Another website says that of the four Duggar girls alive during the incest/molestations, Jana (the oldest) was not molested. If true, then that would mean 15 year old Josh molested 4 year old Joy-Anna.
Why? They most likely use the same homeschool math curriculum, I have a guess to which one, and if I made my kids use that particular curriculum they’d all say they hate math too! No sure what they are doing for spelling but the program we used wasn’t very time consuming and my kids might have all said spelling was their favorite because it took the least time:-)
And the papers were supposedly destroyed because one is still a minor. Unfortunately, Joy-Anna isn’t 18 til later this year. Unless that minor is outside the family.
I read that Josh sat Anna’s family - not just Anna - and “told all” before he married her. That they chose to still say “ok!” to him courting and marrying her at such a young age and so quickly - most of these relationships on this show result in meeting/courting/marrying/and getting pregnant all within a year or so.
I think most people here are not knocking Christianity - they are knocking this family - a family who happens to hang their hat on being Christians.
I don’t even know what specific religion they are and I have watched the show often. I would almost say that it is their lifestyle - based on their morals/values - that is more specifically the problem here.
^to see what “religion” they follow you can Google ATI cult or Bill Gothard. There is a website called recoveringgrace that is about those that have escaped. At that site, you can see what type of “counseling” the girls likely received. That site has brought back an older article abotu sexual abuse as a feature. There are documents on there that show the process of counseling quite clearly. It’s not pretty.
They’re yet more in a long string of sleazy evangelical moralists who advocate against gay rights and women’s rights while at the same time engaging in truly wicked behavior. Last week, the pastor posting on Grindr. This week, the “pure” Duggars hiding sexual abuse of five girls. It is a long, long list of sleaze, almost always in conjunction with practices that treat women as children, and that often blame victims for inciting bad behavior on the part of men. Blech. (Just read those ATI counseling documents for a real taste of how perverted their views are: young men shouldn’t change diapers of babies lest it incite impure thoughts.)
I don’t see this cult as being any different from the ultra-Orthodox who refuse to sit next to women on a plane and who harass women whose attire they find inappropriate, the parents that ship their daughters off to the old country to have their genitals mutilated, or the Catholic priests who abused children or covered up the abuse. Let’s not forget the Jewish rabbi who was just sentenced for peeping at women he required to use the ritual bath (mikveh) in DC.
I’ve never quite wrapped my mind around the contradiction of so many patriarchal cultures which put men as the only sex strong enough to be heads of families and serve in governing roles, being the very cultures which see men as apparently so weak and mentally fragile that seeing a woman’s hair or short skirts totally overwhelms their willpower and judgment.
If you chose to showcase dysfunction as the bread and butter of your network, you should expect that skeletons will eventually start falling out of the closets.
Imo the people who think this is an anti-Christianity thread are actively looking for a reason to be offended. Afaik, no one has even brought up other Christian branches who have had similar scandals (example: the Catholic church’s history of protecting child molesters.)
If you want to see this become an anti-Christianity thread, I can certainly make that a reality. However, even though I am very anti-religion, I don’t believe religion is to blame here. I think Jim Bob is a misogynistic control freak who happened to find a “religion” that told him he was unquestionably right about all things and latched on to it. His children are, unfortunately, subject to brainwashing because of that and his twisted interpretation of Jesus’ messages.
And Hayden, I appreciate the nomination! 
I don’t watch this show but this really boggles my mind. Enough that I went to the Discovery Communications website and submitted a comment expressing my displeasure. You can voice 1500 characters… Granted I’m sure nothing will come from it, but if they get enough communication from normal people, maybe they will get the hint. Here’s the link to submit your comments in case anyone is interested.
http://corporate.discovery.com/contact/viewer-relations/ :-@
I find Michelle complicit in setting up and supporting the context. What vote she had at 20 (and by reports, they were much like other kids at that age,) she swung it to another plan. In effect, I see her as the same sort of control freak, though she defers certain decisions to her husband. The whole system they have going, as parents, is all about control. This is way past “grooming” your kids to follow your own beloved faith and praying they’ll do so. It’s all about lock-step. Earlier in the series, they talked about hour by hour schedules, no flex, no self expression except within the parents’ guidelines. All the boys’ socks were black, all the girls’ were white. All the dresses used to be alike. Go on a trip and everyone wears the same color. No exploring except carefully monitored. In a tightly controlled group, once you get the limits set and the flow going, of course the younger ones follow. It’s the only context they know. I read once about the controls the tv crews are also subject to.
Being on Facebook to spread the word, leave love notes to a fiance or spouse or proselytize is different than surfing the web to explore options. The fact the girls may have smartphones may seem like a lot of freedom; I doubt the parents are risking the older girls going much past a make-up site or Erin Bates’s hair curling videos. The boys have software that limits them (actually JB called them 1995 phones.) Their home computers did, too, probably still do.
It is also interesting to watch the last few years and how now the girls wear make-up (LOTS), dress still conservatively but more trendy than the past and yes, many of them have FB pages, Instagram accounts, etc. So it is interesting to me how “someone” decided they could have these freedoms but they are still much involved in “hand picking” spouses, telling them “no away college for you!” etc.
This is the sort of “anti-Christian” statement to which I was referring in my earlier post. It is from post #140, I believe.
I am not saying that disagreeing with what the Duggars did or how they did it is to disagree with Christianity. Of course not…
I am just asking that people not make broad brush judgements about the “saved crowd” based upon the fact that this particular family messed up, big time. And I submit that we ALL have “messed up”, to some degree or another.
“Daddy likes long hair.” I’m guessing Daddy likes a little make-up, too, which is off-message, as it makes them more, uh-oh, attractive and we know where that leads. I think it also may have an element of calculation- the more “normal” they can seem, the more viewers try to relate.
I can like the parts of their choices that work, I can accept that their faith is real to them. So what if they wear the same color when traveling? (This was explained as a way to keep an eye on the sheer number of them.) But when the cracks appear- and unwanted touching, over time, is a mighty big crack- then the thing risks imploding. And so, here we are.
I do tend to lump all people who seek religion as a way to make sense of the world into one group, but that also depends on how much they are working to restrict freedoms of others, and how evangelical they are about it.
I do agree that we are human, and humans make mistakes.
In this case I would say making mistakes began when they chose to have more children than they could adequately parent.
It seems to me that many here who are crying out about the “judgmental” attitudes of the “religious” or “saved” crowd are the ones being awfully judgmental…
so it’s a “group” with sub-divisions or sort of on a continuum?
I am a member of that large group of yours…but I do not in any way shape or form work to restrict freedoms of others…and try not to get all self-righteous (not always successfully) about those in this group who DO. And I freely admit that they do, much to my chagrin. I do, however, recognize that what you see as manipulative (and, trust me, I see it that way too at times!!) and what you so scornfully (that’s how it seems to me, any way) call “evangelical” comes from a place of earnestly trying to help others.
And in spite of all the things that this family has done with which I vigorously disagree, I think they have also done good in the world. And now they are being absolutely ripped apart…
I would like to see this discussion thread stay on the DUGGARS and perhaps their extended family if possible. Lumping people together and creating “groups” gets us in trouble.
Churchmusicmom, I think for many, they vigorously disagreed with this family and their doings before this week - but this recent discovery, is the icing on the cake - the straw that breaks the camels back so to speak. The incident that tips the scale.
Good work is good work. But there are MANY parts to this story that wreak wrong with society. And the good work does NOT make the wrong parts less wrong.
OK - The Duggars and many of their supporters seem to see sin and repentance as a badge of honor that is validated by belief that Jesus died for our sins (not all Christians but this brand). Yes, we are all “sinners” and all make mistakes, but there is a world of difference between not treating your neighbors as yourselves and molesting your sisters. There seems to be a pervasive belief amongst their fans that the Devil is working overtime to bring them down because they are SO close to God and that Josh’s admission of sin is a sign of his successful struggle against Satan. I call BS on that.