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In Reply to: Good question posted by Passing By on April 27, 2004 at 20:18:43:
I'm going to assume that the site you are talking about is Newdaynews (NDN), which I am currently involved in administrating.
When NDN was started by Barney, he was an FM member of The Family and that fact was openly known.
The reason Barney became an ex-member was that he was kicked out of The Family for allowing "Free Speech". The Family took exception to an FM Member running a website that allowed individuals, some of whom are regulars on this site today, to express highly negative views of The Family.
I don't know if Barney did this because he had some kind of conviction to see the truth be known, or if he just didn't have any idea how to work the message board software, and it got out of hand. I know that when I took over the tech side of the board, it was a huge mess, with no administrative tools available.
So, as to your first point, when Barney started NDN he did not call himself an ex-member. He only did that after The Family made him an ex-member. As a friend to him at the time, I can tell you that he went through the whole range of feelings that many of you, including my wife did. Everyone seems to do that at their own pace.
As far as the question, "so who is an ex-member?". One would hope that the ex-member community isn't going to set up some kind of tribunal to judge and convict people the moment they step out of the cult.
It took most of you years to get where you are today. Are these newly departed expected to instantly transform in order to qualify for moral support and compassion from the established ex-member community at large?
