Did the Duggars Just Bring A Spotlight on the Quiverfull Movement?
The news story du cycle is the one about a teen Josh Duggar fondling young womens’ privates, including his sisters. But here are a few stories from the periphery of that story, that I ran across in the past couple of days:
- The Duggars’ dangerous cult of purity: What they preached was never right at the Washington Post.
- Quiverfull of Shit: a Guide to the Duggars’ Scary Brand of Christianity at Gawker.
- How The Duggars’ Church Encourages Young Women To ‘Submit’ at the Daily Beast.
- A ‘9/11 Every Day’: The Radical Anti-Contraception Ideology That Links The Duggars And The Anti-Choice Right at Right Wing Watch.
The Washington Post is mainstream media. The Daily Beast wants, I think, to be mainstream. And while Right Wing Watch and Gawker should probably be classified as “citizen journalism” (i.e., blogs) or “watchdog organization”, I think they at least try to present news without being completely biased. More importantly, they’re outside of the atheosphere, the cluster of atheist blogs and sites where everyone knows who Hemant, PZ, and the FSM are.
So it may just be that some of the media spotlight may be directed not at Josh Duggar and his family, but at the culture in which the Duggars live: a far-right Christian society in which men are manly, are the sole breadwinners, and make all the decisions; and women are subservient, expected to be pregnant as much as possible to outbreed all the other religions, and be ready for sex whenever their man wants it.
I think the Quiverfull movement is dangerous, with cult-like aspects, and certainly anti-feminist. Maybe this story will help to bring some attention to that.