77 Zealous Inches

(Coming a few days later than I would have liked due to the Big Christmas Party having commenced last night and the necessity of me being up to my elbows in Polish sausage kabobs and Merlot-soaked cherry brownies etc. for two days to do my part to help it all come together. Pictures forthcoming. It was, as usual, a blast!)

Well, that was unexpected. Silly me for thinking otherwise but I honestly didn’t think what I said would draw in the career ex-member heavyweights who have proven themselves, in my opinion, numb to any sort of reasonable dialogue, all the while claiming, when it suits their purpose, that they are all about dialogue. You see a lot of that in the world today, don’t you? I guess I figured you all wouldn’t want to bother with the opinion of a 20 year old Family member who has never experienced or seen any form of abuse, ever. But I see that you’re just practicing good strategy of spreading your “cause” wherever you can. So that’s my bad for underestimating what it takes to get you going and I feel a little silly for assuming you wouldn’t want to bother but lesson learned and I don’t think I’m going to lose too much sleep over it.

I’m explaining this because I’ve closed the post below for further comments and the reason is because this post was directed to the public who heard about TFI for the first time the other night on CNN, not to those who have already formed a solid, albeit distorted, opinion about us. I don’t assume that I have the ability to change the minds of the Moving On crowd and I’m not interested in trying. What I am interested in is getting what I know about my life and my religious organization out the to the average CNN viewer who deserves to hear both sides. Debating these already well-debated subjects with those who are bent on seeing our missionary work destroyed is not something I have the time or see the need for. They are firm on their stance and we are firm on ours, we try to agree where we can but considering what many of them claim they are ultimately trying to do in destroying the work of The Family (more on that later) I don’t personally see how TFI would be able to satisfy them.

I will address some things that have been said in the comments that I would want to see answered if I stumbled across this blog and thread for the first time (so forgive me if I hop from subject to subject) and I will address some of those who commented directly for the sake of clarity; not because I think I can get the small hardcore group of Moving On’ers to feel any differently, but because I’m hoping that people not associated with TFI in any form will read this and realize, if they haven’t already, that there is an anti-religious agenda being played out in the media and therefore not write me and my friends off as deluded cultists.

It should be abundantly obvious that this and everything else I’ve posted on my blog unless otherwise stated is my personal opinion and should not be taken for Family policy and you cannot quote me as “speaking for The Family” but just in case it needs to be in writing, there – it’s in writing.

(more…)

To friends and family – I know I’m being Captain Obvious with this post but it was written with the public in mind. Maybe no one who saw the program will read this but that won’t weigh on my conscience as heavily as not saying anything would. As Ron Burgundy would say “I wanted to shout it from a mountain but I didn’t have a mountain – I had a newsroom”. Ron Burgundy had a newsroom and I have a blog and we use what God gives us.

Apparently there aren’t enough current events happening around the globe for CNN to report on because last night they were forced drag a very old dead horse out of the archives and start swinging away at it. You’d think that with all that’s going on in our world….. and yet, there they go and here we are – so here’s what I have to say about it! It’s tiresome to have to think of new ways to say old things but for as long as the media is going to broadcast lies I’m going to stand on my little soapbox and speak my piece ‘cuz that’s just the way I is.’

If you know nothing about The Family International you probably watched that show and are walking away with the opinion that we’re a bunch of fanatic freaks with a pedophile for a leader and that you can’t leave our sex cult except by way of “escape”. If you don’t believe what you heard on CNN, I salute you – you know how to watch the news critically. If you do believe it, I don’t blame you – you were just sitting there watching CNN and CNN told you there’s a dangerous sex cult out there and CNN is one of the largest broadcasting stations in the US so heck, they must have gotten it right.

There are facts that have been said better than I can say it so I’m providing a number of links to them below. But this is what I believe; (I’m speaking specifically about World Services in this case as that is what was covered in CNN’s segment) I have heard the accounts of quite a number of people who grew up in World Services – the same World Services that Davida Kelley and Ricky Rodriguez grew up in, and have very positive accounts of their childhood. Having read their accounts of a happy, safe, abuse free environment in the same place and time that she lived in casts a very reasonable doubt in my mind about what she claims on TV. To imagine that she and Ricky (who himself never accused his mother of sexually abusing him) were subject to regular sexual abuse while their friends and Ricky’s own sister grew up right next to them and had nothing remotely similar happen to them – well, that’s a bit too far for my imagination to stretch. But that’s just me.

Of course, there’s always “Well of course no one the group says they were abused, they’re deluded, they’re browbeaten into denying it ever happened, there’s so much pressure in the group that people are afraid to ever admit that they suffered abuse – duh! It’s only once you leave the group that you can start looking at your upbringing objectively and recognize the abuse.” Puh leeze. If anyone currently in TFI had been sexually abused, especially the horrific abuse that we keep hearing about in the media, it is my firm opinion that they would have said something by now. Contrary to how we’re portrayed, TFI is not afraid of confronting abuse, we’ve been aggressively confronting it for two decades – see the links below. We can hardly get a breather from the whole issue. To think that after all the abuse-confronting and Family-defending we’ve done over the years, there are people currently in The Family who grew up in World Services who experienced horrific, CNN broadcast-worthy abuse and are hiding/denying/afraid to confront it, well, I’m not going to believe that one either until I see it.

There is so, so much more to say on this subject but the bottom line is that The Family is an insanely safe place for children, not to mention a fantastic place for thousands of missionaries to serve God and fellow man, but thanks to biased reporting, 800,000 viewers have just been giving a horrifying picture of a perfectly decent Christian missionary organization. Blessedly in this case, news is quickly and easily forgotten and we in The Family International will go on being the best counselors, missionaries, humanitarian aid workers, teachers etc. etc. that we can respectively be until someone decides the dead horse needs another thrashing, fishes out that god-awful Ricky video, and tries to make old news sound new again. At that point, we (well, we as in me. I can’t speak for everyone) will roll our eyes, drag out the old soapbox, and repeat this all over again.

Sheesh.

(more…)