“Where’d ya get your eyelashes,” an enthusiastic girl asks as thousands of teenagers file through the turnstiles at Cox Arena.

The teens are with Teen Mania Ministries, a group known for its fundamental Christian and anti-homosexual beliefs, and the girl isn’t posing the question to one of her fellow teens. Instead she’s put the question to a member of the Asylum of the Tortured Heart the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who, towering above her in nine-inch heels and two-inch metallic eyelashes, stands behind a metal barrier peacefully protesting Teen Mania’s arrival.

The Sisters, a self-defined “order of 21st century nuns dedicated to the promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt,” are here staging a silent “joytest” called “PeaceCry” to counter Teen Mania’s “Branded by God – The Mark of a Warrior: Acquire The Fire” tour that rolled into San Diego last weekend.

Comprised of predominantly gay men who don the traditional nuns’ habit and raise money for local charities, the Sisters are behind the barrier for their own protection because of Teen Mania’s anti-gay views.

Tonight, however, no protection seems necessary.

“The kids here are amazing,” says Sister Iona Dubble-Wyde (a pseudonym), a member of the philanthropic group’s San Diego chapter and an accounting assistant at the Gay & Lesbian Times. “There is so much love, so much compassion and so many are willing to look past what they are being taught.”

What exactly is that? According to Ron Luce, 45, who founded Teen Mania Ministries in 1986, the kids are taught that “as far as homosexuality is concerned, God is the ultimate judge. He loves the sinner, but he does not love the sin.”

The message, among others that Teen Mania promotes, draws praise from such prominent evangelical leaders as Joyce Meyer, Jerry Falwell, Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson and Jack Hayford.

It’s a message that Teen Mania propagates at about 30 conferences in as many cities across the United States and Canada each year, according to the group’s Web site, www.battlecry.com.

TeenMania “exploits homophobia to preach about the so-called evils of American popular culture and targets its message of intolerance toward 14 to 21-year olds,” a release from the Sisters states.

Various publications and organizations have expressed similar views. When the group convened in San Francisco last year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said that such fundamentalists are “loud, they’re obnoxious, they’re disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco.”

At last weekend’s San Diego event, however, it was the kids’ manners and inquisitiveness that impressed the Sisters. Intelligent, respectful and well informed – at least with regard to quoting scripture – the kids gathered in front of the nuns with a variety of questions. Not just about eyelashes, the queries were about sin, God and how God knows being gay is “wrong.” Although it’s doubtful the Sisters changed the kids’ minds on that point, they were surprised to find that dogma had not entirely blinded them.

“These kids can see past the message of BattleCry,” Dubble-Wyde said.

That doesn’t surprise Ron Luce. According to Luce, Teen Mania Ministries is not as far-right as it is perceived to be, and people opposed to the group are mistaken. “They don’t know the real reason that we are here,” Luce says.

While it’s been said that reason is not only religious but also political, Luce denies that Teen Mania has political affiliations or a political message. “With Acquire the Fire, I hope to get the message across to today’s youth that they don’t have to give in to the ideas and beliefs that media and pop culture are throwing at them,” he says.

Political affiliations or not, Luce does have some powerful political and religious connections. In 2003, President George W. Bush gave Luce an appointment to the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities. And, according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com, Teen Mania Ministries is a member of the Arlington Group, a coalition that unites the leaders of almost all the most prominent Christian Right organizations.

Yet at least one protester believes Teen Mania’s evangelical efforts don’t go far enough. Standing alone behind his own metal barrier is “George Washington,” – presumably a San Diego resident – who, dressed in big-buckled shoes and breeches, as the former president would have been in the 1700s, is almost as fantastic-looking as the Sisters.

“Washington,” who declines to give his real name, believes that Teen Mania doesn’t do enough to combat such “sins” as homosexuality. He proclaims his views to a crowd of 11 or so Teen Mania kids, and then one of them asks, “What’s wrong with being gay?” Quickly hushed by a scripture-quoting peer, the girl nevertheless risks one more question: “Don’t some gays believe in God?” she queries.

But, although Washington launches into a sermon on the matter, her question is lost amidst the excitement of the cotton candy and the rock music pounding from the speakers. Tonight, no one’s mind is on much besides the party.

“This is much better than a rap concert,” says one proud and, seemingly, relieved mother manning a literature table crammed with books by Luce. She is happy that her daughter is here, safe from the “temptations” of the world beyond – a sentiment echoed in various forms by many here. “God” is the answer, they say, to the “depravity” of the modern world.

Perhaps God is even the answer to one’s fashion questions.

Because when the Sister bats her arresting eye couture at the admiring teen and tells her he acquired his stunning lashes at the mall, the girl flits away as if she’s found the answer to her most pressing question – prompting the Sister to quip, “I’m glad we could find some common ground.”