Churchhoney

True that. Unfortunately, much of the nation takes them for reporters. And I expect that many of them believe that themselves, actually.

Just for background, here are a few new Homeschoolers Anonymous posts related to the usual question -- "Why don't they just leave?" They're heartbreaking, although both these women finally did get out. Sheds light on the toxic interweaving of the sick-family dynamic mixed with the sick-cult dynamic, something that's clearly at play in the Duggars-of-Gothard empire: http://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2016/03/14/fighting-for-hope-elliott-grace-harveys-story-part-one/ Something I find amusing about the three groups I was in is each of them had their own, “Here’s why we’re not a cult” speech. Reminds me of a proverb in the christian bible, “The wicked flee when none pursue.” Here are a few of the signs of a cult shared among all three groups: ● The leaders are always right; hierarchical and authoritarian power structure. ● Use of guilt, shame, and excommunication to manipulate and silence group members. ● Suppression of dissent, you must change your beliefs to conform to the group’s beliefs. ● Newcomers need fixing, the leaders believe they are entitled to know everything about you personally. ● Black and white thinking, contradictory messages, group specific language. ● Insistence that this group holds the source of truth; unquestionable dogma. ● Elitist and isolationist; denigrating other religious groups, and personal attacks on critics. http://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2016/03/15/fighting-for-hope-elliott-grace-harveys-story-part-two/ – I’m so tired. Confused. Lonely. Lost. Down. I feel like the truth I’m looking for is somewhere staring me in the nose and I just can’t see it. I wish… I even just knew what I was looking for. – So supposedly dad is bringing a complaint against me to the church. This is going to be a big ugly mess. – I’ve never felt like I really could be myself or belonged anywhere but my family. Now I don’t even have that. – I didn’t know I wanted someone who would stick with me even if I wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t perfect. Maybe there’s a person out there who could love me for me, but why not a christian? Is there such a person? Someone I could trust that much? I’m just so tired. Tired of this place. http://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2016/03/16/fighting-for-hope-elliott-grace-harveys-story-conclusion/ Mars Hill Church, though a cult, was my gateway drug to separating myself from IBLP and OPC. The act of attending a church with different beliefs was radical in and of itself.... I say my past doesn’t matter that much, that I love my family and that’s all that matters. I want it to be true, but it has directed my whole life. I never want to feel like that again. I suppose that leaves me here, believing that no one on this earth will love me more than my daddy does. Desperately holding onto it. And so so lost in the reality of the life that we had. But. As long as nothing else is better. As long every other relationship I have is worse, as long as no one measures up, I can keep believing it. I don’t have to let go. I don’t have to acknowledge, truly to myself, that it’s not all in my head. That I’m not just misinformed, that it’s not my skewed perspective. This is where the lines become so clouded that I have no idea what’s even close to true. One is so ingrained that I think (I know) I’m lying to myself to say anything else.... On the Homeschoolers Anonymous website, I poured over dozens of stories from other homeschooled kids that were carbon copies of my family, I could have written them myself. Recovering Grace detailed the dangers of IBLP, and shared stories from others that were involved in the cult. I consumed everything I could find. “I’m not the only one. I’m not crazy.” Over and over those words played in my mind. I started realizing the truth of what my family and these groups were, and calling it for what it was. http://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2016/03/17/leaving-before-you-are-ready-ajs-story/ How easy is it to leave a cult? For me personally, the answer is “not very.” I pay close attention to the stories of those who have left a religious cult. I admit I am a little envious of the females who made their escape from their family’s cult by marrying a man who whisked them away from it all. I wish I had that ticket available back then. It wasn’t available to me because I was terrified of men. I was especially afraid of Christian men because of the religious Christian monster my father was. And I was also scared of the so called secular, worldly men because linking up with them meant my life would be cursed with demons attacking me, and my family would cut me off. Also, there was that unspoken threat circulating in the underground Christin dating advice columns and pastor’s sermons where the non Christian man is guaranteed to cheat on you and leave you. If he doesn’t first rob a bank, then become a mass murderer. Because, gasp, that’s what people do who don’t fear God.... So I knew from a young age that my escape was not going to be through a man. There would be no prince on a stallion. My sisters didn’t escape with the help of a man or marriage, either. They were about as gun shy of men as I was. So how did we get out? Well, we couldn’t just leave. It seems so easy, right? Just walk out of the door. But if we moved out of the house, God would allow Satan to attack us, destroying our physical health, mental health, finances, future career, and future relationships and marriage.... I can’t even begin to explore what would have happened if I had stayed in my parents’ house instead of leaving with my siblings during the intervention. I think it would have been an incredibly dark experience. I do know that once I started living on my own, I began to experience happiness. I did forget the horrors of the cult. I think I can honestly say that I was happy on my own. Especially when I was geographically far away from my family.... And then it hit. I was 33 and a half. The PTSD knocked me blindside, and everything fell apart. My health fell apart, even though I struggled for a year to keep myself together. I had to eventually give up my teaching career. Well, I put in for a year’s leave of absence, but my health wouldn’t allow me to go back after that year was up. I had to give up my apartment, my boyfriend left me, acquaintances disappeared, and I didn’t really have friends… the only thing I had left was my family. I had literally forgotten how strange and cruel they were.... I went back into the cult.

Because although they claim to be just a (conservative, faith-focused) family that happens to be on tv (and not a tv family) what they really are is a (particularly lame-ass) example of a "tv family," cast in the same contemporary sex- and possession-focused mold as all the other "reality tv stars"? Never saw that fact in such high relief before until reading your post just now. Everything they do screams out "we're a reality-tv family" (and an especially boring and unaccomplished one, too) at the same time as they -- and, strangely, to me, their many fans -- scream out that they're so not and that their focus is entirely different, and edifying for the nation in these degenerate days. Not hardly.

30 minutes??! I hope you have very stable blood pressure! I just read about five comments and I can feel mine rising -- had to quit! The cluelessness of these people about the Duggars has to extend to their own lives, too, and every other judgment they make. Terrifying to think how many kids besides the Duggar 19 are exposed to this bullshit.

HSLDA does a ton of disservice to the many many great homeschoolers. Unfortunately, like JB and M, they have a fanbase of the misguided and easily scared, I guess.

This is one case where they're constrained by the law, I guess. The only real requirement for homeschooling parents in Arkansas is that you pretend to care about school until the kids are 17.

Well, I seem to recall that she only cooked once a month -- or less! -- before Spurge emerged or even entered her womb. So I don't think she can use him as her excuse. Sorry. No can do. They did publish it. Major malpractice on their part. True. Of course, I'd add that she's got little to work with besides a dolt husband, mousey sisters and her generally unpleasant and unintelligent, very boring self. No wonder she's always letting out the nervous laugh that's been reported. Bears repeating. This, as I guess I've repeated too often, is my big issue with the whole thing, too. They're being trained on a daily basis by their tv roles to falsify their entire lives for a purpose not their own. That's inevitably damaging, and it's got to be more so for people who have also been trained to falsify themselves for a cult. Not good for them. Not good at all.

Oy. I guess it's easy to just see what you wanna see. How People's "reporters" can hold up their heads after writing this crap is a whole other question.

Do the lhs ever specify what these jobs are?

Maybe they figured that failing to call him Spurgeon (or some variation thereof) would be letting the haters win?

I want to think that. But then I remember that these are the Duggars. And I think about those birthday messages and birthday signs. And I remember that they picked up their cooking skills and standards from their parents. So they probably picked up their project skills there, too.

I wish I thought Jim Bob were smart enough to know who the guy is, let alone have an opinion on his ideas! Cause I'd kind of love Bin taking some kind of revenge. Maybe JB suggested naming the kid after Gothard. Not Bill, just "Gothard" .... or "Gothard Spurgeon." And then Bin said, "Oh, no, that's a ridiculous name!"

With all those kids, though, you'd think they would have figured out that you don't necessarily have to peel them. My family just "boiled them in the jackets," as my grandmother used to say, and then chopped and mashed them up, adding a little milk, butter, yogurt, chives or whatever you have, as needed, for softening and added flavor. Then you get the added benefit of the nutrients in and under the skin. Hard to see why anybody can't figure out how to mash a potato. The apes figure out how to mash fruits and vegetables to eat them.

And I'd put big money on a bet that what she "learned to cook" was the add-water-and-oil-to-the-mix, bring it to a boil, then simmer box of Near East couscous. Not that that isn't good and a pretty real food for them to serve. But Jessa making it without the premixed package? Or adding meat, vegetables, nuts, etc., to it to make it a full meal, experimenting with things to add to keep it interesting and maybe turn that box into several good meals you can whip up easily? Naaaa. Or watch the Disney movie. Somehow I'd bet that the actual Milne would be too much for them, in a literary way. I really can't see them actually reading something that British and poetic. I don't think they'd get it or be able to follow it, even, given how literal they seem to be.

It shows you what her standards for food are, though. Just as we've always noted that their educational standards will only go downhill generation by generation as each group is educated by a less educated person, apparently their food standards will do the same. Amazing, as almost everybody else in the universe raises their standards as the generations go on.

Because this is the only story line they have? Seriously. And yet 1.9 million people watched it. So there's that. To be fair, I remember reading about one change-of-pace episode in which Jill made a big deal about cooking for a small number of people.

Well, let's just hope that one day some of them get a clue and study for the test and pass it on their own. There's no time limit, so the test will still be there if anybody's eyes actually open. And there are prep classes and so on. I know that the female Duggs expect to be supported by someone else (although it turns out that, after marriage, they seem to do their damnedest to prevent their husbands from holding down jobs). But I don't know how Joseph, Josiah, etc., could expect to support their future families without some credential for employment. I'm hoping this thought's at least in the back of some of their minds. ... Well, honestly, I'm really hoping that some of them have secret plans in this regard. Only secret plans that have turned up so far are Josh's though, so they'll probably disappoint me.

No "seems" about it, in my opinion. Pretty much the whole purpose of this "religion" is protection of insecure patriarchs, I'd say. The way you describe the oddity of it is right on the money, I think.

In Arkansas, homeschooled kids with special-ed needs can receive the same level of services that the public schools offer to eligible private-school students under the IDEA -- which is to say, close to the same way it works in public schools but not 100 percent. HSLDA advises against accepting any of these publicly funded services, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Gothard-education-machine agrees with that. Here's HSLDA's statement -- "Note: HSLDA believes that with receiving government funds, certain freedom and privacy is lost. Each homeschooler should weigh the cost against the benefit he or she would receive from accepting public school services. To enable families to not feel obligated to take government support for their special education students, HSLDA has established a private fund through the Home School Foundation that makes support available." https://www.hslda.org/strugglinglearner/sn_states.asp

He apparently likes this particular little control trick, since there's more than one story of his demanding breakfast at the last minute when the family needed to be doing something else. This is the kind of thing that makes me sure he's a malignant, control-freak narcissist. People with that personality type, in my experience, absolutely adore and crave the power they feel when they break into something of importance to another person with their demands and they've amassed enough power in the relationship, one way or another, to make the other person jump when it's the last thing that person wants to do or should do. I've seen that trick pulled in my family way too many times to count, and when you're in the situation you can see the absolute ecstasy they get out of doing it. And they become experts at knowing the very worst time to make their demands, too, as well as the exact right strings to pull to make the victim either do what they want and lose something that matters to them as a result or, occasionally, explode into an impotent rage that the narcissist will then turn into an even bigger problem for the mark. Somebody with JB's personality plays others like a cat with a mouse. It's even more horrible when you watch it close up. He's nowhere near a normal human being, in my opinion. He's a huge sick freak. And of course he also managed to dig up a cult leader who taught him how to couch his malignant behavior in fucking theology. It's sickening.

So did the Duggars. The female Duggars that is. And they started without assistance. ; ) Apparently doing laundry hampers your ability to hold up that big umbrella.

Yeah, they're certainly nothing if not passive aggressive. The whole gang of them. Not surprising when you remember that their first principle is truth suppression, I guess.

They had them do those annual tests because the state required them as a means of collecting data on their home school population. The idea of crappy Michelle pretending that this was some initiative of their own to check up on anybody's learning is just more Duggar lies. And even though the state required them, the state never recorded the scores for individual students (or not within recent memory, anyway -- don't know how long that was in home schooling law). Parents were given the kids' individual scores so they could see the kids' progress or lack of it and revise their methods accordingly (although state offices did not receive those scores). But it's pretty obvious from some of the math work we've observed with the various howlers that these particular parents didn't really give a fig about whether the kids were up to snuff or not.

Well, the thing is that Arkansas has an extremely loose homeschool law, with no course requirements, no records, no transcripts, no qualifications for the parent (or parent-appointed teacher), etc. You do have to attest to the kids' being in school through age 17, and you're supposed to describe the qualifications of whoever is the teacher -- although there are no requirements for what those qualifications must be. And the state has wanted periodic achievement tests -- but for data only, and the state has not collected the data for individual students, only in the aggregate. So in Arkansas, the only way they could have done the kind of thing you're talking about is to hook up with some other school or group, such as a private online school or a homeschoolers coop or something. The state doesn't accept transcripts or the like from homeschoolers. Unlike in some other states, there's no such thing as being a qualified or an unqualified homeschooler and no such thing as submitting your homeschool record anywhere for any kind of qualification. They would have had to hook up with another group or school of some kind. And maybe they did do that, for the reason you state. As you say, Jessa's being a girl would certainly argue to them that they shouldn't do it! That's actually no longer true either. In 2007 they passed a law that changed the rule. Home schools previously had to be "conducted" by parents, but beginning in 2007, they could be only "provided" by parents or guardians. So parents became free to hire whatever teachers they wanted and no longer have to do it themselves. (In many cases, though, including this one, this change may well be an improvement. I can't imagine anyone worse as a teacher than totally out-of-it do-not-care Michelle.) Here's the law -- http://www.arkansased.gov/public/userfiles/Learning_Services/Charter%20and%20Home%20School/Home%20School-Division%20of%20Learning%20Services/Home%20School-%20act_824_2007.pdf

Yeah, I know that you have a real one -- just as you do in a private school. But under that definition, all or at least most of the Duggar kids have real diplomas -- real homeschool diplomas, because it seems to me they've had a graduation for pretty much each kid, haven't they? So, yes, she, like all??? (or at least most) of her 18-and-over siblings has a real diploma (homeschool variety) granted under Arkansas law, just the way every kid who graduated from any Arkansas private school has a real diploma from that school. In Arkansas, however, the homeschool diploma carries no requirements at all for course completion or hours of study or whatever and while homeschooled students take tests periodically, the tests are used for data purposes only and individual scores are never reported to or recorded by the state. So ... that's why I suspect that when people talk about Jessa being "the only one with a real high school diploma" they take that to mean not the Duggar homeschool diploma but a public-sector-awarded state diploma, which does have certain requirements. What I was trying to explain was that under Arkansas law Jessa can't have that kind of diploma (and to explain what other kinds she might have instead that would have requirements beyond Michelle's requirements.) The confusing point is why they would have said that Jessa is the only one to have a high school diploma -- when it seems that they've pretty much had a graduation ceremony for every kid. What, exactly, would Jessa have done that the other Duggar kids wouldn't have done, to get that "only" designation? Why would they -- and how could they -- have educated her at home in a different way or to a different standard than all the other kids? If she's indeed the "only" holder of a certain kind of diploma, seems to me she had to get it from some source other than the Duggar homeschool (or beyond the Duggar homeschool, such as some kind of homeschool cooperative or something), but that source couldn't be the state itself.