Josh Duggar, Family Man

First, the disclaimer: I’ve never seen the ’19 and Counting’ show, but it’s in the news and on the discussion boards often enough that I think I have a rough idea; it’s a reality show about a family with a ridiculous amount of children, and they’re crazy family values Christians, which is absolutely the most obnoxious variety of Christian.

I watched Honey Boo Boo once, for about 5 minutes. If it’s anything like that, I’m not missing a thing.
Also, I don’t want to totally jump on the ‘Let’s Lynch Josh Duggar because he’s a filthy child molesting pervert’ bandwagon. Maybe just hang onto the side and ride it down the street a ways, but not jump on firmly with both feet. There are a couple of reasons for that.
First, I’ve heard many, many people over the past couple of years criticizing the Duggars for having so many kids, but I’ve got no problem with that. I might not agree with their Christian reasoning, but big families are great (I’m one of seven)and if they can afford it and are good parents, more power to them.
Secondly (and feminists hate this) there really are different degrees of sex crime. Not everything is rape and, among rapes, not all are equally horrible. Josh Duggar did not hold any women down at knife point and forcibly have sex with them. He snuck into girls’ bedrooms, when he was 14, and touched them up while they slept. The news article I read didn’t specify, but I imagine the girls involved were his sisters.
It’s not a good thing, but it’s not Bill Cosby bad, it’s maybe not even Woody Allen bad.
So much for the defense. Now let me ride the bandwagon.
He’s a nasty morality crusader who is famous for saying “Gays are child molesters” so it’s comical to see him in this situation. Comical but somewhat predictable. All of the fiercest anti-gay types turn out to be closet homosexuals, or have some other skeleton in the closet, and child molesting definitely counts as a SITC.
Mike “will never be President, no matter how bad he wants it” Huckabee came to his defense, saying “Good people can make mistakes.” Perhaps the good reverend Huckleberry is thinking of the time his own lovable little lardbucket tortured and killed a dog at summer camp.
Here’s the thing. Just like Bush invading Iraq, just like Huckabee’s son torturing the dog, just like Mitt Romney and his buddies forcibly holding a kid down and cutting his hair, it was NOT a mistake. He did not walk into their room looking for his toothbrush and accidentally put his hand down their panties. What he did, no matter where it ranks on the hierarchy of sexual misbehavior, he did on purpose.
He probably won’t be prosecuted, it doesn’t seem as if his wife is going to leave him and he’s more or less gotten away with it. The network canceled their program, though. That’ll teach him.