Weeks ago there was a big scandal about the cheater's website, Ashley Madison, data being hacked. Thousands of names, addresses, emails, and account information for its users were obtained by a group which threatened to release this information to the public.
I found the whole situation funny, yet unsettling. What grown, consenting adults do in their spare time is none of my business. There are lots of things people do that I would never do. Have an affair? Nope. Get drunk in bars and bring home a stranger? Not in a VERY long time. Go to church? Never again.
My only issues were that , one, some people are going to get really hurt with this. For a person in a monogamous relationship to cheat, that's one thing. But, what if the cheater picked up a disease and spread it to their partner? What if they got pregnant or got someone pregnant? That seems like a lot of heartache. Personally, I wouldn't want to go through it nor would I want a loved one to go through it.
My other issue is the whole idea of this website getting breached. It sounds like a scary security issue. We recently had the Home Depot and Target credit card information hack. It seems like it's a rising trend that online security is becoming more of a problem.
Today, however, came the not-so-shocking news that Josh Duggar, from the recently-cancelled TLC show 19 Kids and Counting, had an account on the Ashley Madison website. For years.
Here is the story from Raw Story:
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/josh-duggar-admits-to-porn-addiction-and-being-unfaithful-to-wife-i-have-been-the-biggest-hypocrite-ever/
I, at first, reserved judgement on this one. The family has had a lot of controversy recently with the learning of Josh's teen molestation scandal. So, I wanted to make sure I heard more information before I wrote about it or took it too seriously.
Josh put out a statement this afternoon addressing it and it seems to be a true story.
All I can say is that I'm not surprised. The church I grew up in always called us hypocrites, undeserving worms, and all other sorts of things a 4th grader shouldn't even be aware of. We were constantly being told that we were sinners, our bodies were not for ourselves, and the devil would try to tempt us into doing wrong things. By being able to call ourselves such hurtful things, we were able to accept Jesus more easily. He was the only one who would truly love us regardless of our sins. To err was to be human. Once we did wrong we were then able to ask for forgiveness.
That's what our church wanted. They wanted us to need Jesus. So they made every natural instinct we had into something vile and dirty. They made us ashamed of ourselves and our natural desires.
I can only assume that Josh was taught nothing about his body. Only that his urges and sexual curiosity were shameful. Am I condoning his actions, both as a teen and now? Of course not. I was taught the same bullshit and I never once tried to molest anyone. Nor am I a cheater. However, I had the advantage of having outside resources and education away from the church.
I'm only trying to say that, once you make something taboo, people have a tendency to be drawn to it. I believe that's what happened to Josh. He became curious, hated himself for it, and tried to condemn it as much as possible publicly. He worked hard to not only make it shameful to himself, but to make it shameful to everyone.
In the end it caught up with him.
I do feel sorry for his family, though. In all honesty, I think the family tried to do the best they could. Isn't that what all families try to do? The best they knew was through their faith. These people truly believe in their god. And they were trying to do the best they could with their holy book. The problem isn't always with the people who believe, it's with the things they believe.
What's made this worse is that Josh and his family will cling tighter to their own personal cross. They will wail harder about how we need Jesus all over because he apparently missed a spot. The Christians will be reminded that even the best of them can be reached by the devil. I guarantee this will somehow become an internet censorship issue. At the very least, it will be traced back to abstinence only sex-ed. Just watch.
We will also get to hear about how this is being blown out of proportion by the liberal media. Fox News won't touch it. I can't wait to hear what my conservative family and friends have to say about it- if anything at all.
My heart hurts for the family but not my head. My head thought, "Well, it's about time!"
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