I read that James Edward Belcher, a preacher, is prosecuting his abuser, a grandmother, for abusing him with unwanted advances in public. The headline: “Anti-gay preacher claims assault after Grandma kisses him at NC gay pride.”
It shows me how preachers are created — abusers make them somehow become preachers to try to shake off the abuse.
This poor man was probably turned into a preacher by prior Granny abuse when he was a child. I recall the horror of Granny and Auntie Abuse myself.
As a child I had multiple aunts and a grandmother. I had ‘unrelated aunts’ as well. I had to endure the moustache, the lipstick and the unwanted hug so often, so very often. Worse, there was lipstick left on me, a substance impervious to everything, only susceptible to maternal spit on her handkerchief and then polishing madly to remove it.
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The Red Stain of Shame was somehow always there — the imperfect circle, the lip print, the brand left by the abuser, the abuser’s mark. I was, somehow, made to be their property by that awful act.
And I was made to kiss them back! Made to! Forced to participate in the abuse by my mother and by my father.
I can see why, for some individuals, this abuse would turn them to preaching the word of some stone age secret friend. Any means of stepping away from Granny and Auntie Abuse is a good way. The pure horror of unwanted touching, or perhaps the thought of unwanted touching has created a whole church in Topeka, Kansas. What unwanted touching and Grannie and Auntie Abuse has done to this poor preacher is the same.
I am so thankful that Granny and Auntie Abuse did not turn me into a preacher. Looking back I can see that it could so easily have happened, so easily. I was strong, or was one of the lucky few who escaped from the trauma.
If I had a secret friend, a stone age deity with a lexicon of fairy tales, I’d pray for his release from the trauma caused by being kissed, yes, on the cheek, by a Granny unknown to him. Being kissed by one’s own Grannie is trauma enough, but being kissed by someone else’s… that is a kiss too far.
His sure salvation is to contact at once Fred Phelps and ask him to intercede on his behalf.
As for the Granny concerned, she should be ashamed of her foul deed, of her hug of imprisonment, of her kiss of shame.
We may only hope, as those who hear of this deed, that she did not have the moustache so dreaded by those so abused, nor did she have the crimson lipstick with which these abusers brand their victims.
Preachers are so often recruited in this sad manner.
They are children who suffer Granny and Auntie Abuse; abused, they have nowhere to turn, and, often unwilling and against nature they choose this preaching, hectoring, dogmatic way of life. It is a lifestyle choice. It is not natural, whatever they say to seek to justify it. So I’m glad that one is finally getting his revenge on an abuser.
Joan Parker, a 74 year old Granny, will get her come comeuppance. I can only hope that no-one spat on her handkerchief and tried to polish away the red stain of shame.
I applaud this man and his courage in the face of such horror.
