TLC
Image via RNS.
Earlier this week, word got out that Josh Duggar of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting had two accounts with Ashley Madison, the website where married people go to look for sexual partners to cheat on their spouses.
The site, whose tagline is “Life is short. Have an affair,” was the target of an enormous hack, which exposed the email addresses and some credit card information of its nearly 37 million users.
Duggar is not the only famous name to be associated with the site, and as people continue to sift through the expanding database, he surely won’t be the last.
But this column isn’t about Josh Duggar. It’s about Josh’s wife, Anna, and the misguided notions of forgiveness that some Christians subscribe to.
Kody Brown, center with (left to right) sister wives Robyn, Christine, Meri, and Janelle. RNS file photo courtesy TLC.
A federal judge on Wednesday finalized the order striking part of Utah’s bigamy law and gave one more victory to the family from the TLC television show Sister Wives.
The long legal battle over polygamy in Utah now appears headed to the appeals courts. Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes has said he would appeal the federal court ruling that found the law against polygamy was unconstitutional.
Sister Wives chronicles the lives of Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn Brown and their children. Utah County authorities began their investigation of the polygamous family after their show debuted.
Jonathan Turley, the attorney for the Brown family, encouraged Reyes to reconsider his plan to appeal.
The families in the show don't conform to distorted Muslim stereotypes that its critics had apparently hoped to see on All-American Muslim.
Lowes pulled its ad dollars from a show that aims to tighten the tapestry we call America because of a faux controversy drummed up by a hate group that said, through its claims of “propaganda," that it's not possible for Muslims to be American.
But the fabric of our nation exists because of the genius of our nation’s founder, who, in the very first amendment to our Constitution, protected the integrity of religion by forbidding the establishment of any one religion as the religion of the state.
In every single society before the founding of our Union, religion and state were married. History has taught us that religion co-opted by the state loses its integrity and its prophetic power.
Ours was a grand experiment that built America into a grand tapestry of ethnic and religious groups that thrive side by side in relative peace—more so than in any other nation in the world.
Sisters Shadia, Suehalia, and Samira from All American Muslim. Image via TLC.
They are dangerous. And no, I’m not talking about the five Muslim families in Dearborn Michigan depicted in TLC’s new series All American Muslim.
I’m talking about the Florida Family Association(FFA). They are a group with a campaign targeting the show's advertisers and who have successfully gotten Lowe's to remove their commercials.
From the FFA website:
The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law. The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish. ...Clearly this program is attempting to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad and to influence them to believe that being concerned about the jihad threat would somehow victimize these nice people in this show.
Yup. That’s their complaint. Having a show that would dare to depict “ordinary” Muslims.