Being in the Duggar fertility cult means following a host of deeply fundamentalist beliefs espoused by Jim Bob Duggar, setting men back by decades and women back by a couple of centuries at least.
But the best-laid plans of domineering patriarchs don’t always work out, and it seems almost inevitable that some of the Duggars will break free of their family’s oppression and form their own ideas.
Well one members of the Duggar family is shocking fans — and appears to be warming to the idea of LGBT rights.
Derick Dillard isn’t a Duggar in name or by birth, but he’s undeniably part of the Duggar clan.
As far as that group goes, Derick can come across as almost likable — despite having cut his hair — though his likability may just come from being compared to the likes of Josh Duggar and Jim Bob Duggar.
It’s easy for anyone to look good in that context, you know? But he seems to be an okay guy.
Derick and Jill have been dedicated to their missionary work — which was controversial even among people who think that missionary work is an acceptable thing to do.
Derick and Jill also dedicated parents and generally part of a very conservative subculture.
Which is why this apparent deviatin on Derick’s part sent shockwaves through fans of Counting On.
Richard Grenell, a long-serving spokesman for the United States at the UN, tweeted.
“No one should be fired for being gay. And no one should be fired for being a Christian. We should be able to work through these issues.”
He’s absolutely right, of course.
Don’t get us wrong, because Grenell tweets a lot of absolute nonsense (honestly he tweeted praise about Trump making a “fast and bold move” on foreign policy and it’s like reading something from a parallel universe where Trump isn’t an evil living trashcan fire).
But “No one should be fired for being gay. And no one should be fired for being a Christian,” is a pair of statements with which most people should be able to agree.
Of course, one of those is a real thing that happens all of the time with zero legal reprocussions in many states. The other is so rare that it’s weird that he’d bring it up.
(It’s kind of like hearing a news report about a series of car thefts and tweeting: “Those monsters shouldn’t steal people’s cars! Also, graverobbing is awful.” Maybe he was just trying to appeal to his followers who might hesitate about his first sentence)
One person who liked that tweet, which acknowledged gay rights (admittedly just about the bare minimum in terms of anti-discrimination, but still), was Derick Dillard.
To say that some people were surprised was an understatement.
While it’s not unusual for Ben Seewald to clash with Jim Bob Duggar over theology, you don’t usually think of Derick as being a “radical” by Duggar standards.
And yes, for these folks, acknowledging even basic human rights for LGBT folks is considered radical.
So “liking” that tweet might be a big deal.
(And yes, likes and favorites are publicly visible on almost every social media platform)
Some fans still don’t think that Derick is necessarily deviating from fundamentalist beliefs or supporting LGBT rights.
There were three sentences in that tweet, and Derick may have been focusing on the second.
“And no one should be fired for being a Christian.”
That’s not exactly an epidemic, and anti-discrimination laws tend to include religion already, but we have to remember that for some conservative Christians and especially for fundamentalists, there’s an emphasis on “persecution” and the need to believe that they’re oppressed.
(For the record, there are absolutely places where Christians are oppressed, but in the US they are 70% of the population and hold majorities in every branch of government at every level, and their God is literally mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance)
So there’s a chance that Derick was not only glossing over the first sentence, but expressing his religiously conservative beliefs.
Still, plenty of conservatives — including Richard Grenell, the man who wrote that tweet — are warming to the idea that gay people exist and might even be treated like people.
Derick Dillard is relatively young and has traveled beyond the isolation of Arkansas.
It’s probably easy for the LGBT community to seem frightening to people who don’t watch television or ever meet people who don’t share their exact same views.
Maybe Derick has seen enough of the world to know better.
One way or the other, it would be nice to see him address the subject of that tweet.
