[url="http://www.freejinger.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ro-post-11.8.14.jpg"][/url]Welcome!  If you have just arrived here for your first visit via an article you read at Radar Online, Epoch Times, PopSoundOff, The Hollywood Gossip, She Knows,  The Examiner, Starcasm, International Business Times, or perhaps some other article that hasn't come to my attention yet, you are probably a little confused by what you have found.

We are certainly happy that the more mainstream type media has noticed us and we love having new people join us, we feel that Radar Online could have done a little better job in their reporting on what we really are and do here at Free Jinger.   So I decided I will try to give a little better picture of who we are.

RO initially described us as (emphasis mine):

[quote]a [b]group of critics[/b] has joined together online in the hopes of convincing spitfire daughter Jinger to leave too — without a wedding ring on her finger! Take a look inside the “Free Jinger” movement.[/quote]

Somewhere along the way, we turned into fans, as you can see from this quote from The Hollywood Gossip (emphasis mine):

A [b]group of concerned fans[/b] has joined together online in the hopes of convincing Jana to break free of her family and chart her own course in life.

Now they are encouraging spitfire Jinger to leave too, and without a ring.

The “Free Jinger” movement has been going on before Jill and Jessa got engaged, but has intensified as the two Duggar girls have gotten hitched.

Most of the articles are  based on the original RO one, so they have all the same "FJ just popped out of thin air when Jill and Jessa got engaged" tone.  The International Business Times, however, clearly was checking our twitter feed because they clarified that we have been around since 2005 and due to the 140 character limit took my "we talk about more than Jinger" to mean we talk about more things about the Duggars than just Jinger, as you can see here:

[quote]While the site has been around since 2005 (and also discusses more about the Duggars than just Jinger), the latest episodes of “19 Kids and Counting,” which have featured Jill Duggar’s wedding to Derick Dillard, and Jessa Duggar’s engagement to Ben Seewald, seem to have refueled an interest in their efforts[/quote]

Here is my original tweet:

[caption id="attachment_2689" align="aligncenter" width="300"][url="http://www.freejinger.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ro-tweet.jpg"][/url] RO Shout out tweet[/caption]

 

I'd like to point out that literally [b]every[/b] page on our site says ...since 2005 on it, so it's not like that information was hidden from Radar Online for their first story.  Several of the other articles did do a little digging and quote our FAQ.  That FAQ was written in 2005 and has been carried over from site to site and owner to owner.  I think it's an important part of our history, but this experience has shown me that we need to have an updated FAQ that is more current (and probably a little more serious) because some of those quotes don't make a lot of sense taken out of the context of the FAQ.

For those of you who came here to see the infamous "Free Jinger Movement,"  I'm afraid you are going to be somewhat disappointed.  The site is named Free Jinger because nearly 10 years ago people who talked about the Duggar specials saw a spark in Jinger and thought the name was funny.   Back then there were probably a few hundred people on the site.   I know when we moved from Yuku to our own domain in 2011 that there were 1500 members on the Yuku forum.  How many were spammers and how many were legit users, I can't say.    I can tell you today, we have 8000+ members and none of them are spam accounts because we don't allow them and if one manages to get through it is swiftly dispatched.    Do 8000+ people post here regularly, of course not, but the site has grown much in a short time.

We do talk about the Duggars, of course.  They have their very own subforum, in fact, and they are a popular topic for many members.   They are, however, a very small part of what we do here and while we would love to see Jinger break free, really it is our hope that all children being raised in oppressive religious environments will be free to make their own choices on how they wish to live.

There have been some things in the news lately  that you might have seen.  You might have read about Bill Gothard, a conservative leader having to resign after abuse allegations.   Without going back to our Yuku archive site because it's hard to search, we've been discussing Bill Gothard since June 14, 2011 and have several threads devoted to his predatory behavior before these actions came out in mainstream media.

Maybe you have heard of Vision Forum and its leader Doug Phillips.  He had a "moral failing" or whatever upstanding Godly men call sexually abusing young women in their employ or who are not their wives, these days.   We've been discussing good ol' Mr. Phillips since at least 2011, as well.   He's one of the more popular topics, with a 6 page subforum.

Pastor Steven Anderson has been in the news lately.  It's a bit hard to find impartial sites on the good Pastor since the SPLC considers his church a hate group.  You can google him for other information if you aren't familiar with him.   We have been warning people about his dangerous teachings since at least 2011, as well.

We also talk about things like Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill who have also been in the news recently, young women who are brave enough to come out about the abuse they lived with growing up,  many religions, and men's rights activists, Kate Gosselin, Brittany Maynard and names for the second royal baby.   If that is not enough for you, you can talk about your pets, gardening, crocheting, genealogy or cooking, as well as your favorite book or TV show.

So yep we are a snark site and we talk about people who put their entire lives out on the internet or on the television for the entire world to see, but if you look at our record we are pretty much calling things correctly and that more than anything is what upsets the people we talk about.   We are shining light on their dirty little secrets, not always in nice ways, admittedly.    If you are oppressing the women and children in your life because you think that is what the Bible says, you kind of deserve what you get, in my opinion.

Free Jinger is a very well-rounded site.  We have no rules about what you can or can't talk about other than you can't engage in hate speech and you can't post private information.  We strictly enforce both of those rules.   Unlike many of the folks we talk about, everyone is welcome here and we won't delete or change your comments.  We have had several people that we discuss come and "dialogue" (their word for discuss) with us in the past.   Most notably (and recently) Ken Alexander from Always Learning and Cabinetman (Robert) from A man, his wife and the bible.  They were the ones that left when the uppity womenfolk of Free Jinger did not fall in line to their headship.   We let them say whatever they wanted without deleting or editing their comments which is more than can be said for either of them.

We are thankful that more and more of these  people and their dangerous teachings are being exposed for what they are and despite the fact that there is no "Free Jinger Movement" in the context that it was originally written about, I am happy that Radar Online and other mainstreams sites have started to notice what we have said for many years.   The best disinfectant is sunlight and thanks to Radar Online and the other sites that wrote about Free Jinger and Jinger and Jana's situation, the more sunlight those girls and others like them get.

We do allow comments on the blog now, as long as you register (you don't have to be a member of the forum to be a member of the blog) and you can also comment on the forum, of course.