controversies, Duggars, religion, sexism, wingnuts

Creepy men who are obsessed with getting some “young stuff”…

The featured photo is a screenshot of part of Patrick Weaver Ministries’ post.

There’s so much I could be writing about today. So much, in fact, that I’ve been sitting here for almost two hours, trying to decide which comments to make regarding the vast array of potential hot topics. Ukraine has been invaded by Russia, and who knows what that is going to lead to on a worldwide scale. Whatever happens will probably affect my husband’s work.

Then there’s the arrest of the guy who killed my former colleague, Matt. I could write more about that, but I don’t know how interesting that is to people other than me.

Then there’s the evergreen issue of COVID-19, but who isn’t sick of hearing and reading about that? I know it’s a tired subject for me.

And then there are the Duggars… another wedding is on the horizon, and apparently, another baby is allegedly on the way. This time, it’s John David and Abbie who are reportedly expecting. And next month, Jeremiah Duggar is going to marry Hannah Wissmann– just ahead of Josh Duggar’s sentencing. Yeah, I could write about that, but I’m not going to… because this morning, I saw something that really creeped me out.

Someone in the Duggar Family News group shared this post by Patrick Weaver Ministries. It’s calling out a youth pastor/filmmaker named Joshua_Wesely, who posted a picture of his girlfriend, Isabelle, on her 18th birthday, back on November 17, 2020. That means she was born the day after Bill and I married, on November 16, 2002. Have a look…

Eeeww…

Perez Hilton has an article about this couple, in which it is revealed that apparently, the two started their relationship when she was 14 and he was 20. He’s now 24 and she’s 18, which sounds slightly less icky… until you realize that he’s been working on her since she was in puberty! Mr. Wesely and his wife have made their Instagrams private, but the front page does reveal that he and the young lady are now married, and have been so since August of 2021. He also has a YouTube channel, at which I am currently taking a look. Interestingly enough, it turns out that he is German, and his content on YouTube is all in German. Also, in Germany, the age of consent is 14. I suppose I’m not surprised, given the attitudes about sex here. Still, it does seem kinda gross. ETA: Yikes! He is from Mainz, which is 20 minutes away.

It’s not their age difference. It’s the fact that he’s been chasing her since she was fourteen… and he’s a “youth pastor”.
So, I guess what Mr. Wesely did was technically legal in Germany… but yucky to Americans.

I remember what I was like when I was 14. I was in no way ready for sex, or a committed relationship. I know there are exceptions. Loretta Lynn married her husband, Doo (Oliver Lynn), when she was somewhere between 13 and 16 years old, and he was nineteen. They had six children, and were together for fifty years, until he died at age 69 in 1996. However, Loretta Lynn’s husband was a violent alcoholic who beat and cheated on her. If it hadn’t been for Loretta Lynn’s extraordinary talents as a musician, who knows what would have happened to her?

Hell, I was barely ready for sex when I was 30, which was when I finally started having it, two weeks after my wedding day. This isn’t to say that my situation is the norm. It isn’t. I just think that kids shouldn’t be engaging in serious and sexual relationships. Isabelle is not a child now, but she was for several years before she and Joshua got married. I know that if I had a fourteen year old daughter, I would not look too fondly on some 20 year old guy wanting to date her. That sounds like a dangerous situation to me. There’s a reason why so many fundies like to marry young– especially when the female half is young. It makes them a lot easier to “mold”. Fourteen year olds tend to be more submissive and less worldly.

It looks like maybe Mr. Wesely is on the far right. Below is a trailer from a 2021 film he produced called 2025- The World Enslaved By a Virus. The film envisions a world in which communism and atheism have taken over, and meetings, Christianity, and travel are forbidden. Wesely starred in the film, which he also wrote. His brother, Simon, co-produced and co-directed it.

I notice the channel where this is posted is called “Wesely Bro’s”… Apostrophe abuse, too?

This reminds me of something I saw back in the early 00s, when Bill and I were newly married. At that time, a lot of men thought the Olsen twins were super hot. I once actually saw a countdown clock in a bar that showed how much longer it would be before Mary Kate and Ashley turned 18. I know there were a number of Internet sites dedicated to their 18th birthday, which was June 13, 2004. Granted, the Olsen twins are celebrities. They are fabulously wealthy, and apparently, nothing creepy happened to them offline– that I know of, anyway. But still, there were basement dwelling creeps who were actually watching a clock to see how much longer it would be before they were “fair game” for being pursued by horny older men.

Ugh… This is just gross.

I know a lot of people think church is the best place to find a mate. Sadly, the reality is, church is a place where a lot of people wind up victimized, because they are conditioned to trust church leaders due to their role in a religious organization. I think this is especially true in strict, culty belief systems that promote conspiracy theories. In fact, as I have referenced before on my blog, there are even Web sites that encourage “Christian” men to marry young women, so they can be properly “groomed” for submission. The link I provided is a blog dedicated to “Biblical Gender Roles”. I have written about that site before, and judging by my stats, a lot of people are interested in it, as well as “domestic discipline”.

Churches are not the only way older men wind up with younger women. Having watched many episodes of To Catch a Predator, I know that these types of guys come from all walks of life. It doesn’t take much for them to take the bait if an underage woman signifies her consent. A few weeks ago, I was watching a YouTube clip that involved a 48 year old married physician from San Francisco, who came over to a decoy’s location, hoping to score. The physician ultimately committed suicide some years later. Surprisingly enough, he was still married to his physician wife when he died.

This is unbelievable. Obviously, he didn’t care about his career at all…

Bill and I talked about this subject this morning. We are, after all, about eight years apart in age. I had just turned 18 when he married his ex wife. However, Bill and I are a hell of a lot more compatible than he and Ex were. When we married, I was 30, and he was 38. Age matters less when you’re older.

I would say there is a big difference between 18 and 24; however, according to recent scientific research, neither Joshua’s nor his wife’s brains are even fully developed yet. That might explain the bizarre movies he puts out, promoting right wing conspiracies. According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, human brains aren’t considered fully developed until age 25. Bill did say, by the way, that he would have had a serious problem with a 20 year old man pursuing one of his daughters when they were that young. Not that Ex would have given him a chance to intervene.

And let’s not forget the case of Jack Schaap, a former “minister” at Hyles-Anderson College, a Christian school in Hammond, Indiana. He famously delivered a horrifying sermon in which he “polished” a rod, masturbation like, as he spoke about how God finds mates for the faithful. Mr. Schaap later went to federal prison for taking a sixteen year old girl he was “counseling” across state lines for sex. He was sentenced to twelve years in 2013, and is scheduled for release next February.

Part of Mr. Schaap’s defense was that the girl he abused was “aggressive” and had prior “extensive sexual experience”. He also alleged that she was a drug user. Apparently, in his feeble mind, that made molesting her okay. The girl was also reportedly a student at the private school run by Schaap’s former church, the 15,000 strong First Baptist Church of Hammond, since kindergarten. Based on Schaap’s comments, in spite of her religious schooling, she was “experienced”. I’d like to know who gave her that experience. Obviously, the staff at that church weren’t to be trusted. Or, at least that’s what I would think if I were that girl’s mother.

OMG… I would have died watching this.

I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. I’m sure there’s a scientific reason why so many of them are looking for “young stuff”.

“You should be gettin’ that young stuff!” Eew.

Anyway… I don’t know if Isabelle is happy. She’s certainly young and pretty, and I can assume she married Joshua consensually. And I understand that German laws are different than US laws are, as are the mores surrounding sex. I do think it’s too bad she isn’t still single, though, and enjoying her youth… maybe doing something for herself, instead of jumping into marriage with a man who appears to be drinking some pretty strong right wing Kool-Aid in the name of “Christianity”. But, it’s her life. Still… eeew. Count me among those who disapprove.

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Duggars, homosexuality, politics, religion

“We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child…”

I remember in August 2014, Bill and I were living temporarily in an apartment in Kemnat, a suburb near Stuttgart. I spent my days hanging out with Zane and Arran, burning up because it was hot outside. The Duggars were in the news because Michelle Duggar had made a controversial political robocall to people in Arkansas. Why was she robocalling? It was because she was hoping to influence Arkansans to vote against an anti-discrimination ordinance designed to allow transgendered people to use restrooms and lockers that correspond to their gender identities.

People were calling for the Duggars to be canceled in 2014 after this call… little did they know what was coming! And yet, they’re STILL in the public eye.

This morning, today’s featured photo was in my Facebook memories. Given that Josh Duggar is currently in huge trouble with the feds for being caught receiving and possessing images of child sexual abuse, it’s pretty crazy that in 2014, Michelle Duggar was saying things like “We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child…” Wow… the hypocrisy is astounding!

As I waited for Bill to come home the other day, I ran across an episode of 17 Kids and Counting. In the beginning, you hear Michelle Duggar’s annoying baby voice as she lists all of her children’s names. At that point, Jennifer Duggar, born in 2007, was the youngest, and Michelle was pregnant with Jordan, who was #18 and would be born in December 2008. She would have one more live birth, when youngest child Josie was born very prematurely the following year. Then she got pregnant one last time and eventually lost that baby, Jubilee Shalom.

In the opening credits for 17 Kids and Counting, Ma and Pa Duggar talk about their “very conservative values” and how the children’s Internet access is “closely monitored.” Obviously, it wasn’t monitored that closely. And they weren’t allowed to watch TV, and yet they were ON TV.

I remember Michelle Duggar once had a good reputation as a wonderful, caring, and compassionate mother. I have never seen a lot of proof that she was a wonderful mother. On the contrary, I’ve seen evidence that her daughters are good moms, mainly because they’ve always been doing the heavy lifting of raising their siblings while their mom worked on perfecting her “baby voice”. And she used that voice to promote anti-LGBTQ propaganda while her eldest son, supposedly sheltered from the Internet, was looking at porn. Such hypocrisy!

As Bill and I were sharing coffee this morning, I was reading the Duggar Family News Facebook group. Someone had shared a link to a post from the truly creepy blog, Biblical Gender Roles about the practice of “domestic discipline” and wife spanking. I’ve written about this blog a couple of times before, most recently in July 2020, when a friend of mine shared with me a different post about “grooming one’s wife” to accept domestic discipline that came from the Biblical Gender Roles blog. I also wrote about a post that appeared in 2019 regarding marital rape— a woman’s husband wanted to have sex with her when she wasn’t interested. The blogger from Biblical Gender Roles wrote that according to the Bible it’s impossible for a married woman to be raped by her husband. And of course, my take is that marital rape is certainly possible and it can be perpetrated by either spouse. It happened to my husband when he was married to his ex wife.

Legally, rape means that a person hasn’t consented to sexual contact. It does not matter if the participants are married to each other. But fundie Christian women are taught to always be “joyfully available” to their husbands. When their husbands fall from grace, as Josh Duggar repeatedly has, the woman is liable to be blamed. Why? Because she wasn’t available enough for her husband to satisfy his sexual needs. Michelle Duggar, the same woman who, in a robocall to Arkansans said “We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child…”, told her own daughter Jill, before Jill married her husband, Derick Dillard:

“And so be available, and not just available, but be joyfully available for him. Smile and be willing to say, ‘Yes, sweetie I am here for you,’ no matter what, even though you may be exhausted and big pregnant and you may not feel like he feels. ‘I’m still here for you and I’m going to meet that need because I know it’s a need for you.’ ”

In other words, this “wonderful mom”, Michelle Duggar, told her daughter that her body isn’t her own. It’s either going to be used by her husband for sex, or used to nourish and develop a fetus, who will either also be used as a vessel for developing new life and as a sexual plaything, or will be a user, as males apparently are in fundie Christianity. Josh Duggar grew up being taught that his wife was to be used, and she was expected to be “joyfully available” to him, on the pain of being disciplined by the head of the family. His sister Jill, on the other hand, got a very different message. She was to be “available” to her husband, whenever he wanted her. She was to submit to his will. In short, she was physically an adult, but in all other ways, she was basically expected to be like a child– seen and not heard– quiet, submissive, and available always.

I’m sure, behind closed doors, Anna Duggar has been blamed for not satisfying Josh Duggar’s “needs”, causing him to fall into the dark web and view “forbidden images” of a sexual nature. But here she is, still in her early 30s and pregnant with her seventh child, another girl. Obviously, she was available to Josh, and he was fulfilling his sexual needs with her. But that wasn’t enough, and he’s evidently been indulging in illegal and immoral activities involving children. How did this happen?

I have never been impressed by either of the Duggar parents. For years, I’ve heard them both talk about how children are blessings and gifts from God. Rather than being good stewards of their children and raising them properly, Michelle Duggar basically turned into a brood animal and popped out children that were then farmed out to their sisters to raise. That’s not fair to the children at all. There was a time in history when having a huge family might have made some sense, since a lot of children died before coming of age and people had farms they needed help to run. Nowadays, I think having that many children is selfish and irresponsible. I don’t like to tell people how many children they should have, but I do think that if you’ve gotten to the point of farming out your kids to their older siblings, you’ve had too many. It’s not the job of underage children to raise their siblings.

Childhood is a brief time in a person’s life, and that’s when people should be focused on their own development and maturity. The way it’s been done in the Duggar family is that some of the children– the eldest sisters– had to grow up too fast. And yet, even when they were raising their siblings, they were still treated like children, forced to share a room and not allowed to choose what they wanted to wear or who they wanted to date or marry, in the sense that they needed Jim Bob’s permission and their husbands to be were forced to answer excessive questionnaires before Boob would give his “blessing”.

When I look at Michelle Duggar’s comment that “We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child…”, and then I see that her very first child– one of the few that she must have had the biggest part of raising– has turned out to be a sexual deviant, I can’t help but think her thoughts on protecting children are warped. She didn’t even protect her own daughters from their brother– her precious firstborn son– who took liberties with them when he was an adolescent. They didn’t get appropriate and effective help for Josh when his deviant behaviors presented themselves when he was still a child. They also didn’t get help for their daughters, who were victimized by Josh. In a sense, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar failed Josh as much as they did their daughters… and all of those innocent children in the pictures and videos found on Josh’s computer who were exploited, abused, and even murdered for the perverse pleasure of Josh and his ilk.

Josh is a MASSIVE hypocrite. Here he is speaking about religious liberties and how businesses should not be forced to pay for birth control. You can hear him talking about how birth control harms unborn children, and yet he apparently enjoys victimizing innocent children who have already been born. He sounds articulate and well-spoken here, which is probably why he got away with this for as long as he has.

Notice in the above video, there are two men speaking about birth control and how it “causes abortions” (it doesn’t). Neither of these men will ever have to do the hardest work associated with pregnancy and child bearing. And they are in religious organizations where women are taught to be “joyfully available” to them and satisfy their “needs”, even when they are “big pregnant” (as Michelle Duggar put it). They’re more concerned about unborn children than they are born children… especially the female ones who will be born to satisfy their sexual “needs”. Well… that is revolting. It really is.

From the Biblical Gender Roles blog… a woman needs her husband’s “help” to control her spending and choose the “right” friends. Based on this, it sounds like he thinks women are never much more than children.

I’m sitting here reading the Biblical Gender Roles blog again. The poster on the Duggar Family News page had linked to an article on that blog about a young wife who was being “introduced” to the concept of Christian domestic discipline. In other words, she was being spanked by her husband. But the blogger wrote an earlier post about the husband’s perspective. In that post, he referenced his earlier post about how to “groom” one’s wife to accept the man as the authority in the home. He mentions that the wife must be young and sheltered, otherwise, she will never accept being “spanked” or otherwise disciplined by her husband.

This blogger has “mentors” who help teach these “Biblical principles” to couples who are interested. He says he vets the participants carefully, because he knows that more worldly people are “spying” on him and want to undo his work in teaching Christian couples to live by what he deems are “Biblical gender roles”. And based on what the young husband writes in the post from the gender roles blog, his wife has come to “accept” his leadership. She speaks to him “respectfully”, sticks to a budget, and I guess most importantly (to him, anyway), makes herself “available” to him sexually whenever he’s in the mood. She’d better, of course, or he’ll turn her over his knee and spank her, as if she’s a child (and personally, I don’t think spanking children is appropriate, either). How fucked up is that? The woman is a child in all ways, except physical. I am not saying the Duggars engage in these practices. I do think, however, that their collective mindset seems to be very similar to the one espoused by the guy who writes the Biblical Gender Roles blog.

More from the Biblical Gender Roles blog… where the writer explains that it’s “right” for a husband to discipline his wife for not putting out sexually, on the pain of being spanked.

Michelle Duggar, obviously, is very much in agreement that there are only males and females; they were all created by God; and that any person with “male parts” is a threat to female children. But apparently, once the females have reached physical maturity, that protection for them is no longer necessary. She unleashed her son, Josh, on Anna Duggar when he was 20 years old, knowing that he was a pervert. And she paid a lot of lip service to “monitoring” her children’s television and Internet exposure, although Josh obviously still figured out a way to get to the forbidden fruit. Maybe if she had been less “Christian”, he would have turned out to be a better person… or maybe, he was born to be this way, despite our “awesome God” who gifted the Duggars with so many children that they were obviously not equipped to raise properly on their own.

How dare Michelle Duggar try to tell Arkansas voters that she is concerned about putting the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child? Where were her concerns about her own daughters’ safety and innocence when they were growing up in her home? Where were her concerns about Josh’s future, when his deviant sexual proclivities came out? Why didn’t she help him possibly avoid falling into sins that could send him to prison? He is about to be the father of seven innocent children, but he won’t be around to take care of them. That task will fall to his long suffering wife, Anna, who has been taught that because she’s a female, she belongs to her husband and has no say over whether or not she wants to have sex! Michelle Duggar is concerned about transgendered people “victimizing” girls… but she was not at all concerned about her vile predator son victimizing her own daughters, and possibly her granddaughters, along with the children who were victimized in the images and videos that were found on Josh’s computer! And she’s all for letting the women be “childlike” in all ways, except for when it comes to giving their husbands sex. She’s even childlike in the way she speaks!

I really think our society is very sick. The Duggars are still influential to many, even though they are massive hypocrites. As recently as last year, they were still trying to get involved in politics, when their son Jed, ran for office against a woman who was clearly much more qualified than he was. He lost, thank God, but I will bet people still voted for him because he’s a white man, Christian, and a Duggar! There are still so many people, especially in the United States, who speak about their rights as “free people”. But they only want freedom for white Christian males with money. They don’t want women to have dominion over their own bodies. They don’t want people of color to have the right to live peacefully, and enjoy freedom of movement without being harassed by law enforcement. They don’t want poor people to be able to receive temporary government assistance, or children to be able to attend school without the fear of being shot. Their right to own weapons is more important than the safety of innocent people to be out and about without fearing being killed by their guns. And they want to be able to dictate to people which restrooms they can use, claiming that transgendered people are “mentally ill”, while they cover up for people like Josh Duggar and give him a platform.

I wrote about Michelle Duggar’s robocall on my original blog. In that post, I explained that homosexuality and transgendered people are not necessarily pedophiles or child molesters. At that point, we didn’t know about Josh… it was just months later that that particular bombshell dropped. One would have thought the Duggars would have been canceled, once and for all, after Josh’s hypocrisy came out. But, as my Italian friend Vittorio has pointed out, the United States is a “weird-o-rama” culture. The Duggars are oddly fascinating to many. Some of us are fascinated as we are repulsed. Others find them to be people they want to emulate. And so, they continue to people we talk about, and write about… and in some cases, make money on. I’m sure the people making YouTube videos about the Duggars are making some cash, anyway. I’m sure not.

Well… I guess I’ve rambled on long enough. Arran has just come to me, expecting a walk. So I guess I’ll close now, and take him out for a much needed constitutional. Hope everyone has a nice Monday.

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