My problems with the Duggars, children, and lifestyle decisions

So here’s the thing, I support your right to live however you want. I mean I don’t care as long as what you’re doing doesn’t harm anyone else. See and there is the rub. I have friends who are deeply concerned that I’m judging them, particularly friends with babies. This is always news to me, because while I like playing with your babies, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them. I mean occasionally, I’ll think, “Jesus, if I had a girl and had to bring her up in this rape culture like C does” or “L’s baby boy is going to have to navigate these unreasonable gender standards and perform to them.” I don’t care if you want to stay home, if you can afford it more power to you. Hell, if I could I would do nothing but read, craft, and bitch about politics FOREVER. So you want to spend time with your shiny baby, that’s cool.

But back to that rub, I take issue with people who harm others, and that includes the advocating of bigoted legislation. I can’t tell you you’re lifestyle is ok if it advocates for limiting the rights of others so like reproductive choice, medical access, welfare, housing, SNAP, marriage equality, employment equality, and on and on and on.

I say all of this because the Duggars. I can’t with these people. For real. I almost made it through one whole episode! My sister M loves the show. I don’t know how or why. But outside of that one episode where the family got whacky and the boys and girls did each others' chores because what could be zanier than girls doing boy work and boys in the kitchen. *head desk* The show seemed harmless, well it pushed some seriously conservative propaganda, but I wouldn’t want my nephew to have the Kardashians or the Duggars as role models. The Kardashians are uber-capitalists (which reinforces racism, classism, and sexism), and the Duggars are misogynists and zealots. Let’s call it a draw. My real exposure to this family like most celebrities is through politics. See the Duggars stump for anti-choice, antigay, anti-the American way candidates, just kidding on that last one. What else do I know? I know the women in this family spend more time talking to tabloids about their sex lives than the Kardashians. I know they are part of a conservative Christian movement that teaches women have no right to refuse sex to their husbands, and their goal is to out populate liberals and atheists (and probably all other groups that aren’t them).

So let me be clear, almost if not everything this family stands for I am against:

• Antigay, no thanks
• Anti-choice, you can have my rights when you pry them from my cold dead hands
• A woman’s worth is purity, *laughing/gasping for air* Um, no
• Women should be submissive, only if they want to be and preferably with a working contract, and tell me what to do, see what happens
• Men have to perform to rigid masculinity standards, nope, nope, nope.
• Waiting for marriage, not my thing, but I have poor impulse control, whatever works for you and your partner, but see there has to be some kind of discussion with your partner so no one is doing anything they are uncomfortable with and expectations are laid out
• Women should be constantly pregnant to populate God’s Army, I’m an atheist, but when I believed in God it was the turn the other cheek and love your neighbor one, God doesn’t need an Army he had all the superpowers
• I won’t even go near the exclusionary practices of these sorts of Christian cults, I can’t imagine there are many men of color being vetted to marry (all boyfriends/potential husbands are vetted by dad) a Duggars’ girl and absolutely no one outside their own faith.

These are values I would want children I care about far away from. I wouldn’t let them watch this show; I’d read them Harry Potter, which is scientifically proven to increase empathy among readers. I would talk about boundaries and how they don’t have to do anything they are uncomfortable with regardless of what adults may think. And from a young age I would try to explain what social constructs are and how they only have meaning because we give them meaning just like scary monsters. The Duggars are so dangerous because they seem harmless, right? They look like a large happy family with values about faith and love, as long as you conform to the molds they believe are worthy. It is the subtext; those things not actually said, but implied that are dangerous. I’m kind of against anything that teaches children there is an us and a them.

The big secret

I'm going to blow some minds with this post. I'm going to share some big old secret; most atheists give zero fucks about your faith unless it infringes on their rights of others. Sure Dawkins has some zealot follows who replaced faith in god with faith in him, and they suck, hard, but most of us *shoulder shrug*. I participated in a study last year, where the researcher was studying atheists, and his questions framed atheism as a faith, but it isn't at least not for me or any I know. It is a lack of faith, which is probably what freaks believers out, but again zero fucks.

Thus I don't care about what people tell themselves to make themselves happy in their marriages. I don't care. God gives you strength to work through problems because marriage is a partnership (or the more traditional view as a medium of the patriarchy), thumbs up (on the first one). You'll be excommunicated if you divorce so better work this shit out, less good, but ok. Or maybe you weigh the cost benefit analysis of marriage for you and your partner and decided yeah, this partnership should be legally binding because I can't think of anyone else I'd rather be legally bound to indefinitely, and you've finally worked through your commitment issues, good for you (and you know who you are). The only time I care about your marriage is if someone is being abused; you, spouse, kids, dog, I care about violence because people need help to leave bad situations.

Where religion and I come to blows is when it starts getting in the way of rights, which neither of the posts I'm going to talk about do. However, the later makes some allegations and assertions that I do want to address, specifically, reason is important when entering a marriage because it is a legally binding contract and to pretend different is irresponsible.

People who read this blog, are familiar with my views on marriage. I think the state should issue a legally binding contract (like a civil union) and then religious marriages should be sought through your place of faith. Because again, your faith has no business in my life. Likewise, my lack of faith is leaving your marriage alone, but the state is also being removed. Win-win-win. I also believe people should put a lot of thought into their marriages, and not only marriages, but living together as well (as society’s practice marriage). If you can’t or haven’t had hard discussions about children, finances, and life goals, maybe marriage isn’t in the cards for this partnership. Also, yeah it is a partnership, and however works for you and your partner, who am I to say what that should look like. I also get a little iffy when people proclaim how in love they are, but they have put little thought into an indefinite legally binding contract.

So the first post, “Marriage isn’t for you,” by Seth Adam Smith is harmless. It is all about how marriage should be about the other person. While I have some objections to this idea because the marriage I want to emulate, that of my parents is a partnership, and no one can live a selfless life all the time, which is what Smith is inadvertently arguing. There really isn’t anything wrong with aiming to make the person you love happy. Though there are dangers to being completely self-sacrificing especially if things don’t work out the way you plan, but hey I’m the pragmatic kind of person who believes in separate savings accounts.

It was the second post that got me wondering about the aims of the first post because this second author is convinced the secular people are waging war on the author of the first, and honestly with Christmas coming up, I’m not sure when we’ll have the time. Sarcasm aside, I went back and read the first post a second time, and while trite still nothing to worry about. The second post however, “Our society doesn’t know anything about marriage,” on the Matt Walsh Blog got my attention when it cited the Blaze as evidence of the secular hate for religious marriage, but see above zero fucks. This post argues that his version of traditional marriage is the way to go, and he makes some assertions about liberals, feminists, and secular life that 1. aren’t backed up by evidence, and 2. are really limiting and reading into the original post.  Let’s start with the second, Smith’s post says nothing about gendered service (or explicitly about marriage as a sacrament or between a man and woman) sure some is implied, but at no point does Smith state anything controversial.

Well, what do we know about secular marriage? Generally it is perceived to be more egalitarian, though atheism has its own problems with sexism (I’m looking at you Dawkins). But we also know based on new research, that atheist have longer marriages and lower divorce rates (as do Catholics and Lutherans) as compared to Jews, Baptists, and the non-denominational. So what does that say about the changing views of marriage? Maybe people who look at marriage as a contract are onto something?

I’ve been having this conversation with my sister M about marriage. She liked both posts, but I don’t think she believes secularism somehow is responsible for the change in views on marriage. However, she does subscribe to an either or perspective. I’m not quite clear on it. I have questions out about how looking at marriage as a contract that people think through and weigh the benefits is in contrast with “for better or for worse.”

I want to discuss two more things: one the actual motives of the second post and the changes in cultural interpretations of marriage.

First, I think we can take a lot away from this conclusion:

“People enter marriage like mercenaries. They aren’t spouses—they’re scalpers. They give only when they get, and the amount they give will be directly proportioned to the amount they receive. They are calculating and immature. They thing their ‘feelings’ are what should guide their union. They drift with the breeze until the breeze no longer carries them. They think of love as a train you buy tickets for and then ride as far as the track will take you. They don’t realize that love is a choice and we must CHOOSE it every day until we die. Sometimes we have to choose it in spite of ourselves and our feelings.

“That’s the message about marriage that isn’t popular, and because it isn’t popular it must be shouted all the louder. I say these things not because I think I am an example of how to perfectly implement them, but because they are true. Simple as that.

“Our culture is poison to marriage. Our culture is poison in general. Every day brings us more evidence of this fact.”

All the things. First, let me say as someone with a reluctance to act on emotions this really spoke to me for all the wrong reasons. I rarely respond with my first emotional response instead I wait and think things through: how will this response impact the person I’m speaking with? Do they need support or do they need a pragmatic look? Would this enhance the other person’s situation or just my own? When I do fly off, I feel terrible, always. Thus I am all about picking the emotion to act on at the appropriate time to prevent as much scarring of other people. The author talks about feelings and not acting on them, while doubling back to stress the importance of acting on this one emotion. That’s fine, I’m just being picky about language, and oh the flowery language. That said, this was written by someone of privilege, which you can tell because he is talking about more than ourselves and our feelings. A friend of mine has been in a violent marriage, she is out now, but I have no trouble telling her to dissolve her marriage. By pushing marriage as something that isn’t supposed to be about you at all sets up unhealthy situations. Marriages should be partnerships between two responsible people, and that is what is lost, though maybe it was never there.

Oh that last line...oh dear. I agree that our culture is poisoning us. Specifically, the emphasis on the individual at the expense of the collective is creating vast inequality and inequity. Oh, was that not what you were going for? Perhaps he’s thinking about how society is held hostage by the elite few to gut food stamps and prevent programs that could help millions? No, still, no? Maybe he’s thinking about voter suppression, poverty wages, the rise of corporations at the expense of people, the Texas drive through death penalty? Nope, nope, nope. Damn, well he mentions marriage so he must be referring to the TANF push for welfare recipients to marry for the sake of raising out of poverty, which simultaneously devalues marriage, put some people in real danger bound to violent partners, and is economically ineffective because of the before mentioned poverty wages? I certainly hope this is what he’s referring to and not something silly like gay marriage, atheism, or people freely choosing divorce as the right choice for themselves.