So the Huckster is at it again. The King of the fundamentalist wing, has come out in the defense of Josh Duggar and the Duggar family.
By now, I suppose you have heard the story of Josh and the incidents of molestation against several girls, including his sisters. You’ve probably also heard about the cover-up. That is parents knew that he did this and helped him avoid prosecution. If you need more information on the story, here’s a link that breaks down what happened and when.
What’s most unfortunate about this whole ordeal is that from the beginning, Josh didn’t stand a chance. His parents were science-denying fundamentalist extremists who used the Bible as if it were a modern day guidebook. His mom, Michelle, used her va-ja-ja as an assembly line, mass producing one child after another. His father, Jim Bob (the name alone gives it away) used and exploited his family for profit and notoriety. That’s the environment Josh grew up in. Am I justifying him? Absolutely not.
What is most frustrating is how it plays against the narrative of the Christian Right: Family is so important. They name all their favorite money-making, bigot-toting endeavors after family. Focus on the Family, Family Research Council (where Josh worked), American Family Association, Family Watch International, United Families International, World Congress of Families… and the list goes on. It’s all about the family. Or at least that’s what they tell themselves.
And now, Josh and his family have the Huckster coming to their defense. That’s right, Huckabee released a statement saying that “Josh’s actions” were “’inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable.’” And then he goes on to chide the rest of us for being so appalled by this story and by the cover-up.
But what can we expect from a guy who has no moral compass? You see, Huckabee doesn’t understand morality. He has no “inborn” morality, and instead, has to get those morals from a really old book. Unable to give careful and thoughtful consideration to the events as they happened, he has abdicated that work to someone else. Unable to find empathy and compassion, he has chosen, instead, to let misogynistic men of bronze-aged values, who lived thousands of years ago, tell him what his morals should be and how he should respond to a situation such as this.
One of the fundamentalist’s favorite Bible stories, especially now that families are in danger from those who chose not to outsource their morality, is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the story were God showed us what family values really look like. This is their favorite Bible story, and they get orgasmic as they tell it.
Most of us have heard at least parts of the story, but I’ll briefly recap so you’ll have the basics.
The story opens with two angels walking into Sodom. Abraham’s nephew, Lot was sitting at the gate when he saw them, and fearing for their safety, whisked them away to his house. But they didn’t get there unseen. As evening fell, the men of the city showed up at Lot’s door demanding the two angels. Instead Lot, being the righteous man that he was, offered his two virgin daughters in their place (meaning that they were eleven or twelve years old).
Before anything could happen though, one of the angels pulled Lot back inside, and the men of Sodom were struck with blindness. The angels told Lot to take his family and get out of town quickly before God rained down fire on them.
Lot took his wife and his two daughters, and they left Sodom just before dawn when, just as the angels had promised, fire came down from Heaven. Lot’s wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt.
Eventually, Lot and the two daughters he only recently offered up as rape bait, were holed up in a cave. In this cave, his daughters got their father drunk and the oldest slept with him. The next night they get their father drunk again, and the youngest slept with him. Then both girls became pregnant with their father’s baby.
This brings up some interesting questions. First of all, that’s a lot of alcohol. I’ve been pretty drunk before, but I’m pretty sure I would know if I committed incest. Second, for a man with that amount of alcohol in his system, there’s bound to be some performance issues—particularly if he passes out.
Yet that’s not the point. The point is, this is the story which fuels all of these “family” organizations. It is where men like Huckabee get his morals. There are a hundred ways to read this story, and each worse than the last. We have genocide, murder, attempted rape, child abuse, pimping out your daughters, incest, lying… it’s a long list. But notice as they tell this story, only one thing matters to them: man-on-man action. This is probably why fundamentalists have such a hard time understanding rape in the first place. It makes no sense to them. Their morals come from someplace else, not from the human heart.
Those of us who have tuned in to our inner compass find what happened with the Duggar family absolutely deplorable and profoundly disturbing. Unfortunately, men like Huckabee can’t go that direction because that would be a conflict of interest with the organization he outsources his morals to.