Operation Goddess Temple

Open letter to the Maricopa County Attorney

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Dear William Montgomery

In response to your “Operation Goddess Temple”.

In September 2011 Temples of Tantra in Phoenix and Sedona were defiled. Heavily armed storm troopers caused extensive damage to property and put many lives at risk. Several of the women arrested have told me of violent and sexually abusive conduct on the part of the militarily equipped fellows, the more normal-looking police men, court officials and prison authorities.

Your accusation is that the Temple was a “brothel”.

The concept “brothel” is commonly understood to refer to a place where a customer can buy specific sexual services. Where brothels are illegal, their typically exploitative work-rate results in extreme profits – irresistible to organized crime. Workers in brothels do not do “up to three sessions a day”, as reported by your investigators. They do not require their customers to fake being spiritually literate. 

To put it in really simple terms: One can arrive at a brothel, order a sexual service, receive it and leave. To bust one takes a police man of average intelligence about an hour. Paperwork included.

One can arrive at a place of worship, make donations, get friendly with the choir girls and seduce one of them. Men, young and old, have done this since God was a boy. 

No one, as far as I am aware has ever suggested that the (usually Catholic - your claimed religion) institutions that profit from sex with the choir girls and boys in this way should be prosecuted as brothels.

It took a huge “operation” 6 (SIX!) months long, spy cameras and specially trained operatives to make a tenuous connection between money donated and consensual sex. I am sure I could train even an unfortunate-looking fellow like you to manage that in St Mary’s, if his sexual inclinations were healthy.

In any civilized democracy (and your county claims to be one) it is commonly understood that specialists, professionals and hobbyists in all sorts of areas use and do things that would be considered illegal if possessed or done by the average Joe.

To a martial artist, actual hitting is just part of his study. Even though it is technically illegal, real hitting of real bodies in a martial arts class is not a problem for the law.

A catering professional can own large quantities of poisonous substances (like hickory flavoring) which could prove deadly in the average home.

Farmers routinely buy quantities of diesel oil and ammonium nitrate fertilizer that would get a regular citizen sent to G-bay or assassinated, now that Obama has legitimized that.

To a Catholic Priest or supplicant, the serving of wine is a sacrament, not an indulgence. Police do not raid Catholic churches as shebeens.

Likewise, in the privacy of their temples, tantrikas use sexual meditations, healing practices and rituals to support their religious agenda: Awareness. This has nothing to do with indulgence, or the selling of sexual services.

Your appointment as Maricopa County Attorney is a political one. Your opposition in the upcoming elections (Nov 2012) has made it clear that he would not prosecute such a matter. This makes your attack a politically motivated one. Claiming inapplicable and irrelevant law as your excuse does not change that fact.

This “prosecution” is, by any civilized standards, unacceptable.

I am doing what I can to raise awareness, especially among those who elected you, of what you have done and what it reveals about you.

You may see pursuing a religious persecution as your duty to your church affiliation. You may see it as being required of you as a republican. You may even be stupid enough to have been manipulated into seeing this as part of your job by your friend, the infamous Arpaio. 

No matter your motivation, though, your comments in the media have made this a personal matter. You are calling the tantrikas out, and I will do what I can to help them become aware of that.

As I am sure your undercover operatives discovered, dealing with tantrikas can be rather uncomfortable. It is likely to get very uncomfortable for you, personally.

By taking issue with the sexual practices of other people, you have made your own sexuality a legitimate area of investigation and debate. This is what is likely to bring you the most discomfort.

You happen to have chosen to attack a group of people who are the planet’s leading experts in matters of sexuality. Many of us have a background in psychology, sex therapy and working with sexual trauma. Our religious practices are aimed at provoking awareness of that which is deeply subconscious. We know more about the patterns of sexual abuse, how abuse is passed on and the consequences of sexual repression than anyone, even the most practiced psychologists.

So we know your secret, Bill. 

Humans in the main regard their sexuality as their private business, and are happy to regard the sexuality of others as their own business. It is not normal, not truly human, to insist that others forgo the right to do as they please with consenting friends. 

Tantrikas, sexologists, psychologists and therapists of many schools recognize departure from this human norm as pathological. They know it to be caused by severe sexual repression.

The most common symptom of sexual repression is that the sufferer believes that things external to him/herself are the cause of his/her sexual desire. Sexual feelings are experienced as invasive or disturbing. Episodes of compulsive masturbation are followed by guilt. This level of repression is very common, and many sufferers are aware that they have a problem.

More severe repression (of which the sufferer is typically unaware) can result in sexual incontinence. Sex happens as an explosion from the subconscious and is then denied completely by the conscious mind. The kind of sex that happens will mirror the severe abuse that produced the repression in the first place. This is usually the situation in cases of repeated marriage-rape and the sexual molestation of children by parents, uncles, pediatricians, school teachers, scout masters and dentists. 

Only when the natural enjoyment of sex by others is experienced as extremely threatening will someone acquire or use a position of public trust to persecute the sexual conduct of others. At this point, the sufferer can affect societydisproportionately. He/she becomes a public menace. 

We know a lot about you, Bill, without even having to interview your wife,or your friend’s children. You have even inspired the coinage of a word to describe you and your fellow sufferers: Antiphilliac. Expect to be hearing that word a lot.

It is a useful word. Like the tags anti-semite, homophobe and mac user, it lets people know that the one so tagged is known to be rigidly blinkered and opinionated to the point of fanaticism around a particular issue. It lets people know that the fellow so described is a known nutter on his particular topic, worth listening to for entertainment purposes only.

My involvement in this matter could perhaps do with some explanation. Three reasons: 

First, I am doing what I can to support friends that have asked. 

Second, I am trying to encourage my fellow very loving and peaceful tantrikas to be willing to object and protest this defilement and violation. Harder than you might think, you will be glad to know.

Third, you have confiscated footage of my school’s presentations at a conference organized by the Sedona Temple, thereby involving me personally.

I will continue to exercise my compassion by countering the damage you have done, and warning people about you and other antiphilliacs.  Offering you support with your own healing would be nice, and could make me look a bit spiritually correct, but I do believe it would be pointless. Sex is never likely to amount to more than a genital sneeze for you, ever. Sorry.

Sincerely

Sw. A Rahasya

Founder, Advait Tantra School

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Resources and links for those who would like to get involved in repairing the damage caused by Bill and supporting the most loving citizens of Arizona in this difficult time: LINK