When Fundamentalism Goes Wrong: What Josh Duggar Should Have Said in His Public Apology
You guys, the summer 2015 hasn’t been such a great one for Josh Duggar, the eldest son and heir presumptive of the unwieldy Duggar clan. First, in May, it came out that he repeatedly molested several of his younger sisters over a protracted period of time, beginning in 2002 when he was a young teenager. Duggar was rapidly dispatched by his concerned parents for a good old-fashioned talking to by a trusted family friend who is currently serving a 56-year sentence on child pornography conviction. Then marriage equality—something that Duggar, as a lobbyist for the arch-conservative Family Research Council, had devoted his entire adult career to fighting—became the law of the land. And now, thanks to the Ashley Madison hackers who exposed 32 million users of the cheating website, we know that he spent nearly $1000 looking to fool around on his wife.
You have to hand it to Duggar: he’s learned something from last time about getting ahead of the story. Soon thereafter, the knowledge of his Ashley Madison account (in which he claimed, controversially for a member of the Quiverfull movement, which forbids women from cutting their hair lest they mar their “crowning glory,” to be interested in women with both long and short hair) he released a contrite public statement, articulating the ways in which he felt he had failed his wife, his fans, and Jesus—not necessarily in that order—and proclaiming himself “the biggest hypocrite ever.”