Jesus’s Horrorshow Droogies, on the Attack Again
Surprising no one, some jackass Southern evangelical Christian congregation is behaving abominably – this time to one of their own former members, whom they drove out of their church with public persecution but still won’t leave alone.
Rebecca Hancock, a 49-year-old adult woman whom you think would be perfectly capable of making her own decisions, was, who knows why?, a member of the Grace Community Church in Jacksonville, FL. She also had a boyfriend. Worse, she mentioned the boyfriend to her “mentor” at the church, whom she foolishly believed was counseling her in confidence. The mentor demanded that she break off with her lover because they were havin’ some o’ that ol’ debbil sex, and hadn’t gotten the church’s okey-dokey on it first. Bizarrely, she did, in fact, break up with her boyfriend, ten times, but kept going back to him. She offered the lame excuse that “It was hard to give up somebody I love”, as if she expected anybody to believe nonsense like that.
When her mentor didn’t succeed in breaking up Hancock’s relationship, they called her aside at church one day, and a group of women from the church informed her that the mentor had told them all of the private details she had revealed in her counseling sessions, that they had been at her house monitoring her coming and going, and that she was a sinner and had to be punished by the church. When Hancock stopped going to the church to get away from the harassment and violations of her privacy, they began calling her at home. When she told them to stop calling, they sent her a letter announcing that unless she contacted them and agreed to “repent this sin”, meet with the church leaders, and accept their demands about her relationship, they were going to hold a public meeting to tell the entire church the private details of her life that she had entrusted to her mentor, call her names, and generally heap shit on her – all this after she had stopped attending the church months previously, and with her children, who still attend that church, in attendance at the meeting.
So, there’s only one thing to do:
OPEN LETTER TO THE ELDERS OF GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH
19 December 2008
Elders of the Grace Community Church
10938 South Hood Road
Jacksonville, FL 32257
To Whom It Really Doesn’t Concern:
It has come to my attention that your church has announced a ritual shaming ceremony directed against one of your former members (as reported by FoxNews online, 12/18/2008, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,469928,00.html). Specifically, Ms. Rebecca Hancock, who had spoken in confidence about her private life to a spiritual counselor from your church, while a member of that church, was confronted by a moral vigilante group of church members who had not been privy to her confidential sessions, and subjected to personal and insulting commentary regarding her private life. When she was informed that even further public humiliation and invasions of her privacy would be scheduled if she did not accede to your demands in respect of her personal relationships, she left the church to pursue her own private life on her own terms. Your church has now announced its planned public denunciation of Ms. Hancock’s life, and public commentary on her intimate relationships, in her absence and at a time when she no longer acknowledges any authority over her on your part.
I am writing to inform you that I, also, have engaged in, and do today continue, whenever I get the, sadly rare, opportunity, to engage in intimate personal relationships of a highly lubricious and satisfying nature without the dubious benefit of, or the slightest regard for, any church’s sanctimonious sanctification. For this reason, and because decency prohibits any other stance in this instance, I would like to request that you denounce me also at your January 4, 2009, shaming session.
For your prurient delectation, and because it appears to be part of your ritual, you may announce to your congregation that I have, betimes and repeatedly and with great eagerness, engaged in, inter alia, frottage, panty-fondling, nipple play, oral sexual congress involving breasts and genitalia, manual stroking of the labia and clitoris and both shallow and deep penetration of the vagina with a range of speeds and degrees of pressure, external genital stimulation involving thighs, vulva, buttocks, breasts, lips, and incidental anatomical appurtenances, vaginal intercourse by way of what I like to regard as an abundant and creative variety of positions and techniques, and related practices; I have made occasional, tentative, and generally poorly received overtures to the anus, but remain optimistic. I have been the recipient of similar stimulatory activities, manual, oral, and genital, on the part of a range of sexual partners of varying ages, relationship statuses, and degrees of skill or enthusiasm. These practices have at times involved a small assortment of toys, appliances, contraceptive devices and/or edible substances. I also continue a life-long habit of obsessive masturbation. You can be sure I am, not merely unrepentant, but non-repentant to the extremest degree of indifference to your silly aversive obsessions, and thus fully deserving of expulsion from any even glancing degree of community with sex-negative perverts of your stripe.
Of course, I am not actually a member of your church and, therefore, technically it is none of your damn business how I conduct my sex life. But the same consideration applies to Ms. Hancock, who has specifically demanded that you leave her alone, yet you continue to harass and humiliate her. I can ask for no less. You inform her that she “displays an insubordinate heart, which is puffed-up with conceit”. I can assure you I do so as well, though certain rather sharper adjectives also intrude themselves when I consider the bald-assed effrontery of your persecutory arrogance. Denying culpability for your own panty-sniffing vengefulness, you claim to Ms. Hancock that “you leave us with no other choice but to carry out the commands of Our Lord Jesus Christ”, which apparently call for deceiving women into revealing their sexual secrets, then publicly humiliating them with violations of the trust they had offered, and badgering them with the self-righteous sneering of their entire community until and after they flee their own church in despair. Truly, you are everything I expect Christians to be. I ask only to be treated with the same disgusted, bullying rejection. I am surely even more deserving than Ms. Hancock of such a relationship with your church, and believe me it is what I want.
So, please, denounce me at your next meeting, and “shame” me with the revelation that I have had sexual relationships and do not regret them. For as long as you continue to treat people in this manner, let me be among them. It is the only decent thing.
Sincerely,
Kevin T. Keith
Hat Tip: Hot Air
You go, guy!
And I note for the record that with all due modest male ego trip, I could add a few things to your list.
I just need to give a tip of my hat for the use of the word “droogies.” Anthony Burgess would be proud!
That might be the best letter I’ve ever read!
I have made occasional, tentative, and generally poorly received overtures to the anus, but remain optimistic.
Let the spirit of Jesus Chrsit fill you with eternal hope!
You know what? – I actually have a serious question.
Seeing as this mentor guy presumably doesn’t have any sort of licensed practice (I don’t think you even need one to be a therapist as long as you don’t call yourself a psychiatrist – right?), isn’t any sort of “doctor-patient confidentiality” basically just an assumption on her part? I mean, other than general good taste and courtesy, I assume this dude isn’t beholden to any mandate preventing him from blabbing about her sex life.
Is that a correct assumption I’ve made?
I mean, not to say that he’s not a total douche (a product line mired in sin, btw). I’m just askin’.
Whether or not any kind of confidentiality exists in any professional/client relationship is a matter of state law and, to some extent, tradition. By convention, the law has treated such relationships with deference, but it partly depends on prosecutorial discretion, unless some sort of protection is explicitly written into state law, which it usually isn’t.
Remember all those Law and Order episodes in which Sam Waterston wants to force doctors or priests to reveal confidential information? His alter ego, the young, decent lawyer, always objects “But what about doctor/patient confidentiality?”, and he snaps “Doesn’t exist!” He’s right, sort of.
For a real-life example, there’s supreme Kansas asshole Phil Kline. He was the state Attorney General, and also rabidly anti-choice. He made it his business to use his office try to force a particular doctor – one of the few in the country who provide late-term abortions – out of practice on a variety of trumped-up charges, all of which failed. After humiliating himself in court repeatedly, he was thrown out of office by the voters a couple of years ago – and immediately apponted DA of the county in which that doctor resides, by the local Replublican heirarchy. In that position, he resorted to subpoenaeing the doctor’s entire medical records files – i.e., the names, addresses, and medical histories – of almost a hundred abortion patients the doctor had treated, on the grounds that some (not all) of them were teenagers and thus might have been victims of child abuse resulting in their pregnancies. Although this maneuver was eventually quashed by the state supreme court on “policy” grounds, and even though it was an obvious abuse of power solely for the purpose of harassment (both of the doctor and the patients – to discourage them from seeking treatment with the threat of publicity), there is no direct protection under state law for the patients. (Kline was rewarded by losing his second election in a row just this year.)
As for “lay counselors” or whatever this woman was seeing at her church, the protections are no doubt even looser.
As to the question you actually asked, whether she can sue the counselor for deliberately revealing her confidential information – as opposed to the counselor being forced to reveal it under subpoenae – there may not be many legal avenues open to her. If the counselor were a licensed professional, she could complain to the professional disciplinary board, or sue for violation of the legal requirements for licensed practice. But you’re right, it’s open to anyone to call themselves a “counselor” as long as they don’t falsely claim to belong to one of the licensed professions, and lay counselors are not subject to professional discipline in that way.
She could sue for libel, but the information revealed by the counselor is presumably true, and therefore not technically libel. There are a few states that recognize an old common-law form of libel in revealing harmful information even if it is true, but that gets into a very obscure and unlikely area of the law.
If there were some explicit contract between them guaranteeing confidentiality, she could sue for breach of contract. Even if confidentiality was not guaranteed, but “implied”, she might sue, but again only if there was in fact a contract to begin with. If this counselor was merely fucking up her life out of Christian love, without getting paid by her or the church, there’s no contract to breach.
In short, there are a lot of ways of legally being an asshole, and this church seems to specialize in several of them.
Thanks, KTK.
“the protections are no doubt even looser.”
Pun intended?…
KTK -
Small correction: It wouldn’t be libel for which she could possibly sue, but slander. Libel is written, slander is spoken. (The letter, sent privately, could not be libel unless the church released the text.)
Still, you’re right that a suit on that basis would be difficult to win. I would think more of a suit based on harassment, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She could, that is, essentially charge them with a civil version of blackmail, threatening to release personal information in order to coerce her into a certain course of action.
Thanks, Larry – I can never remember which is which.
Are “harassment” and “invasion of privacy” recognized torts? I thought you had to have an explicit statutory guarantee of anti-harassment or privacy rights (like sexual harassment laws in the workplace, or medical privacy under HIPPA) to be able to sue for such violations. It was my impression that there was essentially no recourse if somebody merely hassles you extemporaneously, as it were, short of actual criminal behavior or a an explicitly recognized expectation of certain rights, encoded in a civil rights statute or a signed contract or something of that sort.
For instance, why can’t patients at abortion clinics sue for harassment? Why can’t doctors who get hate mail at home, or are picketed outside their houses by anti-choice freaks? What about that woman who badgered a teenage girl through an online chat service until she committed suicide? Was that not “intentional infliction of emotional distress”? My impression was that those kinds of lawsuits almost never work.
[...] [Perhaps KTK should seek out graduates of such programs, based on the middle of paragraph three of this letter, but I [...]
[...] [Perhaps KTK should seek out graduates of such programs, based on the middle of paragraph three of this letter, but I [...]