I cannot go any longer without writing a small piece on the ‘scandal,’ as it were, surrounding Josh Duggar. I don’t know how organized I can keep this piece, since the information, opinions, experiences, anger, sadness, etcetera are swimming around in my head like little fish in an aquarium.
I’m writing this because there are several things that trouble me. What I want to mention first is the rush to characterize Mr. Duggar as a ‘predator,’ or a ‘pedophile.’ He may be one of those, or both, but I would have to see the results of extensive psychological testing directed at making such a determination before I can then make any claim one way or another. I will return to this subject later in this piece.
Believe it or not, the fact that Mr. Duggar molested several little girls does not, although it points in that direction, immediately qualify him as either. This would be true if he were an adult, but it is especially true given the fact that he was was fourteen and fifteen years old at the time of the offenses. I was once fourteen (and fifteen for that matter) and I can tell you now that my hormones were beginning to undergo many changes as I stood at the gates of those delirious years known commonly as puberty. I am certain that every adult reading this piece experienced the same.
I am not condoning Mr. Duggar’s actions, or giving him some sort of ‘pass’ because of his age, but when I look at the patriarchal cultural environment in which he was raised; an environment in which men feel they have the right to exercise unquestionable and absolute authority over women, I am saddened more than outraged. I look at this fourteen year old boy entering puberty and how he was taught, by observation if nothing else, to consider girls (and females as a whole) as ‘things’ that are there to satisfy his wants and I am saddened. I am definitely saddened for his victims, but I also feel sadness for him.
Our healthy and undeniable sense of right and wrong are born into us. God gives us this gift; this imprinted, internalized knowledge of how we are to look upon and treat others. We know what this looks like even as adults tainted by the world in which we live. It looks like the look in a child’s eyes of immediate acceptance of others even in all of our imperfections; expressed in the unwavering look of “Hey, how are you? You want to be friends!?” It is the look of the love God wants us all to live and share.
My wife and I once bought a t-shirt for our daughter when she was in either kindergarten or the first grade that had a picture on the front of a white and black child embracing each other and smiling. It also had the sentence “Nobody is born a bigot” below the picture. Truer words were never spoken.
We, then, as adults, have the opportunity to either help our children fulfill the promise of that gift, or twist it into some grotesque, self-serving image of what it should be; of what it once was. When we twist this gift of God into a curse of human passions, our children become the Quasimodo-like foot soldiers of the imperial free-market theocracy we seem destined to leave as our legacy. We end up with war, economic exploitation, sexual exploitation, slavery, and a list of evils too lengthy to even begin to catalog. We end up with a minimized image of God that supports all of these and is, since we have then succeeded in re-creating Him in our image, as seduced by them as we are.
The adults in the lives of Josh Duggar and his victims did just this. They twisted the beautiful sense of right and wrong God births into us into something completely unrecognizable; something truly ugly. They removed all True ‘right’ from the moral equation, retained only the ‘wrong,’ and then pressed this into their children as what is ‘right.’ They then reenforced this evil manipulation of God’s desire for us by characterizing at as His will; as ‘Biblical.’ That, my friends, is the overwhelming weirdness of this tragedy. Sadly, they weren’t the first to do this and they won’t be the last.
In the patriarchal freak show they created, once Mr. Duggar’s crimes became known, the concern was for him, not his victims. Who cared for the victims? No one within their ‘faith.’ They were taught, through a truly ugly manipulation of the Godly act of forgiveness, to get over it. When I think about what these girls have had to go through; not only as victims of the immediate act of Mr. Duggar’s molestation, but especially the manner in which their pain, confusion, and needs were marginalized afterwards, by their family no less, my sadness begins to turn to anger.
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I do need to return to Mr. Duggar for bit. Although I am troubled by the fact that he grew up in an environment that would seem to, if not actually condone his actions, at least make certain that he was not held accountable for them, I am more troubled by the fact that he had multiple victims.
Mr. Duggar needs to be examined, over a lengthy period of time, by a professional psychologist or psychiatrist regarding his sexually deviant behavior to determine the extent to which he may be at risk for committing any such acts in the future. He may pose no risk to anyone. This may have been a pubescent hunger fueled by his environment. Then again, he may pose a great risk; he may be walking around cloaking his deviant desires beneath a shroud of avoidance of shame and guilt that is certain to fail at some point in the future. If he poses such a risk, he must either voluntarily, or be compelled if necessary, to find a way to minimize this risk; not within the male-domination common practice of his family’s theology, but within the larger world. After all, it is within this larger world that he exists.
I sincerely hope that Mr. Duggar is not a sexual predator (in which case all women are at risk to be sexually assaulted by him), or a pedophile (in which case all children, especially girls, given his history, are at risk to be sexually assaulted by him). These are psychological conditions I wouldn’t wish on anybody, if for no other reason than the harm done to others as a result of their expression when left untreated.
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Lastly, in terms of what actually occurred, although I have not the requisite information to accurately characterize him as either a sexual predator or a pedophile, I do condemn Mr. Duggar for what he did. Mr. Duggar knew right from wrong, for although the adults in his life twisted the ‘knowledge of right and wrong’ gift God gives us, we all know that His gift always survives within us in its true essence. God is too powerful and loving for us to ever completely destroy His work. Mr. Duggar made choices, and those choices were his and his alone. Those choices were counter to what he knew was right and hurt these girls and others.
As I stated earlier in this piece, all adults reading this have passed through the crucible of puberty. These years contain the genetic/hormonal changes that take us, in a purely physical manner, from childhood to adulthood. We exist in this strange transitional state in which the curiosities of childhood meet the desires of adulthood. The body is changing so quickly that our psychological and emotional selves cannot keep pace. When this happens we end up with…teenagers. Yes, that’s right, the dreaded scourge of all parental tranquility; the teenager.
However, the vast majority of pubescent teenagers are able to process the curiosity/desire matrix through a filter that will lead them to not molest children, but rather stumble through these years of discovery and confusion with someone their own age who is experiencing the same physical and psychological pushes and pulls. Mr. Duggar either did/does not possess this filter, or saw it as not part of the ‘biblical’ traditions to which his parents taught him he was entitled. Both of these are dangerous, but the latter is by far the most dangerous.
Parents create the environments in which their children learn how to live within the larger world. Two major environments are the degrees to which children grow in love and understanding, or shame and guilt. Depending on the balance of the ‘love and understanding’ or ‘shame and guilt’ home environment created by the parents, we end up with several different outcomes to this teenaged, pubescent stumbling:
In a home environment based upon love and understanding we have initially uncomfortable conversations between parents and children about the dangers and responsibilities of approaching physical adulthood and the eventual inevitability of becoming sexually active. The results of the conversations fostered by this ‘love and understanding’ environment are teenaged boys who respect themselves and girls, and girls who respect themselves and boys. Neither are generally promiscuous and both know about birth control.
The result of a ‘shame and guilt’ home environment are no such conversations. Rather, society ends up with teenage boys who look down on girls and girls who end up pregnant at the abortion clinic their parents are trying to shut down.
Peace and Love to all,
Niemand