12.27 Media - Warning: Danger Zone

Bestest Friend and I are in the middle of a blog project. Each day of the month we will post a picture on a pre-determined theme and write a little something about it. The theme for the twenty-seventh day of each month is "Media."
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I mostly find religion inoffensive. I mean, I'm not religious, but I see the appeal of it.  If it doesn't hurt me or anyone else, I see how it could be comforting and even useful in terms of moral action. I also sound a bit patronizing when I talk about religion, so I tend to avoid it if at all possible.

But.

When religion is the excuse people use to create extremist views and it does hurt people, I can get riled up.

Religion is no reason to suggest that gay/black/mentally ill/people with other religious affiliations/tattooed people/whoever is different from you deserve to have rights or liberties taken away.

It's no reason to create an environment where women are so subjugated that when a teenage boy fondles a preschool girl, the teenage boy can't see what he did was wrong and the girls have no idea that what happened was unusual or that they should speak out about it.  It's no reason to fail to give the boy some sort of mental health treatment, no reason to continue to allow the boy unchaperoned access to girls he's already victimized and other girls.  It's no reason.

I think the Duggars have failed their children - all of them - maybe even especially Josh.  I think Josh Duggar is a symptom of the problem of subjugation of women in a culture that treats women as nothing more than virginal vessels who then become incubators whose job it is to submit to their husbands' requests for sex at any time. It's not surprising that sexual abuse is rampant in a culture like that.

It is surprising that a family that knew it had such allegations in their family would consent to being part of a reality television to be held up as paragons of what the American family should want to be like.

It is chilling that the Duggars thought they could just sweep this under the carpet. If I go all conspiracy theory on it (the police officer who is now in jail for child porn, the judge who was a Huckabee appointee, Huckabee himself), I get really nervous about the child welfare system in this country.

So, to sum it up, I wish nothing but bad things for the Duggar parents. I worry for the underage children still under their care. I hope at least some of those children are able to withstand the brainwashing, break away from the cult, and live normal lives. I hope Josh Duggar gets counseling and the girls he molested, including his sisters, never have to see him again.  I hope Josh Duggar's children are healthy and happy and remain so. And, most importantly, I hope this wakes people up so that they will stop holding up sick and twisted fools like the Duggar as an exemplar of morality and happiness.

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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about the theme of the day, check out her blog, Too Legit to Quit.