(The following is told in the first person, as it was told to me by the one who actually experienced it.)
The first thing you need to understand, is that the Reconciling Ministries idea is that being part of the LGBTIQA+ community should not separate you from the community of faith; you should be able to worship just like anyone else. Thus, whether you are a part of the community should not matter at all. So if I am of the community, it is no one’s business, I don’t have to tell anyone: it is my choice to choose whether or not I say anything. But in practice they want to have everyone as a show piece of the liberal and inclusive attitude, and isolate us by their inclusion.
Having reconciled myself over the years to my position in the community, I learned early on, elsewhere, that I only shared that information on a need to know basis, because early on I was accused of being in the community, but always the wrong letter, and cast out of place after place. So by the time I arrived at Avondale United Methodist Church, I didn’t mention to people my “difference” so they wouldn’t treat me any differently. And for about 13 years of my 15 years there this policy worked out just fine.
What blew it up wasn’t my letter in the community, whether they knew the right one or not, but another situation where they did to me the same thing they ultimately do to all community members: knowing what is best for us they do their good by the invasion and violation of the personal liberties and civil freedoms of the one they are performing their good upon.
This is a long story, I have to go back two years to set the groundwork for how it all played out. And it began with something entirely unrelated to the church, but which the church saw fit to stick its nose into for my good.
Right before Covid struck I lost a job with a company where the reasons given by the company were both fabricated and unrefutable. To give an example of this, one time HR called me at home to see how I was doing. When they asked how I liked my job, I said: “I have never worked with a team of people I have enjoyed more, I find the work challenging, rewarding, and socially valuable.” To which HR replied: “We know you are dissatisfied with your job and have serious issues with several of your coworkers.”
This difference of perspective turned the work I so enjoyed into a very stressful psychological minefield. I got put on mandatory counseling, and was required to formulate a plan of action with my counselor. By good fortune I was assigned a counselor I had been going to for years because of child raising issues related to my autistic children. He knew the falseness of the company’s reasons for requiring this counseling, but helped me put together an action plan to show I was taking their concerns seriously. We turned the plan in one day, and they fired me the next.
Part of the plan was to go in for a high level psychological evaluation. Since I still had insurance, and since the stress of the past months at work had taken a toll on me, my counsellor encouraged me to go get the evaluation done anyway. And so two days after I was fired I was at Signature Psychological Services.
My work stress related to the way HR lied, deceived and coerced me, and the people doing the evaluation chose to lie, deceive and coerce me in order to help me. They thought I needed help because I happened to mention midway through the interview that I had a note sheet from my wife of various things to be sure to bring up. They took the paper from me, looked it over, asked me no questions about it, and decided I needed to be admitted for 48 hours, based on a cryptic list of words from someone who wasn’t there without any context as to what they referred to. They misunderstood something and thought I was a danger to myself or to others (myself I believe).
(It was also at this stage, when my wife was desperately trying to stop me from being admitted that night, that I learned how American police officers are trained to lie and not tell people the truth. No “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” My idealism hit a serious dose of reality about law enforcement that has given me a deep distrust about our legal system and the justice it doles out so unjustly.)
It took me until the next afternoon to see the psychologist who agreed that I was no threat to myself or anyone else and had me released, and my insurance paid the hospital bill, despite my instructions that I had not contracted for it and that it was an illegal curtailment of my freedom.
While I was in that night, I had access to phones in the hospital, and I called a lot of people at church to tell them what had happened and asked them to pray for my wife and for truth and justice. I felt no stigma attached to being admitted, and failed to realize that for many of the people this was where the idea that I was mentally ill and that they should be afraid of me started.
A member of the musical partnership I was a part of, Madrigalia Bar Nonne, was a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and I called her as well, and let her know what had happened, and asked for her advice on how to get this resolved quickly. Peggy Chilson offered nothing helpful, and I have conjectured that this is the point that she got the idea to start laying the basis for her campaign that I was “just being more difficult these past years” and her later declaration that I was mentally ill (more on that later).
There should be no stigma attached to getting help from mental health professionals, I never felt any nor thought so of others who sought help. But I have learned to my detriment why people don’t talk freely about these subjects: because people do use it against you, no matter how enlightened they claim to be.
Fast Forward a year or so and a friend of a friend, who we helped because he was supposedly losing his sight, and so let him stay with us for awhile, started an altercation and then called to police, who made us stay out of his way while he moved his stuff (and much of my stuff hidden in with it) out of our house. After the police left, I saw one item obviously mine,. something he had given me in payment for service rendered, a $100 item that he claimed was worth $400 and so got out of $400 that he owed me.
When I explained quite clearly that it was mine, and how so, I went and retrieved it. Upon turning my back to return to my house, I was hit by Greg Hardy four times with an iron pole in the elbows and back.
I went into the house to treat my injuries, my wife called the police to come back, and while inside, I decided to call Bill Conaway, a church friend who had helped us many times. He came over to give me comfort. But his first words to me were that Greg was a nice guy and I should treat him better. “You do know he hit me with a metal pole” I told Bill. I also mentioned that he was stealing thousands of dollars of my tools and stuff hidden in his baggage. It made no difference.
My wife waited for the police to arrive and finally went inside to use the bathroom. When she came out the police were leaving, and would not talk to her, having talked to no one but the assailant. When she told me this, we decided to go to the police station to talk to someone. I went ahead in my car and she was to follow. Bill cornered my wife in our house and wouldn’t let her get by to follow me as he tried to counsel her about the errors of our way. When she finally got out, he went outside and used his truck (Greg’s assertions to the contrary, he could find no friends to help him move his stuff) to move Greg’s stuff, and the items he had stolen from me, to a new location, thus becoming an accessory to Greg’s theft.
Fortunately my wife didn’t tell me about this until after we talked to the police. They finally agreed to take a report and press charges, but despite the pictures they took of my injuries their Assault investigation team circular filed it for lack of evidence, never talking to the victim or witnesses. They did charge me with stealing clothes of Greg’s which he had left behind, and which I went through to remove my clothing that he was stealing before putting his clothing back for him to pick up.
When I heard what Bill had done to my wife in my house, I sent an e-mail to the church telling of my assault and injury, and noting that someone who molested my wife in my house deserved to have his block knocked off.
Pastor Michael Dunlap showed not one ounce of sympathy for my injuries and suffering, or the offense done to my wife, but threatened to call the police on me for violence, me the victim of an assault, and the one whose wife had been denied her personal agency and freedom by Bill Conaway, the man who violated her civil and personal liberties “for her own good.”
No one ever agreed with nor objected to the word molested. In fact, any time we brought up this violation of her liberty, the people we were talking to ignored what we said, as if we had never said anything. This silence lasted the whole remaining year we were at Avondale.
I had said I really needed someone to talk to, and one lay speaker said I could come talk through my grieving with her, but that I couldn’t grieve today. I had to grieve tomorrow. As If one could schedule these things.
Suzy Conaway, Bill’s wife, said that I should stay away from the church because people were afraid of me. It was then that I learned that being the victim of an assault makes you a dangerous person (just like being the victim of a rape makes you a sexual pervert. Oh wait, it doesn’t). The subtext of what she said told me that it was no longer safe for me to go to church there. I might walk into the building and find myself hauled off to a mental hospital. The Sanctuary would be no sanctuary for me As would be proved later.
For 9 months I attend church by Facebook live except for maybe 3 special occasions. And I continually told people I no longer felt safe at church and that the leadership should do something about it.
It was about midway through the 9 months when I came across evidence of Peggy Chilson’s perfidy and slander of my good name. We both were members of the Songflower Chorale, and as the communications officer for the chorale she had deliberately left me off of rehearsal announcements so that I missed being able to perform in 3 different concerts. My attempts to discuss with her were met with avoidance. After exhausting all the socially acceptable methods I chose to try a socially unacceptable one. I took all the gossip and innuendos I had heard about her over the past decades and asked her about their veracity, coarse language and all.
She had me brought before the Madrigalia board for disciplinary action. I say brought before but actually it was all done via computer mediated communications. If it had only have been done in person some people might have actually seen one another and listened to one another and realized what they were doing to one another, but as it was everyone hid behind computers and email and therefore we’re able to do highly unjust things and not even realize how they were sending people through the hyperbolic gas chambers.
The partnership bylaws had a specific process listed for handling such disagreements and her proper response in the first step would have been simply to show my communications and let them speak for themselves as being socially inappropriate as I said they were. Instead she wrote this long mood piece parading as a sociological study of me declaring that I was mentally ill and that she had concerns being near me because of the recent Mass shooters. She signed it with her LCSW credentials which avers that I had been her patient and she had done a psychological study of me which was not true. She did something unethical and illegal and I pointed this out to the board. I would respond no further to such unethical and illegal maneuvers. The next stage is supposed to be face to face with a mediator. I told everyone I looked forward to getting a chance for us to actually meet face to face to discuss the issue. She said that she don’t want to be in my presence again and then she never wanted me to sing with anybody else it would be too dangerous. The board chose to ignore the bylaws even though the founder of the group had at the annual meeting stressed how we always must follow them no matter what (Marilyn Miller “Mother Madrigalia” proves her hypocrisy) and summarily dismissed me from the group without due process.
Since so many people at Avondale have background in social work and the legal profession I figured someone there must have some good advice some knowledge or expertise on how I could seek Justice for my mistreatment, my loss of my one paying job, and the slander on my reputation that would make it very difficult to get another one. Instead no seemed to have any skill or acumen to help me in any way. I struggled without any hope except the strong support of Jonathan Ray and the quiet helps of Bonnie House, Ruth Laningham and Jean Holloway.
In fact despite the obvious and clear way in which I communicated to explain the unethical and illegal actions of Peggy Chilson, the people at the church chose to believe her insinuations, something I did not realize until the penultimate event occurred.
I finally went back to church live, and had my assertion that it was not safe for me there confirmed. Suzy Conaway instantly started ordering me around and curtailing my freedoms of motion and action. During the service. While the preacher was preaching. Not letting me pay attention to the service. She became physically threatening (and don’t anybody try to mention the size difference between the two of us. Say that she can’t physically threaten me because she’s so much smaller than me is bigoted bias and derogatory to her)
When her actions moved from harassment to assault (not battery), I stood up in the service and requested help. I asked for Sanctuary. I was totally ignored by everyone until Judy Everly asked me to sit with her.
At the end of the service I talked to Judy Everly about what Suzy had done, and about my struggles caused by Peggy Chilson. We were joined by Elizabeth Boman, Judy Jensen and Pastor Michael Dunlap. It ended with Judy Everly saying, and everyone agreeing, that Suzy Conaway wouldn’t be allowed to do that to anyone again and that they would try to find me an advocate for my issue with Peggy Chilson.
It was Rev. Dunlap that led the followup phone call on Thursday morning. That was all concentrating on my mental health and the need to see mental health professionals before I could get an advocate. I did not at that time realize that the reason for the call was no longer my getting an advocate; they were taking the false charges of my mental health as true and requiring me to provide proof that I was mentally sane. I was to be guilty before proven innocent. Fool that I was I jumped through every hoop they required and was given a good health clearance, along with several comments on why was I doing this anyway from the people I was seeing.
The call had ended with my needing to jump through those hoops and come back and say I had done it. But on Friday I got a formal letter from Rev. Dunlap that was one lie after another. I had apparently confessed and apologized for my inconceivable action of interrupting his service, and I was to provide medical reports from my mental health profesionals showing I was fit to attend church.
Now, part of the problem with Peggy Chilson’s deception, is that it violated my medical records, a possible HIIPA violation. And here Rev, Dunlap was requiring an even deeper invasion of my private medical records, and he would not give a non-disclosure agreement. And he wasn’t even going to help me with my situation. Just one more situation where someone supposedly helping me chose to do it by lies, deceit, and coercion.
At the end of the Thursday phone call, before the Friday certified letter bombshell, I had mentioned the issue of my wife, and being detained in our house, and how no one ever bothered to acknowledge that the incident had occurred, thus acting like my wife didn’t ever exist, and how this deeply hurt her. Once again, no one said anything , as if I hadn’t mentioned it at all.
The church had been having a “Love is Love” banner up during the months before I was kicked out. The Sunday after I was kicked out they put up a new one: “Come as YOU.” It was a nice piece of hypocrisy. I couldn’t come as me. They had made certain of that. While touting their inclusion, they had carelessly and hypocritically kicked out someone in the rainbow without a thought.
So be warned: You will never be included unless you meet their ideal of what someone in the community should be like. And since they know what is best for you, they have every right to violate any and all of your personal liberties and civil rights to see that you get what is best for you, whether you want it or not.
At The Rainbow 