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.* 

Amanda Marcotte on How Ashley Madison Leaks Demonstrate What Christian Conservatives' "Traditional Marriage" Is All About

Amanda Marcotte notes how the Ashley Madison leaks have shown us all over again what conservative Christians mean when they talk about "traditional marriage": Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, informs us that sexual license (think: gays, divorcees, cohabitants) is ruining marriage, and men who stray often do so because their spouses are not submitting to them adequately and serving their sexual needs satisfactorily. Anna Duggar is expected to absorb blame for Josh's infidelity (and, it goes without saying, to forgive him). And Nia Rader sits behind Sam Rader as he confesses to the world that he was a less than admirable exemplar of traditional marital values while he was on the internet extolling the beauty of his marriage even as he maintained an Ashley Madison account.

Did Gay Marriage Cause Ashley Madison? Taking the Arguments of Folks Like Ross Douthat to Their Logical Conclusion

Did gay marriage cause Ashley Madison? Has permitting same-sex couples to marry caused millions of heterosexual folks to cheat on their spouses? As Business Insider reports this morning, only three zipcodes in the U.S. did not have folks signed up for Ashley Madison. Two of those were in Alaska, one in New Mexico, and all together, they have a whopping total of 476 population.

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: 

Things I'm Reading at Week's End: Marriage, Bible, Catholics, Women's Rights, Recovering from Religious Trauma, Pope Francis and Women

Things I'm reading as this week ends — these items all connected in that they talk about issues of religion in the public square:

Mormons Celebrating Pope Francis's Affirmation of Traditional Family Values: Wait, What?

Big headline in Salt Lake City's Deseret News yesterday:

Another Reprise: Margaret Farley's Challenge to Make Love of Gay Persons Just in Christian Churches, and the Vatican Synod on the Family

Here's a reprise of another sort today: I published the excerpt below (from Margaret Farley's book Just Love) on November 2, 2012. Here's why I'm republishing it now:

The Vatican Document on the Pastoral Challenges of Family: "Gospel of the Family" and the Bible (but Where's the Good News?!)

When I first wrote about the document recently prepared by the Vatican as a foundation for discussion of family life at the upcoming synod on the family — the so-called instrumentum laboris that will guide the synod's discussion and which reports on the responses submitted by lay Catholics and bishops to a Vatican questionnaire on the family — I noted that one of the document's significant shortcomings is that it reads like a laundry list in which every affirmation it makes is equal to every other affirmation. The document is, in key respects, a replication (though obviously a highly select one) of what lay Catholics and bishops told the Vatican as they responded to its questionnaire on the family, but it lacks a clearly discernible theological center in which to put its lengthy list of concerns into a meaningful, coherent scheme that would provide a helpful snapshot of precisely what the people of God believe about family matters at present.

"Traditional" Family and the Bible: Snapshots from Recent Discussions of the Topic

Matthew 12: 46-48

In her recent book, How the West Really Lost God, Mary Eberstadt argues that the decline of the traditional family has led to the secularization of the West, rather than vice versa as many sociological theories propose. Robert Hunt disagrees.

Wisconsin Judge Crabb to Defenders of Traditional Marriage: You Do Understand That Polygamy Is the Tradition You're Defending, Right?

Federal Judge Barbara Crabb in her ruling yesterday (pdf file) striking down the Wisconsin ban on same-sex marriage:

Holly Welker on Why It Makes Sense for a Religious Commentary Blogsite to Pay Attention to Mormons

Holly Welker on why it makes sense for a blog like Religion Dispatches to include a Mormon blogger like herself, when Mormons represent only 2% of the U.S. population and .21% of the world population: 

Book Notes: Suzanne Berne on Family Values and Morning-in-America Mythology

Suzanne Berne, The Ghost at the Table (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007):

Redefining Marriage: A Salient Reminder

From the Facebook page of Americans Against the Republican Party, a pithy reminder that we've already redefined marriage.  A long time ago (and over and over again), since marriage and family are institutions that constantly evolve and change.  Always have.  Always will.

A Reader Writes: "There's a Rich Vein of Understanding about Marriage That Remains to Be Discovered"

Another stellar comment here in the past few days by boltingmadonna, who writes the following in response to my posting earlier in the week about Archbishop Cordileone and Cardinal George and the knotted knickers of Catholic leaders vis-a-vis their gay brothers and sisters:

Nate Phelps on Fred Phelps's Family: "Ideology . . . Supported and Promoted with Violence"

Nate Phelps's conversation with Dick Gordon at Salon today is noteworthy because of its explanation of how the virus of patriarchal violence is transmitted generation to generation.  Nate is the son of the notorious virulently homophobic pastor Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist church in Kansas.  He notes bluntly that the tendency to intrafamilial violence stems from the "fairly common idea" in fundamentalist Christian households that the husband is the "head of the family" and has a right to discipline his wife and his children.  To bring them into submission to his "absolute authority," as Nate Phelps puts the point . . . .

Pussy Riot and Defense of "Traditional Family Values" (and My Response to Catholic Centrists about Pussy Riot Conviction)

Vis-a-vis another recent news item about which I blogged a number of days ago--the sentencing of the Pussy Riot group in Moscow for "hooliganism driven by religious hatred and offending religious believers": I find Gillian Kane's article at Religion Dispatches today situating the feminist rock group's trial against the backdrop of the campaign of Russian Orthodox leaders to block human rights movements at an international level instructive.  Kane reports that the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox church have been lobbying at the United Nations to enshrine "traditional family values" in human rights statements, and to block U.N. initiatives that, in their view, work against such values.

Pictures, Words: Images Capturing Inconvenient Truth

Ken and Barbie sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g: Vancouver photographer Dina Goldstein produces a photographic meditation about what may have gone wrong when Ken married Barbie.*

The Josh Weed Story: Heterosexual Marriage as an Ideal for Gays?

Last week, Josh Weed revealed on his blog that though he's a happily married man (in a heterosexual marriage) with children, his primary attraction is to other men.  He's gay.  He chose to enter a heterosexual marriage largely because he's a devout Mormon and wanted to live a committed Mormon (which is to say, heterosexually married) life as an adult.

Political News: Marriage Equality and Obama, Traditional Marriage, and GOP Goals

Congressional Religious Freedom Hearings, Feb. 2012

And in recent news commentary (also with religious themes) about the decision of President Obama to affirm marriage equality:  

Gender Gap in Higher Education in Utah: Women on Bottom

Writing in today's Salt Lake Tribune, Brian Maffly reports that for years now, women in Utah have not entered or completed college at the same rate as have men.  In 2008, 26 percent of Utah women had a bachelor’s degree, while 32 percent of Utah men did, according to a 2009 Utah Foundation study.  Women constitute 55 percent  of undergraduates nationally, but 45 percent in Utah.