Keep in mind that abuse victims come in different varieties. They are not all victims of sexual advances, assaults or rape. Some are victims of violence and physical abuse. Some are victims of mental and emotional abuse. George Lakoff has described the typical family of a right winger as being run with a "strict parent" approach. A loving, strict parent upbringing can be a wonderful thing. But when strict parenting becomes abusive, in all the ways described above, who knows what the risk is that abused children will become abused adults, in a codependent relationship with the ultimate abusers-- right wing extremist Republicans.
The right wing extremists who have used honest Christian faith to con their victims are in for their come-uppance. We can help the victims of their abuse by finding ways to help them feel strong enough to find new lives that do not depend upon the abuse-maintaining ministers who are profitting by keeping the Evangelicals supporting a corrupt, dishonest evil, right wing Republican group in power. Therapists help adults who were abused as children by helping them to become strong enough to face their pain, face their past and strong enough to face, confront and often bring charges against their abusers.
A reader dropped me this comment:
And another reader comments:
The right wing extremists who have used honest Christian faith to con their victims are in for their come-uppance. We can help the victims of their abuse by finding ways to help them feel strong enough to find new lives that do not depend upon the abuse-maintaining ministers who are profitting by keeping the Evangelicals supporting a corrupt, dishonest evil, right wing Republican group in power. Therapists help adults who were abused as children by helping them to become strong enough to face their pain, face their past and strong enough to face, confront and often bring charges against their abusers.
A reader dropped me this comment:
I was a counselor in the military some years ago, and found back then that the need for security, boundaries, safety, among right wingers drove their attempts to control everyone else around them. Virtually all were victims of some form of abuse in their lives, and fell to religion in order to give themselves the external support they felt their lives required to be safe and to not pass on the abuse. They do not trust or do not generate internal safeguards, but rather must have someone else police their lives as long as they deem it to be 'safe' in nature for them.
And another reader comments:
The evangelicals are not poor abused preachers, they head up "churches" supported by FAITH BASED CONTRIBUTIONS from the administration's scheme to fund their churches through tax monies in exchange for sheparding the congregants (who are too poor to even support their own churches) to the polls. THAT'S WHY the fundamentalists support Bush and his cabal. You characterize them as "abused," I think NOT. Follow the money.Frances Morey
When it comes to abuse, one fundamentalist Baptist church here in Austin landed in the headlines when two "teachers" in their bible study program beat up one youngster so badly for not learning his "bible lessons" that he ended up in Brackenridge Hospital. Faith based, indeed, it's about quid pro quo. There's nothing sexy about it--it's for votes. The abused are the congregants.
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