Keeping up with Sung Myung Moon, C Street, and L Ron Hubbard
Item #1: Tumult is hitting the Washington Times, in part perhaps coming out of the passing of assets from Publisher Sun Mung Moon to son. Now, recently Sung Myung Moon held one of those massive Mass Weddings he used to hold.
The former editorial page editor of the Washington Times has filed a discrimination complaint against the paper, saying he was “coerced” into attending a Unification Church religious ceremony that culminated in a mass wedding conducted by the church’s leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Richard Miniter, who was also vice president of opinion, made the claim in a filing Tuesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that also disclosed he was fired last month. He said in an interview that he “was made to feel there was no choice” but to attend the ceremony if he wanted to keep his job, and that executives “gave me examples of people whose careers at the Times had grown after they converted” to the Unification Church. A Times spokesman said the paper would not comment.
AND it’s political ramnifications.
The paper, which Ronald Reagan referred to as his favorite, was considered a must-read for the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses. The paper is among the most-quoted by conservative blogs, radio shows, and cable networks, and the Times has also enjoyed unusual access to conservative politicians. Conservative news leaks in Washington most frequently go the Washington Times. […]
Moon’s political and media strategy would seem to have worked well for the Korean Messiah and self-proclaimed “King of Peace.†In March, 2004, ten Democratic and Republican Congressmen and Senators attended a coronation ceremony for Reverend Moon and his wife when it was held at a U.S. Senate’s Dirksen building. The Moon-approved video below indicates that these elected representatives were only a handful among a ballroom full of dignitaries.
Item #2: C-Street, or “The Family”, which I first became aware of in the Harpers article from a few years ago, pierced out of obscurity this summer due to several Politial Sex Scandals. It finally made the panels of Doonsebury, for instance. It’s a… um… Religious Right Font in Congress, I guess you can say?
They survived for 70 years by not locking themselves in with any one faction. So you see Democrats like Representative Mike McIntyre, a very conservative Democrat from North Carolina; Representative Heath Shuler, also from North Carolina; Representative Bart Stupak; Senator Mark Pryor, who is pro-war, anti-labor, anti-gay and a creationist, but he is a Democrat. And he’s a guy who explained to me a couple years ago that through The Family, he had learned that the meaning of bipartisanship was that, quote, Jesus didn’t come to take sides; he came to take over.
Kind of like Rick Warren’s image of bi-partisanship, I guess. Today they are apparently passing some anti-gay legislation in Uguanda.
Mr. SHARLET: Well, the new legislation adds to this something called aggravated homosexuality. And this can include, for instance, if a gay man has sex with another man who is disabled, that’s aggravated homosexuality, and that man can be – I suppose both, actually, could be put to death for this. The use of any drugs or any intoxicants in seeking gay sex – in other words, you go to a bar and you buy a guy a drink, you’re subject to the death penalty if you go home and sleep together after that. What it also does is it extends this outward, so that if you know a gay person and you don’t report it, that could mean – you don’t report your son or daughter, you can go to prison.
And it goes further, to say that any kind of promotion of these ideas of homosexuality, including by foreigners, can result in prison terms. Talking about same sex-marriage positively can lead you to imprisonment for life. And it’s really kind of a perfect case study in the export of a lot of American, largely evangelical ideas about homosexuality exported to Uganda, which then takes them to their logical end.
GROSS: This legislation has just been proposed. It hasn’t been signed into law. So it’s not in effect yet and it might never be in effect. But it’s on the table. It’s before parliament. So is there a direct connection between The Family and this proposed anti-homosexual legislation in Uganda?
Mr. SHARLET: Well, the legislator that introduced the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of The Family. He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda.
The literary agency Curtis Brown, which represents several members of the Churchill family, has written to the church’s London branch protesting at a range of advertising leaflets and posters that liken the Allied struggle against Nazi Germany to Scientology’s efforts to recruit new members.
One image, seeking new staff to volunteer to work at the organisation’s headquarters, carries a black-and-white picture of a Spitfire soaring triumphantly over the Home Counties, together with the quotation: “It’s not enough that we do our best. Sometimes, we have to do what’s required.” Another, to advertise a fundraiser to help the church create a celebrity centre in London, similar to the one it already has in Hollywood, name-checks Churchill among such “Great Britons” as David Beckham, James Bond, Harry Potter, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. The leaflet claims the event will be “their finest hour”.
Reminiscent of the Mormon Church’s conversion of dead people. Or perhaps a Used Car Sales-person reciting the Gettysburg Address “Four Score and Seven Years Ago, Our Forefathers SLASHED PRICES!”