SusanG's diary last night singing Gerald Ford's praises as having allegedly kept his faith and his political acts separate finally crossed some threshold that pushed my partner, Mike Doughney and I, into commenting. We wrote for the first time about an event we were present for where Ford threw the full weight of his status as Former President behind one of many key groups in the Biblical American, or what some might term the "dominionist", youth movement; by personally appearing at Teen Mania's "Stand Up" event in Michigan, back in 2000.

This diary, then, are some of the details of that, and unlike almost most every other piece of writing I've seen since Ford's death, this is based on a first hand experience, it reflects an event that happened almost 7 years ago, not during the 1970's.

This has been exceptionally difficult for me to write out, the gravity of what we saw and how to bring information forward; ourselves, holding to some value of civility even as we have seen incredibly uncivil things. But ultimately, I think it's critically important to look at Ford's 'legacy' in light of his actual actions. So at this point, I'm just going try to write 'what I know', while incorporating some quotes from my partner, Mike.