[Vision2020] one final thing

[Douglas]

Visionaries,

Well, that fax to First Step was something new. I want to make one last 
observation about what has transpired here, comment on the fax, and then 
be gone.

My interest in resubscribing to this list, first to last, was to protect 
the victims and their families, and to get this group to admit that 
their right to privacy outranked this listserve's right to chatter about 
it indignantly. The family had no interest in becoming a political 
football. They had no interest in having court records from their tragic 
case made public. They had no interest in having you do to them what you 
have now done to them.

One of your number, one of the sane ones, wrote me privately to offer 
help on working with families in our church because he works in this 
very sad area. His offer was well meant, and kindly received. He said 
that it is well-known in his circles that reporting this kind of thing 
happens at a much lower rate among religious conservatives. After this 
reaction from the usual vitriolic ones here, is it hard to imagine why?

Between the two of us, Peter Leithart and I pastor a community that is 
the size of a small town. Do you think that this kind of thing could 
ever possibly happen again? And if it did, I would seek to do the same 
thing again -- get the crime reported immediately, provide help, counsel 
and protection for the victim and families, and restore a climate of 
calm in which forgiveness and healing could begin to occur. But if the 
family involved in this new hypothetical case knew (and how could they 
not know?) what had happened to the /last /family who did what their 
pastor had asked, what do you think my chances are going to be?

You should encourage those who seek to do the right thing. You should 
not punish those who do the right thing. As a criminal, someone like 
Steven is being punished, as he ought to be. But you people (or rather, 
the small, malicious, and very vocal pack among you) have arranged to 
punish the victims, all while loudly proclaiming how interested you are 
in "protecting families." But if you really had their interests in mind, 
then why do you not do what they so reasonably asked, and shut up? When 
a family is thinking about reporting something like this, what might 
make them hesitate? Those who have experience with this (as I do) know 
that one of the big questions always concerns whether or not the process 
involved in reporting it could become as bad as the abusive experience 
itself. In this case, it has, thanks to Michael Metzler, and his 
apologists and enablers.

If I am counseling these hypothetical parents a year from now, should I 
print out all your posts, put them in a notebook, and ask the family to 
read through them? Full disclosure? If I say that I want you to report 
this, but "this will probably happen to you too, if you do," what effect 
do you think this would have on them? Take all the posts from Michael, 
Joan, Keely, Jackie, et al. and ask yourself -- could this kind of 
discussion occur about you? Yes, it probably would. If you asked them to 
stop it, please, would they? No, not a chance. Not if the situation 
provided them with a clear shot at Christ Church.

We are dealing with an out-of-control pack of ghouls. They are ghouls 
for different reasons. Michael's reasons are emotional, Bill London's 
are political, Keely's are theological, and Joan's are literary. But 
after the first twenty-four hours, when it initially looked as though 
the general pattern of posting was going to follow my pleading and drop 
the subject, all the old habits and antipathies then kicked in. The 
central subject and central concern was overlooked (the victims and 
their families), and your emotional renegades began bellowing about this 
and that, and demanding timelines and details. As Don Henley put it, 
"Kick 'em when they're up, kick 'em when they're down." If any of you 
think that I am /incapable /of defending in detail what we did at every 
step of this story, you are mistaken. But I will not do that because of 
what it would do to the families. I have already been forced to talk 
about it to an extent that (in a decent community, one with an operating 
sense of shame) would have been unnecessary. I am convinced that since 
you clearly will not honor so basic a request as this, for me to stick 
around and upbraid you for it will simply inspire you to continue in 
your sadistic pattern.

And so this leads to the fax. If you think that this outrageous behavior 
has not made a lot of people angry, then you have really misjudged this 
thing. It is one thing to demand a "free speech" zone so that people can 
bash Bush, and liberals can pretend they are speaking truth to power. It 
is quite another to have an "accountability-free" zone that reserves the 
right to do to the victims of child abuse what a handful of you have 
done in this reprehensible display, and all on First Step's dime.

I know there are many of you who are not sympathetic with what is being 
done with the unmoderated space provided by First Step. Looking at the 
fax, that would appear to be an understatement. We keep thinking, surely 
they would draw the line at /this/. But then nothing happens, and the 
victims of child abuse are run through the 
FirstStepFreeSpeechGrinder.com. But one of the things that the broadband 
revolution is giving us (in increasing measure every year) is choices 
and options.

Douglas Wilson