00:03:01.900Women are inferior to the male heads of household.1.00
00:03:04.860Children must strictly obey their parents.1.00
00:03:06.800And all of this, all of these norms, are enforced through abuse.
00:03:11.080But it's not just about how individual families run their households.0.89
00:03:15.080Because of what's called Christian dominionism,0.86
00:03:17.580the idea that Christians like the Duggars1.00
00:03:19.340should take control over government and society,0.96
00:03:22.100Religious zealots are striving for more and more control over all of our lives.0.99
00:03:26.860Eve Ettinger hosts a podcast called Kitchen Table Cults,0.99
00:03:30.340where they talk about life as an ex, someone who got out of a cult.
00:03:34.980Their story is featured in the new Amazon Prime documentary about the Duggars called Shiny Happy People.
00:03:41.640Hi, I'm Eve Ettinger, and I am on the board at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.0.82
00:03:48.460Eve didn't grow up under IBLP, but they were raised in an adjacent ideology called quiverful,
00:03:54.280and they know a lot about the kind of purity culture that's a hallmark of both movements.
00:03:58.800So I just finished watching the shiny Happy People documentary.
00:04:03.380First, I have to ask, what has the response been like from the show now that it's aired?
00:04:09.640It's been so sweet, honestly. It's been really kind.
00:04:13.880lots of survivors reaching out. They relate. They're grateful. They're really happy that
00:04:21.580this is being told. And a lot of other people who are like, oh, my God, I had no idea. How can I
00:04:28.200help? And so being able to direct them to CRHE and our work is just really satisfying.
00:04:34.880We were talking a little bit off mic about this, but you have this
00:04:37.940really prolific background as an activist, someone who writes about important issues. And
00:04:43.660I'm happy to hear that the response has been positive and sweet and helpful and supportive,
00:04:49.660as opposed to some of the other issues like your piece about the abortion rights movement,
00:04:53.980things like that. I can imagine this feels like a change in getting those kinds of responses.
00:04:59.320Night and day different. I've had to really up my security first things when things like this
00:05:05.100go live because I've had a lot of hate directed my way, some active threats. And so it's been just
00:05:12.720surreal to feel just the kindness around this. And I also have to, I think, thank the producers
00:05:19.700for this. And I think the medium probably has a lot to do with that, given that there's so many
00:05:26.560of us speaking out together. It's not just me writing a one-off piece, but also the producers.
00:05:32.380I worked mostly with Corey and Olivia, and I cannot speak too highly of them. They've been
00:05:37.860so wonderful and so kind. And there were certain topics that were really enmeshed in the stories
00:05:44.380that I was telling that I find impossible to tell without those other pieces, but there's
00:05:51.440elements of that that leave me vulnerable to people from my past. And they were able to really
00:05:57.000cleanly edit out all of those things that left me open to a text and just really protect me.
00:06:02.680And I felt very cared for by how they presented the material that they got.
00:06:08.180So often when us, the viewers, are watching the finished product, the person who is the subject, the person who is being spoken about, who is sharing their experiences, which are often traumatic or painful or heavy, I hate it when I hear from them where it's like, oh, this felt really traumatizing or this felt exploitative.
00:06:24.860exploitative. So it makes me very happy to hear that you felt like it was a good
00:06:28.700situation for you and not something that was just like, how can we mine this person's pain more
00:06:35.360for views? I really can tell when I'm watching something that feels like that and I don't like
00:06:40.020it. Yeah. Part of the reason I chose to do this with them is that I felt that Lula Rich
00:06:46.580preserved the dignity of the survivors, which was the piece that they had done before this.
00:06:52.560And so that carried through. Olivia is incredibly careful, incredibly thoughtful, and just very trauma-informed. And I just felt really cared for. I think everybody did.
00:07:04.380You know, something that they make really clear in the doc is how people watching shows like 19 Kids and Counting might not have really been privy to how harmful ideologies like IBLP actually are.
00:09:13.040if there's like an actual conspiracy um for christian dominionism that has been like
00:09:19.700put in place over the last 30 plus years and it's not like conspiracy theories are again another like
00:09:27.300pastime like a great icebreaker is like what's what's one conspiracy theory you like personally
00:09:33.300would love to be for it to be real you know like that kind of chit chat um but it is very real and
00:09:41.140And I think we just don't want to take it seriously because it means that there's a certain amount of religious freedom for the rest of us that would immediately be at stake.
00:09:57.380So I didn't grow up in an evangelical household, but I did grow up in a kind of old school, southern, like spare the rods, spoil the child kind of household.
00:10:08.200And something that really struck me in watching the documentary is how when they were talking about the brutality of some of the physical abuse that was commonplace in their communities and how they had all of these specific ways to avoid the police getting involved with how they were, you know, abusing their kids, essentially.
00:10:25.760I, you know, you talked about children's rights and this sort of children first ideology that we're starting to talk about now. That is not a vibe that I grew up with.
00:10:38.880And part of me wonders if one of the ways that people didn't really necessarily want to see some of the more abusive aspects of these ideologies is because it's, even if you're not an evangelical, you might be beating your kids as, you know, and telling yourself it's discipline, I'm doing this for their own good.
00:10:57.320You might have a mindset that says your kids are not people, your kids are your property. And the most important thing for your kid is to be respectful to you and not to express themselves, not to have needs, values, opinions, emotions. And so that would be very threatening, even if you were not evangelical.
00:11:13.100Oh, yeah. It goes back a really long way. I mean, I think there's a piece of this that is like, historically, like, you know, women were property, right? Legally, there was a like, tradition of law around that.
00:11:31.160and the women's like movement to end that children were under the same, had that same status.
00:11:43.100And it really never changed because they didn't come along with the evolution of women's rights
00:11:47.640very far. I talk about a lot about this in a recent series on Kitchen Table Cult. We did a
00:11:56.400deep dive into the history of children's rise here. But then there's also, yeah, people don't,
00:12:04.420people carry trauma from their past and they think that they turned out fine. And so it's okay to
00:12:10.260like pass that forward, um, because they're not willing to acknowledge that people that they love
00:12:17.480deeply harmed them. And that's a really hard thing to face. And it takes a lot of maturity to be able
00:12:24.180to face that and not like implode. And then also people, people really just don't want to take kids
00:12:34.800seriously. It's a lot easier to parent by breaking your child's spirit than to like take them
00:12:41.260seriously as a rational individual with whom you need to negotiate because they have autonomy and
00:12:48.440consent. It takes more time. It takes more work. And a lot of people are not willing to do that.
00:12:53.500And a lot of people like have kids because they, you know, don't want to be alone or they want to have a legacy or they want to be able to micromanage someone else's life because a partner wouldn't stick around and let them do that.
00:13:10.280You know, there's a lot of, like, immaturity that goes into why people have kids.
00:13:20.280But then what you do with the children when you have them is it's very, very important to take them seriously as individuals with autonomy.
00:13:28.640And that's really, really hard to accept.
00:13:31.100In the documentary, we learn about the kinds of brutal abuse tactics the Duggars use with their children.
00:13:36.860Tactics like blanket training, where a baby is put on a blanket with a toy just out of reach.
00:13:42.500If the baby reaches off of the blanket for the toy, they're hit.
00:13:46.660This is meant to break the child's spirit so that they're more obedient.0.97
00:13:50.460The film showcases the ways that spanking and brutal physical punishment
00:13:53.840is glorified as a godly way for a parent to treat a child.
00:13:58.000I say often that spanking is sexual abuse, and people really do not like that.
00:14:03.920um i'm sorry that's an erogenous zone and you are like preparing i mean you saw in the
00:14:12.540documentary it's it's functionally grooming for sexual abuse like the the whole i'm doing this
00:14:17.740because i love you you need to submit to an adult who is violating your boundaries and you have to
00:14:25.300go back and hug them after it's done and you have to accept them publicly and you have to have no
00:14:29.140resentment you can't scream out like that's a sign of rebellion like all these things0.82
00:14:34.940it's it's sexual grooming it's predatory um in addition to just the like smacking your child0.99
00:14:44.800is like extremely fucked up i don't know there's just there's a lot there people don't like to look0.99
00:14:51.340at it they really really don't like to look at it they really really don't and i think0.98
00:14:56.860it's kind of like what you were saying I think part of it is that we as a society I think we
00:15:02.340hate children we are very threatened by the idea that children are little adults and that if we
00:15:08.960actually built a world that accommodated that reality that seems big and scary and threatening
00:15:14.380so it's easier to believe that kids are just property you don't really need to think too
00:15:21.220hard about it and how you treat them are you familiar with the UN convention on the rights
00:15:25.240of the child? I am not. Okay. So, um, it's, you know, obviously like UN acts do not have like
00:15:34.280control over our laws, but when we, you know, co-sign something that, you know, the international0.98
00:15:45.880community has agreed, like this is fucked up. Like it's, it's, it's endorsing a, like a standard0.94
00:15:51.220that we're aspiring to, right? And we never endorsed or ratified the UN Convention on the
00:16:01.160Rights of the Child back in the 90s, early 90s, because Michael Ferris, who's the founder of the
00:16:07.580Homeschool Legal Defense Association and was up until recently the president of Alliance Defending
00:16:13.560freedom, which is a really, it's a hate group, um, lobbied and organized homeschoolers to
00:16:20.760try to keep us from ratifying that because among other things, it asserts that a child has a right
00:16:29.380to not be hit by their parents. Um, I first read this when I in entirety, I knew of it. I knew it
00:16:40.060was considered bad in the fundamental some school world um but i first read it in its entirety when
00:16:45.180i went to peace corps um i was serving in kyrgyzstan as a uh educator volunteer and
00:16:53.420because kyrgyzstan had ratified it we had to read it as part of our training as educators there
00:16:59.740wow and i i lost it i had to go leave go leave and sit in the hall for like an hour because it
00:17:08.200was like all of these things that it's asserting like would have saved me would have saved my
00:17:15.040childhood would have been wonderful to have had as these are our values as a nation and we just
00:17:23.020don't like kids um so there's there's like a whole there's a whole like a lot of history behind that
00:17:30.780and obviously again it wouldn't be binding in the way that a federal law would be but um
00:17:38.200Just the fact that we won't even endorse that kind of aspirational value is deeply disturbing.
00:20:48.140Today, Eva's part of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an organization that pushes back against the harmful, regressive, and insular worlds that these kinds of ideologies build by advocating for the rights of kids who are homeschooled.
00:21:01.840The homeschool space has been deeply deregulated, thanks in part to the lobbying efforts of people like Michael Ferris, Republican activist, and the head of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.
00:21:13.560Eve says that homeschooling is a big part of how kids are further entrenched into and harmed by ideologies like IBLP and Quiverpool.
00:21:21.640One of the big things I have to talk about is homeschooling, right? I have to imagine that the right to an education is something that, I don't know if it's spelled out in that, but like kids deserve to be educated.
00:21:39.060I would imagine something that's so clear in the documentary is that homeschooling, there's a lot of things that contribute to the harm that is able to be done and perpetuated here. Homeschooling is a big one. What role do you see homeschooling as playing in all of this?
00:21:58.960homeschooling enables abuse and i've written about this many many places like obviously
00:22:05.900like general caveat of like there are great parents and homeschooling can be a really
00:22:12.080wonderful tool but as it stands homeschooling has been systematically deregulated over the last
00:22:18.46030 years by people like michael ferris um in order to elevate parental control
00:22:28.420over a child's right to education and a child's right to an open future.
00:22:33.020The net effect is that I'm in Virginia, and I was homeschooled in California and Virginia.
00:22:40.620In Virginia, there's two ways you can register to be homeschooled.
00:22:44.120One is the standard process where you report to the school board, I'm homeschooling,
00:22:48.460and then you have to provide certain academic benchmarks to prove that there's academic progress
00:22:55.960um that could be standardized testing that could be a portfolio like
00:22:59.820um different states have various benchmarks that they use for that but in virginia you can also
00:23:07.780register under religious exemption which basically says i'm homeschooling for religious reasons
00:23:11.820and as soon as you do that you don't exist so this was established back in i want to say the
00:23:21.700eighties. I don't think that's quite right. Um, but it was established originally to allow the
00:23:28.620Mennonites to pull their kids from school to be part of the farming work in their community or
00:23:38.060whatever they had going on and, you know, not have the mandatory education through 12th grade.
00:23:45.640Um, and that's a homeschooling loophole that has been used. It's been like really, um, strongly
00:23:53.620protected by, um, the homeschool parental rights extremist lobby. Uh, and kids, like if, if a
00:24:04.160parent decided to homeschool their first kid and then decided that we're going to have a home birth
00:24:09.240for the second kid and, Oh, we don't want to register this child as existing. If the home
00:24:15.180earth goes really smoothly and nothing goes wrong, they could potentially have a child without a
00:24:21.260social security number who is being educated at home under the religious exemption who the state
00:24:27.760has no idea that they exist. And that's perfectly legal. Under the religious exemption, you could
00:24:34.500have your kid graduate from high school without knowing how to read. And again, that would be
00:24:40.020perfectly legal um virginia is kind of like one out of many different every state has a very
00:24:49.540different set of regulations you can look yours up at um responsible homeschooling.org we've got
00:24:55.260a list of states in there you know the current state of homeschooling by state um we consider
00:25:00.920pennsylvania currently to be the the gold standard in terms of like how they track this stuff but
00:25:07.020But we at CRHE have a vision of changing policies so that the child's right to an open future and a child's right to an education are preserved.
00:25:23.900And currently, that's not the case.0.86
00:25:26.040And so all of that sets the stage for families like the Duggars.
00:25:34.140Ironically, Arkansas is one of two states that does not allow a registered sex offender in the home if a family is homeschooling.0.57
00:25:46.140So if you want to register as a homeschooler, you have a registered sex offender in the home, you will not be permitted to homeschool in Arkansas.
00:25:55.820But there are only two states that have that.
00:25:57.820That is, I can't, I'm like, I'm, I'm, I believe you, but I am shocked. That is shocking information.
00:26:05.460So, you know, like we're, we're looking at, um, groups like Moms for Liberty, right? They're
00:26:11.660trying to, they're trying to be like, some of them might be homeschool moms coming to school1.00
00:26:16.160boards, trying to like regulate how things are censored. Um, this is based off of the model0.62
00:26:22.360that the homeschool lobby has been using to deregulate homeschooling and it's been wildly
00:26:26.960successful, which is why CRHE exists, because we're homeschool alumni being like, this is0.99
00:27:42.120We'd like to make it safe for, you know, even if some of my homeschooling experience was great.
00:27:47.680um don't need to like spend a lot of time getting into like the specifics because it's not up for
00:27:54.080debate but like I like certain things like what did homeschooling look like for you um so I'm the
00:28:01.560oldest of nine kids and um up until I was 13 and my mom had a set of twins numbers six and seven
00:28:10.800in the lineup. Um, I had much more like support and like flexibility. I got to like have some
00:28:19.180sort of input in the curriculum. I didn't have a lot of choices, but I got to choose within
00:28:23.480options. Um, and my mom had time to like work with me on stuff, but once the twins arrived,
00:28:30.720I was co-parenting the younger kids. I was babysitting, uh, ninth grade. I didn't know
00:28:36.520school. I just read, you know, great books, works of literature and met while I was watching
00:28:42.140children. Um, I got super behind in science and math. I did not have assistance to check my work
00:28:51.160on things. I mostly had to do it myself. I had to, you know, go take the great book and like,
00:28:56.280go check my answers and like, not have any idea how I got X algebra problem wrong. Um,
00:29:03.820and then going to you know my mom or my dad for help would be like does one even remember how it
00:29:10.360worked and does the other even have like the energy to even look at this or like there's a
00:29:14.660screaming toddler who needs to be fed like let's go do that so i you know i have adhd i like to
00:29:24.020learn i hustled and i didn't want to be stuck at home so like i was like an okay student on my own
00:29:30.160but the environment was not conducive to learning and there were a lot of gaps that i've had to fill
00:29:35.920on my own afterward um if you want to get a pretty good example of how it can look like that
00:29:40.840like tara westover is educated felt very familiar in terms of like you know i i knew that the
00:29:48.200holocaust had happened by the time i got to college but um but she didn't and that's not
00:29:54.500uncommon or unheard of. Do you think part of it is gendered? Had you not been assigned a female0.91
00:30:02.440at birth, would you have been responsible for childcare at nine? Fuck yes. Because I was1.00
00:30:11.000expected to be a wife and mother someday. And the long-term theory was you don't really need to go
00:30:18.960to college um but if you want to go to college that's fine but the only reason you would need
00:30:25.480a college degree degree is like what if someday in the future your husband got disabled and
00:30:30.800couldn't work and then you had to go earn money like that's the kind of like extrapolation there
00:30:36.140was no like i really wish i could have taken my college search seriously and applied to ivy league
00:30:45.320schools. Not like the Ivies are better, but at a certain point, I believe that they were. And I
00:30:50.940had a lot of anger over the fact that I was directed at certain private Christian colleges
00:30:56.900or super local colleges so that I could be close to home and be available. I left as far as I could
00:31:03.520within those parameters. But again, I had options within a set of choices handed to me,
00:31:10.340But I was not encouraged to, like, think about myself as someone who was going to be earning money in the future and having to support myself or having to take care of other people because I was training to be a wife and mom.
00:31:37.480Yeah. You know, I wonder, I read your amazingly written salon piece about homeschooling and
00:31:47.600something that really struck me was how secrecy seemed to be a big part of it. Like if somebody
00:31:52.940asks about your education, don't say this, say that. If somebody from the state comes poking
00:31:57.660around, say this, not that. I think a lot of that was early on and that part of my life was
00:32:04.920in California, especially. So, um, California is like homeschooling law at the time was
00:32:10.180you registered as a private school. There was no limit on how many students a private school
00:32:16.320had to have. And so each individual homeschool could operate as a private school. Um, and
00:32:23.800that's how they, you know, registered to homeschool. So back then, you know, this is like
00:32:31.08096 97 98 somewhere in there um when i was getting taught those things like homeschooling was not
00:32:38.300very well known mean girls hadn't come out you didn't have like references um and so it felt0.68
00:32:47.920like one probably my mom didn't want to explain things in the grocery store
00:32:53.100Two, there's serious fear mongering always and is still being carried out by HSLDA, Mike Ferris's org, to make homeschool parents pay dues to participate in their organization based off of the fear that you might need legal protection from us someday, legal representation from us someday because the state is probably going to come for your kids.
00:33:19.080We were taught to not trust social workers or CPS to see them as a threat.
00:34:44.360Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:34:48.900I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:34:53.460I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:35:00.900They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:35:04.860But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:35:08.300They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:35:11.440Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:35:20.400If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:35:26.340This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:35:38.800I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:35:45.920I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:35:49.500From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:35:55.440It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:36:02.920Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:36:12.540Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:36:28.260Teaching kids to fear agents of the state like social workers and CPS
00:36:32.280is sadly not an uncommon thing for some parents.
00:36:36.240Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Hart adopted six Black children
00:36:40.060who the women physically abused and neglected.
00:36:43.100When Child Protective Services would get involved in one state,1.00
00:36:46.240the women would pack up the kids and flee to another state.0.77
00:36:49.020Until eventually, in 2018, the women loaded all of their kids into their SUV1.00
00:36:54.080and intentionally drove it off a cliff.
00:36:56.380none of them survived if you look at you know the the heart family case that's a very that's
00:37:04.260a very classic case of this it's like they left the state to go to oregon i think they were in
00:37:11.040wisconsin they were in the upper midwest um because the cps case was open and they were
00:37:16.320being looked into and they were trying to avoid it and that was happening again in oregon and
00:37:21.560that's when they took that fatal road trip. Being trained to be afraid of the resources that are
00:37:30.040there to protect children, again, kind of goes hand in hand with the they hate kids. You don't
00:37:35.720want your kids to be safe. You want them to be under your control. Fuck. Thinking back about
00:37:42.360how fear is really used to control people's behavior, the documentary makes this interesting
00:37:47.900point that all of this ideology was really picking up steam on the backdrop of things like school
00:37:53.600desegregation. And I was just like watching and I was like, God damn, these people really did not0.99
00:37:57.940want to go to school with black people. Like they set up this whole thing. It is very clearly laid1.00
00:38:04.880out. There's a really good piece I can send you that kind of, it's a Politico piece, I believe,
00:38:09.620that documents this, but it's basically like Brown v. Board, white people started private
00:38:15.620Christian schools. And then the private Christian schools started getting desegregated. You look at
00:38:19.640Bob Jones University and like the ruling there. Um, and they fucking panicked and went to0.99
00:38:26.480homeschooling. And I, you know, look, looking at the homeschooling community I grew up in both in0.98
00:38:33.480California and Virginia, predominantly white. Um, there were people, people of color and there's
00:38:39.900other you know communities within that um some immigrant families you know who were choosing that
00:38:49.220because it felt safer for various reasons like but it's just the way it started was like very
00:38:57.160clearly a move um a fear-based move around white supremacist ideology and um that is still
00:39:08.480like kind of so embedded in the movement you can't find homeschool curriculum there's a few
00:39:15.860options that are not overtly religious or don't have like overtly revisionist history um so as
00:39:25.040the during the pandemic the like spate of people leaving to go homeschool their kids
00:39:32.760There was a, it seemed like there was a wave of especially black homeschool families starting to homeschool. Um, I just, I feel really bad for them because like, yes, this is a really good and safe option for you.
00:39:45.840And also, um, you're walking into a community that is really, uh, stacked against you and the resources that are available are directly opposed to any kind of like adequate education.
00:40:04.440Um, it's, I just, I just feel bad that, you know, this is a really good option for them and it's not safe.
00:40:11.340And again, that's part of why CRHE exists is like, this should be safe. There should be, you know, there should be good resources. We'd love to see like homeschoolers being able to be integrated into public school extracurriculars, you know, those kinds of things where you're part of the community, but you get to do it your way.
00:40:33.260yeah you've made really clear that the kind of abuse that is made worse by homeschooling that
00:40:40.840we saw in the documentary is preventable what are some solutions to preventing that kind of thing
00:40:45.260so i did a piece or team vogue about this with my friend nyla burton one of the things we covered
00:40:54.060in our reporting or was a lot of former homeschoolers who are now social workers talking
00:40:59.240about we don't want more like mandatory oversights we like yes we want more interactions with
00:41:07.960mandatory reporters or mandated reporters but not through like a top-down like you have to meet with
00:41:14.340this person every year instead opening things opening up existing resources in existing
00:41:19.600communities where they will interact with mandated reporters um so that you avoid the
00:41:26.120carceral top-down stuff um where if you open up my kid is homeschooled but wants to participate
00:41:34.280in band and the local middle school down the street has a really good band program and we
00:41:38.820can like i can drop tommy off at three for band practice and like he's part of the community and
00:41:45.080that teacher is a mandated reporter and like so providing more integration resources for
00:41:52.720homeschoolers to participate in systems that already exist um to be able to take some pressure
00:42:01.220off of parents for being the sole source of educational resources and just kind of like
00:42:08.140what can how can we like bring them in how can we make things accessible um and this will like
00:42:17.180I feel like everybody would benefit from this this will help the kids with disabilities who
00:42:22.300being homeschooled, but like need to participate in certain things or like, you know, being able
00:42:27.420to pick and choose more and integrate yourself as much as you want. Well, obviously like how to
00:42:37.280manage that policy-wise is complex, but I feel like a more integrated vision is probably the
00:42:44.020safest way forward for everybody. Yeah, that was really clear to me watching the documentary when
00:42:51.000folks would talk about how they didn't have they didn't have tv they didn't have movies they didn't
00:42:58.200have like when there was a hurricane there's somebody had to a family member had to call
00:43:02.100because they didn't have that even that level of access to the outside world and when people are
00:43:07.280so closed off and these communities and families become so insular that really is just like a
00:43:12.840breeding ground not not to mention the way that these young people are being taught like do
00:43:17.520whatever the oldest male tells you to or you know if somebody is abusing you that's actually good
00:43:23.400for you it's just pretty obviously like a recipe for not great stuff happening not safe stuff
00:43:29.320happening yeah i it's like i mean i also like kind of think about this in terms of
00:43:38.400i this is this is absolutely opening a can of worms but there is kind of a like
00:43:44.940back rooms conversation among the ex-homeschooler community about like you know for a while and I
00:43:55.620think now the question has been closed but for a while before the most recent allegations came out
00:43:59.840is Josh Duggar actually a pedophile or was he just not given access to sex ed and I think like
00:44:07.700now like child porn case closed but up before that there was a lot of conversation about like
00:44:14.940we didn't get access to sex ed and so stories of siblings checking each other out
00:44:23.820to figure things out is a really like terrifyingly common experience for a lot of people
00:44:34.400um and you just you just set everybody up to fail if you don't anticipate curiosity and
00:44:44.400provide resources and education. It kind of goes every which way. Kids having information about
00:44:56.140childbirth because mom had a home birth in the living room, but not knowing about how their
00:45:00.140body parts work. Just the lack of information really sets you up to fail. Definitely. And
00:45:10.240like not leaving space for the realities of what kids are going to wonder about and be curious
00:45:17.580about and have questions about. Again, they're autonomous beings. You can't anticipate
00:45:22.980everything. You can't control everything. Like they are going to surprise the fuck out of you
00:45:28.140if you let them. Just be willing to like go along and provide resources for them. It's not that hard.
00:45:36.460from iblp to quiverful the point of these harmful ideologies is not just about how one family raises
00:45:45.240their kids it's much more than that with young people being trained and educated to serve at
00:45:50.480the highest levels of government and politics and using social media platforms like tiktok
00:45:55.260and youtube to put a more palatable telegenic sheen on their ideology the goal is pretty
00:46:00.860explicitly world domination. One of the points that I thought was so scary and salient in the
00:46:08.120film is this idea at the end where it's like, it's not just about this one ideology. This is about
00:46:14.940people who are harmful, who are also very well connected politically, have lots of money,
00:46:21.100who are doing this because they ultimately want global domination. They want to be at the highest
00:46:27.220levels of government and politics. They want to be the people who are making decisions for the
00:46:30.500rest of us for what we can and cannot do um how have you seen this playing out and should we be
00:46:36.300worried oh god um so there's a whole lot there's a whole lot that goes into this um so i i think
00:46:46.380this was clear in the film but like want to just like reiterate i did not grow up in iblp
00:46:50.620i grew up in quiverful and the venn diagram is like almost over top of each other but not quite
00:46:57.000um the only reason we didn't do that is because my dad liked to play his electric guitar and
00:47:03.660that is satanic in IVLP so but pretty much everything else we we adopted and there's a
00:47:11.340lot of that like overlap if you look at R.J. Rashtuni so kind of the grandfather of Christian
00:47:19.920dominionism um and the like intellectual trickle down effect that he had on everybody you could
00:47:28.280play bingo with all of the like stuff that's going on with the southern baptist church convention
00:47:34.860right now and evicting women from from practicing as pastors and the uh hillsong documentary stuff
00:47:44.380and the um god willow willow creek baptist church problems and all just like anytime there's a
00:47:55.720christian sex scandal or like overt racism happening in a church community you can just
00:48:02.040like there's there's a genealogy you can trace back to these these old school christian dominionists
00:48:09.120who were, like, trying to basically, like, push the Confederacy into theocratic territory.
00:48:18.840Like, I sound like the guy with the string map on the wall, but I built out the string map, and it's pretty solid.
00:48:36.620I mean, that's one of the things that's like, it kind of goes back to what we opened the conversation with about this idea that we do have this innate thing in us in society that's like, oh, if this person wants to live like this, even if it's harmful to them, let them.
00:48:52.720But some of these harmful ideologies, it's not enough that they live like this and they want their kids to live like this.0.98
00:48:58.540They want me, a bitch they've never met, to live like this.1.00
00:49:01.260They want what I can do and can't do.1.00
00:49:04.880It's the same thing like you were saying, like the homeschooled parents, Moms for Liberty, their kids are not even at the public school, but they want to be at that school making decisions for what other people's kids can and cannot read.
00:49:28.740And, like, there's different ways people get into it.
00:49:34.660Some of them have a literal eschatological belief that if America is not made into a Christian nation, then Jesus will never have a second coming.
00:49:46.480like full on, full on, um, it's deeply anti-Semitic, um, belief system about the way end
00:50:00.540times should work and will work if we do or do not become a Christian nation. And then,0.52
00:50:06.420and then there's other people who are much more like soft about it, but they, they kind of end
00:50:12.220up in the same place through other ways just in terms of like um wanting to have these like
00:50:18.940christian values imposed upon people or wanting to be able to functionally eliminate certain0.58
00:50:26.980segments of society i mean like what is happening right now is is a very slow trans genocide like0.73
00:50:33.080that's the plan um and these book bands are like the start of it and and that's why i'm calling it0.90
00:50:41.320fascism because it's it's looks very slow but that's where it's going to end and they all get
00:50:48.020to the same place no matter where they they start if their interest is controlling children
00:50:54.500and controlling access to information and consolidating power
00:50:59.780even if it's said by a really sweet seeming lady with a baby voice and big hair it's still fascism1.00
00:51:08.300I was going to do a Michelle imitation, but I can't.
00:55:48.680But there's actually a lot of it that's like I have lived far beyond the scope of my imagination that I had for my life when I was a teenager.1.00
00:55:59.740And so sometimes I feel a little like I'm floundering because I'm like anything else that I do is so far removed from anything I ever thought possible that like I'm just like inventing new goals and inventing new visions for my future.
00:56:18.360it's really cool and it's also like wow I never it's it's the the thought of the you know I sort
00:56:25.740of have experienced this in another sense but there's the the thought of like when you've
00:56:31.260experienced a long period of depression and you're like damn it I'm still alive like what now
00:56:35.840like I didn't think I'd live to be x and then now I'm here might as well just like figure stuff out0.57
00:56:42.740like it's it's that it's a little of that like I didn't think I'd get this far whatever else
00:56:49.360happens is just really cool and gravy but also um I struggle to dream big any about it because
00:56:59.720there's there's so much that I've already been able to do that was so seems so impossible
00:57:04.080that's kind of beautiful yeah it's it's fucking rad it's fucking rad
00:57:11.140Eve, is there anything that I did not ask that you want to make sure gets included?
00:57:16.780I think that it's important to know that CRHE is the only organization founded and run by
00:57:24.000homeschool alumni for homeschool kids and their rights. I think it's important to know that
00:57:28.560we are still largely a volunteer-run organization, and we would love to be able to pay all of our
00:57:36.000staff full time. So we are looking for monthly donors. If you feel so led to use the church
00:57:44.260language, go for it. We are about at the end of our fiscal year. So by June 30th, that's the end0.98
00:57:53.480of our end of the year fundraising drive. And being able to have monthly donors helps us be
00:58:00.680able to project who we're going to be able to pay next year. And that would mean a lot to all of us.
00:58:06.700Where can folks donate and get involved and learn more?
01:00:25.220and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
01:00:30.480I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
01:00:34.620Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
01:00:42.180These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:00:46.020Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:00:53.640Hello, my love. I'm Ryan Weiss. And for the past 15 years, I've been an emotional intelligence coach and a spiritual guide. And I'm sharing with you my new podcast, Waking Up With Ryan. Waking Up With Ryan is a daily audio video podcast here to help you connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over.
01:01:14.100So let's start our days together with a moment of calm that's just for you.
01:01:18.600Listen to Waking Up With Ryan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.