[Vision2020] shamelessness

[Andreas Schou]

Doug --

I am at an impasse. You must realize that, in this situation, you are
representing someone else's interests -- someone whom I don't know,
and someone who, for their own privacy's sake, I have no desire to
know -- as being perfectly congruent with your own. This makes it
prima facie unbelievable. You have no desire to have your church's
policies criticized or your own conduct held up to public scrutiny,
or, as the case may be, slandered. And you are telling us that it
would be in the best interests of the child injured by Stiler that
Stiler's crime not be discussed in any public setting.

I've met you in person. I've always been clear, and I hope the members
of your church on this list find it clear, that I find your politics
repugnant, and your theology repugnant insofar as it influences your
politics. But this is a political disagreement, not a personal one,
and I am not willing to believe any slander about you simply because
it's a slander.

While the victims themselves are not a story, never were, and never
should be, you have made yourself a public figure. Your pastoral
conduct may have been beyond reproach, and I am not the only person
perfectly willing to believe that your defect of conscience is
restricted only to your belief in unjust heirarchies. But you run a
tight, well-documented church and you are well-aware that you run a
tight, well-documented church, and if the truth is on your side, the
truth will bear you out.

And what have Michael Metzler and J Ford said that even vaguely refers
to the victims? And what has Mike done but attempt to restrict the
flow of the conversation to your church's conduct, and not the
victims? You're referring to commenters on Mike's blog, but, of
course, this is rhetorical slight-of-hand I've seen before:
tarring-and-feathering someone with words someone else used. And while
you may feel that this is necessary to protect your church, or believe
that your opponents are a monolithic corps of robots piloted by Satan,
this doesn't excuse this tactic.

If this is libel, Doug -- and you have to realize that, in this
country, libel is maliciously promoted with the pre-existing knowledge
that it is false -- then black out the names, open your public
documents, like, for instance, your HOH memo, and put the rumors to
rest, because I want to hear libel as little as you do. You have an
impulse to secrecy, perhaps because you've been hurt by releasing
information before, but you have to realize that, if this were to just
go away, then it would go away for one of two reasons: (a) because you
ignored it, which you haven't done, or (b) because you simply opened
up the HOH document to prove you handled it well. It's as simple as
that.

So just do it and make the issue go away, won't you?

-- ACS

On 6/6/06, Douglas Wilson <dougwils at christkirk.com> wrote:
> Visionaries,
>
> Let's take just one thing at a time. J. Ford claims that I knew about
> Steven Sitler's activities for two years without doing anything about
> it. In the real world, where all this actually happened, the civil
> authorities were contacted immediately, and no children were endangered
> by him from that moment to this. Steven left Moscow immediately, and was
> allowed by the civil authorities to wait for his trial in his home town,
> which is why the people there were informed right away. When people here
> needed to be informed, they were -- by responsible people who put the
> interests of the victims and their families first, unlike Ford, Metzler,
> and the cohort of anonymous cowards who post to Metzler's blog.
>
> So I want to put this question to Moscow's progressives and liberals who
> have watched a mania about me on the part of some become an unhealthy
> public obsession. This mania is about to chew up some innocent people.
> Do you approve of this behavior? What is your mechanism for dealing with
> this kind of manufactured libel, all wool and a yard wide? Bill London,
> you are the quasi-moderator here. Does your commitment to free speech on
> this forum have any way of protecting the victims in this tragedy? What
> are you going to do to keep one of the crazies here from posting their
> names, all for the sake of making some obscure and telling point against
> me? What responsibility does FirstStep have to protect the victims'
> names? What responsibility does this forum have when one member of it
> accuses someone of complicity in perverse and criminal activity for two
> years, when what was actually done was to involve the police
> immediately? Does J. Ford's libelous post get to just remain there? Is
> anybody going to do anything about this? Are you people totally without
> shame?
>
> To all those who have been discussing this enthusiastically, with about
> a third of the facts, and /those /creatively arranged, I would make this
> request. Michael Metzler, J. Ford, all you visionaries, this is a
> request I am making on behalf of the victims' families. Please stop this
> discussion right now. Drop it. All you are doing is gearing up for the
> second round of abuse. Sitler provided the first round, and godless
> chatter here and elsewhere is providing the second. When I talked to the
> victims' parents about what Michael Metzler had done on his blog, and
> what was being done here, do you think the response from them was more
> like, "Oh, good," or "Oh, no"? Which response do you think it was?
> Honestly, which? If you guessed the latter, you would be right, and that
> should dictate what those with any sense of decency remaining will not
> write about from here on out. Once again, the victims families feel
> quite helpless, and Metzler's blog and this forum are the reason for it.
> Do the right thing.
>
> Douglas Wilson
>
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