Churchhoney

I think all of these equivocations and misapprehensions by the Duggarlings are just part of the dense fog of denial and delusion they all walk around in. And have been walking around in their whole lives. As @Tuxcat mentioned, they desperately need to pivot out of that fog. But right now they may have a world record for size of denial fog, length of fog's persistence and number of people who seem to have no motivation to see an inch beyond it. I'd think that this Josh situation (again) was the time when multiple people might start looking for the light. But watching Jim Bob appear to double down lately makes me wonder whether anybody actually will, as the trial fades into the past. For one thing, despite what some have said about Josh, I don't see any sign that any of them has actually moved off the slightest bit from their vast collection of hideous beliefs. And those beliefs are a huge factor driving their isolation, deliberate ignorance, and many delusions, it seems to me. Even now, I wonder if any of them has any real motivation to try the no-doubt terrifying-to-them prospect of really questioning their indoctrination, their "faith" the cult, the family cult and the apparent groupthink inside those. Their bubble is pretty big, as bubbles go, and obviously strong. So their delusions get plenty of reinforcement, and it's still true that all they "know" about what's outside the bubble is that it's all satanic and deadly dangerous and your highway straight to hell.

Absolutely. I don't think they could have ever afforded anything in the forefront of even evangelical post-secondary education, really. They had lots more kids coming along behind Anna and had very little earning power. ....Notable, really, that they paid for any kind of a course for her. Even a couple of hundred bucks would have been a lot out of their budget, I'd guess. .... JB and M have had a lot more income and income potential, but aside from some flight training so they can fly around, they haven't ever seemed willing to pay any tuition bills, even small ones. Even when it comes to training in the trades, they seem to just drag the kids to somebody's place of work and have them stand around gawking for a while -- they insist on getting whatever training they get for free. So the Kellers did better by Anna if they bought her any course at all once she'd "graduated" from their home school.

What's always been alleged/reported -- though I've never seen a school name attached to it -- is that in the early 2000s she attended an online Christian school and earned a degree in early childhood education....... Even if that's true, it's not promising. What I've always seen strongly implied is that she did this very soon after she "graduated" from Keller homeschool at age 16. Anna turned 16 in June 2004. So she must have done this in the 2004-2006 time frame. Those were early days for online education -- even in the "best" programs mostly you worked through fill-in-the-blank exercises, as far as I know. Online or off, distance education at that time was a pretty sparse and rote enterprise, in most cases. If it's not a prominent enough fundamentalist Christian school for anybody to even name it.....then its quality is, at best, questionable. And a place like that wouldn't have granted degrees, just certificates recognized only by its own graduates or something. If she had a degree from any place that's accredited by anybody, including the conservative Christian groups, I expect we'd have heard about that; but I've never seen anything naming the school or program. Plus, in real life you don't get a degree in early-childhood education without doing class observation, student teaching and so on......And you certainly didn't do that in an online fundamentalist Christian school in 2005. So whatever it was she did, I doubt most people would actually call it education. It was likely a little rote-learning mini-course in which she read some fundamentalist literature about young children and answered some multiple-choice questions. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's more than most Duggars would do. But beyond that ... nah....

Well, I'm the perpetrator of the ponds thing.... But I didn't say anybody had reported facts about ponds. I was just going off the the one thing we apparently do know from the police's arrival -- that a kid did go wandering away from the house and they didn't know it....... I was just making the comment that there are three or four easily accessible ponds quite near the TTH. There are two ponds that are each about 500 or 600 feet from the house, another one that's maybe about 800 feet away, and another maybe 1000 feet away. So anybody who's wandering around near the TTH is going to be near ponds. That's just a fact of the landscape. And if a kid could walk to any road at all from the house, they could also easily walk far enough to get to a pond. I didn't mean to imply that the kid was found near any ponds. Just that, to me, having not just one but several ponds that close to your house is another really good reason to make sure young kids can't go wandering outside on their own. Plus, I wonder whether the fact that the ponds are there might have something to do with why neighbors/cops/whoever considered it reckless to have a small wandering child in that area and be unaware of it.

A kid who could propel themselves that far was within easy reach of three or four ponds, too. That seems like the kind of potential threat you'd worry about.

My guess is that because of how 2021 is going in the the Duggar clan there was general chaos and mental fog and probably a series of miscues and small messups among two or three people that ended up with this thing -- whatever it was exactly -- happening. One way or another, the stupid mess will probably end up without any huge consequences for Jana while motivating all of them to get their acts together -- even if they only do it because they now fear further "persecution." And on the whole, that'll be a good thing (except for the persecution complex -- but I fear there's nothing anybody can do about that...) The only thing that to me feels unfair is having Jana suddenly showing up all over the media and getting sort of equated with Josh and his issues in some places. Obviously, this is nothing like that and she's nothing like him. I wish that weren't happening to her. But.....it wouldn't be happening much -- or at all -- if JB and M weren't media whores and hadn't gleefully made their family into a media circus. It's too bad that this event comes down on the head of one of the Duggarlings who's stayed away from media and social media to a large extent......But if your family is this nuts and you stay with them into your 30s, this is probably the kind of thing you have to expect. Re: Laura. How the hell any adult not born of JB and M can voluntarily move in with those two creeps and live with them for years -- no matter how "religious" she is -- is completely beyond my comprehension.

And, in fact, you're being generous...... All these young kids now being "educated" -- essentially in isolation from anybody but their relatives -- by uneducated, utterly naive-to-the-world, yet supremely arrogant people is a horrifying picture.

Well, I guess she's going with those who say writing the first one was a mistake. Maybe she's just got an impulse-control problem? You need to be more careful with the social media there, girl.

Although she sometimes says or does what I'd call the right thing, cheap shots are, unfortunately, vintage Amy, as far as I can tell. I don't know why you'd do this. If for no other reason because taking shots in many directions weakens the effectiveness of what you say about the worst things. Nobody cares much about the criticisms of somebody who comes off as an indiscriminate grouch.

If the law stays the way it is now, when Josh is released they'll have to make other schooling arrangements for whatever 17-and-unders remain. But that's six years away at the very least and maybe considerably longer ......... .And it's hard for me to imagine the state making Anna stop homeschooling before then. Allowing people to homeschool under most circumstances is a pretty important principle for a lot of people, especially conservative evangelicals, of which Arkansas has very many.

They do like flying the planes, though, and being able to fly around in lieu of some other tasks that feel more like actual jobs. So I'd bet that at least someone'll be willing. I mean, they can tell themselves they're doing it for Anna and not for Josh, anyway.

The Arkansas homeschool laws have tightened up a tiny bit over the past few years, but they're still extremely loose. They do bar you from homeschooling if a registered sex offender lives in your home (not the case in every state). Basically, the Arkansas laws amount to the state covering its ass by collecting a bunch of statements from homeschooling parents in which the parents agree that, since they're homeschooling, every consequence of the kids' education, good or bad, is entirely the parents' responsibility. You have to send in a form each August stating that you'll be homeschooling kids x, y and z who are ages a, b and c. (or send in a form a few weeks in advance if you decide to start homeschooling mid-year). The homeschooling parents have to affirm that they're wholly responsible for the education of and educational choices made for the children ages 5 through 17 who are being homeschooled, and as long as there is no registered sex offender living in the home, there aren't really any other requirements. The teacher can be literally anyone the parents choose. What that amounts to is that it can, in fact, be noone. You can just plunk them in front of a computer -- or a tv or a trash fire, if you want to -- and tell them to teach themselves. No requirement that parents must do the schooling, tell the state who is doing the schooling, or choose a teacher who meets any requirement whatsoever. No immunizations or anything like that are required. There are no curricular requirements. So there's nothing to file except the annual form listing the kids you intend to homeschool that year, and your address and other contact information. And since the Duggars have been homeschooling for years, somebody probably reminded Anna she needed to do this last summer or filled out the form so all she had to do was sign it, I'd guess.

What an article!

Jeremy does really like to condemn people. In his Laredo sermons, the condemnation is the only place where he really took off in stirring up everybody's emotions. The rest of the time he was boring and sounded as if he was bored himself. And, like a lot of pastors, he carefully limited the things he condemned to "sins" that the people in front of him either feel confident they're personally innocent of -- like being a Catholic or being understanding to two gay people who'd like to marry each other -- or that they don't feel innocent of and actually hate in themselves -- like feeling same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. I think to at least some extent the Josh statement taps into the same vein. It's easy to really lay on the strong rhetoric when it comes to sins and crimes you're not even tempted to commit and that you figure few people reading or hearing you will be tempted to commit either. Ones that most everybody considers beyond the pale -- ones that many of us involuntarily and viscerally recoil from. Jer clearly enjoys strenuously condemning pariahs as sinners, and with pedophiles he's got a group of people who are pariahs for almost everybody. That's not to say that those crimes don't deserve strong condemnation. But it's a million times easier to loudly condemn those than to loudly condemn the many kinds of very wrong things we ourselves may actually be tempted to do. I doubt Jer will ever in his life rev up a really strong condemnation for sins of that kind. Because the audience won't thrill to hear it and he won't thrill to pronounce it. But we can all thrill to loud condemnation of Josh. EMLTA: To see how much Jer likes using very hot negative rhetoric against the sins of pariahs, here's his language from a Laredo sermon about people who call themselves Christians but nevertheless express sympathy and tolerance for gay people's who want to marry. They're destroying society and directly challenging God himself, according to Jer -- Here's some of his language on the topic of people who are false Christians because they're gay-marriage sympathizers, It's kinda garbled rhetoric, and he delivered it with a lot of heat -- "All you have to do is look at the sexual revolution pressuring them, and they cave in to a worldview that rejects God's truth and embraces popular opinion. Do you want to see the gun? Do you want to see the threatening of being burned alive? ... Look at the revolution of popular thought. Look at the postmodernism of today's culture. Look at the sexual revolution. Look at the false idea of tolerance. Look at the false definition of love."

Great points. Jeremy won't ever address them, of course, in my opinion. Or even give it a second's thought, frankly. He likes what this version of religion gives him -- He gets to be a patriarch, tell everybody else how it is and what to do, and run the show -- for a salary! ..... And despite what his statement on Josh sort of suggests about him possibly having concern for children, at least, I've never seem him express or demonstrate any actual empathy whatsoever for anyone who suffers from these or other harms and troubles. So my guess is that he'll never ask about the logic or the fairness of any part of the scheme under which he personally prospers and plans to prosper forever. I suppose that as long as he finds people who are as content as he is with an "I've got mine" religion, he'll be able to preach to them successfully and they won't care about the big questions either.

Indeed. Meechelle's the one who'll be getting a golden crown and a special throne right near Jesus for producing all these grandbabies. The aunt moms get nothing out of the deal except thankless work taking care of them all the time. I doubt the correct Jesus would allow a childless spinster much more than a folding chair down by the laundry in Duggar heaven, no matter how many of those grandbabies she raised.

So Jana must have been watching them at the warehouse encampment? A child Maryella's age would have had a very hard time making it to the road from all the way up at the TTH. But the warehouse is right by the road......and apparently not childproofed, despite its burgeoning tot population? Would Jana have been spending nights there with the M kids too sometimes while Anna was over at the Rebers?

Seems kind of ironic that Duggars are getting picked up for child endangerment now, when the ratio of adults to minors has finally improved a bit. They started operating like a woefully understaffed, utterly non-compliant, totally uncertifiable daycare/grade school/high school combination three decades ago and have been at it nonstop ever since.

Well, Meeechelle and company never said much of a thankful nature to the large number of medical people who worked to save Josie either......It was all "God" "God" "God" "Jesus" Jesus" "Jesus." And, so far, Duggarling spouses seem to have similar approaches to things. Other people don't count for much in their worldviews, it seems. I think they're afraid that God and Jesus will roast them in an eternal firepit if they don't express enough gratitude. Whereas other people don't have access to the endless barbecue and the spit.

So much of the attitudes all the Duggars harbor about these events trace right back to the mythology with which everybody's been ceaselessly indoctrinated over the years (while being deprived of any outside influences that might encourage thought). Even though the IBLP/ATI remnant ostentatiously threw Gothard himself overboard, his "ideas" are what entranced them and held them together for decades. And they're still apparently determined to be a group and charge forward in an attempt to regain their influence. (JB and M wouldn't spend $2.5 million on a building in Branson if they and their longtime buddies didn't have high hopes to reanimate their poisonous crap.) A whole lot of the specific attitudes that have worsened this situation and will continue to make it tough for them to actually grapple with it come straight out of the IBLP/ATI language, which the IBLP/ATI core still embrace.....Like these, from an article whose description of the Duggs/Gothardite rise to media prominence over I quoted at some length over on the "media and TLC" thread (that's what I do 😁 ) -- IMAGINE IF YOU'D HAD THIS LINE HAMMERED INTO YOU AT THE SOTDRT, WHEN YOU'D BEEN MOLESTED/ASSAULTED AND HADN'T CRIED OUT -- Gothard’s philosophy on sexual assault is detailed explicitly in his publications, including in the Wisdom Booklets. When a woman is attacked, one booklet reads, “She is to cry out for help. The victim who fails to do this is equally guilty with the attacker.” [OF COURSE, IF YOU DO CRY OUT YOUR WHOLE FAMILY WILL ETERNALLY BRAND YOU A FAMILY-DESTROYING SNITCH...SO....TOUGH CHOICE HERE] WHAT ANNA WOULD REALLY BE DOING IF SHE CONTEMPLATED DIVORCE -- Gothard has written extensively about the grounds for divorce, which in his view is almost always impermissible. As IBLP lays out in detail in Wisdom Booklet No. 26, “To allow for divorce and/or remarriage in the case of marital unfaithfulness” is the same as destroying Christ’s relationship with the Church, and the believer’s relationship with the law. WHY TURNING A BLIND EYE TO DICEY MALE BEHAVIOR IS SOP -- While working closely with Gothard there for the next three years, Leigh said he subjected her to “holding hands, playing footsies, stroking the hair and that type of unwanted physical affection.” At the time, she was in her early twenties and he was in his seventies. She said she traveled frequently with Gothard, including on a visit to the Duggar home in 2006, where he held her hand in the presence of Jim Bob and his daughter Jill. WHY BLAME OF WOMEN AND FAILURE TO REPORT ARE SOP -- Leigh had been raped as a child, and Gothard “counseled” her personally about it. “He told me the sin—the pain I felt in my heart over the years—was because of my sin in it,” she said. “So he had me confess my sin for being raped as a child.” ..“I would help him counsel girls who had been sexually abused by family members,” she said. “That was not an uncommon thing. He would counsel them with that [same] material, he would immediately send them home and never report the offenders [to authorities].” Mark said he knew others who had received that same “counseling,” including a girl who had been raped by her uncle when she was five.. THE "CURIOSITY" LINE CAME STRAIGHT FROM GOTHARD -- Robert Norvell, who ran an IBLP training center in Eagle Mountain, Arkansas, for 12 years, said the Duggars had contacted him in 2003 about sending Josh to his facility. Jim Bob “just told me that Josh was having some struggles and just wondered if I could take him for a while,” but he turned them down because his facility was full. Norvell said he did not know about the sexual abuse until the May 2015 In Touch report. But he dismissed the abuse as insignificant, pointing to Gothard’s teachings. “What you’re hearing about Josh is a stupid thing that a little boy did,” Norvell said. “In the seminar, Bill [Gothard] calls it a natural curiosity. Had it been as traumatic as they make it out to be, the sisters would have been bitter, and the sisters are not bitter. I know the whole family.” A POSSIBLE FACTUAL BASIS FOR THE PICKLES ST. PAUL STORY? OR A SOURCE FOR ITS HOAXER/FABRICATOR? In her family, Gothard “was revered as this person who could not mess up, almost like a saint or a god,” said Joy Stillwell Simmons, now 39, who was part of ATI from the time she was eight until she was 29. “My mom would refer to him as a modern day Apostle Paul.” More here, if you're interested.-https://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/josh-duggar-bill-gothard-institute-in-basic-life-principles

There are stories about this virtually everywhere. (and there'll be another big event to cover -- the sentence!)....So a real piece of good news, to me, is that, for a while at least, it may be just a little harder to promote their kind of legalistic, patriarchal "faith" as something good for you and your family. Here's a long recap of the whole Duggars-come-to-prominence-and-bring-this-guy-named-Bill-Gothard-with-them story, in case anybody wants a memory refresher. Some interesting deets. (This is an expansion and slight rewrite of a piece from a few years ago -- which many folks here probably read -- republished this morning) EXCERPTS: HOW THEY GOT ON TV: In September 2003, just two months after Josh had returned from IBLP’s Little Rock Training Center, Michelle wrote an article for the widely read magazine Parents. Duggar’s piece described how her 16-person family managed their oversized brood—a buddy system, two deep freezers, a door-sized family activity schedule. She also emphasized their evangelical faith. Homeschooling, Duggar wrote, is “the best way to teach our Christian values.” The curriculum they chose, which Duggar did not identify by name, “emphasizes character—honesty, integrity, initiative, and responsibility.” That article caught the eye of Eileen O’Neill, a Discovery executive the Hollywood broadsheet Variety has credited with having “turned TLC into a powerhouse.” “I had just about finished my maternity leave and was reading, you know, [a] Working Mom magazine-type article,” O’Neill told Television Week in a 2009 interview. O’Neill, who announced her departure from Discovery Communications in February and did not respond to TPM’s interview requests [GEE, I WONDER WHY], saw something special in “Michelle Duggar, who I think at that point had had 15 children, and we decided to do a one-up” (a one-time television special). GOTHARD, WOMEN, AND ST. PAUL (WHICH I FEAR MAY LEND A BIT OF CREDENCE TO THAT PICKLES STORY) -- Bill Gothard actively discouraged women from working outside the home. Women who finished his ATI curriculum were often encouraged to go work for him at IBLP—where sources who spoke to TPM described unrelenting and humiliating work conditions, often uncompensated. Since 2012, more than 30 women have come forward with allegations that Gothard subjected them to sexual harassment while working at IBLP over the years. For one woman, that harassment allegedly included Gothard’s own version of “counseling” for a childhood rape. One former follower describes Gothard as a “very motivational speaker” who, some former followers would later allege, was also a micromanaging, controlling ideologue. Now 87 and never married, Gothard founded IBLP in 1961 in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois, near where he still lives. During the burgeoning culture wars, he captured the attention of conservative Christians who feared the secular world would tempt and despoil their children. Because he “used the Bible’s words in ways people hadn’t heard before,” said one former follower, “they thought it was revolutionary. They thought this was God’s will or God’s way to show them where they had been wrong for years.” In her family, Gothard “was revered as this person who could not mess up, almost like a saint or a god,” said Joy Stillwell Simmons, now 39, who was part of ATI from the time she was eight until she was 29. “My mom would refer to him as a modern day Apostle Paul.” SOME OTHER TIDBITS ... IMAGINE WHAT THIS GOTHARD LINE DID TO THE DUGGAR SISTERS -- Gothard’s philosophy on sexual assault is detailed explicitly in his publications, including in the Wisdom Booklets. When a woman is attacked, one booklet reads, “She is to cry out for help. The victim who fails to do this is equally guilty with the attacker.” [OF COURSE, IF YOU DO CRY OUT YOUR WHOLE FAMILY WILL ETERNALLY BRAND YOU A FAMILY-DESTROYING SNITCH...SO....TOUGH CHOICE HERE] GOTHARD REASON FOR OPPOSING DIVORCE -- Gothard has written extensively about the grounds for divorce, which in his view is almost always impermissible. As IBLP lays out in detail in Wisdom Booklet No. 26, “To allow for divorce and/or remarriage in the case of marital unfaithfulness” is the same as destroying Christ’s relationship with the Church, and the believer’s relationship with the law. EDUCATION! NOT! -- Gothard enticed followers with promises that his teachings would lead to great knowledge and achievement. ATI, Gothard has written, “was designed to train up world changers,” the heart of a grandiose vision that many former followers say intrigued them—at first. Gothard actively discouraged his followers from attending public school, college, or even medical school, instead urging them to address medical issues on a “spiritual level.” GOTHARD FLAUNTS HIS SICK RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUNG WOMEN -- While working closely with Gothard there for the next three years, Leigh said he subjected her to “holding hands, playing footsies, stroking the hair and that type of unwanted physical affection.” At the time, she was in her early twenties and he was in his seventies. She said she traveled frequently with Gothard, including on a visit to the Duggar home in 2006, where he held her hand in the presence of Jim Bob and his daughter Jill. ALWAYS THE FEMALE's FAULT AND NEVER EVER "REPORT" -- Leigh had been raped as a child, and Gothard “counseled” her personally about it. The “counseling,” she said, consisted of blaming her for being raped because she wasn’t wearing modest clothing, had “lustful thoughts,” and “didn’t cry out to God” to stop her rapist. “He told me the sin—the pain I felt in my heart over the years—was because of my sin in it,” she said. “So he had me confess my sin for being raped as a child.” “We just trusted him, I guess,” Leigh continued. “He would listen to my story, get physically close, get me to try to cry into his chest.” That made her uncomfortable, she said, but she “grew up believing he was infallible.”...“I would help him counsel girls who had been sexually abused by family members,” she said. “That was not an uncommon thing. He would counsel them with that [same] material, he would immediately send them home and never report the offenders [to authorities].” Mark said he knew others who had received that same “counseling,” including a girl who had been raped by her uncle when she was five.. THE DUGGS WERE THE GOTHARD RECRUITMENT DEPARTMENT IN THE 21st CENTURY -- Yet in Discovery and TLC’s hands, the Duggars became the sanitized poster children for this insular, authoritarian, and increasingly discredited religious sect, packaged as innocuous for a mass television audience. And IBLP used the Duggars’ fame to promote its teachings. The Duggars, said Leigh, were Gothard’s “model ATI family,” and were “held up as ideal in the IBLP world.” In the 2000s, 'IBLP enrollments were loyal viewers who’d been inspired by the show, according to Leigh, who has discussed the matter with recent staffers at IBLP headquarters. As depicted by TLC, the Duggars were a loving, virtuous family—and their biggest fans wanted to know their secret....."They were joining because they had seen the Duggars on TV and wanted to live like them.”' THE "CURIOSITY" LINE CAME STRAIGHT FROM GOTHARD -- Robert Norvell, who ran an IBLP training center in Eagle Mountain, Arkansas, for 12 years, said the Duggars had contacted him in 2003 about sending Josh to his facility. Jim Bob “just told me that Josh was having some struggles and just wondered if I could take him for a while,” but he turned them down because his facility was full. Norvell said he did not know about the sexual abuse until the May 2015 In Touch report. But he dismissed the abuse as insignificant, pointing to Gothard’s teachings. “What you’re hearing about Josh is a stupid thing that a little boy did,” Norvell said. “In the seminar, Bill [Gothard] calls it a natural curiosity. Had it been as traumatic as they make it out to be, the sisters would have been bitter, and the sisters are not bitter. I know the whole family.” AND THERE's MORE -- quite a bit more, actually, especially if you want to know more about Gothard and IBLP -- Here --https://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/josh-duggar-bill-gothard-institute-in-basic-life-principles

Maybe their communications consultants are on vacation. 😁 The thing is, I suppose they "have" to say something, by convention or something......But it's fine with me if they don't. I don't think anybody has to make a public statement about something like this...... I certainly don't consider these two public figures that we expect to -- I don't know -- account for their views so we know how to judge them or lead the way in stating a response or whatever..... And I don't think people's relatives have to say anything, whether they're "public figures" or not......I don't see any reason why I should know how they're responding. And if I were Jinger, I expect my feelings would be pretty tangled.......

I read the post, and I really hope it's a hallucination or fabrication or just anxiety-driven hyperbole or something........Could be any of those things coming from the PIckles page, iI think. However, I've felt several things Jim Bob's done and said lately could show him becoming a bit unhinged by how his life is going. And if that's true, the post may be true, too ....... I already assumed Meechelle didn't show up at all in court because they know she's too close to unhinged to be trusted in that setting. And if JB is losing his grip a bit too, that's really depressing with a bunch of minor kids still in the house.....especially if some of the older siblings possibly become more distanced from it, which the strains of these events may easily trigger, even if the Pickles post is completely untrue.... Yet another reason why having 20 kids is a lousy thing for the 20 kids......

A tweet that makes me laugh: Gillian Branstetter: "Please use his full name--former Family Research Council Action Executive Director and FRC Board Member Josh Duggar"

I think you're very likely to be right! But I also think -- and have seen evidence to prove -- that we don't ever know how capable anybody is of change until they're dead. So I always hold out some hope!