The Family

[BeastOfBologna]

I missed it completely, DT ... I was in the 1st two weeks of a new project and probably didn't have the time to visit here. It is for sure an important topic to expose. These are some pretty sick puppies. Their symbol has to be the upside down crucifix.

[Aianawa]

Family, ?, families not in survival mode is great start, families still dealing with past pain n suffering plus future bleak = once again survival mode, the elders were the anchors, energy holders n dream givers plus focusers.

Family has to start with death n birth then planning, your family served you well DT, mine also, mind you i was black sheepped for few years, always welcome, always a bed, we got masks sillyness starting again in NZ so have a wee bit more sheepy with fam to go, love is the answer, not our fear.

[BeastOfBologna]

Classic perversion of high value principles can easily and has been many times applied to 'Family'.

I worked with an african-american lady that was completely obssessed with the denigrations that white america had placed on her people. Obssessed and vengeful. She had a group that she had organized at work called the 'Family'. They loved to 'exclude' people from their in-group. Mostly me, for no reason that I could determine I was excluded. It was a bit unsettling. A new girl came to work, african-american and she was seated next to me. We developed a good relationship and at one point she was asked to join the 'family' and asked me for advice as to whether or not she should accept the invitation. I told her that I thought it really was a matter of what she wanted. We had talked about how the 'Family' leader was destroying herself with her absorption with the negative aspects of life. My cubie declined the invite. There was a rumour that after my other cubie had voluntarily stepped down from his manager's position, a black gay dude took over and it was his appointed mission to remove the 'Family' leader from her job. I left and heard later that the strategy had worked.

So 'Family' is not always Family.

[BeastOfBologna]

To finish the above story I'll add that there is always a silver lining to every cloud. A member of the 'family', a cute Hispanic lady that everyone was always ogling (I thought she was sexy but not all that) during workhours would call me back to her desk to talk and then show me pictures of herself in her underwear. This was shortly before I got married, of course, end of story.

[Dreamtimer]

I feel it would be naive to think that members of the Family aren't involved with this sort of thing.

The phone call came in at about 9:30 AM MST on Monday, November 16, 2020, on our home landline.

"We're Coming For You in a White GMC Truck to Blow You and Your Wife's Heads Off With a 12 Gauge Shotgun”

The Voice was male, unaccented, earnest, eager, and almost gleeful.

The Voice repeated the sentence over and over again during the 37-second duration of the call.

We get a lot of this.

The above link is to a document called Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Hate Mail Compilation March 2008–April 2018

Let me see if I can try to explain.

I am not a Christian but I call many Christians my dearest of brothers and sisters.

I was born and raised Jewish.

Although I’m not very religious, I am proud of my religious faith’s ethnicity, cultural heritage, and contributions to the human condition.

Nevertheless, what I do professionally for work, brings me in extensive contact with many Christians.

I am a lawyer and civil rights activist.

I lead an organization, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which has helped well over 71,000 U.S. military members and veterans fight against the ravages of religious discrimination for 15 years now.

The clearly distinct villains in about 99% of these cases of abject bullying, prejudice, and bigotry are military superiors who use their professed version of their Christian faith to profoundly hammer their otherwise helpless military subordinates into submission so as to force them to accept their armed forces bosses' fundamentalist Christian faith.

(bold is mine)

As a result of MRFF’s successful interventions to preserve the Constitutionally-mandated separation of Church and State in the United States military, we have made many powerful enemies among some large fundamentalist Christian parachurch organizations, right-wing national news outlets, and the many individuals who support them both.

My wife has written two books about it all. (Read them with caution!)

This abuse is immeasurably repugnant, ugly and – above all else – constant.

Consequently, we are forced to invest nontrivially in substantial security measures to protect ourselves, our MRFF staff, and our MRFF mission.

We work extremely closely with law enforcement and our own MRFF security team.

Why am I writing about all of this?

It is...to meaningfully comment.

If vigorously supporting our United States military members’ basic Constitutional rights to be free from the constancy of Christian proselytizing by their superiors generates the never-ending torrent of hateful threats directed at me, my own family, and the MRFF family of staff and supporters…well, what does that genuinely say about us ALL as fellow American citizens?

His concluding appeal:

We, as a country, must rapidly find the treasured mechanisms to reach out to our neighbors in purposeful fellowship, understanding, and love.

We must come together as a whole American people; we must do so NOW.

We must recognize and celebrate that which we share and not fatally obsess over that which separates us.

The responsibility to reasonably and rationally reconcile in friendship falls upon each of us.

I second that sentiment.