Anti-LGBT activism coexisted with dismissed sexual abuse within the same movement

Evidence

In 2015, the Duggar family, devotees of Gothard’s teachings and stars of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, became embroiled in their own scandal when reports surfaced that oldest son Josh had molested four of his sisters, as well as the family babysitter. His father, who had known about the abuse years earlier and had sent him to a Christian counselor, insisted that “he was just curious about girls and he had gone in and just basically touched them over their clothes while they were sleeping.” His sisters, too, minimized his actions, and his mom Michelle went on Fox News to explain that everyone has made mistakes—“That’s why Jesus came.” She felt there was an agenda at work, that people were eager to slander the family. At the time, Josh Duggar was executive director of FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, an organization known for anti-LGBT activism and for linking homosexuality with child abuse. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 643

Categorization

• XREF: The stark asymmetry—vigorous public policing of sexual purity in others while privately minimizing abusers in one’s own family—echoes the double moral standard the reader already sees in their ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article, where moral panic is directed outward as class/identity signaling. — connects to: the MOC “The Wound of the Label: When Knowing Someone Becomes a Way of Erasing Them”