Duggar Family Ally Sued for Sexual Abuse by Numerous Women

It seems that one never knows what delicious new bomb will go off and pt the hypocrisy of the Christofascists and "family values" crowd on open display.  Regular readers are likely familiar with the implosion of the Duggar family that made a nice living by peddling the godly Christian shtick and the parents' ability to bread like rabbits until it came out that son Josh had not only sexually abused his underage sisters and utilized the services of prostitutes.  Now,  Bill Gothard, a Duggar family ally and for years a major player in the Christofascist home schooling universe has been sued by a group of women who allege that Gothard sexually abused them.  Previously, Gothard had resigned from his "ministry" after 30 women alleged that he was a sexual predator.   Secularists and Democrats are not immune for sexual improprieties, but it seems that for every one of them that runs into trouble there are at least nine of the godly folk.  The Washington Post looks at this new lawsuit and Gothard's questionable past.  Here are highlights:

Ten women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, who for decades was a major force in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, charging him and leaders in his ministry with sexual abuse, harassment and cover-up.

Gothard, who urged Christians to shun things like short skirts and rock music, is accused of raping a woman. The same woman says she was raped by one of the ministry’s “biblical counselors.”

The lawsuit is part of a battle between dozens of women and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which was until recently an influential homeschooling ministry, and its charismatic leader Gothard, who urged Christians to focus on their “biblical character” and have large families.
Gothard, 81, resigned from the ministry in 2014 after more than 30 women had alleged that he had molested and sexually harassed women he worked with, including some who were minors.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Gothard said he has not seen the lawsuit and denied allegations that he had raped one woman.

A smaller group of the same women filed a lawsuit in October against IBLP. In Wednesday’s amended lawsuit, more women have joined the lawsuit, and the lawyers added Gothard to the complaint as a named defendant.  

Gothard’s ministry was once a popular gathering spot for thousands of conservative Christian families, including the Duggar family from TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting.” Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute conferences, where families would learn from Gothard’s teaching, were popular among homeschooling families. He has also rubbed shoulders with Republican luminaries like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

IBLP was in the headlines last year after In Touch magazine reported that Josh Duggar, the eldest son of reality TV stars, had been sent to an IBLP training center as a teenager after he admitted he had sexually abused four of his younger sisters and a family friend.

Read the entire piece.  The take away is that Gothard - like so many of the professional Christian crowd - is not only a parasite, but also seemingly a world class liar and hypocrite.  It is little wonder that the younger generations are walking away from organized religion and the poison it peddles. 

Are the Deeply Religious Insane?

As regular readers know, I have a very low regard for the Christofascists and others who reject objective reality, logic, reason, and scientific fact in favor of "religious faith" and claims based on the writings of ignorant, uneducated (in modern terms) and generally unknown authors - Islam being an exception since the author of the Koran is know even if no less ignorant.  As the world hurtles forward in modernity and science provides explanations and solutions to countless situations, the Christofascists and those like them of other faiths nonetheless cling to unsubstantiated myths and beliefs of Bronze Age herders.  Is this behavior a demonstration of insanity.  A fun piece in Salon that using a satire piece as its launching pad suggests that the answer to this question is a resounding "yes."  Here are article highlights:

The headline on the [satirical] News Nerd was almost too good to be true: “American Psychological Association to Classify Belief in God As a Mental Illness.”  A study, the story beneath it read, had led the APA to conclude that “a strong and passionate belief in a deity or higher power, to the point where it impairs one’s ability to make conscientious decisions about common sense matters, will now be classified as a mental illness.”  Faith’s recurrent lethality was adduced: “Every year thousands of people die after refusing life-saving treatment on religious grounds.”  Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, said the article, refuse lifesaving transfusions (on account of biblical prohibitions against the drinking of blood).

Most gratifyingly, for a rationalist, the author quoted a certain Dr. Lillian Andrews, who opined that, “Religious belief and the angry God phenomenon has caused chaos, destruction, death, and wars for centuries.  The time for evolving into a modern society and classifying these archaic beliefs as a mental disorder has been long overdue.”

A “strong and passionate belief” in a (nonexistent) God does our world immeasurable harm: look no further than ISIS or al-Qaida.  In fact, look no further than the damage religion causes to progressive causes of every sort (and thus to our psychological well-being) in the United States, from women’s reproductive rights to same-sex marriage to teaching science in schools to depriving federal coffers of $82.5 billion a year (in tax exemptions).  Consider the enrichment of all sorts of faith-charlatans who thrive off the gullibility of millions of Americans.  Recall the sick “purity movements” that allow meddlesome parents to ruin the lives of their daughters.

I could go on.  In any case, it was to be expected that sooner or later psychologists would catch on to the quasi-psychotic elements (including detachment from reality, belief in spirits, hearing “the voice of the Lord, and so on) inherent in religion.

The fine-print disclaimer at the foot of the News Nerd’s page ruthlessly dispelled my elation: The story, like the others the site publishes, was “for entertainment purposes only,” and “purely satirical.”  In other words, a spoof.  . . . psychologists were not yet ready to diagnose firm belief in God as what it is: an unhealthy delusion.

Yet the satire in the News Nerd’s piece derives its efficacy from an obvious truth: belief in a deity motivates people to behave in all sorts of ways — some childish and pathetic, others harmful, a few outright criminal — most of which, to the nonbeliever at least, mimic symptoms of an all-encompassing mental illness, if of widely varying severity.

Why childish?  A majority of adults in one of the most developed countries on Earth believe, in all seriousness, that an invisible, inaudible, undetectable “father” exercises parental supervision over them, protecting them from evil (except when he doesn’t), and, for the mere price of surrendering their faculty of reason and behaving in ways spelled out in various magic books, will ensure their postmortem survival.  Wishful thinking characterizes childhood, yes, but, where the religious are concerned, not only.  That is childish.

To have all the resources to begin reliably fathoming the mysteries of the universe, and yet to cast them aside for slavish fidelity to primitive fables (most of which deserve no more “reverence” than tales from the Brothers Grimm) that no one past the age of six or seven should believe . . .   well, such is the very definition of pathetic.

But the harm is greater than that.  All in all, the most pernicious constellation of rubbish misbeliefs forming the core of the Abrahamic faiths concerns women, blamed for sin itself (the “original sin”), and the Fall of all mankind.  Every mainstream misogynistic superstition stems from the rotten old myth of Genesis: woman as made not in God’s image, but from one of Adam’s spare parts, and thus inferior to man.  Woman as temptress, woman as unreliable, woman as “unclean.”  The rest of the Old and New Testaments inculcate an array of injurious ideas: that women depreciate after their initial sexual encounter, and serve only to bear children and satisfy the lust of their mates.  

Religion as child abuse has, of course, always formed the mainstay of faith.  A desire to indoctrinate the unsuspecting young in faith’s dark, lurid dogmas before science, reason, and the enlightening joys of secularism take over and help them mature into healthy adults has for decades motivated a controversial homeschooling movement afflicting some 2.5 million children in the United States.

Homeschooling amounts to allowing the faith-deranged to infect their young with their disorder.  But it covers only the academic year.  Summertime, some of those same faith-deranged foist the God delusion on their defenseless children via a noxious plethora of “Bible camps.”  For a shocking look inside this perverted institution, check out the masterly (if enraging) 2006 documentary “Jesus Camp,”. . .

“Jesus Camp” shows children at the gruesomely named North Dakota camp “Kids on Fire” suffering through a miasma of brainwashing involving the abusive instillation of fear, self-loathing, and guilt, an incitement to al-Qaida-style martyrdom for the sake of Christ, . . . . The searing documentary exercised a salutary effect on the “Kids on Fire” camp, which is to say, it led to its demise.  Unfortunately, there are plenty of others like it.

Suffice it to say that religion is the chief motivator of terrorism the world over.  Apologists can rant themselves red in the face trying to ascribe such crimes to anything but faith, but the truth is, any Islamic fundamentalist can claim, with irrefutable textual justification, to be acting in accordance with “holy writ.”

Terrorism aside, though, faith’s role in the death of its own votaries could well serve as sufficient evidence for classifying strongly-held religious convictions as symptomatic of a possibly homicidal mens rea (criminal intent).  Here the courts have proved complicit, aided by our prevailing custom of exculpating religion and deferring to the religious.  

If the News Nerd’s APA story was a hoax, professionals are, nonetheless, taking note of the danger it was parodying.  A San-Franciscan human development consultant named Dr. Marlene Winell, herself a survivor of a Pentecostal upbringing, has bruited the idea of “religious trauma syndrome” and established its symptoms as “anxiety . . . depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning.”  Kathleen Taylor, an Oxford neuroscientist, has proposed treating religious fundamentalism itself as a “mental disturbance.”

The religious blather about evil in the world yet are too blind to see that much of the evil we see stems directly from religion.  It's time that deference to religion and the deeply religious end. 

Why Conservative Christian Homeschoolers Are Fighting Standards That Don’t Apply To Them

Extremist Mike Farris

I continue to believe that the derangement of today's GOP tracks directly to the rise of the Christofascists within the GOP base.  Given the 90% overlap between the Tea Party and self-styled "conservative Christians," that hijacking of the GOP includes the rise of the Tea Party.  The goal of this crowd?  To impose their sick, fear and hate based religious beliefs on all and to oppose anything that might suggest that their fantasy world view is wrong.  Nothing terrifies these folks more than having to think or face the possibility that they have built their lives on an untrue myth.  A piece in Think Progress tracks how this ties into the effort by the home school crowd to oppose education reforms even when they do not apply to them.  Note how Virginia extremist and failed statewide candidate Mike Farris is in the thick of the opposition - and making a nice $400,000 a year in the process.  Here are highlights:

Opposition to the educational standards known as Common Core has come from an array of Tea Party groups, conservative think-tanks, Glenn Beck, and the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity — and a few voices on the left as well. But one of the most active sources of opposition has been an unlikely group: a Christian conservative organization that works to defend the rights of homeschooling parents.

Homeschoolers are not actually covered by the educational standards. Still, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has spent tens of thousands of dollars in opposition to the Core State Standards Initiative, including federal lobbying, a microsite, and even a fully produced 39-minute documentary.

While HSLDA has tried to present these public school standards as an “immediate threat” to homeschooling families, critics from inside and outside of the homeschool movement wonder if it is part of a pattern of fear-mongering by an organization eager to maintain its membership base.

An attorney and ordained Baptist minister, Farris joined with J. Michael Smith in 1983 to establish an organization to provide advocacy and legal representation for parents who chose to educate their children at home. Farris was a already veteran of the Christian Right movement, having worked against the Equal Rights Amendment under anti-feminist legend Phyllis Schlafly in the 1970s, as head of the legal department at Concerned Women for America, and as a state director for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in the early 1980s. Today, HSLDA estimates its current membership as about 82,000 families. The organization, based in Purcellville, VA, reported in 2013 that its annual budget is more than $10 million. 

Some homeschooling advocates were not thrilled that the movement’s most visible organization was and remains a religious one. Mark Hegener, publisher of Home Education Magazine, told ThinkProgress that Farris’ “approach is a narrow religious agenda, and homeschooling is just his shtick.”

Farris argued that “Christian beliefs have been thoroughly eradicated from public schools,” and those schools are a “multi-billion-dollar inculcation machine” to push “secular humanism and new age religions.” It also quoted Farris as describing public schools as “godless” promoters of “evolution, hedonism and one-world government.” 

Farris won the 1993 Republican nomination to be Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. . . . even the state’s Republican U.S. Senator John Warner refused to back him and Farris lost by nearly 9 points (as the Republican nominee for governor won by a more than 17-point landslide).

Though opponents have tried to convince parents that the Common Core is a massive federal plot to usurp state and local control of education with a national curriculum — some even labeling it “Obamacore” — it is not actually even a federal program, nor a curriculum. 

This claim of a federal takeover is one of a series of objections Michael Farris and his Home School Legal Defense Association have cited in their massive anti-Common Core campaign.

One common attack on HSLDA has been that its work often extends to topics that are not directly connected to the rights of homeschoolers. So far this year, its federal lobbyists have worked to stop ratification of treaties, including U.N. Conventions on the Rights of the Child, the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as passage of a bill to prevent corporations from denying birth control coverage in their healthcare benefits.  

In the 2006, the group even lobbied for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. A statement on the group’s website explained that because “Same-sex marriage attacks the traditions of the family in western civilization,” it thus constitutes an “attack on parental rights.”

Kunzman concurred, telling ThinkProgress that he has frequently heard people in homeschool community criticize HSLDA as a group that “only survives financially by continuing to manufacture crises. That’s how they fundraise. Threats to homeschool freedom get the base riled up, so people contributing believe they need legal protection and political advocacy.” This victimization narrative has proven beneficial to the organization in good times and bad, he suggested: “If they win something, it’s great promotion of their services. If they lose, it’s ‘the threat is real and you’d better support us.’” 

[M]ajor concern is that if states have common standards for the public schools, standardized tests like SAT, ACT, and GED will be aligned to the Common Core and homeschooling parents who opt not to use Common Core curricula will see their kids do poorly and not get into college. Warning that kids taking these examinations might “soon encounter progressive ideologies including social engineering and alternative lifestyles,” HSLDA claims on its website, homeschool students who “are not adherents to the Common Core” could “find themselves at a significant disadvantage come test time.” 

Read the full piece.  Ultimately, opposition boils down to opportunistic extremists like Farris seeking to make a very comfortable living while  force the larger public to embrace ignorance so that small minded parents don't have their house of cards belief system threatened.  Greed and selfishness are at the core.

GOP/Conservative Groups Plan US-wide Assault on Education, Health and Public Sector

David Koch

The hypocrisy of Republicans and self-professed Bible worshiping conservatives continues to soar to new levels.  As The Guardian reports, plans are underway for a 34 state campaign to "release residents from government dependency," which of course, really means that the poor and those without health care will be cast into the gutter to hopefully die while education spending is gutted.  Helping to fund this effort to bring back the worse aspects of the Gilded Age are not surprisingly the greed driven billionaire Koch brothers.   Shockingly, another major supporter is food giant Kraft and multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (yes, the boyfriend and I will be changing our shopping patterns).  The article also highlights the pressing need to halt the political activities of alleged charities that are nothing more than funding funnels Here are story highlights:for the far right. 

Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as "free-market thinktanks", includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The policy goals are contained in a set of funding proposals obtained by the Guardian. . . . The documents contain 40 funding proposals from 34 states, providing a blueprint for the conservative agenda in 2014.

In partnership with the Texas Observer and the Portland Press Herald in Maine, the Guardian is publishing SPN's summary of all the proposals to give readers and news outlets full and fair access to state-by-state conservative plans that could have significant impact throughout the US, and to allow the public to reach its own conclusions about whether these activities comply with the spirit of non-profit tax-exempt charities.Details of the co-ordinated approach come amid growing federal scrutiny of the political activities of tax-exempt charities.

Most of the "thinktanks" involved in the proposals gathered by the State Policy Network are constituted as 501(c)(3) charities that are exempt from tax by the Internal Revenue Service. Though the groups are not involved in election campaigns, they are subject to strict restrictions on the amount of lobbying they are allowed to perform. Several of the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents propose the launch of "media campaigns" aimed at changing state laws and policies, or refer to "advancing model legislation" and "candidate briefings", in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.

The documents also cast light on the nexus of funding arrangements behind radical rightwing campaigns. The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.

The proposals in the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents go beyond a commitment to free enterprise, however. They include:

• "reforms" to public employee pensions raised by SPN thinktanks in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania;
• tax elimination or reduction schemes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska and New York;
• an education voucher system to promote private and home schooling in Florida;
• campaigns against worker and union rights in Delaware and Nevada;
• opposition to Medicaid in Georgia, North Carolina and Utah.

Medicaid is the target of a grant proposal coming from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an influential thinktank funded largely by rightwing foundations and corporations including the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, tobacco company Altria and the telecoms giant Verizon. The Texas Observer has investigated the contents of the document and points out that in its request for $40,000 from Searle, TPPF claims credit for blocking Medicaid expansion in the state.

The article is lengthy, so read the entire piece.

In Leaked Audio, Cuccinelli Affirms Support For E.W. Jackson

Homeschool Tele-Townhall from Jack Hertzfedlt on Vimeo.

E.W. Jackson has to be one of the most insane and delusional nominees for statewide office in Virginia's history.  One would think that anyone who hopes to come across as rational and of sound mind would be running screaming away from Jackson.  But not Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP's gubernatorial nominee.  In a leaked audio, Cuccinelli has affirmed his support for Jackson.  This event confirms what I have long maintained: Cuccinelli is a crazy and as much of a religious extremist as Jackson who clearly wants a theocracy.  Talking Points Memo looks at Cuccinelli's lapse in what he thought was a private conference call with home school extremists.  Here are highlights:

Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general and Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, told supporters recently they should have no question about his support for E.W. Jackson, the GOP's polarizing nominee for lieutenant governor in that state.

Cuccinelli made his comments over the weekend in private conference call with a group called Homeschoolers for Ken after a woman asked why he hadn't "linked up" with Jackson or made a formal endorsement. TPM obtained audio of that call.

"I am calling to find out why so far you have not linked up with E.W. Jackson for lieutenant governor. I'm really excited about him," the woman said. "I'm very encouraged by his pro-life stance. I feel like the two of you are on the same page and I'm wildly excited that you could both be elected, but I'm not sure what will happen if you don't endorse him and I just want to know why there hasn't been a linkup."

Cuccinelli responded by disputing the notion there was any split between him and Jackson, and promising they will spend more time campaigning together in the final weeks of the election.

Of course I'm supporting both Mark and E.W.," Cuccinelli said. "I don't think there's ever been any question about that. And there shouldn't be on this call."

Cuccinelli previously made attempts to distance himself from Jackson, including during a radio interview in June where he said he "absolutely" wants to be judged separately from Jackson and added, "E.W.’s going to have to introduce himself individually to the rest of Virginia.

Since winning the lieutenant governor nomination in May, Jackson has made negative, national headlines for past statements criticizing gays, accusing President Barack Obama of harboring “Muslim sensibilities,” comparing Planned Parenthood to the KKK, praising the Constitution's original clause to count blacks as three-fifths of a person, and for his efforts in the late 1980's to fight desegregation in Boston.

Listen to the audio of the conference call below, which was posted on Vimeo under an account using the name "Jack Hertzfedlt." Cuccinelli begins discussing his support for Jackson at about 26:50.

Virginia Senate Blocks Christianist Backed "Tebow Bill"

As prior posts have revealed, I am no fan of Tim Tebow.   Nor am I a fan of the Christofascists at The Family Foundation or their political whores in the Virginia Republican Party who incessantly want special rights for far right Christians.   A case in point is the so-called "Tebow Bill" that would allow home schooled students to play on public school sports teams.  The very public schools that the Christianists seek to hit with budget cuts whenever and wherever possible.   Thankfully, the Virginia Senate killed the Tebow Bill for this year and the Christofascists will have to wait before they can once again try to have their cake and eat it too by holding their children out of public school but then nonetheless wanting special public school perks for their children.  The Roanoke Times has details:

Legislation to let home schooled students join public school sports teams was defeated Thursday in the Senate Education and Health Committee, where similar bills have failed in previous years.  The perennial proposal from Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, would achieve that by prohibiting public schools from joining an interscholastic governing body, such as the Virginia High School League, that bars home schoolers from public school sports.

It was tackled again in a Senate committee, failing on an 8-7 vote when Republican Sen. Harry Blevins of Chesapeake, a retired high school principal, joined with the Democratic minority on the panel in opposition to the bill.

Before the vote, a procession of home school students and advocates urged the panel to approve the bill.

“We pay our taxes, too,” the elder Henderson said. “There’s no difficulty in taking our money.”  “You pay taxes that also go to purchase an F-22 fighter, that doesn’t mean you get to fly it,” fired back Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw.  The Fairfax County Democrat said parents “knew the ground rules when you opted to home school your kids” and made that choice.

Opposing the measure were representatives of education interest groups including the Virginia Parent Teacher Association, the Virginia Education Association, the Virginia High School League and the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.  They said creating special dispensation for home schooled students is unfair to public students who have to meet course load and other standards home schoolers don’t face.

Kudos to Harry Blevins who now will likely face the wrath of a truly pissed off Victoria Cobb and her fellow hate merchants at The Family Foundation who saw this bill as a top priority.  The Family Foundation was a moving force behind the killing in committee of a bill that would have protected gay and lesbian STATE employees from being fired for being gay.  Go here to see some of the lies that are all too typical of the garbage Ms. Cobb and her cohorts disseminate and direct at legislators.