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ShazzieB

(19,321 posts)
4. I grew up sort of fundamentalist adjacent, too.
Wed Jun 14, 2023, 04:03 PM
Jun 2023

But nothing nearly as batcrap crazy as Gothard. It's scary what some people can be convinced to believe just by telling them this is "what the Bible says," and Gothard was evidently a master of that.

No, the Bible does not actually say women have to wear long, baggy dresses so as not to "tempt" men to sin, that parents need to learn how to "break their children's spirits" with corporal punishment that inflicts the maximum amount of pain without leaving a mark, or that men are supposed to be absolute dictators over their households. Goddard evidently decided that certain passages mean those things and somehow got a whole bunch of people to take his word for all of that and more. Horrifying!

What's even more weird is that I think he probably believed what he was teaching on one level, while at the same time he was behaving like a disgusting pervert with underage girls who were under his influence. It's really bizarre how a person (especially a man) in such a powerful position can rationalize away despicable behavior in order to give himself permission to act on his baser urges.

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