and they don’t have to pay taxes on their huge home, because it was declared a church.

ROTFL! oh my god…

What – are they getting federal money or private charity?

I don’t really follow them, because the whole idea of rewarding them makes me ill, but I believe they receive money for being on the shows on the Discovery Channel, and they don’t have to pay taxes on their huge home, because it was declared a church.

“One wedding and two graduations” … but was it a religious wedding?

I guess we’ll read about it next week

It was a religious (Hindu) wedding.

A nice one, too… though nothing I’d ever want for myself

I know this is tongue in cheek

Karen, I am deadly serious. It’s part of the cycle of abuse, resulting in the mindset, “I’m so bad that I deserve nothing better than eternal damnation. I’m lucky that God would even condescend to do anything to save me.” The indoctrination alone should be regarded as a form of child abuse.

They’re operating at a very primitive level. Even the brightest of them, the ones attending Ivy League schools (and don’t even get me started on that) can’t see beyond the level of reward and punishment. They are deeply, obsessively attached to hierarchy, authority – especially parental authority. This is why they go apeshit whenever we talk about making corporal punishment illegal.

It’s very simple, Stacy. Fundies beat their kids and scare the living daylights out of them with threats of eternal damnation.

I know this is tongue in cheek, but seriously I’m sure they run a pretty regimented, discipline-and-rules-heavy household.

A) They would have to be, just to manage co-existing with that many people and B) I know some people in the Full Quiver/homeschooling/fundy set and they are extremely authoritarian parents. And my friends “only” have six kids! The other thing about them is that the older girls barely graduated from their homeschool high school courses before they were married and (immediately) pregnant with kids of their own.

I also have to throw this out there- if the Duggars were black, and receiving the charity that they receive, they would be called the worst names in the book.

What – are they getting federal money or private charity?

In fact as I write this, and my two kids scream, beg, beat my legs and mash the keyboard, I wonder how Michelle Duggar has 17 kids, because I find just two to be extremely annoying at times. lol

It’s very simple, Stacy. Fundies beat their kids and scare the living daylights out of them with threats of eternal damnation.

Atheists tend not to have large families because, as Hemant has acknowledged – we eat babies.

My feeling on the matter has something to do with the screwed up relationship between women and religion. Now, we all know that there is a limit as to the number of pregnancies a woman can go though (I have heard 23- the woman who had 69 children had 23 pregnancies). It is not good for a body to go though that many pregnancies- really, one baseball team is all you need. But- when a woman is constantly pregnant (and Michelle has spent, what, 12 years pregnant?) she has less time to get out, be with people, learn, move up at a job, etc. I am not saying that women can’t raise children at home, but Michelle lives there, teaches her children, and goes to church with them in a Duggar-family church- she can’t exactly ever grow as a person outside of her family.

A woman who is constantly pregnant has no chance to gain economic freedom. And really, that is what modern birth control and safe, legal abortion give women- a chance to gain economic freedom. No wonder the crazies hate it.

I also have to throw this out there- if the Duggars were black, and receiving the charity that they receive, they would be called the worst names in the book.