A few words on the issue of deceit, and the general level of honesty and trustworthiness of the UC.

    I believe the issue of deception has been a serious problem for the UC. I am not convinced that it has been adequately resolved. There were reasons that the group lost credibility in the eyes of the public, and they have nothing to do with fear, persecution and bigotry. I think this problem has been a key reason why so many members lost faith and left. I wonder how many members really can trust what they hear from the top leadership anymore?

    There was always a strong tendency to justify anything as long as it got the results. An MFT "central figure" of mine once said "The only way these people will ever be happy is if we fulfill our mission" as an answer to the question of honesty in fund raising. We would say just about anything we had to to get the people to give - after all, their ancestors were depending on that "indemnity condition" to help them progress spiritually. The MFT leadership told us that Moon said that if someone gives you a twenty dollar bill and a one dollar bill by mistake, thinking they were giving two one dollar bills, that was a "heavenly mistake", and we were to take the money and run. Deception in the witnessing arena was also well documented. The expression "Heavenly deception" originated in the group. This was not an anomaly or aberration. The doctrine does imply things about "goodness deceiving evil into goodness". If restoration is going the reverse course of the "fall", and the "fall" was evil deceiving goodness into evil, what conclusion are we to make? Steve Hassan points out a place in a UC publication (Way of the World, I think) that says just this. I suspect that most members, good and honest people when they joined, at some point in their membership had to struggle with the issue of lying. This legacy can't be dismissed so easily, despite what the group would like us to believe.

    I have never heard the organization deal with the issue squarely. I remember the excuse "It is a problem with 'over zealous' members". What a non apology, seeming to address the issue while not doing so, while painting the group as something uncontrollably inspirational. Always blaming the members for the problems of the group has been the continual strategy. I think that this itself is dishonest.

    On another level of untruthfulness, there was a level of rationalization and PR spin that is so egregious, so contrary to the spirit of truth, that it is nothing less than a lie. There were so many times when the official UC line to the public about one thing or another was absolutely contrary to what I knew from personal experience. The UC PR machine would say that "members were free to accept or reject their match", that "members involvement in the political process was no different than the average citizen" that the group "doesn't interfere in a members personal sex life (Mose Durst, on a TV panel back in the 80's) etc.etc. There was always some way to make it fit, some way they could rationalize the incongruity, and I suspect that the people responsible sincerely believed that what they are saying was true. Yet I knew it was all pure BS. The group lost credibility with me, and I could no longer trust what it told me. Based on recent UC PR statements about Nan Sook and the suicide by Moons son, I think little has changed.

    The recent memo from UC leadership to the members about the suicide is so much manipulation and bald faced baloney that it would make George Orwell proud, right out of "Animal Farm". Moon must have seen that - has he ever corrected it or advised the members otherwise? I don't care how deluded someone is - when they put the blame for that suicide on the "failings" of the members, it's a dishonest lie. I once witnessed a "Performing Arts" leader make a great claim about his expertise in something to a higher up, then confiding to us that he had no such expertise, but only said so to support and comfort his "Abel". Where does such thinking end? What else has been said to the members by the leaders to "comfort the members", for the "sake of the mission"?

    For decades the group has been denying the perennial sex scandal charges with "ad hominem" attacks against those who made such charges, calling them "instruments of the devil". For decades members have been indoctrinated that their sexual urges were evil and shameful. For decades Moon was held up as the paragon of purity and righteousness. Now we find out that it has been decades of hypocrisy and lies. What does this say about the trustworthiness of the group? And what kind of faith is it that still hangs on? I have to ask a member again - can you really trust what the top leadership believes? How much would you stake on the word of the higher ups?

    It has long ago stopped being a matter of personal interest to me. I have escaped that cuckoos nest, and I feel sorry for those still have to deal with it. But there are larger issues of the UC's continued involvement in the public arena, and I can't be silent. I can not do nothing. I love the ideals this country aspires to, and I think that groups like the UC are a potential threat. When I read that the Washington Times is claiming to be "America's newspaper", while it is heavily controlled and funded by foreign nationals and foreign money, I see the same old Orwellian deception that is so aggravating. It is almost like the leadership follows the old maxim tell a lie boldly and often enough until it is accepted as truth.

    I think about the whole "God Bless America" public face of the group when it actually held to ideals very different than pluralistic democracy. I think about public figures like Bush and Reagan and Falwell who seem to have no problem in rubbing elbows with Moon and his money. I think about the level of manipulation and control, the textbook example of the coercive environments in UC, and the people I saw who were totally screwed up in the head by the group. I think about Bo Hi Pak's quote from an interview as seen on the PBS Frontline documentary saying "the last battle will be a battle for the mind.... capture the minds". I think about Moon's continued demands for absolute obedience. Then I think about SMM going in front of the recent conference at the UN and making joking comment "you may have heard that I brainwash young people" as a facetious preemptive deflection, so disarming and coy. I tell you, I am not one to put much stock in biblical prophecy, but the apocalyptic quotes about the "great deceiver" do come to my mind.