house again, back in Georgia, with her husband, Steve Bevilacqua, whom her son has been forbidden in court orders from calling "dad." It's the family Kohl has lived with, except for vacations that roughly coincide with the school year, for most of his life, until he went to visit his biological father, Jeff Jary, for Christmas in 2005.

When Rachel took Kohl to the airport on December 18, she had no idea that a few days later Jary would tell a judge in Orleans County, New York that Rachel was homeless. No idea that without checking on the claim — without even sending a perfunctory notice of a hearing — the court would grant her son's father sole, temporary custody.

And she certainly had no idea that in order to get her son back, she would have to convince a condescending rural judge that calling yourself Mary Magdelen and parading around in a bondage outfit and goat mask is funny.

The Church of the SubGenius's savior is Bob Dobbs, an iconic salesman who looks like Ward Cleaver with a pipe. As church doctrine has it, Dobbs cut a deal with Alien X-ists back in the 1950s so that when they return to earth on X-Day — July 5, 1998, or whenever the true date happens to come along — alien sex goddesses will rescue the SubGenius congregation, taking the faithful away in flying saucers while the rest of the population of Earth is processed into drugs which the X-ists can sell on the intergalactic stoner market. Salvation costs $30.

Time Magazine celebrated the Church as the Fraud of the Century in 1999. The Church of the SubGenius, and the SubGenius Foundation Inc., comprise a novelty company that sells humorous pamphlets, books, buttons and other materials, hosts rock-concert-style "devivals," and broadcasts the weekly "hour of slack" radio show on WCSB 89.3 in Cleveland, as well as in about 20 other markets. Church founder and CEO the Reverend Ivan Stang, now of Cleveland Heights, says about 40,000 people have sent the $30 membership fee.

Rachel Bevilacqua is one of them. The group's sarcastic schtick, starting with the original pamphlet The World Ends Tomorrow, and You May Die, resonated with Rachel. In 1997 she attended the church's annual X-day, a forum for performance artists to satirize religion and politics at a private, clothing-optional campground in western New York. She had recently broken up with the father of her baby. And at the gates of X-Day, she met Steve Bevilacqua. He was working the cash register.

Steve's path to the church had begun a few years earlier, when he was running a countercultural bookstore in Lakewood called the Flying Lemur. His shelves offered books on religion, including so-called pagan sects, the occult, beat poets and the texts of all the world's revolutions. The process of cultivating contacts in Cleveland's rich weirdo scene led Steve to the Starwood Festival in New York, and that's where he had met the Rev. Stang, who then was based in Austin, Texas. Steve started booking the high priest of the sarcastic faithful for rock concert Devivals at the Euclid Tavern and Peabody's Down Under, where Stang would preach the word of Bob. Things went so well that Bevilacqua moved to Austin to become its business manager.

Soon after meeting at X-day, Steve and Rachel were a couple, enthusiastically taking part in the mockery that is the heart and soul of the SubGenius faith.

Poking fun at religion throughout history has led to people wearing funny costumes or taking off their clothes. And if you're performing and not shy about it, there are likely to be pictures — which the members of the Church of the SubGenius gleefully post at their Web site. So when Jeff Jary decided he wanted to play hardball over custody of his and Rachel's son, it wasn't hard for him to find and download a dozen photos of Rachel taken at X-day.

Once the boy was in upstate New York for a holiday visit, Jary and his lawyer filed for sole custody in Orleans County Court. In support of the request, they showed the judge a picture of Rachel as Mary Magdelen, in the nude and getting a tattoo. They showed a picture of Steve — known among the SubGenius as Lord Jesus Christ — wearing a clown suit in a mock passion play with a crucifix festooned with pool-noodle dollar signs, while a crowd of partially clothed people, including a woman holding a dildo, look on. There's a picture of Rachel in a costume parade called the Deity Ball, in which she's wearing a black mesh bondage suit with a papier-maché goat's head mask perched atop her trim shoulders.

Jary also claimed that Rachel was homeless. But at a subsequent hearing, it became clear that Judge James Punch had been far more concerned with the photos when he awarded custody to Jary. Punch spent a lot of time on those photos, and he didn't get the joke.

According to New York's judicial directory, Punch has long served as a top legal authority in rural Orleans County. He got his JD at the University of Dayton in 1980, passed the New York State bar in 1981, and became Orleans County District Attorney in 1985. He served in that capacity until 1990, when he was elected to his first 10-year term as Orleans County's only judge. No photo or more detailed biography of him is available. In coverage of the Bevilacqua v. Jary case, Buffalo Beast newspaper described Punch as a "black-haired, double-chinned, bespectacled larva with a Rovian smile."

Even in a transcript from a February 3 hearing at the Orleans County Court House, Punch's disgust with Rachel's religious affiliation is obvious. He practically taunts her.

JUDGE PUNCH: Can I interject a question? Could you hand her the exhibits and just show me one thing in those exhibits that's funny to you? Would you just pick one out for me just so I, because the sense of humor is elusive to me I guess, and maybe you can help with that, OK?

RACHEL BEVILACQUA: Okay.

JP: Why don't you just the first thing you come to that's hilarious, pull it out and explain it to me?

RB: As I'm sure you realize, it's very difficult to explain humor.

JP: So why don't you just stop talking and just do what I ask you to do, OK?

RB: Yes sir.

HOME OFFICE Rachel Bevilacqua just a few feet from where she gave birth.

JP: You're passing by a lot of pictures that apparently aren't funny then, is that correct?

RB: I'm passing them by because I'm not sure how to explain to your honor the humor value of them.

JP: They are all funny to you?

RB: The pictures themselves are not, but the events were.

JP: Okay. We will keep going until you can find something that's just going to knock my socks off with the humor of it, and we'll proceed. Since you have such a big organization devoted totally to humor, I would really like to learn more about it, so find the funniest picture and then explain the joke to me. How about the Barbie doll that's being crucified with the swastikas on the nipples, is that a pretty good one?

Punch was especially adamant that Rachel convince him of the humor of her Deity Ball costume, with its goat-head mask. "Why a goat?" he asks several times in a transcript of a hearing. "Would it be funnier if it was a goat as opposed to a pig's head?"

Western New York, a region of gently rolling terrain with a patchwork of small fruit farms, is generally known for its wine. In tiny Lyndonville, there's a company that makes a lot of vinegar. Lyndonville is where Jary took Kohl after winning custody; home is a barn-red trailer on land owned by Jary's father on the outskirts of town.

When a reporter knocked at Jary's place, his girlfriend Randy C. Butz slowly pulled the door open, just a crack. She confirmed that the trailer, with its clutter of disabled cars, one stuffed with clothes, was Jary's home. Asked if he would comment on winning custody of his son, she said simply, "I'm not going to give you any information," and closed the door.

Moments later she walked out again, dressed in black sweats and a Marilyn Manson t-shirt, and said that her boyfriend is "a good father," that the Church of the SubGenius is "revolting" and that everything Rachel Bevilacqua says is a lie. Asked to elaborate, she said Jary told her to refer the reporter to his lawyer. The lawyer, Lance Mark, did not return several calls for comment.

Court transcripts include some questions about Kohl and his schooling, which largely seem driven by Jary's allegations that the boy's mother was not schooling him, that he wasn't growing as fast as other children his age, and wasn't getting enough physical activity.

The initial claim that Rachel is homeless was easily disproved when Rachel showed that she and Steve had been making mortgage payments on two houses, and that she was staying with a friend temporarily after she and Steve had a series of arguments — which they attribute to holiday stress — and agreed to separate for a few weeks. They got back together January 1, when they learned secondhand from Rachel's mother that Jary had taken custody of Kohl; they have no plans for divorce.

At a hearing, Jary's lawyer asked a series of questions about schooling. Rachel and Steve, both college graduates, have educated Kohl at home. They did well enough that the boy tested, age appropriately, into fifth grade.

There were questions also about Kohl's Internet access in both the houses. Jary, according to court transcripts, said he has a filter that monitors the child's Internet activity. "It's called Dad," he said, and he assured the court that the boy never gets on the Internet when Dad isn't in the room.

Rachel has filtering software that blocks adult material, including the Church of the SubGenius's co-ed nekkid pageantry. In fact, she says Kohl has had no access or exposure to the church and knows nothing about it.

She had answers for each of the boy's father's allegations, but the majority of the hearing was spent turning over the apparently elusive humor and the half-naked, wholly mocking rituals of the church. Before the hearing was over, the judge would call her a "pervert" and lecture her on moral parenting. The judge seemed preoccupied with the photos — photos in which the boy does not appear, taken at events at which he wasn't present. Punch even allowed Jary's lawyer to question Rachel on the record about the nature of her faith.

ATTORNEY LANCE MARK: And you've indicated that you are as of a year ago an Anglican, correct?

RACHEL BEVILACQUA: Yes.

LM: And that you have a deep abiding faith in Jesus Christ, correct?

RB: Yes.

LM: What does that deep abiding faith mean to you?

RB: I've read the Bible and I studied it and I believe that the basic message of Christ is doing to others as you have them do unto you and treating all other people on the planet as your brothers. I believe very strongly in that.

LM: And you believe that your activities in the Church of the SubGenius are consistent with those beliefs?

RB: Absolutely.

CHURCH HISTORY IN THE MAKING Stang with what is sure to become a SubGenius icon.

LM: So you believe that participating in religious festivals and wearing a goat's head and having people up on a cross in clown costumes and things of that nature — that that's consistent with your beliefs as a deeply religious Anglican?

RB: Yes.

Stunned by the judge's labeling of her as a pervert, Bevilacqua began to blog about the incident. Judge Punch read her blog, as it turns out, and in a subsequent hearing he ordered her not to blog about the case anymore and angrily read to her a law that says it's a crime to falsely report what happened in court.

"If only I'd reported something false," she says, "I might have been scared by that."

After the hearing, Rachel discussed the photos and the judge's response to them with her lawyer, Francis Affronti. She had learned that she could file a complaint against the judge with New York's Judicial Review Board. That's when Affronti decided he had to take himself off the case. Rachel says he told her he could no longer represent her because his dad plays golf with Judge Punch, and for a family in the legal business in a one-judge county, that could cause some tension.

At a loss for another lawyer, she asked Affronti for suggestions. Perhaps jokingly, he said she might try "Paul Cambria's firm," in Buffalo.

Cambria's list of first amendment clients includes pornographer Larry Flynt and rock star Marilyn Manson. So that night on the phone, she passed the joke on to Steve, who was back home in Georgia, working two jobs to keep up with legal fees. This time it was his turn not to see the humor.

"I'll call him right now," she recalls Steve saying. And he did. Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria LLP took the case.

Rachel's first hearing with her new attorneys was in early April. As she recalls, her lawyer, Chris Maddingly, sat quietly while Judge Punch and Jary's attorney engaged in more of the same discussion. The judge was ready to end the hearing when Maddingly spoke up. Rachel says Punch ordered him to sit down, which he agreed to do, but the new attorney would not back down from his argument — that the photos did not represent the child and that they were neither pornographic nor relevant to questions of parenting skills or the child's welfare.

Maddingly also noted that for most of the previous two hearings, the child had been a minor point of discussion while the judge and Jary's attorney concentrated on the photos and the Church of the SubGenius, and whether Rachel's performance art was actually funny. Punch became frustrated, Rachel recalls. He banged his gavel and walked out the door behind his bench.

When he returned, he asked the attorneys to approach. He took off his robes, signaling that court was not officially in session for the conference. Bevilacqua says they talked for about half an hour. When it was over, Judge James Punch had decided to recuse himself.

Within the next week, official transcripts of the February 3 hearing became available. Right there in black and white were all the judge's diatribes about Rachel's supposed immorality, and his calling her a pervert. Rachel immediately gave the transcripts to reporters and bloggers, and Judge Punch reportedly left town. He has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

"WHY CAN'T IT BE satire and a real stupid religion?" asks the Most Reverend Ivan Stang, speaking amid the tidy riches of high weirdness that cover every horizontal surface of his Cleveland Heights home. "The fact that it admits that it's a joke proves that it's the only honest religion."

Stang, the father of grown children, balances the gravity of the situation against his amazement that the Bevilacquas are being legally tortured by the same self-righteous moralists their performances lampoon.

"We're playing with everyone's hot buttons," he says. "We find one and jump up and down on it. And these are the very people we are laughing at."

Stang adds that while the custody battle has been grueling for the Bevilacquas, it's been great for the church. The membership-driven business has tripled in recent months. Whenever the custody battle is mentioned on a blog, he says he gets another 50 or 60 orders at $30 apiece. "I've never made so much money," he says. (He says Judge Punch's question "Why a goat?" has become a stock punchline on the online newsgroup alt.slack.)

Stang's own online history of the case includes a fundraising plea to help the Bevilacquas cope with what have become enormous expenses. In addition to having to take an apartment in Spencerport, New York for the last five months, they're facing legal fees in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, Stang is on the verge of completing another chapter in the history of the Church of the SubGenius: a new book for a publisher which also plans to re-issue his original volume. He's also preparing for Nine X Day, July 5, 2006, which, according to SubGenius scholars, might be the real thing and not a drill, the day when the X-ists return to Earth with their flying saucers and sex goddesses and a cargo of salvation for the SubGenius and fiery wrath for the perpetrators of the conspiracy.

Since putting Kohl on an airplane in December, Rachel has seen her son for just a few hours. She had one supervised visitation with him overnight at her parents' house. She's allowed to call him on the phone and talk for half an hour three nights a week. She says a court order forbids her from talking about the case or his father, which are naturally things she most wants to ask her son about.

Still, she's optimistic. After Judge Punch recused himself, the Bevilacqua v. Jary custody battle moved to neighboring Genessee County. Rachel says that Judge Eric R. Adams began the first hearing by telling the parties that he wasn't interested in anything but the welfare of the child. Their next hearing is scheduled for June 12.

For now, Kohl still lives with Jeff Jary in the trailer outside of Lyndonville. Rachel says she's hoping the judge will return to the custody arrangements they've had since 2000, when the school year and vacation schedule was established. She also hopes Jary spends some time in jail because she sees his claim that she was homeless as an obvious lie to the court, and therefore perjury.

Stang says Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria has contacted him to confirm his address, he surmises in preparation for the possibility of calling him as an expert witness. Steve Bevilacqua says he hopes that won't even be necessary.

"Our understanding is that the Church of the SubGenius will not be discussed. It has no bearing on anything. If that is considered in a court case, it sets precedent for a case against anyone who belongs to any religion that's not in line with the mainstream. And it's worse than that because they finally convinced the judge that it's not a joke but some sort of cult religion. Even though the books have the word 'humor' on the back. But that makes it even more of a problem because this guy was judging based on religion, which is completely unconstitutional. Who cares what religion she is? They have no right to ask you that."

Rachel says the new judge's outlook has renewed her faith in the judicial system, and she's optimistic. She's looking forward to being judged "on the fruits of my mothering instead of the nekkidity of my buttocks."