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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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’19 Kids and Counting’ petitions don’t faze Duggars

The Columbian
Published:

A petition urging TLC to cancel “19 Kids and Counting” over the political views of the Duggar family “won’t succeed,” according to family patriarch Jim Bob Duggar. In fact, he said recently, all of the attention around the effort is working in the family’s favor, giving the Duggars even more exposure.

The petition, which currently has more than 180,000 signatures, began as a response to the family’s recent comments against LGBT rights. It gained traction quickly and drew a lot of attention to some of the family’s recent activism.

But Jim Bob Duggar probably has good reason not to be worried about the petition: The effort to raise awareness about the family’s political views prompted its conservative supporters to launch a counter campaign, urging TLC to keep the show. A “Defend the Duggars” petition on LifeSiteNews currently has almost 210,000 signatures — more than the petition telling TLC to scrap the popular series.

In a speech to the Booster Banquet at Hannibal-LaGrange University late last month, Duggar said: “Our show is the No. 1 show on TLC. We love everybody. It’s a small group creating this fuss. All it has done is give us more exposure. We’ve gained 50,000 Facebook fans last week.”

The current controversy over the family of 19 children seems to date back to August, when Michelle Duggar campaigned against a municipal anti-discrimination ordinance in Arkansas with a robocall that claimed the measure would allow “males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls.”

Change.org petition author Jim Wissick wrote that the statement “reek(s) of ignorance and fear mongering.” The ordinance banned housing, employment and public accommodation discrimination in the town on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

The ordinance passed, but Michelle Duggar, Jim Bob’s wife, lobbied intensely on behalf of a repeal effort against the anti-discrimination ordinance — which she and its opponents referred to as the “transgender bathroom bill,” CNS reported. Earlier this month, voters in Fayetteville, Ark., overturned the ordinance in a special election.

Although they have, until recently, stayed somewhat quiet on the political front, the Duggars have long been something of popular culture ambassadors for the small, conservative “Quiverfull” Christian movement to which they belong. The movement urges its followers to have as many children as God will give them, and to raise them within the conservative evangelical Christian belief system of their family by, among other things, homeschooling.

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