Showing posts with label police complaint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police complaint. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Learning to act right (32)… Unveilings


Learning to act right (32)… Unveilings
Torrey Orton
Jan. 30, 2013


The ashamed will often out themselves,
even if they are sure their God is on their side


One of the interesting things about the HoGPIs is their aversion to personal accountability for their public actions at the FCC. Aversion appears in self-veiling in different ways. The religious wear trench coats; the laity are trenchantly nameless. They do not provide their names easily, or ever. They do not provide their associations – professional, social, familial, avocational – easily, or at all, if asked. And, yet, they see themselves fit to attack others (under the veil of "helping" or "counselling") about one of the most individual things in life…the continuation of it!!...or not.


Here's a couple I've recently seen.


Flywire screen veil


My wife and I were in Bunning's – a first in our lifetime joint venture – seeking and finding a broom and scoop set for brushing up the kitlit which our two fuzzy wonders spread around in their version of veiling their presences from the world. As we lined up for the getaway with our treasures I caught a recognised face outline to my rear right and turned slightly to confirm it. It took a millisecond (or 2?) to note that the old priest from my Fertility Control Clinic vigils was ambling by the outers of the checkout lines holding a rolled length of flywire on end to cover his face from my view. Or so it seemed. If I've learned anything from 18 months out front of the FCC it's the unreliability of my own perception.


So, I asked my wife to turn to her left and see if what I thought I had seen was actually there, describing him as above and so he was, as she reported, "looking like he didn't want to be seen" by me. I took another look and confirmed my impression. He has never met my eye while standing on the line at the FCC singing religious ditties, mouthing verses from a prayer book and supporting the women doing the Church's work of harassing patients. A few days later when I ambled by their morning protest post on Wellington Parade and I noted how nice it was to see him in Bunning's the week before, he didn't meet my eye then, either.


One of the grim-faced, superannuated men standing with him immediately threatened me (a feather's blow from a handleless duster) with the grimaced assertion that "we'll call the cops if you say anything we don't like". The priest in question already refused to support an effort by his HoGPI minions four months ago to sick the cops on me for offending him about the Church's paedophilic history and his potential shared responsibility for that as an elder – both facts, of course. I suspect they're working up for the new public offense legislation to roll in. I wonder if this post will be seen to be an "offense" in the meaning of the eventual act. There's nothing but the facts here, I suggest.


"I don't have to tell you…"


Then there's one of the five most harassing HoGPI women, also grim-faced, who I asked a week ago "what do you do", and then "what's your profession?", to which she answered "I don't have to tell you." Which is interesting for someone trying (98% unsuccessfully) to tell patients what their medical and social situations are with moral certitude of a remarkable order. Some of what she says is meant to be "evidence based" but isn't. I can read the evidence on social/psychological factors with some competence. I was wondering if she could, too. If so, then I could point her at the latest deep work on the areas she purveys.


She and her sisters are purveying false information to patients. Obviously their faith is weak since they keep advancing pseudo-science for matters which are items of Church dogma (and proudly proclaimed so for some authorities ensuring us that the Church has always thought the same things about matters sexual, without exception, etc. until it is overwhelmed by facts). Where faith treads science can have no say, unless it can throw faint lights of reason on the dull dim of dogma.


Anyway, through another Friend of the FCC I heard that she is a Billings Method "counsellor". It seemed useful to test this hearsay by offering it to her to avow or dis as she might. This offer – "I hear you are a Billings counsellor" – produced a gush of almost incomprehensible gabble about guessing I've done a web search and "it's better than putting things inside you" and…on unstoppably like a caught child…the babble of the guilty / ashamed confessing to she didn't stop to find out what accusation...which wasn't anything but an empirical observation…but, I did the search later and found that the Billings Method in Australia advertises three levels or domains of services, one of which is natural contraception…a little conflict there with dogma.


I think the nuts are cracking.


Maybe this stuff fits in my flexible travel category of "travel funnies" which I usually write on road trips. Friends of the FCC is a trip for me from places I know to ones I haven't entirely imagined, or sometimes even dreamed, and the end is not in sight nor is my motivation clear.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Learning to act right (29)… I did see something, really!!


Learning to act right (29)… I did see something, really!!
Torrey Orton
Aug. 23, 2012


How close are the nuts to cracking?


Six weeks ago I wrote: "I did not see anything I could swear to in a court of law" about a missing, believed to be stolen, cross out front of the Fertility Control Clinic.


A few days ago the following happened on the same stage: The police were called for an act of mine deemed assaultive by two of the regular Saturday HoGPIs. I had held up in the view of them and their associates the front of THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIANMAGAZINE August 04-05, 2012. The cover story was a self-outing by a Catholic priest of his married status while an active pastor. Its title was: "Sins of the Father - Why this Catholic priest got married – and kept it secret from his flock".


While holding it up, I also mentioned that there was another front page story in TheAGE that day of yet another unreported sex abuse by priests in the 1990's. This presentation took about 10 seconds, twice. Once to show it to a group of 3 HoGPIs gathered at one end of their prescribed protest ground and the second time to the lone male at the other end of their ground. He said something at the time about calling the police, and he did so, but did not specify what prompted the call. He was more than his usual angry self at my perceived disrespect for their enterprise.


A two officer divvy van showed up from the nearest station about 30 minutes later. One male, one female in their early thirties. The woman conducted the formal discussion with the complainants and then came over to see me, which was the moment I discovered I was the object of their complaint. I acknowledged having the allegedly offensive magazine and that I raised it in front of them, along with a remark about the morning's front page revelations in TheAGE of 18/08/12 about priestly misbehaviour with children. Such news seems to me germane, since the HoGPIs are claiming an absolute high moral ground for their objection to abortion. For me, their ground loses some altitude in the light of the Church's failing, so I have been making this point regularly over months, but not so effectively it seems.


Their reported complaint was that I had provoked them by raising matters that were not germane to their self-appointed task of "helping" patients at the FCC. Hence, I had assaulted the complainants. Of course, it is a bit of a wonder that something un-germane should have been so provoking, but then I quibble. I offered not to do it again. I was not commanded not to, nor formally cautioned against doing so. The door is open to argue that it is germane, and that might well be worth doing sometime if we have some cheap legal service with which to pursue the issue and make the total behaviour of the Church germane to this part of their suite of offers to the local world!!?


One side effect, so I'm told, has been to have my image raised in the FCC security community for having lived down a "we'll call the police" threat from the HoGPIs. Didn't even know I was lifting my profile. Since I didn't know what I was doing, I can hardly claim any honour for it. Maybe effectiveness is more important than intentions. It's often unclear how many things come to be.