Some Betrayals I Can Overcome. But Not This.

Like most people, I deeply admire the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. What some people might not know is that MLK was a serial cheater.

This revelation is probably a big “So what?” Because what matters in the end is MLK’s legacy. And I agree. He betrayed his wife, not millions.

Anyone who knows me knows how weirdly judgmental I am about adultery. No one ever cheated on me so my “she that doth protest too much,” must come from somewhere.

When I was five my adopted mother left me, my sister and three brothers. And so trust has always felt fragile.

While I make and keep friends easily, somewhere in my gut, trust is to be earned and fiercely protected.

Breaking trust is like a shattered precious vase. Even when you glue the pieces back together it’s never the same. The vase is weaker, no longer able to support water for the beautiful flowers it once held. Damaged permanently.

At the time my mother cheated she’d gone on a bird-watching cruise to the Seychelles. During a stopover, she met a successful world wildlife photographer in an African hotel lobby and decided to leave my father.

Eventually, under her new husband’s mentoring, my mother became a highly respected photographer for National Geographic and the like. The two traveled the world and published beautiful photography books, both leaving behind their spouse and kids.

Free at last.

When I was old enough, my father shared that long before my mother left, their marriage was in trouble. She’d been an unhappy housewife, suffocating in an upper-middle-class suburban small town in New Jersey. But my mother didn’t just leave her marriage, she left five kids to create a life she wanted all along.

Careers weren’t what most women did back in the 1950’s. Women, even those like my mother who graduated college, were for the most part, expected to marry and have babies.

So my mother’s story is more complex than adultery.

As a parent myself I can’t forgive her. I can’t imagine on my worst day ever leaving my daughter. But as a feminist, a small part of me understands why my mother did what she did.

Compelled to live her authentic self. To exchange dresses, kids and elegant crown roasts, for hiking boots, the wild outdoors and photographing lions across the savannah.

At the time I learned about MLK’s cheating, for some vague reason it felt deeply disappointing. I expected more from the man who preached love and forgiveness. Sermons of greatness from a great man.

We count on our inspirational leaders and loved ones, not to be perfect, but to at least stop being serially imperfect.

Years ago a local reverend I deeply admired was found guilty of slowly grooming one of his teenage congregants, then having sex with her for years.

The grooming started when the girl was 13. The repeated statutory rape when she was 14.

Thirty counts of sexual battery against a person younger than 18.

When the girl became an adult, plagued by the pain of what happened, she turned the reverend in. During a secret police-recorded phone call, the reverend “admitted his accuser was a victim and he was a predator in the “eyes of the law.”

Then he justified his actions by telling her that she was just “too damn mature for your own good.”

One of the many reasons I admired the reverend was because of his unapologetic vocal support for reproductive and women’s rights. And because of his popular podcast with a rabbi and an imam to promote interfaith dialogue.

“Rev” as many called him, was a big-bearded, funny, compassionate teddy bear of a man. Soft-spoken. Warm. Gentle. Brilliant.

After I heard what he did, for months I had nightmares. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes crying. Haunted by the betrayal to his community and the girl he harmed.

Once the guilty verdict came in, one night alone in his home, the reverend killed himself. Not able to live with what he’d done.

His podcast slogan always struck me: “Religion is good when religion is used for good.”

And I still believe that.

Except that he also used his religion for evil. And so for me, in one instant, he wiped out decades of his goodness. Every shred.

He destroyed every word of love and forgiveness and equality and justice that he spoke as a visiting speaker at the Unitarian Universalist church I joined years ago.

Sometimes when Rev spoke I got choked up, especially the Sunday after the Pulse massacre in my hometown. He happened to be the scheduled speaker that morning. We were all grateful that he was the one who comforted us as we hugged and wept in shock and despair.

After he was found guilty, many who loved the Rev still loved him. His legacy lived on.

For them, his decades of good work remained eternal despite the evil they agreed was beyond despicable.

Still today, a few people post “Happy Birthday Rev. We miss you” on his Facebook page. Words of grace on a deceased pedophile’s social media.

For me, raping a 14-year-old means your good work was a front. A mask. A fraud.

In an interview, one of the reverend’s sons told the officer that he “witnessed his (father’s) pattern of disrespecting women and that he was not the person he presented publicly.”

And yet, the reverend’s good work was real. It meant something to thousands. A human is the sum of his or her impact in the world. Right?

Until you rape a child.

Writing this story still breaks my heart.

I was never comfortable around religious leaders. Easily intimidated by priests and pastors, not because I grew up in a conservative shaming religious church or family.

My father’s second wife was an easy-going Methodist, and he was agnostic. Zero religious guilt.

After my daughter was born I joined the local Methodist church. I figured I should at least expose my child to a faith-filled life. When she was older she could decide.

The moment I joined I felt welcomed by the warm laid-back approachable pastor. But even he made me nervous. Because despite my wishy-washy devoutness then and now, the cloth meant authority and goodness, one degree better than the rest of us.

Not because they’re perfect or closer to God, I don’t buy into any of that.

Because they’ve spent their life teaching love, grace, forgiveness and compassion. Jesus behaviors. Pastors are, we hope, people to respect, confide and trust.

I think back to the day the Rev spoke at my church about how as a man he could never understand the pain unwed pregnant girls and women went through. “How dare I be so arrogant to even try?” he said.

He said his job was only to listen, learn and to support girls and women in their time of need. No matter their decision.

It was that level of humility and respect for women that floored me the most. That he loved women in all the right ways. Like my father.

But where was that man when he had sex with a 14-year-old girl hundreds of times? When he convinced a child that their “relationship” was righteous, that it was good. That it was Godly.

It’s often said that forgiveness is for the victim, not the perpetrator. That we don’t forgive what the person did; we let go of the anger for our own peace.

But for me, sometimes forgiveness is disingenuous. A platitude. Sometimes forgiveness is a betrayal to myself.

So while I no longer ruminate in the middle of the night about what the Rev did, if he enters my mind, I consciously choose not to send him forgiveness.

Instead, I push him away as fast as I can. Because his goodness is impossible to reconcile again his evil. So I don’t even try.

I no longer allow myself to hold space for my once-favorite visiting reverend. For a man of the cloth who helped me feel less cynical about organized religion because he shared my values.

That person died for me long before he tragically took his own life. I mourn the soul death of my favorite reverend. But I do not forgive.

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This post was previously published on Know Thyself, Heal Thyself.

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