Who Really Set Up Papal Meeting with Kim Davis? Enlightening Comments at Catholic Blog Site

Yesterday at the National Catholic Reporter site, Tom Gallagher posted an article focusing on something about which I spoke briefly in a posting here on the same day: namely, that in the wake of the Kim Davis-Pope Francis debacle, the mainstream media are finally saying out loud what many of us have known and been saying for some time now — that the outfit giving legal advice to Ms. Davis, Liberty Counsel, is an anti-gay hate group. I find the comments in response to Tom Gallagher's article especially enlightening.

Highly Recommended: Sarah Posner's Just-Published Essay on Duggars' Close Ties to Discredited IBLP Ministry of Bill Gothard

A very important essay to which I'd like to point you: Sarah Posner's exhaustively researched investigation of the ties of the Duggar family to the discredited ministry of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). As Sarah reminds us, Jessica Michelle Duggar has used Gothard's Advanced Training Institute (ATI) curriculum to home-school her children.* 

Josh Duggar and Ashley Madison Revelations: Commentary I Find Worth Reading

A selection for you this morning (blossoms or weeds? — you please decide) from things I've been reading about the revelation that, while employed by Family Research Council and attacking gay folks as premier threats to the sanctity of marriage, Josh Duggar had two accounts at the Ashley Madison cheat-on-your-spouse site: 

Duggars Praying, Satan Dancing: White Evangelicals Respond to Obergefell — What Does Church Mean When Love Wins Everywhere Except in Church?

The Duggars are praying, y'all — for all of the rest of us, it appears, though it seems not for themselves.

Dan Savage on What Constitutes Abuse of Duggar Children: "All the Duggar Kids Are Being Abused"

Dan Savage yesterday on the latest Duggar revelation (In Touch has published another article indicating that Arkansas DHS is investigating the Duggars, who are refusing to cooperate with the investigation), and on precisely how the Duggar children have, in his view, been abused:

A Reader Writes: "This Is the Logical End of the First Things' 'Protestants and Catholics Together' Project: They Band Together to Fight Against Culture War Issues and Look the Other Way at Each Others' Abuse Cases"

I haven't forgotten my promise yesterday to share with you some of my reflections about the subject of abuse of women and children and rigid patriarchal forms of religion, which we have been discussing here of late in light of the Duggar and Caitlyn Jenner stories. I have gotten a bit sidetracked from that conversation yesterday and today by the court ruling I discussed earlier today, which instructs the state of Arkansas to obey the law and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who married legally in May 2014.

Quote for Day: In Wake of Duggar Scandal and Conservative Christian Reaction to Caitlyn Jenner, It's Become Clear That Abuse Is a Feature, Not a Bug, of Christian Fundamentalism

Christopher Stroop at Religion Dispatches:

Bob Cesca on Fox News's Defense of Duggars as "Harrowing Turning Point in Our Discourse" — and Father Jonathan Morris's at Fox News's Defense of Duggars

Yesterday, I pointed you to a thought-provoking article by Andrew O'Hehir which argues that it's through public conversation about stories like those of the Duggars and Caitlyn Jenner that Americans now carry on political debate about the role of religion in American life and how sexual abuse is often tolerated, minimized, covered up within families. O'Hehir thinks that if we pooh-pooh these conversations as low-culture events beneath the notice of serious people, as the beltway media and many centrist journals pretend to do, we remove ourselves from "the substance of our national conversation, the central narrative of American political and cultural life in our time."

Homeschool Survivor Nicholas Ducote on Duggars and Christian Patriarchy: "It's Literal Rape Culture"

As the day goes on, Salon's lead story right now is an interview by Jenny Kutner with homeschool survivor Nicholas Ducote about Christian fundamentalism and "rape culture." Ducote, who has helped set up the Homeschoolers Anonymous blog to enable other survivors of homeschooling to share their stories and network, was homeschooled in Louisiana by a right-wing evangelical mother who was heavily into the worldview of Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute.

Discussion of Duggars and Caitlyn Jenner As How We Talk About Religion in Public Life Today, and a Question: Is There a Genetic Link Between Rigid, Patriarchal Religion and Abuse of Children?

Andrew O'Hehir argues that it's through public conversation about stories like those of the Duggars and Caitlyn Jenner that Americans now carry on political debate about the role of religion in American life and how sexual abuse is often tolerated, minimized, covered up within families. The old-fashioned kind of political exchanges carried on by means of the ballot box now engage primarily "the fearful, the crazy and the deeply, pathologically Caucasian (overlapping demographics, to be sure)" when the presidency is not at stake.

Droppings from the Fox News Talking-Points Birdcage: "Slam Dunk Heads Will Roll" Due to Illegal Release of Josh Duggar's Police Report

Someone with the username wreckinball writes in here yesterday in reponse to my update regarding the Duggar family, to challenge my statement that Judge Stacey Zimmerman abused her judicial office in having the police records about Josh Duggar's molestation of minors destroyed, on the ostensible ground that she was protecting the minors who had been molested:

The Duggars Speak Out: Victims? What Victims? The Duggar Story and the Gospel

The Duggars just don't get it, do they? The fact is, they can't get it, because they live in a little countercultural bubble of religious truth that trumps all other truths from the world outside their bubble, the world in which the rest of us poor sinners live — a world that is, to their certain knowledge, going to hell in a handbasket. They and their kind do not answer to the authorities of that world, the one in which the rest of us live. They answer to another authority hidden to those of us going to hell.

Critically Important to Analyzing Duggar Story: Stephanie Krehbiel and Ruth Krall Discussing Issues of Sexual Violence (and Cover-Up) in Churches

In the latest issue of Mennonite Life (issue 2015, vol. 69) (online here), Stephanie Krehbiel interviews Ruth Krall on the topic "Breaking Open the Structure of Sexual Violence." As she notes, Ruth's magisterial book The Elephants in God's Living Room, which Ruth published at her Enduring Space blog, has done a tremendous amount to publicize the sexual violence practiced by the noted Mennonite 20th-century theologian John Howard Yoder. Perhaps more than any other Mennonite scholar, Ruth has been responsible for organizing Mennonite women to force the male-dominated leadership structure of their church to face the Yoder story and do something about it.

Duggar Saga: End-of-Week Wrap Up (with 10 Links to Valuable Commentary)

As this work week ends, I thought I'd update you on the ever-unfolding Duggar family saga, and provide you with some links to commentary on this story that, in my view, is well worth reading:

Religious Culture of Abuse of Females in Right-Wing Christianity: A Current Case Study

In my posting on the Duggar family earlier today, I cited Jenny Kutner to note that what shouldn't be overlooked in the Duggar story is how Josh Duggar's abuse, his parents' cover-up, and the excuses being made by the religious and political right are rooted in a religious culture of abuse of females. As I indicated, the religious ideology defended by the Duggars and their friends calls on women and girls to submit to men and boys. It routinely excuses even outright abuse, sexual or otherwise, perpetrated on females by males as just how boys behave.

Duggar Saga: From Curioser and Curioser to Sleazier and Sleazier — Police Reports Ordered Destroyed by Huckabee-Allied Judge, Female Police Chief Under Fire, SNAP Weighs In

News about the model Christian family in my home state of Arkansas, the Duggars, continues to pop so fast and furious that it's hard to keep up with. I appreciate links a number of you good readers have provided to previous threads about the Duggars, who are attracting much attention now that the story of Josh Duggar has become public, because of the way in which they have represented themselves for years now as the model Christian family, and the way in which they have viciously attacked the LGBT community as a threat to children — when Josh Duggar and his parents knew of his molestation of minor girls who appear to have included his own sisters.

The Curious Saga of Josh Duggar, Anti-Gay "Family Values" Champion, Or, Aristotle Was Onto Something When He Said That Hubris Courts a Big Fall

Big news in my own state of Arkansas as this week ends, which has implications that reach far beyond the borders of the state, since this news involves a family with a national presence and following in the religious right and the Republican party: as In Touch Weekly reported several days ago (and here), anti-gay family-values religious-right superstar Josh Duggar, executive director of Family Research Council's FRC Action arm, was reported to the police in 2004 by his father for molesting underage girls.