Over the years, the Duggar family’s strict fundamentalist religious beliefs have stirred up a good deal of public debate, much of it stemming from their involvement in the controversial Quiverfull movement.
Last week, Raw Story published an article from a former Quiverfull adherent that describes a convention designed to help parents find suitable arranged marriage partners for girls in their teens so that they can start producing offspring.
The disturbing event was coordinated by Quiverfull founder Vaughn Ohlman who believed that girls should be married off as soon as they’re “physically mature enough to handle” childbirth “without damage.”
The self-appointed minister advocates finding husbands for girls as young as 12, writing on his website that the Bible defines the “‘flower of her age’ (1 Corinthians 7:36) as ‘from twelve to twenty years of age."”
Ohlman writes that in ideal cases, the girls will consent to the marriage, but the type of “obedient consent” he imagines doesn’t allow for the possibility that they might say no:
“But it is very important to realize that this type of “consent” is the kind of obedient consent we see in the examples of Adam, Eve, Isaac, Rebecca, and Christ,” he says on his website.
“It is consent where the son or daughter, realizing that their father has bound them and then submits to the covenant as binding, recognizing the good gift their father has given them.”
The event was to be held in Kansas (as it’s one of the few states that has no age requirement for marriage as long as the kids have proof of parental consent), but was canceled at the last minute due to pressure from protest groups.
Needless to say, it’s not the kind of thing most reality TV families would like to be linked to, but the Duggars remain proud Quiverfull devotees.
Dozens of fans have flooded the family’s social media accounts this week requesting a comment on the controversial convention and asking if they condone it, but the family members who are permitted to use social media (Read: those who are already married off) have yet to respond.
This latest scandal comes on the heels of news that the Duggars’ former minister Bill Gothard is being sued by dozens of men and women who claim he oversaw decades of systematic sexual abuse.
Not surprisingly, the Duggars have yet to comment on that on that story as well.
Though they’ve answered questions about Josh Duggar’s molestation of his sisters, parents Jim Bob and Michelle have yet to respond to claims that his actions may have been partially motivated by the culture of childhood sexual assault found within the Quiverfull movement.
