If you haven't heard of Josh Duggar by now, then you must be living under a pretty hefty rock. But just in case, here's a bit of background on this man, once the executive director of the Family Research Council, who is now not only a child molester, a porn addict, but now a known member of the Ashley Madison website (aka he's been cheating on his spouse). What a great representative for the Family Research Council, right?
Josh Duggar was on TLC's popular reality series, "19 Kids and Counting." The family was known for their emphasis on wholesome family values and Christian beliefs, however, the show was pulled shortly after stories of Josh molesting his sisters surfaced. Sounds a bit contradictory, doesn't it? For a show so reliant on family values, goody-goody morals, and the sanctity of marriage, it sure seems like they had more than a few skeletons in their closets. It gets worse, Josh Duggar's parents kept it a secret. When these facts surfaced, the family insisted that their Christian faith could get them through, releasing a statement mentioning that their trust in God will prevail and help them get through such a disgusting situation.
And although Josh has apologized to the public repeatedly for his actions as a "silly teenage boy" (right, like you can blame molestation on "being silly?") and that his wife seems to be 100 percent behind him on the fact that Christ has forgiven him of his mistakes, recent facts make this hard to believe.
If you haven't heard of Ashley Madison, it's a website that is based solely on the idea of cheating on your spouse. In fact, the site's slogan is: "Life is short. Have an affair." It sure doesn't seem like the place for a man that used to calm himself an activist for family values. Nonetheless, after the enormous hack of the site's servers, it has become evident that Duggar's credit card and his grandmother's home address have been registered to the site. Keep in mind this is a pricey website, and Duggar invested nearly $1,000 for his subscription. He was even subscribed to it while a member of the Family Research Council.
But It doesn't stop here, things get way more graphic. The Ashley Madison hackers leaked just exactly what Duggar was looking for on the site: "conventional sex," "bubble bath for 2," "someone who can teach me" and these are the less of the disturbing desires.
Duggar is known for lobbying against same-sex marriage in the past as a result of his immensely conservative beliefs. My question is: How is it not OK for two people to be in love and get married, but it is OK to pay to cheat on your spouse? Just thought I'd throw that in there...
There's hard evidence of Josh Duggar's data on Ashley Madison throughout the depths of the internet. And, this week, Duggar and his wife released a statement regarding the affairs. He does call himself, "the biggest hypocrite ever," which I think we all can agree is pretty fitting.
So this leads me to an interesting idea for a debate -- can we really trust social media to accurately portray someone? With Josh Duggar, we have the perfect example of a man using his fame and the media to completely deceive all of America into thinking that he is not only a family man but a perfectly Christian man. For a while, we all bought it. "19 Kids and Counting" was a complete success, and the Duggars were adorable. Eventually, though, social media resulted in Josh Duggar's demise as his fatalities and disgusting fetishes were revealed.
Duggar isn't the first to use social media to portray himself as something he is not. If not anything, I think we can use the Josh Duggar scandal as an important reminder that social media is never the complete truth.