Argus

Sure. I was a bookish introvert who'd been picked on a lot in his old town in New York before moving to a small town in western NC in the 9th grade in 1974. By 9th grade, most small town school cliques are pretty well set, and I was unsure of myself and my social skills, so I mostly stayed by myself. The TWIts saw me eating by myself and reading, and invited me over to join them. Sure, why not? They then invited me to a social meeting and "forgot" to mention the Christianity angle, a right-off-the-bat giveaway even to a 15 year old that they were aware of a potential negative reaction if they were honest about what their group was based on. Kind of like Amway. Now, I was pretty desperate for social interaction - I had problems at home with two older brothers as well, and in such a small town at that time there was nowhere to go and get away. But I had already, as a voracious reader (how my friends describe me) I had already read science writings by Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Issac Asimov, and a lot of SF. I knew something about cults and cult behaviors, and about outrageous claims that couldn't be verified. What little I did not know my dad filled in with a lot of strident warnings and some screaming and yelling. TWI members said there were all kinds of miracles that could be done by accepting Christ via the TWI method; they're listed in 2nd Corinthians, yes? But somehow oh somehow, none of them could ever take place where anyone ever observed them, except of course for speaking in tongues and interpreting. Let me point out that any second-string ham actor can speak in tongues and interpret in a fashion indistinguishable from the "real" act of doing so. But the raising people from the dead? People said it had been done, but I never met anyone who had been there when it happened - they'd just HEARD about it. Of course. Typical con-man behavior; pay your money, THEN you see the miracles - maybe. Healing. I never saw one verified illness that the healing verifiably fixed. I even came up with a scientific test - at age 15 - that TWI members refused to rise to the challenge of. A broken arm is pretty hard to fake; it's very easily and definitely diagnosed; it can be verified quickly, cheaply, and easily, beyond mistake, with a simple X-ray photo. Take a person with a broken arm. Set up a room with bright lights and cameras in all four corners and a portable X-ray machine and developer and doctors and trained, skeptical observers looking on, just like real scientists do. Take the first X-ray, develop it, hold it up to the cameras to verify the broken limb. Have the medicos verify the broken arm, the patient's identity, etc. Have the TWI healer do his or her thing, on film, in front of doctors and skeptical observers. Take a second X-ray and let the medicos take another look. If it's the same patient - uninterrupted film will belie any patient switching - and the arm is suddenly healed - a bona fide miracle occurred under circumstances that make it impossible to discount. NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN MORE VALUABLE TO TWI'S CAUSE THAN SUCH A FILM. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TRIVIAL IN COST AND EFFORT TO MAKE SUCH A FILM TO MY STANDARDS. Yet when the idea was posed to them, they refused, and made lots of mealy, eyes-averted excuses about why miracles don't work that way. ....! All I did was pop their pathetic little balloon of lies. I put them into a corner with their own claims, and they surrendered instead of coming back out swinging. So, while I needed some social contact and outlets, I turned away. A pig is a pig, no matter how much lipstick you slap on it. Subsequent events simply verified my 1976 conclusions. I didn't know about it for many years, until bored-at-work Google searches brought the later evidence in front of my eyes. Dr. Weirwille died of cancer, after teaching that true believers can't get cancer; his own death certificate is online and shows what he died of. TWI's reaction was to lie and said he died of a stroke.I didn't think the Soviet Union was supposed to be TWI's model for news dissemination! The Fog Years; L. Ron Martindale's fascinating scrambled-eggs-on-a-military-cap dictatorship style of management and eventual could-not-be-more-embarrassing-and-destrutive style of downfall; and now Rosalie Rivenbark's (or whatever that scut's name is) sad rule over the empty shell, at 4% of its peak population in 1982 or so - and still dwindling. Dr. Weirwille was basically just a white Father Divine, except with less genuine concern for his flock than Father Divine had. I've even re-established contact with many of the twig i was in. We're friends again now, and several of them said I was right all along.

My first response would be: Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. Run while you can! But that is a bit extreme, however concise, accurate, and useful that advice is. I should explain my own history. I was approached by, and investigated, and turned away, from this group back in the mid 1970s. The folks were nice enough - many of them from back then are friends with me today - but the theology and policies fail the sniff test. The subsequent behavior of TWI's management would have embarrassed Jim Jones. Her interest in you, I can assure you, has to do more with "saving your soul" or "separating you from your money" than it does "you in particular". You may safely ignore any of her protestations to the contrary; she will dump you long before she leaves the group - the group will always be more important to her than you. It's very similar to having an alcoholic romantic partner; guess what always comes first? Alas, a part of cult thinking is to indoctrinate members already in to entice more members in. Using sexual favors in exchange for getting your money, or the brownie points with God for saving your soul, is an absolutely standard tactic. My term for this is "prosyletution" - conversion via slap-and-tickle. The worst part is.... it never worked for me, even with the hotties in the group at the time. Sigh. Seems like that's how it always works for me. My advice would be to simply study and get familiar with cults and their behaviors, and see how many of them your ladylove and her family exhibit. This website is full of former members - some left of heir own accord, and others driven out in Stalin-style purges - and they'll give you the distasteful, puerile truth of that sorry organization. For Scientology, a well known cult with some interesting similarities to this group (if you skip the aliens part), you can look up the website Operation Clambake on the web, and read up on Scientology and cult behavior in general. The commentaries of Dr. John Juedes (great name, eh? I'm sure the TWI Kool-Aid Club loved that!) are as succinct and accurate as anything you'll find. Google that name. One particular bit of reading on that site worth studying - it's very short and full of useful information - is the "baloney detection kit" from Carl Sagan's THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD: SCIENCE AS A CANDLE IN THE DARK. In fact, I'd go find a used book store and read the entire thing. Now, maybe you're the sort of fellow who would fit right in to a hate-mongering, Stalinist cult. I don't think so, since you're smart enough to be asking questions up front, but who knows? Maybe this is the only way you can get laid; if so, you'd be better off working on that rather than getting mixed up in this bunch of deluded bizarronauts! If you decide to get on into it, I frankly would make getting laid hot and regular the MINIMUM price. But I suspect the stupidity and boringness of the entire deal will make her charms pall after a short time. 'Tis far, far easier not to enter than to get out. And if not.... run while you can. DTMFA, as Dan Savage would say.

Wow. (No pun intended, 1975 members!) I wrote this over seven years ago, and only now have found my way (again, NPI) back here. It's kind of like the Marco Polo story of the Internet. I thank you all, years later, for the warm and generous words. I'd also like to say that the 1975-76 members of the Morganton NC twig were remarkably patient with me at the time. I'm also pleased to say that many of us have re-established friendships decades later. It's also just a bit gratifying that several of them said, once we were communicating again, that I had been right all along. A brash and snotty teenager with an overdose of scientific and critical thinking came out ahead. It's like the precursor to THE BIG BANG THEORY. TWI just didn't pass the "sniff test" for me. The claims were too extravagant, the answers too pat. There was no real setup for non-believers beyond "just believe". That may be a defect of all faiths, but this was my first close examination of one, and it did not impress. 99.99% of it all was discussions by bought-in believers for bought-in believers, and it left me out in the cold. And it's not as though the lives of people inside were any happier or more prosperous than people outside. There WAS a lot of self-reinforcement, reminding each other of how happy they were. The major philosophy of pay first and believe later sure didn't help. Even at 15, I had a pretty good idea of how cons worked, and getting the money first is key. Now, I did eventually fork over the $85 and took PFAL, which left me unimpressed. But I also got that money back! That little green card people signed when they paid constituted a contract - a signed document with exchange of valuta for good and/or services. I was under 18, and had the legal right to nullify a signed contract; I learned that by accident when I overhead my mom say that when she was studying for her real estate broker's license. So I wrote TWI headquarters and told them this, and with no further ado they sent me a check for the full amount! YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN my mom's face, and the chief guidance counselor's face at my high school, when they saw that!! I still have the check stub, framed and everything.

I was a marginal member of TWI for only about a year, from 1975-76 when I was in high school. The extravagent claims and confidence in the miraculous events claimed to be happening consistently intrigued me until I saw that those extravagent claims simply rarely if ever actually happened - at least, where anyone could actually see them. So I dropped out and lost track of TWI folks I knew until the Internet appeared; I was delighted, too, when my old twig leader showed up, entirely by chance, at my mom's memorial service after not seeing him for 20+ years. The folks in my twig were much nicer, it seems, than the overall karma of TWI. I mention that mostly in reference to the question I am about to broach. It doesn't seem to have been approached in any other thread, at least none I've spotted. Obviously I missed the entire Dark Ages or Fog Years or whatever it was, and the entire loony-bin rule of L. Ron Hubbard, I mean, L. Craig Martindale. He seems to have instituted an anti-homosexual bias to TWI that I do not in the slightest recall existing in my brief contact years before. The virulence of it is shocking - somewhere on the web there is a TWI anti-gay coloring book for kids. This publication strongly reminded me of the anti-Semitic children's book THE POISONED MUSHROOM written by sadist and insane Nazi Julius Streicher, rightly hung at Nuremburg for his actions. All material after this point is OPINION, not stated as facts. Just to derail any lawsuits that might happen. The gist of it is: I wonder if L. Craig Martindale is either a closet homosexual or at least a bisexual. While I am not a psychiatrist, and I myself am not gay or bi, I know that several of his behavior patterns closely match what many mainstream psychiatric sources cite as those of a homosexual or bisexual trying to hide, or who is ashamed of, his or her sexual orientation. First off, in many of the photos I've seen, he looks like he's dressed to be in the band The Village People or other gay-oriented entertainment. The white jumpsuit? It's lovely, darling! It'd look good on Liberace, too. I don't know if he was a dancer before he did Athletes Of The Spirit, and from what I've heard, he wasn't a dancer during or after he did that, either. While certainly not all male dancers are gay, I've done enough volunteer theater (lights and sound, thank you) to get a statistical appreciation for the unusual concentration of male gays in dance. It may well be less in Christian groups as my experience in theater does not include working with such. Of course, people can dress oddly and not be gay. People can do dance and not be gay. The strongest clues are his virulent anti-homosexuality and his profligate, abusive heterosexuality. The TWI papers substantiate the former and the various lawsuits filed against TWI substantiate the latter enough to allow discussion of it here as fact, in my opinion. It s a well known truism, or at least a widely held opinion among psychiatric workers, that the most vicious anti-homosexuals are the ones who are afraid to see it in the mirror. People comfortable with their own heterosexuality rarely feel threatened by homosexuals. I know I don't. His pathologically strong negative reaction would quite possibly indicate that he's unsure of himself, and doesn't like that at all. Yes, the Bible seems to have one verse, in Romans I, condemning gays. It's interesting that it comes from someone else quoting Paul, not directly Paul, nor the voice of God or Jesus. What is even more interesting is that homosexuality is ony part of a long list of things in that same list found objectionable, many of which are glossed over or ignored when homosexuality is attacked. Why aren't these other crimes persecuted to the same extent? Is it because there are too many people that practice those other offences? [26] For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: [27] And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. [28] And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; [29] Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, [30] Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, [31] Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: [32] Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. ("Against nature" is an interesting claim, too; homosexual behavior has been observed hundreds of times in dozens of species besides humans. If it occurs in nature, how is it against nature? Human nature, perhaps, but not, it seems, nature as it's stated here.) (Seems like "Fornication" is listed here too. But it's OK, it's in a different verse. I guess. "Without understanding" - ditto. ""Debate" - sounds like TWI needed MORE of that.) That segues into an interesting thought. One of the easiest ways to distract attention from one's own failings is to accuse others of the same thing. "Get those eyes away from me! Look look, it's over there, not here! Go get them!" Is that what might have been happening here? Next angle: It's true that people given such absolute, unchecked power such as what LCM enjoyed take advantage of thier exalted position to get as much sex as possible, with as many attractive partners as possible, and aren't necessarily gay. They're almost always still badly messed up, though. Josef Goebbels, the Minister of Propoganda in Nazi Germany, and Adolf Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann both had multiple affairs. (LCM, you're in good company here, eh? It's worth noting that Adolf Hitler, himself, was completely faithful to Eva Braun for many years. Very little if any evidence has ever been found to the contrary; he was apparently devoted to her as much as he ever allowed himself to be to anyone.) But many people who run through so many other-sex partners are also trying to prove how straight they are, to prove to THEMSELVES there's nothing "wrong" with them. "See? See? Look at all the women I've done. I'm not gay! I'm not. I'm NOT!" Once again, the misdirection strategy, the desperate costuming to cover up....... Even if he wasn't gay..... such abuses of power and lack of self-control reflect poorly on TWI and its leadership. As did VPW's similar behaviours. A typical parent would get angry at his tenth-grade son for acting so swinishly. But it's OK for "the man of God for our times"? For someone who's supposed to lead, and be an example to people? Is this behavior unacceptable in, say, Bill Clinton, but OK in a church-group leader? If so, how? Oh yeah, he married a bisexual, too, it seems. He supposedly got angry because she suddenly came out. Excuse me - how do you marry someone not knowing that, not figuring it out for years, then suddenly one day it's "Oh, er, 'bi' the way, honey..." Surprise, surprise, surprise! Were you just not paying enough attention, or somehow this never was discussed, or what? Or did they marry because they were similarly inclined - a pair of pinch hitters - and willing to tolerate each other's pecadillos? Perhaps he got mad when she decided her partner was more talented than he was, or maybe they booted him out in the cold one night? Poor baby. It would not be enough evidence to convict LCM in a court of law - but people were thrown out of TWI, marked and avoided, on far less evidence, it seems. Perhaps some were partners of LCM, and had to be gotten rid of before they sang like canaries? Or perhaps LCM didn't want anyone around to tempt him, or who reminded him too strongly of what he tried to bury in his own psyche? Or, again - to distract critics away from his own perceived weakness or aberration? One last thought: Jesus Himself seems to have taught tolerance, love of others, and to turn the other cheek. Sadly, this lesson seems to have been overlooked, ignored or abused through much of history, causing many deaths and untold misery. What if homosexuality exists as a Litmus test - to give some people a condition that many others, for whatever reason, find unattractive, or difficult to accept - to test their ability to apply some of His toughest teachings? Did TWI leadership fall on their faces, and make a C- on a final exam with this? Once again, this is all opinion. These thoughts are delivered AS IS, with no warranty express or implied, and are the UNPROVEN, THEORETICAL OPINIONS of the author, placed here solely for debate and discussion.