Part One: The Cult Behind Josh Duggar

I was gonna shout chow Chessco. Just just scream out chow Chessco's name, but I forgot to at the last minute. And I'm so sorry, Sean. That's okay, I mean it's it's you know, it's no Punani. But you know, well, we can talk about Poonani. We can talk about but but we do have we do have a different bastard today.

Although all bastards lead one way or the other to Steven Seagal, I do believe that strung and I'm fairly certain you could connect today's bet Well, let me let me double check here, let me do check here, because we're talking about Josh Dougger today, and in a broader sense, we're talking about aspects of the Quiverful movement. And I kind of wonder, can we here with the production company or something related to a movie made by Steven Seagal. That's that's there. I think I know how I can

make this connection. Um, okay, yes, we can make this connection. So Mike Huckabee went on the View in two thousand and seventeen and denied that Joe R. Pio was a racist and says that he knows Joe R. Pio their friends, and he knows that Joe R. Piot was not a racist. Joe R. Pio has shown up at campaign events and campaigned with both Jim Bob and Josh Dugger. Joe R. Pio was connected directly to Stephen Seagal. We did it, We did it, hey, perfect, We should put it out there,

put out to the universe. Steven Seagal, the bastards, Kevin Bacon. That's right, Yeah, we could. I mean, I bet if we were to spend the time, we could draw a connection between him and Hitler. Um, but I would probably need to do a little bit more digging than I'm going to do right now while we're recording an episode, but for a depressingly less amount of there's just a photo of him in an s S uniform. No, he

has an age nearly that. Well, Sean, you want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself before we

before we get into this episode. As I was telling you before we started up, I worked on the healthcare front lines during the during the pandemic and kind of sat on my hands while watching and paying attention to Twitter and all that stuff of all the protests and the tear gassing and all that stuff going on in real time, being kind of like, oh, I'm at this, I'm at this front uh of all the crazy stuff going on. I don't want to bring COVID from one

to the other. Uh. So I was like, when this auction came up, I was like, Oh, I am willing to spend a real amount of money to to did Wheeler fuck Ted Wheeler? Yeah, I'm I'm I'm glad that you did. And for those of you listening who live in the city of Portland, if you go to Total Recall PDX dot com, you can print off the sheet that you can then sign and and and scan back in. You can also print off sheets that will allow you to sign up multiple people. It will explain everything. There's

like a whole process. It's more complicated than it should be and more of pain in the ass, and it should be because they don't want Mary's to get recall UM. But if you go to Total Recall pd X, they will explain the whole thing. If you're not in Portland and you want to support the recall effort against Ted Wheeler, who is trash like Shan did very generously, you can also go to Total Recall PDX and you can donate. They have paid people going out and who are helping

to um, who are helping to fund this. Timber is a thorn's game. They're usually out there and it's you know what, I there's there's a lesson I learned from all this, and that is you know, there's a phrase that comes up a lot and on this podcast too. It's called fuck you money, and it kind of it's usually people that are so super rich, you know they have It's like, fuck you, I have money. Fuck you I have enough money to change your life if I

want to. If you've annoy me. Yeah, and it's it's something most of us will never have, never ever, nor should we ever have, because it really kind of gollums up your Sniegele, you know what I mean. That's a good way to put it. So, but hey, I just want everyone to know if I've learned nothing else from this, It's said, if you have hope in your heart and even but a penny in your pocket, you have fuck Ted Wheeler money. Yeah, and that's that's together we can have.

We can have fuck Ted Wheeler a variety of things, because it's not just money that fuck Ted Wheeler. It's getting out on the ground and signing people up. It's adding just your name or your name and people in your household to the sheet. All of that is in an ephemeral sense, Ted Wheeler money. Yeah. You don't even have to spend a time. You could be sitting broke in a little uh in a little cafe in Louisiana. Again, just that little pen in your pocket. It just know

that you do have fun Ted Wheeler money. Or if you're living in Portland, you've got a good relationship with some neighbors, go out and signed some people up. There's a lot of ways to fuck Ted Wheeler. Um, we could make a joke about the fact that you just got broken up with, but we won't because that's not classy. Um the very little known rule thirty five. So Sean, you I asked you when you when you won the auction,

who do you want to hear about? And you gave me a couple of different names, And the name that I decided to go with because I've been wanting to cover this motherfucker for a while was Josh Dugger. And I'm curious before we get into the episode, Um, what do you know about Josh and why did you want to learn more about him? So Josh Dougger. So what I know about him was the uh, the or j Dougs, you know, the dig dugger. Good God, I hope no

one calls him that. Not interested if she's nineteen and counting? Uh, I know, you know obviously there's the uh, the violent child porn that came up, the being on the kind of pushing that quiverful life through tlcs um reality show of nineteen accounting, and uh, he just seemed to be a kind of like a celebrity spokesperson might not be the right way, but but like a represented like he mainstreamed stuff that was not that it wasn't like not

that there wasn't a significant amount of it going around in the country. Like I grew up in it was it was real conservative Catholic, not not quiverful necessarily, but kind of towards that lines. And then like terms of politics and stuff, um, so I kind of knew we had a thing with that. And for me, part of kind of growing up and and paying more attention to things and looking back on stuff what got me interested in him was because this is this is something that

is what he represents. I think is kind of not always mainstream talked about as as a danger. A lot of like they cause some sometimes they're ex evangelicals or they'll call themselves ex evangelicals, Like I know people that have struggled with like coming out of that and trying and so there's a lot of talk in those communities

about it. Um. But I think maybe the best way to think about it for people who aren't familiar with it is you kind of you know, you have your kind of maybe like your sovereign citizen type libertarians where it's like the government should just have defense and have this, So the kind of people he represents, I would say, the best way to put it is they say that and and the follow up to the government should just do like defense and like a couple of civil things

is and the rest belongs to Jesus. And so when you talk about separate, it's it's one of those vocabulary things that's also purposely deceptive. I think, where like when you talk about separation of church and state, they can say yes because they're defining the state in a completely different way. And I think that really kind of can hook people into it or have people not realize what

it is. And I think there's from a little bit of of dabbling in some of the history of like um apocalyptic groups are knowing people that got out of like doom colts Um. They're the vein of kind of fundamental fundamentalism that he's in is one of those that's like, oh, Israel becoming a state is the sign of the end time. I'm not exactly sure if he personally is is within that. Oh, I mean, yeah, I'm pretty sure we're gonna go into

detail about the exact chunk of evangelical Christians. Yeah, you can't really, you can't really explain the Duggers unless you explain the quiver full movement. Um. And so we have we have a bunch of that talk and we're not going to go We'll go deeper into the quiver Fule movement in another episode. I have a friend who grew up in that particular cult and I R l uh No, he has a friend of mine though, um as I said, yeah, I went to a traditional conservative Catholic college with Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I remember. I was like Eve, I Eve has been a friend of mine for years and years and years. Who's how I met R. L. Stoler. Yeah? Okay, so we actually know some of the same people who grew up in this cult. Well, some of this is going to be old news to you, but it'll be new to a lot of people listening, and it's important. So I'm gonna I'm gonna get into it. From nine to two thousand to Jim Bob Dugger was a state legislator

in the Arkansas House of Representatives. He made a couple of failed bids at seeking national election, and during one of these campaigns, he took his wife and his family, which at that point numbered fourteen kids, out to support him on election day, he and his wife voted and then marched off with their sizeable brood, and ap photographer spotted them and took a picture. The picture was purchased by the New York Times, and it went the early

odds version of viral. Now. At the time, it was obvious that Jim Bob was a conservative Christian, but the enormous size of his family was seen as more of like a quirky personal choice than anything. That's how it really got portrayed a lot in the media. In the mainstream media, parenting magazines reached out to Michelle Dugger, his wife, and asked her to write an article about child rearing. Somewhere along the line, a savvy producer at Discovery Health

decided the Duggers would make fascinating reality TV fodder. They put out several hour long specials featuring the family, whose fame rose consistently until in two thousand eight they got their own TV show, Seventeen Kids in Counting Yeah, I would like to interject real quick, something that uh uh an analogy or not analogy, but a comparison that came up is because I grew up with that was one

of six kids. So and there's always like the oh, it's such a big family, like it's kind of a there's kind of that like remember from I remember from the Rush Limbaugh Show, you Rush Limbaugh episodes, you talked about how he was fitted by the media. It's one of those things like, oh, this is interesting, this is fun. They don't dig and so then it gets spotlighted. We're gonna we're gonna cover We're actually going to go deep into one of the earliest article I've been able to

find on the family. Um so for about seven years after two thousand eight, which is you know, kind of when they really hit the mainstream. The Dugger family grows steadily in fame. They become millionaires. UM. I don't know exactly. It's it's hard to tell, right because those what are your net worth or what is his person's networth is always kind of shitty. But it seems like what I've heard is like three and a half million for Jim Bob, which doesn't seem impossible. Like he's been on TV a while,

it's been a successful show. Um And as a result of their growing fame, they became increasingly plugged into Republican Party politics. Jim Bob and his oldest son Josh, did photo ops with Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who we now know is connected to Stevenology just one degree of separation, and Florida Senator Marco Ruby, oh, I guess is connected to Stevens well, probably actually has direct connections to both,

probably one step away. Um. Now, it was hardly a secret that the Duggers were right wing, but most casual observers, including most people who watched their shows, were unaware of the sinister reality behind why the Dugger family had so very many children. On July eleven, one, the Washington Post published an article titled an American Kingdom. The logline was this and this this showed up all over my Twitter because of the fiction book that I just read about

this sort of thing. The logline was a new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, once a nation under God's authority, and is central to Donald Trump's GOP. Now, the article is this is what you were talking about?

Is broadly accurate in a way that it sketches out the dimensions of the dominionist movement, which quote holds that God commands Christians to assert authority over the seven mountains of life, family, religion, education, economy, arts, media, and government, and which after which time Jesus Christ will return and reign for eternity. Now where that article gets things wrong is it classifies this movement as new. It's not. Now.

You could argue that it's new that because these are you know, there's two broad in kind of this chunk of evangelical culture. There's pre millennial and post millennia old dispensationalist right, and Premillennials were the guys who were like, um, it's going to like the the God is going to like come soon and we're gonna have us a rapture

and ship. And the post millennials are like, we'll talk about this more a little bit later, like, well, no, we have two ready the world for God to come back, right, and one of those was dominant, like the left behind books are kind of the old the older way, and that's less dominant now because it didn't. I don't know if you're aware of this, but the the Changing of the Millennium didn't really do much. And there was a

movie with Nick Cage. He kind of was a movie with Nick At that point, God, I want to know more about how they managed to make that because remember he uh, he was so deep in text for what he had to sell his dinosaur bones and take any movie too many dinosaurs and he had to be in a weird Christian propaganda movie. Nicolas Cage is about the only actor I could never be angry at for doing that, because it's like, well, yeah, you gotta you gotta keep

your dinosaur bone addiction going. Man, I don't blame you for that. Any movie Nicolas Cage is in, just keep the bones flowing. That that should have been the tagline Nicolas Cage has to bone left behind. So yeah, um yeah. So again, not a super new movement, although it is kind of new and being as dominant with an it like that that has changed over time. The election of Donald Trump was which was you know, partly fueled by

evangelical support. Um, and so sorry I framed that badly. Again, this is not a new movement, and it's tied into everything that's been happening over the last five six years that have really freaked out a lot of kind of liberals who maybe weren't paying as much attention or who wrote off the Christian Right as kind of just like they're just they're just nuts, right, like they all together. It's the same thing. It's the same. It was easy

during the Obama era. It seemed like you you could make fun of these people in the silly things they'd say online and like movies like Jesus Camp and stuff, and it didn't seem like as much of a it didn't seem like they were gaining as much power as they were. And every we're seeing today both the rise of Donald Trump, the current assault on trans rights, and states like Tennessee and Arkansas, the present groundswell of right

wing Christian support for crackdowns on voting rights. All of these things have their origins in the same, very specific Christian subculture, and for more than half a decade, the Dugger family was the trojan horse for bringing that subculture into the American mainstream. To understand the Duggers, we have

to talk about the Quiverful movement. The name comes from Psalm one seven, like arrows in the hands of a warrior, Our sons born in one's youth, blessed as the man whose quiver is full of them, They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies at the gate and the gist of this idea is that American society has become hopelessly godless and sinful, and if you're going to bring the nation back to God, you need a new generation of holy warriors to fight for Christianity.

So it's your responsibility as a true Christian to pop out several basketball teams worth of babies in order to fight it build the army of God. Right, that's the Again, we both have friends who were who were raised to be soldiers in God's army. Um. Now, the quiver full movement evolved rather naturally out of several different strains of right wing Christian culture. One of these was the homeschooling community. Obviously, parents can choose to home school kids for a lot

of perfectly sane reasons. Uh. And in fact, one of my old co workers, Christie Harrison at Cracked, who is not at all a quiver full type you know, Christian, home schools her family um and is a perfectly reasonable person not shipping on the concept of home school. I was homeschooled from first grade too through high school. Graduation was yours, but yours was pretty reliou. I mean, it's efet not to be so here's so here's the weird thing.

So the background on that is it was more there's there's family dynamics, which I won't go into for the sake of but basically it was kind of a more of a it's a thing we should do, so it's kind of weird, Like we did a lot of the performative stuff without getting super into the CULTI stuff. It was more of like viewed as an obligation to life for the community or like grandparents or whatever. Um So

it worked for me. So I'm like on the low end of the spectrum, and I can see like school or what what used to be or maybe still is called Asperger's um so, but uh, I can see going to school given that, given how aware of my given everything at home and family dynamics and issues and mental health and all that stuff, I can see that being

a real bad time for me. So it's like it's not a great time for most It's so I mean, and my my dad had a restaurant, so I worked at that, so I kind of had like one foot in the secular, one ft in the like insular kind of sheltered. Yeah, that seems like a pretty lucky and

it might very yeah, one of the things. But if you're even if you're coming at it from a more reasonable perspective, if you're in home schooling, you're gonna encounter a lot of weird Christian propaganda because it's so dominant in schooling, right, even if you're trying to be secular with it, it's just everywhere in that community. Um, and yeah, the practice. This leads to what I'm saying. The practice of homeschooling has been heavily dominated by the evangelical Christian

community for decades. The U s Department of Education currently estimates that more than one million school age kids are homeschooled in the United States, and the real number could be double or triple that because a lot of those families do not participate in the census or get birth certificates for their children. That is very common in the Quiverful movement, if you like, especially in the fringes, not

even the fringes of it. A lot of people in it like like maybe you get birth to maybe you get a birth certificate for your sons, you don't get them for your daughters because birth certificate she could leave at some point a social Security number with a birth certificates, security passport, do you leave, get get away from your weird family, cut it off through So we really don't know how many kids there are like this um and that's I mean, there's a lot of other different subcultures.

Sovereign citizens get looped into some aspects of this, but not all. Like once you're the once you're home setting in the middle of nowhere and not getting birth certificates for your children, you become you're getting the co into contact with a lot of subcultures. It's it's like the white version of avoiding immigration to by not doing the census. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

which you you do not have. Well, I don't know, I'm not I can't say that you shouldn't worry about the census if you're an undocumented immigrant because some sketchy ship was tried to be done by the Trump administration. I don't know. It's a bummer the census should it shouldn't. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole other rand. So over the course of the nineteen seventies and eighties, a backlash against feminism and the civil rights movement helped lead to the birth of

the moral Majority. The first organized up swell of what we now called the religious right. We did a two parter on this. Jerry Folwell was the biggest man in that movement, but there were a lot of of I mean it's it was a huge movement, right, A lot of people were involved. Another prominent member of the early religious right in the Moral Majority was Howard Phillips, a

Russian Jewish Man who converted to evangelical Christianity. He broke off from the Republican Party in nineteen seventy four and founded the far right Constitution Party. Now. Howard and his son Doug were two of the of the first prominent advocates of a very specific way of looking at the Culture War in the United States. Like many in the religious right, they argued that the struggle between humanism and

Christianity was a war. They went on to argue that this war could only be won by Christian women, and the only way for Christian women to fight was for them to die to themselves. This is the term they use, I give up their personal ambitions and completely submit to their husbands. The basic idea, as the Phillipses and others preached it was that Jesus was the general of a great heavenly Army. Soldiers in a real army are expected to follow orders whether or not they agree with or

understand them, unless you're in the German Army. Now, ye, women needed to submit totally to their husbands because that's what Jesus asked. So if they accept to the utter authority of men over their lives, they would actually be taking agency and striking a powerful blow against the deevil. But giving up your life, that's that's you exercising agency. Then, to put it in context again for the more secular people, uh, you think about war, you know, like war crimes that

the United States gets away with. If you're in a heavenly army, what are war crimes? You know, it's it's it's the same where it's like, yeah, you know what's gonna happen, and it's gonna get covered up and it's okay as long as you achieve the objective. It's that yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of crimes that are fine with us. But you know who doesn't do crimes unless they're rad I was gonna say people who aren't elon Musk, but then you said crimes. Yeah, I'd say crimes, not crimes

the products and services that support this podcast. Sean, have never committed any crimes in the United States that have been documented by journalists who have not been carboned. I was gonna say, they have to be arrested for it to be a crime. Have to be arrested for it to be a crime. That's how I live my life, and that's how our sponsors do too. Here's some AT's. Ah, we're back, Sean. We're talking about Howard Phillips. Uh, and we're talking about the birth of of the religious right.

So in speeches that Doug Phillips gives to packed his son, Doug gives to packed audiences, he reads versus from the Bible like Ephesians five one, Uh, wives submit to your husband's as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ as the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior. Now is the church submits to Christ. So also wife should submit to their husbands and everything. Now. Doug calls this the quote best kept secret of modern Christian marriages.

And then he says stuff like this, you are a help meet. The Bible says that man is not made for women, but women is made for but the woman is made for the man. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the creator, not Phillips. I'm just quoting. Until we get comfortable playing those roles will never be at peace. But if we accept those roles, who half the battle is diminished already just by the

fact that we accept God's creation order. This philosophy has come to be known as complimentarianism, i e. Women were created not as individual beings of their own with independent desires and talents, but as a compliment to men. Right. It's the little known fact that was actually the original tagline for a g I. Joe. Submitting to your husband's

is half the battle. Now. Feminism in this cosmology moral cosmology is evil because it encourage encourages women to seek their own lives independent of men, which Rob's men, who are again the only real people of the wifely support God intended for them to have. In his speeches, Phillips loves to quote Isaiah three twelve, which cites God's curse upon us inful nation, children are your oppressors and women rule over you. This is a God saying like this

is how I'm gonna curse you. If you if you don't follow my claws, I'll make your children oppress you and your the women will be in charge. Um. So he's saying that like if if that's what God is, like, feminism is a curse from God if we if we don't obey his call, will curse us with feminism. Well, going back even further again from my upgrading, upbringing and a lot of some people in my upbringing, and then just kind of a general Christian thing, it's the whole

Well Eve gave him the apple. So women has always been men's downfall, and it's their place to be underfoot because that's because that's you know, that's that was just how it worked, because that's how the story started, how the story started. Now, the nightmare for these people is a world in which Christian men do not have total

control over their families. While mainstream culture filled with movies featuring strong female protagonists in the eighties and nineties, rock stars like Madonna, political figures like Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, Phillips and his ilk preached that women's liberation would lead to the collapse of civilization. He called the young Christians he preached to in the nineteen nineties and early adds the Rick reclamation generation, because their duty was to retake

society from liberal feminists. Um. One of the through lines in this strain of the evangelical culture is they have way more faith in the power of feminism than most feminists, and I know they are really bullish on its ability to to change society. Now, homeschooling was considered one of

the necessary tools of reclamation. By having enormous families and teaching their children themselves outside of the sinful state education system, Christian families could keep their children free from the sinful secular world. One of the things I find most interesting about these people is the sheer amount of weight they give to feminism, and again they have a lot of of They really think that it has a lot more

influence and government than I think it does. Here's Mary Pride, editor of Practical Homeschooling magazine and one of the most influential figures in the homeschooling movement. Quote. Christians have accepted feminists moderate demands for family planning and careers while rejecting the radical side of feminism, meaning lesbianism and abortion. What most do not see is that one demand leads to the other. Feminism is a totally self consistent system aimed

at rejecting God's role for women. Those who adopt any part of its lifestyle can't help picking up its philosophy, and those who pick up its philosophy are buying themselves a one way ticket to social anarchy. Feminism is self consistent. The Christianity of the fifties wasn't. Feminists had a plan for women. Christians didn't. And this is our explanation for why feminism was was winning and they were, you know, Christianity is under siege and one. Not to be fair,

there's there's probably ah. I mean, obviously a lot of people are like, no feminism, but there's probably a good chunk that are that No. They have to pump it up to get people to keep And what I say, by the way, when I'm saying stuff like that, I think these people have an outside idea of the impact feminism has had. It's not an anti feminist thing. It's just like there's still a lot of bias against women in our culture. I think they're overestimate, um the power

that feminism has culturally. Um Now Pride's major contribution to the evolution of what became the Quiverfule movement was to provide a plan for women. She helped and again that's her ideas, like Christianity hasn't had a plan for women. Feminist did and that's why we're losing. They had a

vision for the future and we didn't. Um She helped to create the whole integrated lifestyle of Biblical womanhood from the book Quiverful by Katherine Joyce, which is a great way to get up to speed on all this if

you're interested, very good book. The Biblical womanhood encompassing homework, motherhood, and wifehood as they were lived not in the nineteen fifties, but in a notion of pre industrial, pre household appliance times is what Pride calls a total lifestyle as comprehensive as the pervasive influence of feminism, which has reached every

part of women's work, lives, biology, and thinking. And this time around, the anti feminists intend to be fiercely diligent, rooting out the worldly feministic ideas and influences in their churches, entertainment and owned thinking and making sure it doesn't come act. Now, I'm leaving out a lot and again, Katherine Joyce, as quiver Full is a great book from more complete understanding of all this to other important contributors to this this

what becomes the ideologies of the Duggers. Follow are John Piper and Wayne Grudom. These are both Reformed Baptist preachers who headed up the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood or c BMW. In nineteen seven, the year of its founding, the c BMW released something called the Danverse Statement, which was both a mission statement for the Council and a

rallying cry to conservative Christian forces. The statement urged Christians to fight egalitarian influences in the evangelical church, particularly the scourge of Christian feminism. It argued that women should be barred from positions of authority and churches. Now, the Danvers Statement was signed by some people you might know. Beverly La Hay, wife of the author of Left Behind, Tim Lay, signed it. Pat Robertson also signed it. Dorothy Patterson and

Paige Patterson signed it. You probably don't know those last two names, but Paige orchestrated the right wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, the organization behind the second largest Christian denomination in the United States. We talked about this in the Moral Majority episode. But a lot of Baptists used to be completely fine with abortion up until like the seventies. It was not a super controversion of the

Catholics have always had their going on about it. But I got in trouble when I was in second grade for leading a group of kids around to sing that song on the playground because I just I couldn't watch like Beats and butt Head or the Simpsons. But for whatever reason, my family was like, well, Monty Python smart, so whatever, you can watch as much of that as you want. And I watched Meaning of Life in that song and idn't really understand it, but I let them

march around the playground singing it. And it didn't go over well in suburban Texas. Now was it because you sang it or because you're sang it at the end you went just hands? It didn't do that. But I didn't get what just hands was. Must been third or fourth grade, but so yeah, um so. In nineteen eleven, years after the Danver statement, the SPC, the Southern Baptist Convention released a statement of their own in which they urged wives to graciously submit to their husband's Mike Huckabee

was one signatory to the statement. The SPC, by the way, speaks for about sixteen million Americans. So by the end of the twentieth century, many of the ideas that are central to the quiver Full movement had started to become mainstream on the right wing. You're not talking about a fringe ideology when the SPC is endorsing some of this stuff, right, that's um, well, this is was it there either the

Fallwell or the Reagan episode. I think I think it was you that talked about it where it was like the evangelical saw Reagan as an inn and then Reagan used them and then didn't give them what they wanted. So then they started going, oh, we need to start taking over and making our stuff me. We need to instead of just giving them our vote and expecting stuff in return, we need to infiltrate and what our people into is the stuff you're seeing Q and on guys

try to do right now. And Christians continue to extremist Christians continuity where it's like, well, we got to get people on the school boards, We've got to get people in local elected positions. They've been doing this for a while and it works, which is every time I see people are left to be like no, the thing to do is throw up a poster on Twitter and have

a march. It's like, well, that's good too. And I get the frustration with electoralism, but they've gotten a lot of crazy shit done because they've been voting for decades. I don't know. We don't have the time anymore to that's a longer. You can make radical changes democratically in this society. Um. It just takes decades of generations of people giving up their entire lives to the cause. Um.

But it worked for them now. Obviously, most Southern Baptists are not out there having a dozen kids is shoeing alcohol, forcing their daughters to wear sackcloth dresses, and refusing to get birth certificates for their children. If you want to view the struggle for Christian domination of the US as a war, and these people do. The quiver full families are like special forces. Their sons like Josh Dugger, are supposed to be trained from childhood to seek positions of

influence in the government and culture. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. We've covered most of the ideological underpinnings of the quiver Fule movement. But the Dugger family are also members of a very specific cult within this chunk of the Christian right. They are followers of a guy named Bill Gothard. It's spelled got Hard And that'll be relevant and an unfortunate way later. Yeah, you know Bill, you've familiar with Bill Gothard. I see how you erected

that joke. Um. Gothard founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles in nineteen sixty one. So this is the religious rights not a thing when he starts this right, not in a political way, right. Um, So he's really on the bleeding edge of all this. And it was originally called Campus Teams, and its purpose was to recruit young people obviously in campuses for christ. The ibl P was fundamentalist from the get go, and it was also male supremacist.

Women were supposed to marry men chosen by their fathers and submit entirely to first their father and then their husband. Dating and flirting were forbidden, so much as winking at a man as seen as lustful and morally equivalent to prostitution. In the early nineteen eighties, the ib LP was racked by a sex scandal when it was found that Bill and his brother Steve were both having affairs with secretaries

at the institute. Yeah, um, weird how that keeps happening. Yeah, we're now none of these guys practice although actually you can say they are practicing what they preach, because, as will continue to talk about, the fault in this case was the women because they were being temptresses. Well you know, and if they had gotten them pregnant, I mean, bonus, he got an Next there's the extra soldiers. So Bill

never married or had kids. Again interesting, but his ib LP became the center of education and philosophy for the quiver Full movement. The ib LP, starting in the late nineteen eighties, ran what was effective and when. So his brother has to leave the organization and Bill steps down, but for like two weeks. And if you want a much more detailed UM podcast series on Bill Gothard, the podcast Someplace Underneath UM, which is part of the last podcast on the Left Left Network did like a four

or five partner on this. That's very very good. I was gonna say too, there's one called Christian Right Cast, so I haven't heard that, So that that's one UM it's a couple ex evangelicals or I forge if that's how they're for themselves. But it's it's on Apple. I think it may have moved to flex or something like that, but there it goes like it goes into guys and like there's there's a thing on Bill Gotthard and thing I don't know if you have it in there, but

like his his rules for how women should dress. Talk a little bit about yeah, um yeah, check out both of those if you want more. This is really important stuff. In someplace underneath they go into less detail about the stuff that I just covered, but they're going to a

lot more detail about Bill um so um. The ib LP ran what was effectively a troubled teen facility that started up in the late nineteen eighties, which is basically a forced labor camp for kids, and they also operated the Advanced Training Institute or a t I, which created curriculum for homeschooled families. The Duggers were absolutely slavish devotees of Gothardism, and all of their children were raised on

a TI curriculum. From a write up by former cult member Delanere Bartlett, who grew up in the same community, The a TI curriculum teaches that the Bible, as the literal, infallible word of God, must be the center of every lesson, leading to some shockingly inaccurate lessons, particularly in science and history.

The A TI curriculum also has a big focus on teaching students how they should behave immediate, unquestioning obedience to authorities is foremost, and a TI prescribes beatings to discipline children for even the most trivial of infractions, like failing to complete a chore on time or arguing with a sibling. Even more disturbing, the uggers participate in blanket training, where toddlers and small children are placed on a blanket and

a toy is placed judge just out of reach. When the child reaches for the toy or moves off the blanket, the parents will slap or hit them in order to instill fear and obedience. And we're not going to talk about to train up a child, but that's very big in these cultures. Child abuses like massive in this community. Yeah, um, yeah, I was gonna say that that sounds uh almost sounds more like something you'd see on a Japanese game show. Then yeah, it would be a fully grown man on

a blanket. Let's still still. I would watch that show. They're adults. I don't like blanket training is fine. If that's like your canker, whatever, more power to you now. I found another interview with a survival of Gothard's cult on Salon. This person went into a great deal more to tail about what kids were taught about sex through this curriculum. Quote. The so called wisdom booklets that form the backbone of a t I children's educations contain more

Bible verses than they do information. Particularly lacking in a religious sect so obsessed with reproduction is any kind of sex education. This is especially true for young women, who receive very little sex education because the church teaches us that women do not have sex drives. However, the opposite is believed of men. A TI teaches that men have nearly uncontrollable sex drives, ready to erupt at the mere

sight of a pant leg or a perm. To illustrate this point, A t I families are encouraged to maintain a no computer rule for their sons, but not their daughters. Gothard also encouraged men to turn towards the wall when dining at restaurants so as to not be tempted by a waitress or a stray attractive woman. You know, those straight attractive women just kind of out there tempting you by existing just wandering, wandering the streets, just just constantly. I mean that is that is how they view with

those that are called like that. That's an attack on you. With a woman's out there living her life, uh, and you find her attractive, that like an assault on you. Because if you're in an army, you're fighting another army, so that means it's it's and they're also a unified trained force of the devil, So they're the sexy taliban out there trying to steal your virtue. Yeah, it's like a Halloween costume, but as regular military gear. Now I'm

going to continue that quote. Not that our supposed lack of a sex drive absolved as from sexual responsibility a t I taught us that it is our job to keep men's desires from erupting into lust or sexual activity. We were taught that it was our sin if we cause a man to lust. After us, I spent many nights as an early developed teenager crying and begging God to take away my large breasts because I noticed men's eyes had begun to linger on me during church. Modesty

wasn't only about dress, It was also about behavior. Women were taught from a very young age that they are to be submissive in all things, allowing men to open doors for us, even to get out of a car, never initiating conversations with a man, and never correcting a man when he was wrong. Essentially, a good a t

I woman is sweet, silent, and obedient. This combination of zo uro sexual knowledge and deeply ingrained submissiveness left many young girls in our church especially vulnerable to sexual abuse. As a teenager, I became aware that several of my friends were being molested by their older brothers or fathers. They would start stilted conversations with me about it, but none of us actually understood the concept of sex or rape or molestation enough to actually discuss it, so would

stayed on the level of furtively whispered hints. And this is I mean you can draw a line here between. Like nineteen eighty four, The idea behind New Speaker is that if you if you, if you limit the vocabulary of a community, you limit their ability to express certain things like that's what's going on here. If you limit the ability of kids to understand sexuality in this way,

you limit their ability to know when they've been wrong. Well, you take away communication exactly and to kind of to draw to something recent more recent as well to kind of go on the other side in terms of how in terms of men blaming for women for stuff, there's the uh, obviously don't know it's for effect, but the um the Atlanta, the SPA shooter, who was they were like I would not be surprised if it was just like basically they were immodest and so that drove me

and my uncontrollable hormones too. That's that shooting from what information we have so far, seems to be the logical extent of this. This kind of thinking is like they wouldn't stop tempting me, so yeah, I don't know, I mean, we don't know about just like it's to get to give people like this isn't to bring it a little in from the abstract is like, yeah, this is this is the recent stuff, and it can go a variety of different ways. Because people are different, they're going to

react differally. Take it into some of those reactions are going to be scary as hell. Yeah, so, but you know what's not scary as hell? Uh, a bright summer day. I was gonna say capitalism, but uh, I guess both capitalism and a bright summer day can be scary because capital is um is a part of the engine of carbon release that is causing our summers to be hotter and dryer. So darker direction than I wanted to um,

But a bright summer day. I mean, it won't pay you to to say that it's that's not a problem, So I mean catalism at least, you know, make a book. At least I'll make a buck by denying that there's any problem with it. Hey, here's okay, we're back. So the Duggers didn't bring Bill Gothard or a t I up often on the show in ways that would have

been immediately obvious. You could see books in the show, right, There's always there's a lot of like it's visible if you know what to look for, but they're not out there like talking about how awesome Bill Gothard is. The signs were there if you knew where to look. At Dugger weddings, celebrants would dedicate an entire cake to Bill Gothard, which is again cult ship. All the Dugger women had distinctively permed hair because Bill believed that curly bangs brought

out a woman's natural beauty. Uh. The antiquated dress codes that the Dugger family engaged in, particularly for women in the family, were also a major part of like a result of Bill Gothard's influence. Over the years they were on TV, the Dugger family, particularly Jim Bob, were extremely open about the fact that their show His Career, was a ministry. They saw it as a way to recruit.

With the help of the Discovery camera crew, selective editing and scripting, they were able to portray what was really in reality and abusive cult as a quirky lifestyle choice, perhaps even one viewers would want to emulate. Jim Bob liked to say that they were just trying to convince people not to get abortions because by seeing that, like, oh, well, this family can handle fourteen fifteen sixteen kids, so obviously

I should keep this one kid, right. Um. It was a big part of like why he said they were doing it. But of course, the real purpose behind all this was to build a larger cultural space for Gothardi is m the quiver Full movement, and male supremacist fundamentalist Christianity and American culture. This is also part of a broader fundamentalist strategy. It came about as part of a

split between premillennial and post millennial dispensationalists. The former believed that the Rapture was coming in any day and soon the faith will be brought up to Heaven the world would end. The latter belief that God wouldn't let Christ return until they established a godly world. In order to do that, they had to recruit, and it wasn't enough to get people to accept Christ. They had to convince folks to follow the rules their rules, otherwise the world

wouldn't be godly enough. Since those rules are very unpleasant and extreme. You have to lure people in gradually by reaching them with something less extreme and drawing them in like a fish on a lure from Quiverfull quote. Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church, rated the eighth most influential church in America, relies on the fixtures of emergent or seeker oriented ministries, such as countercultural groups like bikers or skaters.

For Christ to attract to attract its young urban congregation, but churches like Mars Hill, which espouses a deeply conservative ideology, recognized that such outreach ministry are meant to be transitional, introducing a person to Christ where they are then easing them into more serious study and graduating them to a traditionalist doctrine and DRIs School's case, to a doctrine that places substantial weight on gender submission and a wife's role

in marriage. So again, these are all this is just it's how colts work. It's out it's how cut non works. Do you can see it? And in the fact that like there's elements of Q that are about the JFK conspiracy, the elements of Q that are about like aliens and stuff that they're about vaccines, and it all leads back to this er conspiracy and that's how people get pulled in. And that's what makes it more. It's syncretism, you know, It's it's how it all work. Wasn't that the Bill Cooper? Yeah,

that was the he was making a bread at that. Yeah, Q and on Anonymous just did a episode on Bill Cooper. I do love Bill. He really did everything right. Um, one of these days one of these days. But oh yeah, I did a two part I remember listening to it, did a fever dream that like Bill, I hope to go out a mountaintop assault by law enforcement. Um while

broadcasting nonsense on the radio. Um. Yeah. So the Duggers TV ministry worked the same way as like these kind of bikers and skaters for christ at the at the mars holtrage were it's it's all the same idea. To draw people in, you have to white wash a lot of realities about their lifestyle, make it look good, and once people start to get in, you can start laying on some of the more heavy stuff. Um, here's one issue with their lifestyle. He's one of the reasons why

what they're actually doing is objectively bad. This is not just I'm not just saying it because I'm not religious. I'm saying this because it's abusive. And one of the reasons it's abusive is that nineteen kids is way the funk too many for two parents to adequately care for in most situations almost but I'm gonna say any situation. The Duggers explain how they do this as using the buddy system. Every kid has a buddy, an older sibling who is supposed to help raise and take care of them.

Mom's buddy is the youngest baby, well she's nursing, but once that's done, she hands the baby off to the next youngest daughter in the cycle goes on. Most quiverful families work this way. I've heard from my friend even her family works that work this way. The daughters, as a general rule, are the ones doing most of the child rearing because there's too many kids for the parents to do it all. And that's not great. Obviously, siblings are supposed to your older siblings supposed to look at

for younger siblings. You definitely learn things from your siblings. You're they're not supposed to be parents, that that robs them of the chance to be a chief. Well, well we'll wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute, So let me get this straight. You're saying the large family basically does a capitalism on its straw and its instructure, where the CEO make middle management and the workers do all that. Wait, but you're saying that doesn't work. Yeah, I mean the people I know who grew up in

it have complaints. I'm innocent for this. I don't know I don't think so. Most Cuivolental families work this way, and again it's usually the daughters who do most of the sun is supposed to do some of it, but it's generally the daughters who are handling an awful lot of the child ring and this is a huge burden on them. It stops them from having a childhood. It also means that older siblings are often the only ones

watching out for their younger siblings. This becomes a problem when one of those older siblings is a sexual abuser, and that brings us to Josh Dugger. Joshua James Dugger was born on March third night. He was born in Tauntatown, Arkansas, to Jim Bob and Michelle Dugger. When Josh was a baby, the family was much less extreme in their beliefs than they would become. Michelle had taken birth control before getting pregnant, and she started taking it again after Josh was born.

She suffered a miscarriage, though, which she and Jim Bob blamed on the birth control. We obviously have no idea what comes. Miscarriage has happened, you know, it's just a thing, been real quick. That's that's that's another thing. I think that can get people suck. Then, like my parents weren't

very religious, they kind of wandered away. And then it's like you have a kid, and then all of a sudden, like everything Like it's something about having that makes you like kind of I don't know if it's just like that insecurity of like am I doing things right or what or not? But I think it makes you more a pliable to get sucked into something. Yeah, I mean that totally makes sense. Um. And it's it's all I think a lot of it is just like you have

a kid. It's really scary because like there's no really there's no map for how to have a kid and raise it right. And like sometimes people do everything right and your kid, I don't know, murder somebody or something like. It's terrifying having a kid. Um. And I think a lot of people are like, well, this group says they have a perfect roadmap for everything. Even if I follow it, my kids will will turn out perfectly. Um, So I'll just do that because this is terrifying. Hi, I'm Dr

Reverend Priest. I have an answer. Would you like to come worship with me? Yeah? All you have to do is put these weird dresses on your kids and have thirty of them, Um, and it'll be great. Here's a blanket, you'll know what to do. So yeah, they blame that there. Um they blame their miscarriage on on birth control, and like that's the what causes them to like get much

more into the into the fundamentalist side of things. They decided to let God choose the size of their family, and this led them to have more than a dozen children in a very short span of time. Now, the Dugger family was not poor. Jim Bob Brandy used car lot, but prior to discovery coming into the picture, they were not wealthy, and by the early adds, the family of sixteen lived in a square foot rented home. Most large

quiverful families live in fairly cramped environs. People who knew the Duggers before fame said their home was not a typical of the community. It was far too small. It often smelled gross because there's a lot of babies and a lot of diapers. It was dirty, filled with clutter and the kind of refuse that again, all those kids create. Now, during Jim Bob's brief time as an elected state representative, he would bring Joshua with him to the state capital.

The goal was to groom josh for a political future, and people who knew the family in this time tend to think that many Gothard just saw him as the future of the movement. He was nicknamed Governor by Republicans

who worked with his dad. The first major news coverage I found of the Dugger family was a Dallas Morning News article written in December two thousand five, two years after that New York Times photo brought Discovery into the picture, and the Duggers were the subject of their own TV specials. The article is a fascinating piece of what I call complicity journalism. Almost every detail of the quiver Full movement and Bill Gothard that was was easily available when this

article was published. There was a lot of information that the Dallas Morning News could have accessed about what these people believed, but the author, Arnold Hamilton's, did zero work to lay out anything about what the Duggers were actually into. Here's a quote. As a couple, the Duggers approached to family planning as simple. They are born again Christians who view of the Bible as their life's manual, and the Bible describes children as a blessing from God. They will

cheerfully accept as many blessings as God ordains. The reality, of course, is that they don't. The Bible is not their own manual. A t I. Bill Gothard is their manual, and that manual says that women are not full autonomous people, but merely an appendage to men and their rightful purposes to serve without question. But pointing that out would make this fun story about a big family sound more like a story of child abuse, so they don't talk about that.

The author points out several times that the Duggers own their own business and home debt free. This is a big deal in that community. And there's a lot of kind of less extreme elements of this that are still wrapped up in this that what is that guy who does those debt free seminars that's like weird and dead. Yeah, the rich dead poor. I mean that's one of them.

There's a couple. I mean it's um and Yeah, it's this whole idea that like you shouldn't have it's immoral kind of to have debt, and a lot of which I'm not in favor. I think it's like horribly fucked up the way the system of debt and the credit and stuff works in this country. I'm not You're not

as wrong. Yeah, it's the system. It's not you. Yeah. Um. And if you're like it's kind of impossible in a lot of way is to take advantag like, your life will be a lot harder if, for example, you're never able to build up enough credit that you can like try to buy a home or something, because renting sucks, ass um. And there's there's a lot of things avenues that get closed off to you when you don't buy. And that's that's not great. I wish it didn't work

that way. But this is a problem for a lot of people in the quiver full movement, um, because it leads to them not being able to access the kind of resources they need to properly care for families that are so large. Uh. Quote, the Duggers lived temporarily in suare foot rented house along a busy street not far from Interstate five forty in this town of about fifty. They are building debt free a seven thousand square foot

house in nearby Taunta town. Now this is um, this this gets to something that's kind of messed up here because again, a lot of these families are in crushing poverty because they can't have debts, so they're often building their own homes in the middle of nowhere. They don't have access to indoor plumbing in a lot of cases, a lot of the again you have families that don't have Social Security numbers. They are in the middle of nowhere. There's fifteen kids living in what is essentially a shack.

Like that's that's a significant element of this. It's not the way the Duggers live. Because the Duggers get a shipload of money from Discovery to build a nice, very large new house. And this is something they don't talk about. They talk about how they're doing it debt free. They talk about how and make it look like this, Well, because we're just we're scrimping, we save, and we're we're very consistent our beliefs, and so we've been able to

build this this very large house. Um, and if you, if you have the kind of financial discipline and listen to the teachers about financial discipline we do, you two can build a house like we have and like have a giant family like we've. It's just not possible for most people. We did it with Kupin's Yeah, we did it all with coupons and tens of thousands of dollars

from the Discovery Channel, which helps a lot um. It's like all those it's like all those articles about like how I bought my first home at like thirty two, and it's like, oh, because your parents give you a a d dollars for the down payment, that would help a lot of people can afford a house with a hundred

fifty grand from their parents. But that great Twitter Twitter mame going around where it's like on one on one side it's it's one of those articles where they're talking about it, and on the other side it's say the line from The Simpsons where they're all around Bart waiting for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it from my parents. Yeah yeah, there we go. Yeah. Now, the Duggers don't talk about any of like the money they got from

Discovery Channel. They talked about how their Christian financial counseling helped them establish a business and buy a property and build a seven thousand square halfwood house. Debt free in their community came together to help them build it, and it makes their lifestyle seem like not just a miracle, but a miracle that you two can half if you follow the same rules right, which again, most people who do the kinds of things that duggers do live in

very very difficult circumstances in a lot of cases. And it's it's a great going back to synchronicity because it also reinforces the kind of UH Calvinists prosperity gospel. The whole thing where we got it beca as we deserved it, were blessed by God. If you didn't get it, it's your fault. Yeah, if you were doing the right thing, if you were doing bless you. With the Discovery TV

show Ye the Circle of Life. Now, I want to quote again because I want to talk about it's important to really lean into the fact that most quiverful families do not enjoy this level of financial comfort. So I want to quote again from that Salon column from a former member of the quiver Fule movement titled I could

have been a Dugger wife. One key difference worth noting between the reality show of nineteen Kids and Counting and the reactual reality of a t I though, is the relative affluence of the Duggers compared to most a TI families. The Duggers live in a spacious, Discovery Networks funded home, but it was not unusual in my church for two parents and ten children to live packed into a single wide trailer. These children usually wear threadbare hand me downs,

already passed through several rounds of siblings. Many of them look malnourished due to the abundance of starchy meals necessary on a lean one parent income. Women and mothers working outside of the home is absolutely forbidden in a t I, no matter what the financial situation of the family. Some women are even required to get permission from their husbands

if they want to obtain a driver's license. That affluence makes the constant growth of the Dugger family, their wildly exaggerated version of a large family upon which their TV fame is built, possible again in a lot of ways. Not only is Discovery mainstreaming this, they're enabling the Duggers to do this because they just couldn't afford to live

like this otherwise. Now that Dallas Morning News article does note that the family isn't getting Christmas gifts that year because the house they're building is their gift for everybody, and Jim Bob gives some quaint advice about eating out on the dollar menu to save money when the family goes out, but no attention has ever paid to the fact that this house they live in was made possible

thanks to Discovery Channel money. In general, that article and all the early and media surrounding the Duggers made them out to be a quirky, strange, but ultimately relatable family living a different kind of lifestyle, but one that was fundamentally healthy, perhaps even healthier than the lives many of their viewers. This is as close as that article gets to acknowledging the fundamentalist cult at the core of their beliefs.

The Duggers may be swimming against societies tied with such a large family, but it's clear children, lots and lots of children, are at the core of their social network. They are members of a home church that numbers around one hundred, They are active in a home schooling network.

Their friends all seem to have lots of children. One family has nine, another six, and there and they're almost seems to have evolved an unofficial, loose knit network of large families that homeschool their children and attend in home churches. Some even have volunteered time to help the Duggers complete their home by mid January. An unofficial, loose knit network. Not what I would describe this cult as UM. It's pretty tightly net um and makes tens of millions of dollars.

Now the reality, of course, yeah, they're members of a cult. UM. The success of their TV show and the thoughtlessly positive media coverage of their unusually large brood disguised this for a while. But from the beginning there was a dark side to the Dugger story. And this brings me back again to Joshua Dugger. I had to really go into the weeds to do this one for you. UM. In two thousand two, when Joshua was fourteen, he accosted his sister in the night and fondled her breasts and genitals.

This sister eventually went to her father and told him what had happened. It is unclear whether or not Jim Bob acted on this information. At first, he claimed on a two thousand six police report and again the abuse started in two thousand two, that it was not and this report was not released until recently, that he disciplined josh when he learned about the abuse. If he did it did not stop the behavior. Between two thousand two and two thousand three, josh molested two of his sisters

on at least four to five occasions. This evidently prompted Jim Bob Dugger to take more significant action, not going to the cops, of course. Well yeah, kind of yeah, I mean eventually we're getting there. Yeah, we're getting twists. Um. He went to the church elders, who advised Jim Bob

to send his son to a Christian training program. In an early report, Walker described this program as involving quote, hard work and counseling, and most covers will be like that's he went to a like a physical labor kind of like treatment program. It sounds like I don't know, I don't know what the solution is Like obviously, if you're a parent, even the best parent, this is like a nightmare, impossible situation to handle. Like there's no there's

no perfect way to deal with this kind of horrible thing. Um, So I'm not gonna say there's no I'm sure there are treatment programs that are helpful. Um. But Michelle Dugger has since admitted that when he was going to this treatment program, Joshua did not see a counselor, so what did his treatment involve? Thankfully, a lot has been written about how Bill Gothard's A t I counsels both victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. And that's who ran the camp.

It was an A t I camp. I want to quote from an interview with one woman who was sexually abused by staff at A t I for some context of how the process of dealing with sexual abuse within this cold works. From the New York Post quote, the organization did have a protocol for counseling sex abuse. A chart published in two thousand third teen by Recovering Grace, a resource for ex followers of ib LP and A t I that the site claims was distributed at A

t I counseling seminars for more than a decade. It explains how group leaders should help those who have experienced sexual assault. The onus for the attack is put on the victim for defrauding the abuser. A modest dress, in decent exposure, being out from protection of our parents are all reasons that God let it happen, it reads. One marriage guide for women even includes a portion on what to do if your husband ever sexually handles your children.

Author Debbie Pearl, a minister whose books were sold by IBLP, wrote in Created to Be His help Meet. Although wives should testify and pray that their husbands get twenty years in prison, they should also visit him. There be an encouragement to him, let him see the children three to four times a year, and girls Bible study. Smith said she was told, you need to be very careful what you do, what you say, what you wear, how you act, because at any moment you could trigger a boy. Basically,

there's absolutely no personal responsibility for the boys now. A source for that article, Ms Smith was molested while working at a t I S training center by a twenty one year old staff member. He had a key to her room and would come in every night and force himself on her. They did not have sex, but in

her words, we did everything else. I didn't have the capacity to say, hey, I don't like it, which is key to the Dugger case too, because one side effect of the lack of sex set is that girls don't grow up with any kind of vocabulary to describe what's

happening to them. The reality of a TI Bill Gothard and the whole Quiverful movement is that it is a cult not just dedicated to breeding up Christian soldiers, but to providing the men at the top of it with a constant stream of helpless victims, women they can molest and then blame for it. Here's another quote from that article. When she returned home from the center, she and her father surprisingly received a call from Gothard, who's basically God,

said Smith. She assumes her friend had told one of the leaders about the incidents, although she was expecting to be reprimanded. Instead, Gothard wanted the dirty details. He started asking the creepiest questions. He was like, what time did he kiss you? What time did he put his hands here? And did he do this to you? Smith remembered calling it gross. So this is the guy who ran the treatment program that Josh went to. This is how he handles allegations of sexual abuse within his his thing. So

not an effective treatment program. I think it's fair to say, Sean, we're going to talk more about Bill Gothor, Josh Dougger and a lot of other very unpleasant people in part do. But for right now, how are you feeling? Oh? You know, he picked a heavy one. It's uh, yeah, it's heavy. It's well, it was like, it's heavy, should be talked about.

It's it's nice, you know, it's it's one of a few times I'm like, you know what, I'm glad I can look across the room and see Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein's best friend, and I feel a little better about the world. They are right here. It does help talking about horrible molestation cults. When there's cats sitting on your legs and passed out, they've had a hard day of mostly sleeping, so they need their rest. Show on. UM. Well, yeah, that's gonna do it for part one. We'll come back

in part two and have more uncomfortable conversations. UM. Thank you for donating and helping to fund the recall effort against Mayor Ted Wheeler. UH, and those of you at home, if you're in the Portland area, go to Total Recall pd x. You can find out how you can sign up to recall Ted Wheeler, how you can sign your name on that, or even volunteer your time. UH. If you might want to donate, also total recall pdx dot com you can do it there. So UM, Ted Wheelers

not connected directly to any of this. But he does suck and this sucks too, So I don't know. That's well, you know, it's kind of it's it's hard to uh, people that want to infiltrate and get into elected positions. It's kind of hard to fight against that when the mayor is someone like Ted Wheeler. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make it harder to deal with. It's all of the problems we have where the elected leaders that aren't

weird cultists with dangerous male supremacist ideas are also incompetent. Yeah, if you'd like to take a shot at someone that is a successful politician and that he knows how to get and keep power, but is incompetent in anything else, you know, take it out on Ted Wheeler today. Take it out on Ted Wheeler today. Uh, and take it out on I don't know, I don't know what. Don't

take other things out on other people. Be nice to the other people around you, be nice to everyone, but Ted Wheeler and fucking Bill Gothard, And take it out it being the trash for your friends, because that's nice, Because that is nice. Yeah, take out the trash, and then you know, once it's out of your house. You can throw it anywhere. It doesn't matter. Yea, yeah, that's ethical, I think. All right, that's the episode