Hobby Lobby billionaire behind the Christian counseling center that treated Josh Duggar

[RandySF]

For more than a decade, Hobby Lobby billionaires provided substantial financial support to Bill Gothard, a politically influential religious leader who — among other things — founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles and the chain of Christian ‘treatment’ centers to which Josh Duggar’s parents sent him after he was caught molesting young girls.

“No one,” Gawker observed last year, “was more instrumental to [Gothard’s] now-controversial ministry than the family behind Hobby Lobby.”

Hobby Lobby founder David Green and his family are committed donors to evangelical Christian causes. Mother Jones reports that the Greens sold Gothard — for $10 — a 2,250-acre campus in Big Sandy, Texas, complete with landing strip and aircraft hangar. The Greens further gifted Gothard a 529,717-square-foot building Little Rock, Arkansas, and a campus in New Zealand.

In 2003, Jim Bob Duggar took his son to the Basic Life Principles Training Center in Little Rock for counseling on Christian values and sexuality. Gothard resigned from the Institute he helmed in 2014 amid allegations by more than 30 women that he touched them inappropriately.


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/hobby-lobby-billionaire-behind-the-christian-counseling-center-that-treated-josh-duggar/

[SunSeeker]

1. The Duggar story is like an onion...so many smelly layers.

[LovingA2andMI]

2. Background on Bill Gothard.....

And each Onion Layer will smell worst then the previous one:

"Bill Gothard, an Illinois-based advocate for home schooling and conservative dress who warned against rock music and debt, has resigned from the ministry he founded after allegations of sexually harassing women who worked at his ministry and failing to report child abuse cases.

Gothard’s resignation from the Institute in Basic Life Principles, according to a letter sent to families affiliated with the ministry he founded, comes a week after he was put on administrative leave. According to an organizer involved in the whistle-blowing website Recovering Grace, 34 women told the website they had been sexually harassed; four women alleged molestation.

RNS spoke with several women who alleged they were sexual harassed, including one woman who alleged that Gothard molested her when she was 17.

Gothard is 79 and single.

Gothard told the Board of Directors he wanted to follow the New Testament command to listen to those who made accusations against him, according to an email sent from David Waller, administrative director of the Advanced Training Institute to families involved in the ministry.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus directs his followers to “go and be reconciled” if “your brother or sister has something against you.”

“To give his full attention to this objective, Mr. Gothard has resigned as president of the Institutes in Basic Life Principles, its Board of Directors, and its affiliated entities,” Waller’s email said."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/conservative-leader-bill-gothard-resigns-following-abuse-allegations/2014/03/07/0381aa94-a624-11e3-b865-38b254d92063_story.html

[davidpdx]

3. The more layers you peel back, the more lies you find

[starroute]

4. Don't leave out Mike Huckabee

Huckabee not only counted Gothard among his prominent supporters but he also has a continuing fondness for Hobby Lobby.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/mike-huckabee-promotes-hobby-lobby-appreciation-day-jan-5-to-fight-hhs-mandate-87721/

January 4, 2013

Months after galvanizing a huge turnout at Chick-fil-A restaurants in support of the owners' stance on biblical marriage, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is at it again – this time promoting a Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day, Jan. 5, to support the Christian owners' fight against the Obama administration's HHS mandate.

On Thursday, Huckabee announced his support of the grassroots event to shop at Hobby Lobby stores on Jan. 5, 2013, on his public Facebook page and his website.

"They are having to fight in court for the most basic American rights of freedom of religion and freedom of speech," wrote Huckabee. "The Obama administration insists that companies like Hobby Lobby bow their knees to the God of government health care mandates, even when those mandates are a clear and direct contradiction to their personal beliefs of faith."


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mike-huckabees-hypocritical-hobby-lobby-day

3/31/2014

On Saturday, Mike Huckabee led a Hobby Lobby ‘buycott’ modeled on his campaign to support Chick-fil-A. Huckabee worked with the Family Research Council to promote the event, which coincided with Supreme Court arguments in Hobby Lobby’s suit to avoid the contraception coverage mandate, a case that Huckabee declared last week will determine “whether religious liberty still exists in America.”

[Major Nikon]

5. Religious quackery thinly disguised as medicine

Of course they gladly accept private insurance and medicaid so that everyone else gets to pay for more religious indoctrination after the original religious indoctrination didn't take.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. It's Mainstream religion, not some offshoot brand....

March 31, 2014
Hobby Lobby’s Green family meets with Pope Francis
Days after discussing the U.S. Catholic bishops’ fight over contraception with President Obama, Pope Francis met Monday (March 31) with members of the Green family, the Oklahoma billionaires whose company, Hobby Lobby, took their challenge to Obama’s contraception mandate to the Supreme Court last week.

Eighteen members of the Green family met with the pope, Sheran said, as well as 10 members from the American Bible Society. The meeting lasted 30 minutes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/hobby-lobbys-green-family-meets-with-pope-francis/2014/03/31/4dfbe22c-b913-11e3-80de-2ff8801f27af_story.html

I can also post about the anti marriage equality conference held in Rome in November, called by the Vatican. Invited attendees included NOM's Maggie Gallagher, Rick Warren and broadcasting live from the event, Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Josh Duggar's boss.
http://time.com/3597245/vatican-evangelicals-mormons-gay-marriage/

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/at_traditional_marriage_conference_pope_francis_speaks_to_u_s_anti_hay_groups

[gratuitous]

7. Just second; Hobby Lobby has its right to religious freedom, too!

According to the Nine Wise Souls of the Supreme Court, Hobby Lobby's religious beliefs (a heretofore unrecognized right, but now as inviolable as any individual's) are to be respected and upheld. Indeed, the corporation's religious beliefs are of such a nature that they are and superior to the First Amendment rights of any of its employees, even if those beliefs are not grounded in reality.

Hobby Lobby's religious beliefs and right to practice those beliefs are to be respected so much that IF Hobby Lobby has to provide compensation to its employees that includes health insurance, and IF those employees choose a health insurance plan that covers contraception, and IF any employee avails his or her family of this coverage, that's a direct violation of Hobby Lobby's religious freedom! Thus sayeth the Court, and thus sayeth the law of all the land.

Why are you libruls so antipathetic to corporations' religious freedom, which now having been discerned by the Supreme Court, trumps whatever you think, believe, practice and live your life?

[BrotherIvan]

8. There it is