Comments

1
I don't have cable TV, so as a cable culture outsider, I'm having trouble seeing the Duggars as worth multiple posts. I suppose since Josh has been antagonistic toward Dan, that makes it relevant here on slog. So gossipy!
2
Wait, I thought gays were the biggest threat to kids? And aren't they consulting a fertility doctor, praying/hoping/trying for baby #20? Ugh.
3
I'm with what #1 said. I love Christian Hypocrisy as much as the next guy but at this point it's getting a little yawn worthy. That is until an arrest happens.
4
Shouldn't a police assault team be sent in?
5
Whether it's the case this time or not, it's quite likely that sometime in the future one or more of the later-born sons will experience strife over homosexual orientation either internally or with other family members due to the fraternal birth order effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_b…, in case you've been living under a rock).
…According to several studies, each older brother increases a man's odds of having a homosexual orientation by 28–48%. (ibid.)
I certainly don't wish that on any of them because it will absolutely suck in their situation, but the cumulative odds are quite high. I hope they're strong enough if it happens to leave on their own and bear the shunning or disowning or whatever else this cult has up its long puffy sleeves.
6
@1 @3
Nope, their slow destruction is to be savored.
7
Re: 5, I'm a terrible statistician—but assuming low odds of 2% for any singleton male being gay; that the effect is negligible before the third son (maybe not); and assuming the low end of the range of 28-48% gives a multiplier of 1.28 for sons 3-10, I get cumulative odds of 56.7% that at least one of them will be gay. Correct me if I'm wrong.
8
Liar Liar pants on fire. Yes, one by one these lying hypocrites need to be taken down.
9
I totally agree with you about 'Christian Patriarchy'. That being said, to connect those teachings with Josh's female child molestation is quite a stretch. Tons of people sexually molest female children, and I would bet the percentage of those people raised with Christian Patriarchy is negligible. The two are likely not related.
10
I totally get how it's getting yawn worthy, the same story over and over is always like that, but I'm really happy that this subject is being brought up. Getting people talking about sexual molestation, about juvenile sex offenders, about what to do in these circumstances and how to combat them from a healthy, well rounded, therapeutic approach. Instead of, you know , sweeping it all under the rug because people don't want to talk about it at length. I've read this blog for years because it's sexually forward and inclusive, not to mention helping people navigate the confusing world of healthy, consentual, GGG sexuality. It may be redundant, but it can really help thousands of people. I wish my parents knew this information.
11
While I agree that the Duggars are the grossest of the gross, I don't think that citing In Touch Magazine as a primary source adds any credibility to your article.
12
ericasonixz, following this cult lifestyle created an environment that was optimal for sibling sexual abuse to occur. If you assembled a panel of child abuse experts and asked them to create an environment where abuse was likely to occur, they would have basically created the Duggar compound. First, you have too many children than can be adequately supervised by the two parents (ordained by their beliefs). Second, you have the majority of the childcare being carried out by other children. Third, you have an authoritarian all-controlling leader of the house who cannot be challenged or questioned (ordained by their beliefs). Fourth, you have the devaluing of the females (ordained by their beliefs). Fifth, you have a strict and repressive environment (ordained by their beliefs). Sixth, you do not have normal social outlets for the children, especially the adolescents (ordained by their beliefs). And that is not all...This is their interpretation of Christianity in action in their home. I would have to say that the two are very much related. Misogyny is present in most religions. Patriarchy is the result of the teachings of most religions. How could they not be related?
13
I respectfully disagree with @1 and @3. I think this story is much, much, MUCH bigger than your garden variety religious hypocrisy.

This is not Larry Craig toe-tapping in a public bathroom while voting for anti-gay legislation. (And even then, he was far less anti-gay than many of his colleagues.) That's hypocrisy. This goes much farther.

The Duggars aren't just homophobic. They're LEADERS in the anti-gay movement. Josh Duggar who molested five little girls, four of them his sisters, one only five years old, has repeatedly accused gay people of being child molesters and has said they don't deserve "special rights" BECAUSE they are child molesters. He works -- correction, WORKED -- for one the leading anti-gay organizations in the country, an organization so extreme that it's one of the few organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed it as a hate group. (And contrary to what the right ring tries to claim, the SPLC doesn't put every anti-marriage equality group on that list. It takes some extreme fucking shit, like advocating that gay people should be imprisoned or killed just for being gay, to make that list.)

Meanwhile, Ma Duggar isn't any old garden variety homophobe, either. She actively campaigned against LGBT ordinances by taping robo-calls saying that transgender men and woman wanted the law in order to rape your kids. She's never met a gay or trans child molester, but she raised one that molested four of her own daughters, only only five years old, and she COVERED IT UP.

These aren't just Christians who did unrelated bad things. These aren't just homophobes who are hypocritical for doing the legal things they espouse against, like Larry Craig. They are accusing LGBT people of vile CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN that they themselves are committing. Crimes that the parents would have been imprisoned for a minimum of five years for simply knowing about it and covering it up if not for the statute of limitations running out first.

Even with this rankest of hypocrisy, the story would be done by now if the right wing had done what liberals do and condemn bad people for doing bad things. Instead, the right wing is defending the Duggars as a cause celebre. The Republican Party is rushing to defend child rapists for the sole reasons that they're "Christians" and Republicans. A former Vice Presidential nominee defended them. A current Presidential candidate defended them -- repeatedly. Liberals would never do that. When Anthony Weiner sent around dick pics, the Democratic Party turned on him -- perhaps too fast, but that's debatable -- and it's probable that what he did wasn't even criminal.

Megyn Kelly of Fox News is defending the Duggars against a "rush to judgement" even though they ADMITTED their crimes, while saying that a 14 year old African American girl who was tackled by a cop who pulled a gun on her is "no saint" and we should simply assume she did bad things without any evidence or even accusation that the girl did anything wrong.

When major leaders of a political party are defending child molesters while condemning people who've never done anything to hurt anyone, that makes this a big fucking deal.
14
Ahem. http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/dugg…
15
Fuck that family take all their minor kids away from them
16
this is important. it's happening all over the world in families all over the world. they are not unique.
17
@14: Full link http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/dugg…
Now, this latest report MAY be legit. It doesn't have any glaring immediate errors in it like that one at Snopes did. However, all the write-ups I've seen link to the InTouch article, so...
18
All right, @13. You've made a compelling case. I concede.
19
#13

+1, feg.
20
And this does come down to Christian patriarchy.

Coming from the ultimate "holy shit i'm a christian?" patriarch?

When "power of the praying wife" is what gets her through the day and you teach some random child who otherwise would have led his life as another unassuming dumbass that he should do whatever he wants because god says women must submit to his will this is what you get.

By the way, they marry platonically.
21
"they marry platonically."
What does that mean?
22
@12, it apparently means Mrs. Duggar was a virgin mother 19 times.
23
I meant @21.
24
Even if you discount all the child molestation and mental abuse going in in the Duggar's house of horrors, simply having that many children is abusive to the children, as the parents can not possibly actually raise the children since there are so many of them.

So the older kids get "parentalized" and more or less have to throw out their childhood when they becme young teens to raise their siblings. The young kids more or less just get neglected by their parents until they have to raise thier younger siblings. Same thing happens with parents who are drug addicts or otherwise neglectful/absent.

It is disgusting and should be illegal. The Duggars should be in jail.
25
Here's a theory, and as I have no psychological background, take it as you will.

From what I understand of this cult, all sexual behavior outside marriage is a sin. Kissing your girlfriend is a sin. Front-hugging a family member is a sin. Even a teen boy changing his baby sister's diapers can be an invitation to sin. Josh Duggar's abuse of his sisters has been referred to as a sin. When you don't differentiate between healthy sexual activity (two teens willingly making out) and unhealthy sexual activity (a teen boy touching his sisters while they sleep) and just label it as "sin" until you say the magic words "I do", you set the stage for unhealthy and even criminal sexual behavior.

I didn't watch the Duggars' interview, but I have read that Pa Duggar said that child sexual abuse was not uncommon in groups like theirs. How the hell this hasn't raised an outcry, even among Fox Noise viewers, is beyond me. Did anyone ever ask him if he doesn't think there's something wrong about a movement where the sexual abuse of children is routinely covered up while they demonize gay men and transgender women as child molesters?

And as much as I hate hearing about this creepy family, I want this shit exposed. I want people to stop idolizing families like this and start wondering how we can stop a movement that his harmful at its core. (I know, lots of luck there.)
26
They're also the one culture on earth that will survive everything, ever.

And they have all of our genealogical records. I don't know why I threw that in.

So, we put the limit at 10. I don't think a law does any good. Throw a pretty blonde to the wind?

The change has to be cultural. These types are generally an aberration(and southerly, if my memory of broadcasted events serves me well), but they happen.

My own personal limit would be four. That may be because that's the unit I came up with, but it seems fair.

The problem is, and will continue to be, that this shit was written when literacy on such a level was not commonplace.

Do you want some of my cocaine? :[
27
@25 - I hope the list of people who "idolize" the Duggars or anyone like them is a short one. I think most viewers (I was not one) probably watched it as a kind of mild freak show combined with feelings of schadenfreude at how people's lives could be so completely taken over by "family".
28
So sad that this, and every other related brand of religion uses faith as a weapon of power and control. It is exhausting being in the world with them.
29
Duggary is the sanctimonious moral condemnation of consensual sexual behavior between adults while hiding, justifying, defending, excusing or committing nonconsensual sexual abuse. Thus, every adult member of the family is guilty, not just Josh, making it a generally Duggary sort of behavior. Not all sexual hypocrisy is Duggary. For example, a gay elected official who publicly opposed gay marriage would not be committing Duggary, whether or not he was out. But Dennis Hastert appears to be guilty of Duggary. And it was the St. Paul Archdiocese's Duggary that resulted in criminal charges for covering up sexual abuse.

Your welcome.
30
"You're ", that is, sorry. As Rick Perry said once: "Oops."

Fox News Priest Jonathan Morris is a serial Duggarer, defending the Duggars and the church while ranting against trans use of the restroom they want, among other offenses. Maybe doughy lacks the hilarity of a frothy mix, but hey, it's a heinous moral sin.
31
@9 molestation of children and christian patriarchy 'not likely to be related'

Ummm, no. Ask the Duggars themselves. On their Fox News damage control interview, they have specifically stated that such 'mistakes' that Josh made are pretty common among the families they know, and Josh's mistakes are not the worse ones out there.

The Duggars being in a cult, you can bet that those known families are all part of christian patriarchy.

The Duggars themselves are on record as saying that (don't call it molestation of children) is common in their cult. That's a lot more occurences than in the general population, so yes, the two are obviously strongly related.

And what is worse than Josh's molestation of children, but children rape ? The Duggars are on record saying that 'worse than Josh's mistakes' happens in households of their cults. So, they know about at least some raped children in families of their cult. And, they're not too bothered about it ; they don't campain much against child rape they know of inside their cultish environment.

They'd much rather campain to portray LGBT as children abusers and or child rapists.

A hate group's hypocrisy must be exposed. The Duggars are not a reality show family, they are a hate group, one very close to Huckabee.

By the way, did you know that Huckabee's ghost writer was accused in his divorce of 'sexual battery of minors', and the only reason he was not prosecuted is because, as with Duggar, it was too late and the statute of limitations had expired ?

Huckabee chooses very special friends, to say the least.
32
@2 I thought they believed that they're having as many children as God wants, and that birth control is interfering with God's plan or something. How is getting fertility treatment not interfering? If you're having trouble getting pregnant, isn't that a sign that God doesn't want you to have anymore goddamn kids?
33
@31, Hucksterbee has to be one of the worst sorts of hypocrites out there. He bashes Obama for letting his daughters listen to Beyonce while making sure his son doesn't face justice for brutally killing a dog. He condemns gays as child molesters but cozies up to a family that protects an admitted child molester. I guess in Hucksterbee's world, it's okay to molest a child if you're a conservative Christian and use a Jesus Mulligan later.
34
@29 - thanks, actually. I haven't been paying / generally don't pay enough attention to this kind of horrifying tabloid-worthy mess to "just know" what Duggary means. It seems to have become a word while I wasn't looking.
35
@1: Pretty catty for someone so ignorant. The Duggars are news at their moment because their serial rapist son was a member of NOM, one of the largest anti-gay rights lobbying groups in the United States.

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