Churchhoney

I think this is why he should make public apologies. Unfortunately, what I've seen of the Duggars makes me wonder whether he isn't making public apologies instead because he is a tv stah and a hot celeb with a big following...and because Jim Bob and Michelle told him to get his ass into apologizing gear so they can all get their tv show back. .... I hope that's wrong and that he's thinking about how he misled people about his own lack of ethical and moral standing to call everybody else out out on ethics and morals and how that's a disservice to his conservative followers and to voters generally, and so on. ... But I find it's really hard -- nearly impossible -- to actually think of stupid, smug, shallow, ignorant, selfish Josh Duggar, of the all-famewhoring-all-the-time Duggar clan, actually thinking in these terms at all. They think of their adoring celebrity-loving public and they think of [the] Jesus [of their imaginations]. But I just can't get my brain around a Duggar, and maybe even Josh in particular, thinking in terms of public and civic responsibility. I'd be surprised if thoughts and attitudes of that nature ever entered any of their heads. I hope that I'm wrong.

I'm really wondering about that Gothard mothers-and-daughters conference in Indiana that Michelle, Jinger and Jana were all scheduled to speak at. It ran from Wednesday through Saturday of last week. I can't imagine that they went. But then by the time all this came down, it may have actually been under way. They wouldn't have had much, if any, notice to cancel, I would think.

Well, at least it would put one Duggar kid many many miles from mom and dad. That might be one way to provide some perspective. Can't say it'll do much for anyone in El Salvador. But it might help Jill get a clue of some kind. (or not, of course....She is a Duggar.)

Absolutely. There's no black and white to these things anyway. For me, the great thing about discussing these things with a lot of very bright people -- as happens here! -- is that we all bring different lenses from our own experiences and see different shades and aspects of what may be going on. Agreeing to disagree is the only way to go. (although hard sometimes, since most of us seem to have really strong feelings and opinions about all of this!)

Figured out what really bugs me about this picture. Here are all these kids, and according to their parents, they're out of school and on the "employed" list now. But they've never studied Spanish or French, or world literature or history. Chemistry, biology, trigonometry, statistics, computer science. They've never run cross country or played intramural basketball. Never tried out for the baseball team or the elite jazz choir and failed to make it. Never made the group, worked for months to perfect something, and went to the county championship and won. They've never chosen a friend who wasn't introduced to them by their father because the friend's family is exactly like their family. They've never sat in classes discussing history or books with people who have completely different beliefs and backgrounds. They've never taken a class because it was something they wanted to study or chosen an activity because they really wanted to try it. Haven't had best friends and fought with them or lost them to moving or best friends who they resonate with immediately and think'll be friends for life. Haven't had teachers that they love and get inspired by and other teachers that they can't stand but have to try to get along with. They haven't gone to dances or to parties at a friend's house that got out of hand. They've never been crazy to earn money for a game system or a car and tried to get part time jobs on their own to afford it. They've never made a friend who shared their most rebellious ideas and started writing angry poetry late at night and sending bitter letters to the editor about their own personal convictions to the local newspaper. They've never met a bunch of kids from completely different neighborhoods and formed a band that tried to play cutting-edge music. They've never had three huge crushes in a row on girls who sat next to them in class. Never gotten a part-time job and then enraged the boss by being late three days in a row. They've never been asked by their homeschooling parents just what subjects they wanted to study and just how far they want to go in school ... They've never done any of these things or hundreds more that form your intellect, your emotional life, your memories, your ambitions. And they never will. I was a completely isolated kid and never got to do any of the friend stuff either, but at least I got to take courses in all kinds of subjects, meet all kinds of teachers and talk to kids from different backgrounds in my classes. Even with all that, though, I came out of it horribly stunted. And they've totally missed even what I got. Depressing. ETA: Okay, just noticed that others have said this before and better! ... Anyway, what a mess. Poor kids. And it seems as if they may not even realize what they're missing. They're set up for a very bumpy ride through life, I fear.

Well, she got that right. It's like she was clairvoyant or something.

Love it. I'd watch this show too. And I didn't watch the other one.

I really agree with this. It's appropriate when you're dealing with kids to dole out responsibility to them slowly, while blocking their opportunities to get into some kinds of trouble until they're a bit older. But I don't consider that an adult's proper role with another adult. Sure, I'm happy for a little bit of adult-to-adult accountability stuff, in which you help a spouse or friend or they help you by checking up on one specific issue, like procrastination or getting to bed on time or something. But to put yourself in the position of essentially having to raise an adult partner who apparently can't handle any kind of responsibility or restraint? No thanks. I'd tell Josh that he could move into his own place, get a therapist and work toward being a responsible adult on his own. And when he's learned it, then maybe he could come back.

Sorry about the hackers confusion. That was a joke. Of course they weren't in collusion with the hackers. But having listened to the sermon, it was not in any way a sermon about Josh and Anna Duggar, in my opinion. Cheating on a spouse was mentioned in it, because it was literally a sermon listing every single thing that conservative Christians consider a sexual sin. And he said that God wants both members of a couple to be careful to meet their partners' needs for sex and love, lest those partners stray. As I recall, he explicitly mentioned both male and female partners as the potential strayers, so the cheated-upon person could have as easily been a man as a woman, given the way I remember him putting it. However, he went on at far greater length about the person who actually does the cheating (or otherwise has sex outside of a marriage), calling what they do sin and immorality and saying that none of the things that people use as excuses are valid. The cheaters were called immoral sinners with no excuse. He ran through a bunch of excuses people use -- like Don't I have the right to be happy? Don't I have the right to get my needs met? And he said, No, you don't if it means you're cheating or having a sexual relationship outside of marriage. So, while partners (and he didn't actually say wives) were told that God wants them to be sexual and loving toward their spouses because it makes their partners less likely to cheat, he also said that not getting your needs met does not excuse cheating. Now, like a lot of people, I do have a problem with his saying anything at all about what the non-cheating partner should have done. Seems to me that it assumes people mainly cheat because their partners aren't assuaging their sexual desires. And I'd bet that maybe 10 to 15 percent of cheating happens solely for that reason, and the other 85 to 90 percent happens wholly or in large part for all kinds of other reasons. So mentioning it vastly oversimplifies cheating and thus ends up making people feel guilty for stuff that they never ever could have prevented, no matter what they did. So, yeah, I don't agree with that. Nevertheless, I honestly don't know why anybody who listened to this sermon would ever think it presented some kind of message on Josh and Anna Duggar. It discussed a good dozen or more sexual issues. If the Ashley Madison thing hadn't happened this week, he could have given the exact same sermon and it's possible no one would even have noticed the cheating section. It laid out pretty much the entire gamut of conservative Christian views of sex and sexual morality. And that worldview is male-centric as well as anti-LGBT. And it does boil a lot of things down to sex that probably shouldn't be boiled down to sex (in my opinion) -- such as the idea that meeting your spouse's sexual needs is a recipe for keeping your partner faithful. So to the extent that one considers that worldview and those ideas to be hypocritical, then it's a hypocritical sermon. But was it a hypocritical sermon that subliminally told us we should excuse Josh Duggar while side-eyeing Anna Duggar with blame, as Perez Hilton and a bunch of people on social media have been saying for the past couple days? I didn't hear anything that suggested that was even #117 on the list of the pastor's intentions. And obviously some people listened to the sermon and got the impression that it was about the Duggars. But I haven't run across any accounts from people who say they actually listened to it yet, so I don't know what the full arguments for that are.

Well, it's not like the sermon actually mentioned Anna or Josh. And if you had planned the first in a series of five sermons on sex, and that first sermon had been scheduled for a Sunday that -- quite coincidentally, unless we believe that the Ashley Madison hackers were somehow in cahoots with Cross Church -- immediately followed a big sex news story like the AM hack, how could you possibly give that sermon without at least mentioning the Ashley Madison cheating issue? Obviously you couldn't. And as for Derick publicizing it -- Well, he knew there was a sex problem in Jill's family and he also knew there was a sermon at his church that day on sex.The sex series has been long publicized as their fall kick-off, which so many churches do to get people back into the pews when summer vacation is over. And I suppose this pastor knows that sex sells and gets bodies in seats. Anyway, so Derick publicized the live feed of a sermon on sex in his church, a church that he obviously likes and probably would like to suck up to. But just like I can't believe that Cross Church was in cahoots with the hackers on the timing, (ha!), I can't believe that they were somehow in cahoots with Derick on the timing or whatever. How important is Derick in their scheme of things? How important are the Duggars in their scheme of things? I suspect not very, in either case. And Cross Church gets a whole lot of publicity on its own, and hardly needs little two-bit Derick somehow pushing it. So I don't see what kind of plan there would have been, from either the church or from Derick, to somehow promote the Duggar view of things or indeed make any particular comment on the Duggars, pro or con.. (Cause I guess this is what you're suspecting?) .... Anyway, I don't know why a Southern Baptist church that isn't currently in the middle of any scandal would have the slightest desire to call attention to or promote anything about the Duggars' situation or their view of anything. Why would they? I don't see how either promoting the Duggars or bashing the Duggars would help them at all. I would think that distancing themselves from the Duggars would be their main aim, really. And did you listen to the sermon? I was curious so I did (although I had it in the background as I was doing other things, so I'm sure I missed stuff) but it in no way focused on this include-the-cheated-on-partner-in-the-blame thing. Yeah, that was in there. But, in my opinion, really only to the degree that that's something said in pretty much every conservative Christian commentary on infidelity that I've ever heard. The sermon was clearly the opening to a series, because it was basically a summary of all the topics you'd expect a conservative church in today's hey-let's-be-misogynistic-even-outside-of-Mars-Hill environment to touch on. He gave stats about how many people are unfaithful (physically and emotionally, of course), how long affairs typically last, how many cohabiting couples break up without marrying or after marriage, why gender identity is fixed-by-God-God-damn-it-and-not-fluid-a-bit, how cheating harms you and your family and everybody, how it's important to dress modestly, how porn is wrong and incest is wrong and how people of any age or gender or whatever can commit these sins yada yada yada yada yada. It was a clearly a "tell-em-what-you're-gonna-tell-em-in-the-next-four-sermons" type speech and it touched on all the current conservative sex hot buttons. And then it had the expected section on how people should interact sexually in a marriage. But, again, it didn't really focus on the part that the news media and social media are focusing on because it could point to Anna -- the part that obliquely includes the cheated-on partner in the blame by saying that if you don't give your partner what your partner needs and craves then that person is probably going to get that from someone else. Yeah, that was said -- he said a lot of stuff about giving yourself over to your spouse completely, for sex, for love, etc. And that if you didn't, you could expect trouble of some kind. But he also did what I expect to hear from churches trying to act mainstream today -- he couched a whole lot of it, maybe most of it, in non-gender-specific language, and made a point of saying that men should give themselves over wholly to their wives in love and all that stuff. There was definitely the implication that women better put out or face a husband who strayed. But he also tried to downplay that by going on at quite some length about how men should make it a big point to enjoy their wives' bodies, give them pleasure, be in love with them etc etc. When you read the "news stories," they imply that there was some kind of special focus on saying that your spouse will cheat if you're not meeting the spouse's needs. But in the context of the whole thing it struck me as only a blip among many many blips. And since I wouldn't expect any conservative Christian sermon on sex today not to say that, I have a hard time thinking that it was any kind of message to anyone about Anna or anything else Duggar-related. As far as I could tell, he said at least as much about cohabitation, homosexuality, the importance of men staying in love with their wives and expressing it, etc. etc. as he did about that. .... Obviously, MMV about what was in that sermon. But to me it didn't seem Anna-Duggar-focused at all (and it certainly didn't mention her by name or description or in any other way). And I can't even imagine what kind of strange conspiracy that church would be involved in that would include blaming Anna to somehow pump up the Duggar point of view on the Josh-Anna issue ....or whatever conspiracy it is that people are thinking is there. I doubt that Cross Church gives a crap about the Duggars and I really doubt that they'd want to be associated with them in people's minds in any way at all at this point, if that's what people are thinking .... Anyway, that's how it seems to me.

If the Duggars were to get a new show (which dog forbid) or publish another book or anything, this is what I want it to be called.

They never cease to amaze. I wish there weren't real Duggars but that somebody had invented Duggars as characters in a movie kinda like This Is Spinal Tap.

Okay, I just discovered on Jessa's Facebook that Jessa thinks she has a #mancrush on Ben. Jessa Seewald August 14 at 11:24am · ‪#‎ManCrush‬ ‪#‎BFF‬ When I was reading here about Bin's last attempt at a sexy photo, I thought somebody else had put that hashtag in the comments on his pic. But, no, Jessa apparently thinks she has a man crush on Bin. Or thinks others should have a man crush on Bin. Or something. Jessa, you can't have a man crush. Or, if you can, things are even more interesting in the Duggar household than I hitherto believed. Oy. Jessa has a man crush on Bin. Oy.

That's sort of the whole Duggar "philosophy" (and Gothard's as well), though, isn't it? They don't seem to allow anything to go on without the promise of some kind of "accountability partner" or "Nike shouter." They don't seem to believe that anyone can control their own impulses regarding anything. I guess I chalk that up to Gothard and Jim Bob and maybe Michelle being so bad at controlling their own impulses that they simply believe it's true for everyone -- and that it can't be fixed. What an appalling and terrifying world view. Also explains why they think education is meaningless, too, I guess. We're all just Pavlov's dogs. ... Horrible

I think that, unfortunately, we already know that for the Duggars -- and maybe also for the Keller parents if they indeed pushed for the Anna-Josh marriage after they knew the entire molestation story -- the answer to the bolded questions is an emphatic "yes." Which I guess kind of suggests that for Anna to do any of the things that most everybody here and in the world at large thinks she ought to do -- even the mildest of them, such as take a break and think things through -- she'd really have to leave this whole belief system she's enmeshed in. I don't believe she'll do that.

I think the idea that the sermon itself was somehow insensitive of Anna Duggar is based on some misapprehensions. Cross Church is a huge institution, with multiple campuses, tons of people. It is not, in fact, the Duggars' church in any way shape or form. Its pastor, Ronnie Floyd, is the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Jim Bob's clan -- and Anna's clan -- are emphatically not Southern Baptists and do not now nor ever have had a connection of any kind to that church, and they're not even members of the denomination. Derick has gone there (although I don't know for how long) as has Jill, but Derick and Jill are a tiny drop in a giant congregational bucket of people who have zero to do with the Duggars. And this Sunday's sermon was the opening to a five-week series that's been planned, announced and advertised for at least weeks, and likely for months. And Josh's new ill-doing became public knowledge on, what, Wednesday? Asking that a big institution with virtually no relation to the Duggars change a long-held plan at a moments' notice to spare Anna's feelings doesn't make any sense, it seems to me. She certainly isn't a member, and she wouldn't have gone looking for broadcasts of their sermons. They have nothing to do with her and had no reason whatsoever to be changing their plans on her account. She never would have known that sermon happened except for her brother-in-law. If anything, maybe Derick shouldn't have posted the thing. He is closely allied with the Duggars and knows Anna, so maybe he should have thought about sparing her feelings. But he certainly didn't. If there is a problem, the problem is Derick's, not the pastor's.

Now that's a mission I could get behind.

Somebody a while ago speculated that the money may have come from Boob's parents. That seems like a possibility to me. I can also see Jim Bob completely blowing off a church request to return stuff, saying yeah, yeah, he'd return stuff, just not now, and he'd gladly pay them Tuesday for a hamburger today. He may also have made some self-righteous speeches about how, if they wanted a member of the Senate who would fight for their values, then they'd better be supportive of his very godly run. I mean, you're a church -- How mean are you going to be in strong-arming some family with double-digit numbers of young kids and a constantly pregnant, harried-looking mom just to get back your broken-down house and vehicle? I'm not sure how you'd get the Duggars out of a house they didn't want to leave, in any case. A church isn't going to send armed marshals, especially if they don't know whether the family actually has another place to go, given how their father is choosing to spend his money. Who knows, though. Where the Senate money came from really is a mystery, I think.

For me, too. Among my friends and nearer acquaintances, I have actually found nary a one who recognizes the name or even recognizes the name "19 Kids," although "that weird huge family" does seem to ring some faint bells. And that includes one group of people that's pretty heavy on the conservative evangelical end and another group that's heavy on liberal politics junkies. That really surprised me. (and maybe they're all hiding a secret obsession like my non-secret one) But to whatever extent it's true, it suggests that their fame is actually quite limited. .... And I suppose it's not that surprising, really. There are a heck of a lot of shows on television, and nobody knows about them all. Makes me anticipate their fame fading faster than they may anticipate. heh Yep. Being deprived of a childhood and adolescences makes you crave them in many weird ways.

I think that's it. Jessa is clearly Fire!

I'll say. Because these two are so frigging stupid and clueless that they're likely to give one a B name and one a J name and adorably refer to them as the BJ twins, without having any idea what the hell they're saying. .... Let Mei Xiang the panda have the twins. You stick to singletons, Fire and Binstone.

He knew from biblical teachings. And, although I don't think he's particularly smart, I'm sure he also could figure out that when you earn your living making high-profile political speeches in defense of "traditional marriage" you're both being a hypocrite ethically and courting a potential disaster for you and your employer if you spend your free time spitting on traditional marriage. For whatever reason, he chose to ignore quite a few clear signs that doing what he did was a bad idea. Who can unravel all that's really wrong with him? But what's quite clear is that he's made numerous lousy decisions, for years and years, when he clearly had to know that he should choose other options, for numerous reasons. I guess what bugs me the most about this that Anna, likely pushed and prodded by Josh's family and, we seem to learn from her brother, her own parents, will probably stay with him on the supposition that he can and is likely to change. But all we've got is a lot of evidence that, for whatever combination of reasons, he's such an inveterate maker of stupid and unethical choices that he's not going to. I guess if Satan gets into you, then it's supposed to be relatively easy to throw Satan out. Or if you were pushed by porn's evil influence to do bad things, you can just get an "accountability partner" and close your electronic doors to porn. Too bad that if you're doing things not because an external force possessed you but because of some complex tangle of your messed-up nature, your messed-up nurture, and your own free choices to do the fun and selfish thing rather than the responsible thing -- and this has been your habit for most of your life -- then changing is incredibly difficult. So difficult that only somebody brave, strong and desperate is likely to try and do it. And then can likely only succeed after years of struggle and with tons of competent outside help and a family-and-friends network truly committed to honesty and stalwart tough and loving support. I don't think Josh has any of that. I think his chances of truly changing are extremely slim. (and even slimmer as it seems the stupid Duggar clan are trying to push the damned forgiveness narrative again). Poor Anna. And, even more so, poor Smuggar children.

Yeah. And that minister is the current President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Makes you wonder how far these ideas spread.

I kind of think that, too. Sure hope you're right. A nice manageable number that makes a family, not the population of a city bus in rush hour.

Fire and Binstone. Perfect.