Happy news for a Friday: Once in awhile, the good guys win. This time the victory is over a scary fundamentalist cult, usually called “Quiverfull,” that has been making unfortunate inroads in recent years in spreading its alarming message of extreme patriarchy, where women aren’t allowed to use birth control and have no real rights, and are instead expected to live a life of complete submission to male authority. The famous Duggar family, which has seemingly innumerable shows on TLC, has been surprisingly successful at shining up the public image of this miserable cult, even though they have recently had a setback with the revelation that the eldest son, Josh Duggar, molested his sisters as a kid.

Wednesday, writer Vyckie Garrison, who escaped the Quiverfull lifestyle herself some years ago, wrote a piece for Raw Story exposing the plans of some Quiverfull devotees to hold a retreat in Wichita, Kansas for the purpose of parents finding people to marry their children off to. Yes, in America in the 21st century, these folks were going to get together to arrange marriages for their children. Marriages those children aren’t really going to have much, if any, say about.

“Quiverfull patriarch, Vaughn Ohlman, who runs a website promoting early, “fruitful” marriage for Truly True Christian™ children,” Garrison writes, “has announced plans for a “Get Them Married!” retreat where fundamentalist fathers will find, and TAKE, suitably submissive young brides to bear many babies for their adolescent sons.”

There can be no real doubt that the intention of this event was arranged marriages for teenagers. On his website, Ohlman argues that “marriage (in order to be timely and to accomplish its purposes) ought to happen before the age of twenty for almost everyone.” While denying that he would marry girls of 12 off, he argues that once her breasts develop and her body is “physically mature enough to handle” childbirth “without damage”, it’s time for her to marry.

And as for how much say the kids have in this matter, read this passage from Ohlman’s site:

Scripture speaks of the father of the son “taking a wife” for his son, and the father of the bride “giving” her to her husband (Jeremiah 29: 6; Judges 21: 7; Ezra 9:12; Nehemiah 10: 30; 1 Corinthians 7:36-38). It gives example after example of young women being given to young men, without the young woman even being consulted, and often, in some of the most Godly marriages in Scripture, the young man is not consulted….

Then, the son or daughter, must “consent” to the marriage—but it is very important to realize that this type of “consent” is the kind of obedient consent we see in the examples of Adam, Eve, Isaac, Rebecca, and Christ. It is consent where the son or daughter, realizing that their father has bound them and then submits to the covenant as binding, recognizing the good gift their father has given them.

They’re allowed to say yes but they can’t say no. Which is to say that his version of “consent” is not consent at all.

After Garrison wrote her piece, apparently many readers started calling the Salvation Army, which had rented out the space to Ohlman for his retreat. Upon discovering they were about to play host to an event centered around arranging marriages for teenagers, the Salvation Army pulled the plug.

SOURCE:

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/06/arranged_marriages_in_the_u_s_kansas_fundamentalist_group_tied_to_duggars_tries_to_get_teens_hitched/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow