>O PASTOR IN SEX SCANDAL
>REV. WRIGHT DONE ME WRONG: CHURCH LADY
>
>
>By SAMUEL GOLDSMITH in Dallas and JEANE MacINTOSH in NY
>
>Elizabeth Payne
>
>
>
>Last updated: 2:16 pm
>September 9, 2008
>
>
>He almost wrecked Barack Obama's presidential dreams, and now
>firebrand pastor Jeremiah Wright has helped destroy a Dallas church
>worker's marriage - and her job, The Post has learned.
>
>Elizabeth Payne, 37, said she had a steamy sexual affair with the
>controversial, racially divisive man of the cloth while she was an
>executive assistant at a church headed by a popular Wright protégé.
>
>When word of the unholy alliance got out, Payne's husband dumped her,
>and she was canned from the plum job at Friendship-West Baptist
>Church, she told The Post.
>
>"I was involved with Rev. Wright, and that's why I lost my job and why
>my husband divorced me," Payne said.
>
>She refused to reveal when the adulterous affair started or how she
>met Wright.
>
>But fellow churchgoers at Friendship-West "found out about the affair
>in the spring," Payne said.
>
>At the time, she was secretary to the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a
>longtime Wright disciple.
>
>In April, Payne organized a series of Texas public appearances by
>Wright, 67. Weeks before, Obama had disavowed his preacher of 20 years
>after Wright's anti-government rants came to light.
>
>"Liz was by Rev. Wright's side day and night during those days," a
>church source said.
>
>"It's all true," said Payne, adding that she has filed a wrongful-
>dismissal claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to
>get her job back.
>
>In an ironic twist, Wright last night spoke at an East Orange, NJ,
>church revival on the subject of "unexpected problems."
>
>"There's no such thing as a problem-free relationship," he told a
>packed Elmwood United Presbyterian Church. "In life, you'll have
>unexpected problems."
>
>He punctuated his 45-minute sermon with evocative 1960s hits,
>including the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go," Frankie Beverley's
>"Joy and Pain," and the Temptations' "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." He's
>set to speak there again tonight.
>
>Payne's husband, Fred Payne, 64, said he learned of the affair in late
>February, when he discovered e-mails between his wife and Wright.
>
>"There must have been about 80 of them, back and forth," he said.
>"Wright said things like he was going to leave his wife for
>Elizabeth."
>
>Wright has been married to his second wife, Ramah, for more than 20
>years.
>
>The preacher reportedly wooed Ramah away from her first husband in the
>1980s, when the couple came to marriage counseling at Wright's Trinity
>United Church of Christ in Chicago.
>
>After discovering he had been cuckolded, Fred Payne, who had married
>Elizabeth in October 2006, headed straight for divorce court.
>
>"I was downright mad about this bull- - - -," said Fred, who said he
>is "in the oil and gas business," belongs to a hunting club and makes
>his own bullets in his garage.
>
>"People wouldn't be happy to know that my wife was sleeping with a
>black man."
>
>He added, "Rev. Haynes doesn't like the interracial thing, either.
>This was quite an issue for him."
>
>Elizabeth Payne said she has been banished by Haynes and the flock at
>Friendship-West.
>
>"I'm not a member of the congregation anymore; I'm not even allowed on
>the premises," she said.
>
>Wright became an embarrassment for Obama after videos of the
>preacher's old sermons emerged.
>
>In them, Wright blamed the United States for the 9/11 attacks and
>boomed, "God damn America!"