I never thought I’d take Keith Ablow’s side (he’s the pet conservative doctor on Fox News), but there you go — he gets into a shouting match with Robert Jeffers, the Duggar family defender. Jeffers goes ballistic at the criticism of the Duggar’s parenting. Ablow is dismissive of the quality of parenting when you’ve got 19 kids, finds their stories naive and unbelievable, and calls the Duggars “bizarre” for refusing to allow their kids to hold hands on dates until they are engaged. Watch Jeffers begin to lose it around the 6 minute mark.
He starts off promoting Christianity: apparently, secular counseling puts you in a state of permanent victimhood, while Jesus forgives you and allows you to move on.
Ablow replies that “the church hasn’t always been perfect in its treatment of pedophiles, has it”. On Fox News? On Sean Hannity’s show? He’s also “not sure that it [pastoral counseling] is a comprehensive way to address pedophilia”. And then he asks “where is the wonderful family the pastor is describing?” after calling them “bizarre” and a “sideshow”.
The pastor’s defense is that the Duggars love their girls more than anyone on this panel do, and certainly more than anyone on the Left do, and I’m tired of the hypocrisy of the Left
. Then he complains that there are people who hate the values of the Duggars
(true, I do!), and Ablow replies “I wouldn’t turn my family into a reality show, I hate those values”.
Get ready to enter the Bizarro universe everyone, because you have to hear the arguments right-winger Christianist Jeffers then makes.
That is your judgment, that is the parents’ choice.
I heard you yesterday criticizing the number of children, that is none of your you-know-what-business how many children the Duggars decide to have.
About the parents being so controlling of their children’s behavior:
THAT IS THEIR CHOICE.
It is none of your business, doctor, to get involved with the choices these parents make.
I really, really want to hear Jeffers’ anti-abortion arguments now. When it’s a Christian family he approves of, any behavior is forgiven, the parents have complete control, and doctors and political forces must be completely hands off. I wonder how consistent he is on that policy?
One other thing I wish they’d followed up on…they started talking about the utility of this “pastoral counseling” nonsense. I think counseling is hard, needs real skill and training, and becoming a pastor involves very little of the necessary background. I have a doctorate in biology; that doesn’t qualify me to do surgery at all, but somehow having a pulpit makes you a master of an extremely sensitive art? I don’t think so.
All the Duggars got was “pastoral counseling”, but they’ve been highly reluctant to say who gave it. They’ve been protecting the identity of this ‘counselor’ more fiercely than they protected their daughter’s bodies. But they dropped little hints about the location and neighborhood of the ‘counseling’ center, and Libby Ann pieced them together and figured out that it was an ATI center in Little Rock, Arkansas. A branch of ATI…the schlock Christian counseling outfit created by Bill Gothard, known sexual predator and promoter of uptight, blame-the-victim morality.
Uh-oh. Keith Ablow was right about something!
Actually it’s very much the business of others if parents make parenting decisions that involve abuse of their children. There are even laws about it. Jeffers should look them up, if he isn’t entirely averse to reading anything but his Bible.
Jeffers is confusing counseling with forgiveness. The perpetrator is the one who needs forgiveness, the victims (and often the perpetrator are the ones needing counseling.
Forgiveness as demanded from the victims by most fundamentalist Protestant sects, such as the Duggars’, is supposed to reset the relationship between the perpetrator and the victims to the status quo ante. Combined with the type of victim-blaming counseling given by Gothard, forgiveness means the perpetrator suffers few consequences while the victims are sunk in a morass of self-doubt and possibly self-loathing.
Jeffers is defending this situation. Ablow recognizes it as harmful to all concerned.
Jeffers is right: I don’t love the Duggar daughters. I don’t know them personally so how could I? That said, I do care about them, and probably far more than Jim-Bob and Michelle ever have. The Duggars might “love” their daughters but loving someone is not caring about them nor is it protection against harming them; especially when the definition of “love” seemingly in use is so twisted it’s unrecognizable by any rational person.
Yeah, given the “values” in question, those people are generally called decent human beings. Jeffers might want to look into being one.
and
Speaking as a member of the society these kids will one day be released into; it certainly is my fucking business! A few of the older ones, like Josh, have already been shoved onto society and are doing exactly what one would expect of someone with the twisted upbringing they went through; primarily mistaking petty hate and ignorance for love and wisdom. Jeffers can talk about parental rights all he wants to but he, and others like him, need to start considering parental responsibility to do their best not to raise decent human beings and not hateful, harmful people.
Of course, I guess when you latch yourself to the political party that makes a warped and hypocritical idea of “personal responsibility” so central to their platform I suppose, just like all those “values” they talk about, you don’t ever have to worry about actually exhibiting them.
1. Actually it is. Parents can’t do anything they want to their children for a good reason.
This will blow the minds of any fundie xians reading it.
2. Children are human beings!!!
They have rights under our laws. Not full adult rights to be sure. They can’t drink, vote, or enlist in the military.
But they have the right not to be sexually abused, not to be killed,not to be physically or mentally abused, the right to food, clothing, education, and medical care.
3. If the abuse of children gets too extreme, we have a place for fundie xians like Robert Jeffers or the Duggars. It’s called…prison.
The Christian demand that no one scrutinize their beliefs and behavior is always ridiculous. You see a version of this every round of elections:
Insane Republican Presidential Candidate: “The foundation of my political beliefs is the Gospel and Jesus and faith and blah blah.”
Interviewer: “Ok, so what are those beliefs? Do you agree with Teaching X?”
IRPC: “How dare you attack my religion. That’s a private matter…”
Ablow is partially correct, they did invite cameras into their home to create a public spectacle, but it’s even worse than that: they did this so that they could promote their bizarre little cult and use their “family values” to engage in politics. That’s why all the nutters on the right (Huckabee, Santorum…etc.) have to deal with this. Huckabee wrote a fucking book where he argued that the Duggars were a model for the sort of society we should promote while the Obamas were bad parents for letting their girls listen to Beyonce. Think about that for a second.
So, if you want this deviant clan to be a model for society, maybe we should ask a few questions -HOW DARE YOU THIS IS PRIVATE!!! But everyone needs to live this way. BUT DON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS YOU HAVE NO RIGHT. But seriously they’re a perfect family, and any time you try to evaluate that claim, you are a horrible leftist.
What the breeder cults and the Duggars are doing is biological imperialism or biological colonialism.
The cults can’t recruit so they reproduce. It’s an attempt to achieve dominance by outbreeding normal people.
It’s tried often and is the guiding principle of the Mormons and Catholics among other groups.
It rarely works. After a few generations, the kids decide it is silly and they have better things to do with their time and money. Despite constant threats and cheerleading from the Catholic leaders, the US Catholic family size is the same as the national average.
And the fundie xian leaders all have small families. They don’t want to spend all their time and money breeding, they want their clueless followers to do it.
I would be tempted to try to start an Internet meme with a “This is your brain, this is your brain on religion” message, with the second photo being of the Duggars family, but it wouldn’t be fair to the children.
To me, there just doesn’t appear to be much difference between the rationalizations of the parents (and their supporters) on what religion allows them to do and those of the couple that kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. If you believe you are doing God’s will, anything is allowed. If you believe someone is going against God’s will, you have the moral authority to do whatever you feel is required to stop them. For their own good, of course.
This often turns out to be the exact opposite of having a moral code, when (surprise!) God’s will is that you should be the asshole you want to be. All you have to do is find the right passage in the Bible that justifies what you want.
PZ got the name of the vaguely humanoid toad wrong. It was Robert Jeffress, notorious Texas bigot who has at times attacked the Mormons and Catholics.
Jeffress is the rich and well paid minister of an 11,000 member Dallas megachurch.
He has two children. He doesn’t want to overbreed. He wants to buy lots of neat and expensive toys with his money. I can’t say I blame him for that.
I can blame him for defending child abuse though and pushing people to do what he won’t do, breed like rabbits.
It’s always nice to see some of that old time religion.
Jeffress is a real fan of the Reformation wars and sectarian hatred. It’s all…very xian.
Raven #4:
Exactly. Children are not the property of their parents, the parents are their children’s custodians. It is something that far to many refuse to understand.
[attempted derail|ignore]:
ummmmm, those, listed, are not RIGHTS, simply privileges and allowances.
1) drinking: a tightly regulated allowance, that entails a huge risk to both self and others
2) voting: a privilege/duty of certain predefined members of citizenry
3 enlistment: a huge risk, that a lot try hard to avoid.
to summarize; I disagree with “not full adult rights”. Rights, in my conception, are human rights, rights are what a living human being possesses inherently. Rights are not age dependent. The ‘right to marry’ is in the gray area though; age is a factor, but not the sole definition.
sorry to try to derail, the point the quoted was trying to make is much more agreeable to this quibbler. I just had to point out some minor flaws in the phrasing chosen to support their good point. Sorry, I just like to quibble.
While one can debate the finer points of rights vs privileges I don’t think Raven is wrong. Freedom and autonomy are rights that we limit for children, depending on their age.
LOL, you guys, he called Keith Ablow “the Left”.
Actually, pastor, it is the doctor’s business and it’s your business and it’s my business. In Texas a person has a legal obligation to report incidents of suspected child abuse or neglect. It’s a misdemeanor to fail to report.
You know who gets to support this perverse band of religious when TLC cancels the show? We do, just like Octomom! At first their church(s) may help but with 20+ mouths to feed and shelter, eventually it’ll be some form of assistance to the rescue.
On FAUX Noise, “the Left” is defined as whomever they’re arguing with, doesn’t matter who.
It would probably be tacky to make a joke about welfare queens, wouldn’t it? Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that the breeder cult formula that Raven mentioned above fails: raising kids is an expensive investment, so when you’re a tiny minority population, trying to out breed everyone else quickly becomes unsustainable. Humans are not an r-selection species.
The vast majority of the Duggar’s fortune is not from the television show at all, so it would be tacky and silly to make “welfare queen” jokes.
I thought in quiverfull families it was up to God Almighty how many children are had by the parents, so who’s really doing the deciding?
What the everloving fuck have the Duggars been smoking?
You don’t, under any circumstances, circle your wagons round him and protect him at any cost. You don’t force the victims to forgive. You do not, EVER, keep the offender in the home where he’ll have further access to his initial victim(s) as well as access to more potential victims. You NEVER compromise the safety and security of the victim(s). Additionally, you don’t send the perpetrator to fake Christian “counseling” — you report the crime to the proper authorities, get the victim(s) into counseling (real counseling), and maybe even do family counseling because there’s probably a deeper dynamic going on that led up to the initial molestation.
And can we please talk about how even his victims are participating in the minimization and dismissal of his actions? I found that disturbing.
I am amazed that I have to agree with Ablow. He is the only one in media that I have heard ask the question of what else the Duggar teenager may have done outside the home and family and for how long. Pedophilia is not usually a one–time thing. Are we to accept that this guy just did this at 15 and then stopped? Have the police looked for other possible victims? Maybe he is an exception. So much the better, but I have doubts.