Joshley Madison Part 6 - Sin, Confess, Repeat

[Artemesia]

My ATI acquaintances are saying Josh and the Duggars have been singled out because out of the millions of names in the hack, only a few (I've heard of 3) celebrities have been named, and all of them conservatives.

After hearing this, I was curious and I went looking, and it looks as if they might be right, at least about the number of celebrity names released.

Does this mean Josh Duggar and those other couple of people are the most well-known figures in the database? Is that possible? Or is it possible that there's some sort of damage control and cover-up going on, and Duggar just had the bad luck to have his name released before the cover-up process started.

Don't mind me. I've just finished a glass of wine and am not 100% here, having no head for alcohol.

I suspect there may be other AM members who have been approached privately, or who will be surprised in the future, such as politicians. Timing is everything.

[vspielman]

Maybe he could become an employee of the treatment center :?

EEEKKKK!!! Perish the thought. That would mean that he would be living in my town!

[Grimalkin]

RU's "success" rate? I think they just made that shit up.

I don't know how success can be measured, or what constitutes success anyway. AAs success rate numbers all over the place but what is it based on? The problem with AA is that in the 80s and 90s judges court orderd people with all sorts of problems to go to AA and it messed it up. There were sexual predictors, and men who beat their wives sent there who had no drinking problem at all. All sorts of crap has happened which is easy to google.(And quite a fascinating rabbit hole to jump into if you have an addict in your life)And while some people never quite sober up their lives still improve by regular attendance. I also think that for some people that is the best they may ever do.

So some brief poking around.

RU is a recovery program that has regular meetings. Apparently there are several places near me that offer meetings. They seem to all be held in Baptist churches, and I never knew there were so many of them around me. I am guessing that Josh is going to some sort of halfway house type situation. It seems like they train their own counselors/mentors/sponsors. There is a good chance there would be no medical professionals involved in this. In general AA and halfway houses do not have associations with medical professionals, and they state any detoxing should be done under medical supervision.

*I feel compelled to mentioned I hope I don't sound anti AA, I just think people should be informed and know if something does not seem right then maybe it isn't. People seem to do well in lots of different types of programs.

[browncoatslytherin]

My ATI acquaintances are saying Josh and the Duggars have been singled out because out of the millions of names in the hack, only a few (I've heard of 3) celebrities have been named, and all of them conservatives.

After hearing this, I was curious and I went looking, and it looks as if they might be right, at least about the number of celebrity names released.

Does this mean Josh Duggar and those other couple of people are the most well-known figures in the database? Is that possible? Or is it possible that there's some sort of damage control and cover-up going on, and Duggar just had the bad luck to have his name released before the cover-up process started.

Don't mind me. I've just finished a glass of wine and am not 100% here, having no head for alcohol.

afaik, not all of the info has been released yet. there have been two data dumps so far, one of them 10g (which josh's info was in) and the other was 20g. considering they got 30+ million accounts, i doubt they've released the whole thing, as i would think the file for that would be way bigger than a combined 30g.

[Antimony]

I don't know how success can be measured, or what constitutes success anyway. AAs success rate numbers all over the place but what is it based on? The problem with AA is that in the 80s and 90s judges court orderd people with all sorts of problems to go to AA and it messed it up. There were sexual predictors, and men who beat their wives sent there who had no drinking problem at all. All sorts of crap has happened which is easy to google.(And quite a fascinating rabbit hole to jump into if you have an addict in your life)And while some people never quite sober up their lives still improve by regular attendance. I also think that for some people that is the best they may ever do.

So some brief poking around.

RU is a recovery program that has regular meetings. Apparently there are several places near me that offer meetings. They seem to all be held in Baptist churches, and I never knew there were so many of them around me. I am guessing that Josh is going to some sort of halfway house type situation. It seems like they train their own counselors/mentors/sponsors. There is a good chance there would be no medical professionals involved in this. In general AA and halfway houses do not have associations with medical professionals, and they state any detoxing should be done under medical supervision.

*I feel compelled to mentioned I hope I don't sound anti AA, I just think people should be informed and know if something does not seem right then maybe it isn't. People seem to do well in lots of different types of programs.

Penn and Tellers Bullshit! Does a great episode on the issues of AA and their lack of efficacy. It's on Google play and probably YouTube.

[PregnantPornStar]

RU is a recovery program that has regular meetings. Apparently there are several places near me that offer meetings. They seem to all be held in Baptist churches, and I never knew there were so many of them around me.

I just looked at my area and there is one right down the road from me and plenty in my local area. Not shocking, given where I live.

We are new to the area (military family) and I have seen so many people I have recently met here post their support for the Duggar family. I guess the bright side is I know they are nutters before I work too hard at making friends with these people.

[VTSleeper]

Whether or not Josh has been singled out is a red herring. It doesn't make what he did any less hypocritical and wrong. Crying about his being singled out is an attempt by his allies to distract from the real issues.

[MakeItSo]

I don't know...one of the guys that got busted for having an account was Snookie's husband...

[Themiscyran]

I don't know how success can be measured, or what constitutes success anyway. AAs success rate numbers all over the place but what is it based on? The problem with AA is that in the 80s and 90s judges court orderd people with all sorts of problems to go to AA and it messed it up. There were sexual predictors, and men who beat their wives sent there who had no drinking problem at all. All sorts of crap has happened which is easy to google.(And quite a fascinating rabbit hole to jump into if you have an addict in your life)And while some people never quite sober up their lives still improve by regular attendance. I also think that for some people that is the best they may ever do.

So some brief poking around.

RU is a recovery program that has regular meetings. Apparently there are several places near me that offer meetings. They seem to all be held in Baptist churches, and I never knew there were so many of them around me. (snip)

Are the meetings held anywhere other than Baptist churches? Serious questions. When I was looking, I couldn't find any.

[Rajah061014]

A handful of politicians in my state have already been outed, and it's about equal numbers Democrats and Republicans. So no, there's no conservative witch hunt. The fundies are grasping at straws.

[Grimalkin]

Are the meetings held anywhere other than Baptist churches? Serious questions. When I was looking, I couldn't find any.

In my 50 mile radius they were all Baptist churches. Celebrate Recovery is also a Christian recovery program but I don't think it is affiliated with any denomination.

[Themiscyran]

In my 50 mile radius they were all Baptist churches. Celebrate Recovery is also a Christian recovery program but I don't think it is affiliated with any denomination.

Hmm, yeah. Sounds like they are happy to sell their materials to anyone but churches have to be Baptist to run "official" RU meetings. I wonder how great AA's success rate would look if they controlled their meetings so closely?

(I think there are very legit criticisms to be made of AA--just saying that RU seems to be holding itself up as some kind of equivalent when in fact they control the makeup of their meetings much more closely.)

[PregnantPornStar]

I know someone who sent their kid to a teen treatment center...Fold Family Ministries. I know it is one that is recommended by Focus on the Family, but now it seems less creepy. Still bad, but less so.

Anyway, a few years later the girl was 19, married to a 50+ year old guy who had multiple marriages and some weird abusice background and immediately got pregnant.

[roddma]

This. I see three major problems with sin and forgiveness in a religious sense (talking about what we see with the Duggars).

1. The church over state law issue. The eternal consequences might for a religious person (I am not, so this is no generalization. A lot of my loved ones are religious and well capable of doing the separation.) outweigh anything else. I see that, but the immediate consequences need to be considered as well. There is a reason why we have them. You would think their blanket training would burn it into their poor brains that there are worldly consequences... :cry:

2. Forcing forgiveness. There is no "I don't forgive you". Not even for god it appears. (Most annoying thing to me: Everybody seem to know when god forgives. It is not for them to decide...) So, you know before and while sinning, that it'll all go away in just a little bit.

3. No way of knowing if someone has changed. If you judge people by their religious talking and not by their actions you will never know if they changed. For these people it appears to me that the most important thing is the heart (with all its non-anatomic pieces). You cannot know if he had a "change of heart". But then again, it's about believing not knowing...

___

On a personal note: I have to clarify that I grew up what people would call somewhat fundi, but my parents never enforces believes onto us. That is probably why all my older brothers and I left the church at age 14 (by law allowed to decide your religion in Germany). Yet, the brain-washing bits remain and whenever I talk about believe and god I feel like it shows that there are believes I don't stand for burned into my brain. So, sorry for any arising inconsistencies.

Edit to clarify that I do not mean to generalize here.

You summed it up better than me especially 2 and 3.Forced forgiveness doesnt give the offended time to process things.

Anyway, Don't Catholicis beleive in purgatory?

[princessmahina]

A handful of politicians in my state have already been outed, and it's about equal numbers Democrats and Republicans. So no, there's no conservative witch hunt. The fundies are grasping at straws.

This almost spurred me to check my state, then I remembered that my state is blood red. I've only heard of one politician who was on Ashley Madison, and he was the mayor of a small-ish town. I believe he has resigned since the leak.

[chaotic life]

Some of my local FB friends have circulated an entire list of every account associated with a resident of our state. Several politicians, a judge and several doctors and dentists are the ones I have heard them talking about. There's a female dentist who was found on the list. She's had the most talk about her, even she may want to relocate to another state before it all dies down. Josh wasn't so special. I would be surprised if a lot of big name celebrities show up, given that they are well versed in bring incognito already, I would assume they would have done that if they were there.

[Ilovebrownies]

Funny that all the perverts caught with AM accounts claim they opened the account "foolishly" or "a long time ago" before this or that, or that they never actually had an affair. What a bunch of lying losers.

[nastyhobbitses]

Funny that all the perverts caught with AM accounts claim they opened the account "foolishly" or "a long time ago" before this or that, or that they never actually had an affair. What a bunch of lying losers.

It just reminds me of the stories of people who go to the ER with decidedly non-dildo items stuck in their butts, and they always have some improbable/uncommon/downright weird excuse for why there's a cucumber in their butt. Excuses won't change the situation at hand, bro, just tell the truth.

[Cleopatra7]

Funny that all the perverts caught with AM accounts claim they opened the account "foolishly" or "a long time ago" before this or that, or that they never actually had an affair. What a bunch of lying losers.

I've heard a suggestion that maybe AM was just an elaborate scam to separate would-be cheaters from their money. I mean, if 95 percent of the accounts were male, how could real-life affairs be arranged, unless the few women on AM were escorts who just went from man to man, with no one being the wiser about sharing partners. AM is pretty old for a website (founded around 2002), so you would think that there was some truth to it, but then again, variations of the Nigerian prince scam have been circulating since the 18th century, with the nationality changing to fit whatever the political situation is at any given time.

[zebra #13]

It just reminds me of the stories of people who go to the ER with decidedly non-dildo items stuck in their butts, and they always have some improbable/uncommon/downright weird excuse for why there's a cucumber in their butt. Excuses won't change the situation at hand, bro, just tell the truth.

In college, a teacher of mine showed up in ER( at the hospital where I worked part time in patient records) with a soy sauce bottle in his lower colon. Amazingly nice guy. I didn't visit him, because I thought he'd be very embarrassed.

So I guess perverts can be enormously bright likeable people.

[singsingsing]

Sticking something up your butt and not being able to get it out again somehow pales in comparison to betraying your spouse by actively seeking or engaging in an illicit romantic and/or sexual relationship with another person...

[skythetowel]

Good gods, people, hie thee to Amazon and get yourself a nice butt plug! Sheesh.

[chaotic life]

I don't think having non-mainstream sexual interests makes you a pervert. A soy sauce might make you an idiot but anal sex may not be the normal but it's not completely unacceptable not unheard of.

[Sherryburger]

I don't think having non-mainstream sexual interests makes you a pervert. A soy sauce might make you an idiot but anal sex may not be the normal but it's not completely unacceptable not unheard of.

When my husband and I got married 40 years ago, I told him I would do anything in bed (or wherever) with him, as long as it did not involve any other living creatures and did not break any (reasonable) laws. Nothing perverted about two consenting adults enjoying each other, wherever their imaginations may take them. I don't recall soy sauce being involved though!

[zebra #13]

Funny thing--I grew up in one of those odd churches seen to be some level of fundy.

Which doesn't believe in Hell at all. A sin is a rule of being human you've broken, so you apologize to your Maker and do your damnedest NOT to repeat. To be a member in good standing, you tithe 10% of your before-tax income. And then also assessments for church buildings, missionary work, welfare.

I'm not LDS any more, but it sure wasn't because Mormons aren't the nicest people I know, as a group.

I have all kind of issues with *any* Christian theology--which makes no, zero, none, sense to me. Godde created whatever kind of critter it pleased him to create. Then blames *them* for sinning? And makes a blood sacrifice of another, more perfect son to pay for all the sins of the humans that HE created TO sin? If Godde wanted/needed perfect beings to praise Him/Her, why didn't S/He just create some?

I have kids. When they were small, and goofed up, I didn't kill their hamster to pay for their goofing up. I tried to show them that they needed to *feel* sorry and to learn if they goofed, and then I just forgave them. And I gotta wonder why the Creator of the Universe can't do even that much?