I’m seeing people asking a lot of very strange questions about why anyone should care that Josh Duggar groped his younger sisters and his family covered it up and did nothing about it.

Are they serious? We should care because the Duggars think and say they are better than everyone who doesn’t think like them, and they have a very large public megaphone – and may still have it if TLC’s cancellation of their show turns out to be temporary. We should care because Josh Duggar was a higher-up in the reactionary homophobic Family Research Council until he resigned two days ago because the truth about his past came to light.

We should care because the Duggars are reactionary theocratic homophobic antifeminist Christian activists who pose as Nice and Smiley and Good. They do harm, so of course we should care that they covered up a crime against their own god damn daughters.

Libby Anne of course has a lot to say on this, and we should all be camping out on her blog for the foreseeable future. Yesterday she and a guest poster talked about the silencing power of forgiveness.

I’ve seen defenders argue that we shouldn’t be airing the family’s private affairs publicly, and that this is over and done with and water under the bridge, and so forth. The problem with these statements is that they ignore the role specific beliefs and doctrines played in the mishandling of Josh Duggar’s abuse. As I pointed out yesterday in my blog post exploring the sort of counseling Josh and his victims likely received, the story here is about problems with the Duggar’s worldview and subculture—a worldview and subculture many Duggar fans have praised as wholesome or quaint for years now, without understanding the deep underlying problems inherent to it (problems I have addressed previously here and here).

And now, without further ado, I give you the following excellent commentary by my friend Carmen Green, who like me, like Samantha, and like Kathryn Elizabeth, grew up in a Christian homeschool family and has personal experience with the Duggar’s worldview and subculture. (I even have mutual friends with the Duggars—the Christian homeschool world can be very small indeed.)

Now, Carmen on Anna Duggar, wife of Josh – homeschooled, married young and inexperienced, raised on “Biblical” ideas about sex, women, marriage…

They can’t use birth control (because sinful) so they start having children right away.

Anna now has three, with a fourth on the way. She is 26 years old. She was homeschooled her whole life and never went to college. She now claims that she knew when the courtship began that Josh was a child molester. But I very much doubt that Josh used those words — it is far more likely that he said he had “temptations” to which he “succumbed” but “God is good” and he has “asked for forgiveness.” And, in that culture, she would have had no choice but to accept that for face value, because to do otherwise would be to call Josh a liar and to doubt God’s ability to save. Now she’s found out the truth, she has a few more years of experience, and she’s more trapped than she’s ever been.

“Temptations” ffs – that could be anything – it could be masturbation, it could be wet dreams, it could just be erections. It could be, in short, victimless and harmless. It seems to be one of the worst blind spots (to put it no more harshly) of reactionary theocrats that they don’t even notice the difference actual harm done to actual people makes. Not surprising, I guess, when they think the 10 commandments=the summit of morality.

And then she gets to the forgiveness thing, which never fails to turn my stomach.

Forgiveness is a warped topic in fundamentalist Christian circles where abuse is concerned. Jim Bob, Michelle, and Josh are using that language purposefully. They are tapping into the belief that no sin is too terrible for God to forgive and the mandate that we must forgive our trespassers as God has forgiven us. Together, these beliefs force victims in this subculture to shut up, sit down, and “make peace” with the people who have wronged them.

This results in victims having to act as if nothing ever happened. They still have to live with the perpetrator. They still have to speak to the perpetrator and show affection to them. They have to smile and pretend for years and years. No one gets real counseling. And the perpetrator is never punished.

My friend, Kathryn, wrote an excellent piece on why we shouldn’t let Jim Bob, Michelle, and Josh dictate the tone of the discussion. I don’t care if Josh thinks the victims forgave him (what choice did they have?). I don’t care if Josh says he’s sorry. He’s a child molester who escaped punishment because mommy and daddy covered for him. Children in two different families (that we know of) were victimized. No other families were ever told about Josh’s behavior so that they could take protective measures for their own children.

This story is NOT about the power of forgiveness. It’s about a cover-up, a blatant disregard for children’s safety, and the appalling selfishness of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar.

Who are, don’t forget, held up to us as model humans via a popular tv show.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Wtf?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Lizzie Dearden at the Independent has been reading IS propaganda so that you don’t have to.

A jihadi bride whose husband took a Yazidi girl as a slave has claimed sex with kidnapped women is never rape because it is an Islamic practice inspired by the Prophet himself.

Well that’s where she’s wrong. The prophet himself was not incapable of rape just because he was “the prophet” after all. If the prophet told men they could rape women captured in battle then he was telling them they could rape, end of story. It doesn’t magically become not-rape just because this one super-special guy endorsed it.

The article, by “Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirah”, appears in the latest issue of Isis propaganda magazine Dabiq under the headline: “Slave-girls or prostitutes?”

In it, the writer claims that taking slaves like the Yazidi women through war (“saby”) is a “great prophetic Sunnah [teachings of Mohamed] containing many divine wisdoms and religious benefits”.

Nope. That’s what’s so wrong with your whole line of thinking. You’re starting with the idea that it’s all Holy and Divine and Inspired and yadda yadda, therefore whatever it is, it is good. That’s back to front, and wrong.

Umm Sumayyah puts reports of horrific abuse at the hands of Isis fighters down to “devious and wicked slave girls” who “made up lies and wrote false stories”.

Oh yes, those devious and wicked victims of war crimes who report how they were treated. How dare they.

A UN envoy who interviewed dozens of sexual abuse victims in the region reported earlier this month that Isis is using widespread and systematic sexual violence as a “terrorist” tactic to spread fear.

Zainab Bangura described how fighters would strip the victims naked and categorise them before trading them in “slave bazaars” and shipping them to other provinces.

And that doesn’t become acceptable simply because someone claims it’s inspired by a prophet.

Citing select Koran passages and hadiths, Umm Sumayyah wrote that slavery only befalls a people that have “left Allah’s favour” when he “has no need for them”.

She lashed out at the vast majority of Muslims around the world who have condemned Isis’ interpretation of Sharia law, massacres and violence.

“(A Yazidi woman’s) enslavement is in opposition to human rights and copulation with her is rape?!?” she writes dismissively.

“We indeed raided and captured the kāfirah (infidel) women, and drove them like sheep by the edge of the sword. And glory belongs to Allah, to His Messenger, and the believers.”

Nope. Your Allah and his messenger and his believers are all fascist bullies.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Now for a downer; sorry.

Heather Hironimus has been forced (by a threat of prison) to sign the permission slip for her four-year-old son to get his penis snipped against his will.

With handcuffs on her wrists and tears rolling down her cheeks, Heather Hironimus looked up to the courtroom ceiling, briefly clasped her hands together in prayer, and finally picked up her attorney’s pen.

The 31-year-old West Boynton [mother] — jailed since May 14 for defying a judge’s custody order and refusing to let her 4 1/2-year-old son be circumcised — gave her consent to the procedure wanted by the boy’s [father], Dennis Nebus, of Boca Raton.

Because of the boy’s age, the snipping requires general anesthesia – which is itself risky.

What a horrific thing to do.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Recorder reads the result.

RTÉ News retweeted
Conor Barrins @ConorBarrins 18 minutes ago
#MarRef passes

RTÉ News retweeted
Martina Fitzgerald @MartinaFitzg 18 minutes ago
Dublin castle erupts with the national anthem #rtenews #marref

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And it’s official official at last – they had to wait for Cork to finish counting, while all of Twitter yelled at Cork to hurry up.

• 18:55 Ireland becomes the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote.
• 18:51 Returning Officer Ríona Ní Fhlanghaile declares that Ireland has passed the same-sex marriage referendum by 1,201,607 votes (62.1%) to 734,300 (37.9%).
• 18:35 The end is nigh! The returning officer for Cork North West/South West/East says two of three results are with Dublin Castle and the third is on the way in minutes.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)