This past weekend, my church had a special program for Ontario and we had visiting speakers from further away. One man made indirect references to something that had happened to me when I went to college in England long ago. We're also passing the 30th anniversary of the tragedy that happened at a cult in Waco, Texas, which had been reported in the news at the time. The cult had no official connection to my church but it was some kind of a distorted off-shoot, and some members from the church had gone to Waco to join them....
Some of the "white" thinkers in my church have possibly been wondering what kind of a business I've been mixed up in with the police...? And some of them went to the same college as me in England over the years, or had friends who did.
Have been learning that the local church pastor in England gave me a bad reference to the special, undercover police project after I asked him for help one time. He was a very elderly gentleman. What happened was that I was suffering from an eating disorder--anorexia nervosa--and my chaotic eating and fasting periods were interfering with my studies. There wasn't as much known at that time about anorexia and I didn't know much, myself. I'd been teased about my "weight" when I was 10-13 years old, even though my weight was pretty much normal. There was a different reason why a few kids were upset with me and neither they nor I knew how to get to the root of the problem, at the time. So, they said I was fat--repeatedly--and I came to believe them.
Don't recall exactly what I said, or wrote, to the pastor but I probably said something to the effect that I wanted to control my appetite...and I was a thin person, to all appearances. The pastor responded to me directly and he was annoyed. He answered somewhat roughly and said I should see a psychiatrist. In one sense, he was correct...but from what I've been hearing from more than one individual, I believe this pastor thought I wanted to control my appetite for religious reasons...? He thought I was some kind of a fanatic and what we call a legalistic person--someone who wants to earn their salvation by deeds that they do [they think they can]. I'm quite sure that's the story that was reported. But my school friends wouldn't have said that about me. And later, I got the proper therapy....
At this time, I'd like to ask my church friends and connections to make an effort to separate the past from the present.... In the past, there was confusion over what my problem was and what help I was seeking....
With the special police project, there HAS been some confusion but I'M not so confused and we're working on things.... There are 3-4 lawyers involved, that I know of, and they're not all coming from the same place. And lawyers are lawyers! That's one issue. (And lawyers aren't all bad.) At the beginning of the police project, some Christian police were very serious about wanting to find help for homosexual people. And rather than helping, the Christian churches were part of the problem, at that time. Many Christians have since helped the police, discreetly, but nothing has been made public so far....
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