A little over a year ago, Amarillo's swingers geared up for their New Year's Eve party at Route 66 Party and Event Rental, a downtown business owned by a prominent couple, Mac and Monica Mead.

Few in this conservative, church-heavy city knew about the weekend parties, and the swingers liked it that way. Everybody in the lifestyle has to be very, very discreet, says Mac.

The Meads enforced strict rules at the members-only club: no drugs, no single men, no audio-visual equipment. Most couples, even ones who had been in the lifestyle for years, are on a first-name basis only. The location of the club is (or was) to be kept strictly private. So imagine the swingers' surprise when they arrived at their New Year's Eve bash to find two dozen protesters, local media in tow, holding signs and singing songs. This was a most unwelcome coming-out party.

Some protesters, mostly young men in their teens and early 20s, wore black hoodies and military fatigues. The men, Amarillo would soon learn, were foot soldiers of Repent Amarillo, a new, militant evangelical group that advertises itself as the Special Forces of spiritual warfare. Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. We're here to shine the light on this darkness, Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News. I don't think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There's no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how many abortions. The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the swingers' souls, but to shut the club down.

For the past year, this Bible Belt city of 200,000 has been consumed by a culture clash between Repent Amarillo and their targets, a list that includes everything from gay bars to liberal churches. For the Route 66 swingers, Grisham's special forces have been a near-constant presence. Jobs have been lost, families estranged, assault charges filed and businesses shuttered. So far, no public official has stood up to defend these businesses, which operate legally. To the contrary, Repent Amarillo has managed to turn the city's own laws and employees into an effective weapon. Amarillo, it turns out, doesn't have the stomach to stick up for gays, swingers, strippers or even Unitarians. Absent a peacekeeper, the conflict might end up being settled the old-fashioned way, frontier-style. This will not end until somebody gets hurt, either us or them, one swinger warns.

Repent has made it clear that its crusade won't end with the swingers. Last January, community theater group Avenue 10 was set to open Bent, a play about the persecution of homosexuals during Nazi Germany. The day before opening night, the fire marshal, police and code enforcers showed up, tipped off by a Repent associate, according to Sirc Michaels, co-founder of the theater. Avenue 10 didn't have the right permit for holding events, and the space was shut down.

What's next for Repent? They've posted a Warfare Map on the group's Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park's Walmart-funded Earth Circle, used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (Allah is a false god), and compromised churches like Polk Street Methodist (gay-friendly).

Police discover sex dungeon in Devon village (on the first floor of a semi-detached home)

Police (in uniforms with  batons, handcuffs and Tazer guns) were predictably 'shocked' to find a sex dungeon containing Nazi uniforms, whips, chains, sex toys and cattle prods.

Officers were alerted after neighbourhood snitches reported unusual behaviour and strange sounds coming from the four-bedroom semi in Lee Mill, Devon.

Police arrived with battering rams to raid the home but a plain clothes officer knocked on the door and the residents let him in thinking he had an appointment.

The sex dungeon was found in a converted first floor room filled with hundreds of items including whips, gas masks, wooden bats, handcuffs, clothes pegs and shackles. Police also discovered bondage chairs with straps, straight jackets, sex toys, gimp masks, S&M outfits, shackles, cattle prods and car batteries used to power the toys. The dungeon was also stuffed with various electrical vibrating items and a recording studio complete with computer equipment and mixing desk.

During the raid, one customer arrived at the home and still asked for his appointment to go ahead despite the large police presence.

Detective Sergeant Stuart Gilroy of Devon and Cornwall police said the home had been a suspected brothel and police had expected to make a forced entry.

A spokesman said: The current tenants have had the property since October and neighbours had reported many different cars and strange men arriving.

A man from Lee Mill, a woman from Ivybridge, Devon, and a woman from Plymouth have been arrested in connection with the incident. They have been released on police bail until April 30 to allow police to carry out further enquiries.

One neighbour said: I've seen traffic jams caused by people trying to go there. It's disgusting. We just want them out and have a nice family move in.'

A sex club has moved into an art gallery with the stated aim of helping visitors to a Gustav Klimt exhibition confront their sexual inhibitions.

The Secession, a contemporary art venue in Vienna, has incorporated the club, named Element6, as part of a project by Swiss artist Christoph Buechel.

Visitors must walk through it to reach one of Klimt's paintings.

A spokesman said Buechel hoped to spark a scandal similar to when Klimt's Beethoven Frieze was exhibited in 1902.

It has already attracted opposition from Austria's far-right 'Freedom' Party, which issued no fewer than six press releases denouncing the project. By abusing artistic freedom, the significance of Austria as a country of culture and of Vienna as a cultural capital is being dragged in the mud, said local 'Freedom' Party politician Gerald Ebinger.

Vienna's Mayor, Michael Haeupl, said that he did not approve of the club, but noted that outraged politicians and newspapers were playing into the artist's hands

Klimt's 1902 painting Beethoven Frieze was once considered obscene and pornographic because of the way women's bodies were depicted, but it is now seen as one of the Austrian artist's key works.

While the club only opens at night, long after the art hall closes, daytime visitors aged 18 and older pass through its dimly lit rooms, complete with mattresses, bar and spa bath.

The club, which is normally located in another part of town, said its participation aims to give as many people as possible the opportunity to overcome their inhibitions. In the framework of this exhibition at the Secession, each individual can test for himself or herself whether this opens up new dimensions for his or her own sexuality, the club said in a statement.