Great news for fans of Counting On: it’s less than a month now until the new season premieres!
We’ve got some bad news for fans of Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard though …
Back in November, we learned that Derick had been fired from the show after repeatedly making offensive remarks about Jazz Jennings, the star of another show on TLC.
Jazz is also a child, by the way.
His comments had to do with the fact that Jazz is transgender, which he considers to be “a myth.”
“Gender is not fluid,” he tweeted at one point. “It’s ordained by God.”
When he got some backlash for that comment, he dug his hole a little deeper, tweeting “I want to be clear. I have nothing against him. I only have issue with the words and definitions being propagated here.”
Except he referred to Jazz as a “him,” not a “her,” which is disrespectful and hurtful and there’s no way he didn’t know that.
He made those comments in August, and in the following months, he continued to make ignorant statements about Jazz and the transgender community as a whole.
Then, in November, he tweeted “I pity Jazz, 4 those who take advantage of him in order 2 promote their agenda, including the parents who allow these kinds of decisions 2 be made by a child.”
“It’s sad that ppl would use a juvenile this way. Again, nothing against him, just unfortunate what’s on tv these days.”
He was right about one thing: it is unfortunate what’s on TV these days.
Thankfully, TLC helped solve a bit of this problem by firing Derick soon after those statements.
Since then, he’s claimed that he wasn’t actually fired, that he just decided that it would be best if he and his family began “heading in a different direction.”
*Insert “Sure, Jan” gif here*
We have our doubts about that, but it’s clear that whatever happened, Derick and Jill really won’t be appearing on Counting On anymore.
The Duggar family’s Facebook page just shared a promotional image from the upcoming season of the show, and we see Jessa, Joy-Anna, and Jinger cozying up to their husbands.
Where are Jill and Derick?
Trying to think up a way to make a GoFundMe page without getting heaps of backlash for begging fans for money, we guess — whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t look like they’re filming a reality show anymore.
It’s nice to see that the Dillards are gone, and that while TLC hesitates to let the Duggar family go completely, they still won’t tolerate the kind of nonsense that Derick spews.
But as it turns out, many, many fans of this family disagree with that — and they took to the Facebook post to address this.
“Utterly ridiculous that TLC removed Jill & Derick everyone is entitled to free speech we may not agree but still no reason to remove them from the show!!” one person wrote.
That’s not how freedom of speech works, but OK, sure.
“I wasn’t aware that bullying was defined by disagreeing,” someone else commented. “Such a double standard with anything that is conservative. Such a sad thing. Freedom of speech only applies if your not conservative.”
… Seriously, do they not teach this stuff in school anymore?
Considering that another person wrote “I think everyone should have freedom of speech and Derick could say what he wants to say and that is freedom of speech…”, we’d wager that they don’t.
Yet another Dillard fan complained that “You can believe multiple spouses are fine and get a show on TLC. You can believe it is fine for a boy to live as a girl and have a show on TLC.”
“You CANNOT voice your deeply held beliefs based on Biblical principles and remain on a show on TLC.”
Another wrote “It is a shame how it is ok to bully anyone Duggar but they can’t have an opinion or a voice. I think the Dillards are awesome and will keep up with them on their social media accounts.”
None of these people see an issue with what Derick said? They all think it’s cool that he went after a 16-year-old girl, and they don’t understand why TLC may have had an issue with that?
It’s a scary, scary world out there.
