All the god-ding in the world couldn't fix him

[Rev. Rye]

So, looking a bit further on this, I watched this video:





One of the points Fundie Fridays raised was rather interesting, and might help explain why the whole "Josh Duggar being into CP and/or molesting his sisters" thing might not have seemed to be as horrible to his community as it would for most people.

I think it's safe to assume that most of us tend to have moral compasses with sliding scales. Something like, say, looking for an affair or inappropriate touching is on the lower end of the scale, and I'm fairly certain all of us would consider raping and torturing an infant at the very high end of the scale. In the version of fundamentalism that the Duggars preach, that scale should not exist. In their view, a sin is a sin is a sin, and if you don't ask for God's forgiveness, you deserve nothing short of everlasting torture. I'm not going to pretend this is a good ethical system. At best, it's blue and orange morality, and at worst, it's utterly monstrous. But people legit believe it. And the Duggars are among them.

I'm starting to suspect that it's possible that, in addition to demonising things like premarital sex and homosexuality, this might end up blunting the effect of the more legitimately fucked-up shit. Remembering Love, Joy, Feminism's coverage of the initial scandal, I found these screenshots of reactions to the initial allegations:


Note how the first post seems to think a boy going to Disneyland with his girlfriend unchaperoned is in any way comparable to repeatedly molesting your prepubescent sisters. It's the sort of take that's so bizarre that not only is it hard to believe anyone would make it in good faith, but it's even harder to imagine anyone acting in bad faith thinking it's a good argument. But, if you look at through the lens of all sins being equal, it starts to make sense.

Another point she brings up is that fundies like the Duggars tend to view porn addiction the same way drug scare films of the Eighties and early Nineties treated drug use: you try the milder shit once, then, with baffling ease, you keep on trucking to getting addicted the very worst shit possible. FF floats the possibility that, having been inculcated with this horseshit all his life, Josh might have decided, well, "I've already crossed the line with regular porn, why not get into CP, and not just CP, but the worst of the worst?" And when I say worst of the worst, I mean that, apparently, one of the files was so notorious that even I knew about it.

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It's a thing called "Daisy's Destruction." I won't go into details about what's actually in it (partly because I haven't seen it, and partly because of basic human decency), but I will say "Imagine if the worst shit in A Serbian Film was real." It's so horrible that, for years, it was assumed that it was just a creepypasta and not a real thing. But it was, and, fortunately, the guy who made it is in jail in the Philippines for the rest of his life, and, against all odds, that little girl is still alive. She'll live with the injuries all her life, but at least she'll live.

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I don't think this scenario is likely, but, frankly, given how toxic the belief system is, that they legit believe the slippery slope to sadistic CP is inevitable for anyone with an interest in porn unchecked by God's love, I can't 100% rule it out.

For the record, I don't think this excuses anyone involved. At best, they're living in a Platonic Cave whiling their days away looking at shadow puppets and they haven't taken the plunge of even turning around. And that may be giving them too much moral credit. Or maybe he's just a run-of-the-mill nonce who just happened to grow up in a famous family.