Special Interest Group.

Heated exchanges can prove very educational, they often bring out what people really believe, force us to see our blind points (many of us have them).

I decided I don’t have to wait until someone insults me to say what I really think.

It may cause someone to get ex-communicated from this site, but so be it.

What has developed is a subculture of ex-members who are just as interested in keeping things covered up as the Family.

This special interest sub-culture I am referring to has very good reasons for being protective of themselves and their families and even members of their family still in the Family cult.

I honestly wonder what I would had done under such circumstances.

I really don’t know.

It is hard to say until you are actually there.

I like to think that if I had a child in the Family I would do ten times what I am doing now, that would had motivated it me to fight harder.

I would had communicated to my child in the Family that I love him or her and that is why I am going to do what I am going to do.

And then I would had raised hell.

Even if my child thought I was a monster, etc., etc.

Even if my child’s picture was all over the papers, so that he couldn’t get a job as a result, even when he left the Family.

Even if my child (still in the Family or out of the Family) never sent my any birthday pictures, or a Chrtistmas card.

To me, even in 2003, with all the “changes” in the Family, to leave my child in the Family even for one day would had been completely and totally unacceptable.

If the Family suddenly saw dozens upon dozens of parents doing what a parent should do...

Well, that’s how changes come about.

What would I had done if I had sexually and physically abused a dozen or so children in the Family?

Again, is it next to impossible to speculate as to what you would had done under such circumstances.

Maybe that would had made me so angry, I would had been much more active than I have been.

But one thing is very clear in my mind.

This special interest subculture should never be allowed to, in any way, marginalize people who believe everything should come out in the open that needs to come out in the open.

The Family tried to marginalize some ex-members, but it didn’t work.

Ex-members have tried for years to make certain ex-members look like a bunch of crazies, but again, it is not going to work.

If you got things in your past you want to hide, hide.

But don’t try to make the ex-member community adapt to your comfort level.

Sam A.