Well, friends I think we need a Justice Primer on another one of Mark's "private letters" to Doug Phillips. This time I am referring to his May 22, 2006 Black mail letter to Doug Phillips:
Doug, allow me to make it perfectly clear that this issue of excommunication is not going to go quietly away…[Y]ou [have] opened the door for public discussion of your behavior…If I do not hear from you by then, I will assume that you desire I take this issue elsewhere…[Y]ou stand to lose far more than I do….Doug, you know it only takes the touch of a button to find yourself in a similarly embarrassing situation as R.C. Sproul, Jr. Ask your IT folks how easy it is to reduce the … correspondence between us to Adobe [Acrobat] files, and then ask yourself if you want Jennifer’s letter of May 2005 seen side-by-side with your response…
Check out www.mrsbinoculars.com for the quote
Now, folks would you meet with a man who tried to blackmail you?
Would you meet privately with a man (Mark Epstein) so violent that other elders encouraged you to get a restraining order against him?
I mean this is nothing more than extortion. What I want to know is when is Doug Phillips going to sue Mark Epstein for libel and defamation? Since I am not a lawyer like many of the commentators on Jen's blog I am not sure, but I would think that a black mail letter would constitute "actual malice" under the legal definition of libel and defamation. However, Doug Phillips is probably a smarter man than to sue the Epsteins right now. I just don't know what he is thinking, but if I was Mark or Jen I would be concerned if I sent him a black mail letter and then went out and continued to smear his good name.
Now, I can hear Corrie, Lynn and Brandon already, but before you start to quoting 1 Corinthians 6 you need to remember that the Epsteins are excommunicants who no longer have the protection of the above passage. So this isn't going to be another "Christian Ministry sues Christian Blogger." The Epsteins are not even members of any church at the moment. Three churches in San Antonio have said they are no longer welcome and a fourth church's pastor wants them restrained by the law.
So for all the home school mommies out there that are continuing to believe that Mark & Jen are just a "poor, innocent and abused" couple should start to ask themselves if they are Christians why would they resort to such unlawful and unchristian behavior?
Until next time, I'm just the Fallacy Slayer
