"They believe God ordains and brings about child rape and murder for God’s own self-glory." ~ @rickpidcock.bsky.social baptistnews.com/article/here...
Child liberation theologian, child and survivor advocate. Learn more about my work: www.rlstollar.com. He/him.
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"They believe God ordains and brings about child rape and murder for God’s own self-glory." ~ @rickpidcock.bsky.social baptistnews.com/article/here...
Homeschool abuse cases are the worst type of deja vu.
I'd recommend @bradleyonishi.bsky.social and @abbinye.bsky.social.
I grew up in conservative christianity and am now a liberal parent. My parents always said I would understand being treated like property once I had my own kids, but the opposite is true - it is unconscionable and dangerous that children are not given rights and autonomy. Thank you for writing this
Teens calling Idaho's suicide hotline are being told they can't proceed with the conversation without parental consent. Many of the callers are then hanging up. Idaho approved a strict parental consent law last year. idahocapitalsun.com/2025/08/29/i...
religiondispatches.org/the-american...
Cant talk about this without the Family Research Council & plethora of international "pro-family' orgs working against rights globally. Jennifer wrigley's old thesis is a great primer. @rlstollar.bsky.social is an expert on this topic. Of note US rejoined Geneva Consensus Declaration (nonUN doc).
I wrote about how the U.S. refuses to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. "ParentalRights.org is an organization that has been actively campaigning against U.S. ratification of “dangerous U.N conventions that “threaten parental rights” www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-p...
This. Children are not weapons. Children are not property. Children desperately *need* the freedom to exist for themselves--not for their parents' causes.
We’re already seeing that solution in action. How many fundamentalist homeschool families have children who deconverted, or sought out a more progressive version of Christianity, or embraced left-leaning politics?
"chatGPT 5 is like having a bunch of phds in your pocket" here's ten trillion dollars "bluesky is having an *actual* bunch of phds in your pocket" dying platform. it disgusts me
Their surety is telling that their authority and training is what will carry each of their offspring into conservatism.
The solution to Christofascists trying to outbreed progressives isn't progressives outbreeding Christofascists. Arms races of children only harm children. The solution is deradicalizing Christofascists' children and creating safety nets and support networks for when they leave.
“The overwhelming majority of child sexual predators are male (94%) and the majority are white (58%). This is according to the United States Sentencing Commission in 2021.”
hidden in plain view
From 1978: "The adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male."
other language for this phenomenon might be 'folks used to trusting narcissistic systems can only feel safe when they see their own personality quirks reflected & mimicked back at them'
Three thoughts: 1. Compulsive sexual behavior and unhealthy porn use are real, but "porn addiction" is not. 2. Abuse is not the result of porn use. Abuse is the result of abusers abusing. 3. Purity culture harms survivors and survivor advocacy.
2. The overwhelming majority of child sexual predators are male (94%) and the majority are white (58%). This is according to the United States Sentencing Commission in 2021.
Conservatives only think children are blessings when they are carbon copies of themselves.
There are many myths and stereotypes about sexual predators who prey on children. These myths and stereotypes are not harmless.
"Only 10 percent of child molesters molest children that they don’t know. We must come to terms with the heartbreaking reality that those who pose the greatest risk to our children are within our families, churches, and circle of friends.” This.
I would partially agree. Not all child molesters are pedophiles, or people who are sexually attracted to children. Some abuse children because they love power and some abuse children because they are the easiest target in their communities. But pedophiles certainly exist.
Tracks with non immigrant male teachers, clergy and LEOs we see often in the news.
If you read the r/AdultSurvivors subreddit, you'll find a lot of "my mom/dad/sibling/trusted family friend molested me for a decade" posts. You will not find any "a trans person assaulted me in a bathroom" posts
From here: strongwilled.substack.com/p/chapter-15...
"Spanking — whether it was ritualized or not — created not just compliant children, but children with disorganized attachment to their caregivers. It blurred the lines, on purpose, between what was abuse and what wasn’t, and taught children to equate pain from godly authority figures as love."
"I was told that if I didn’t go to work, or if I did the job poorly, my baby siblings (3 of them at the time) would be starving on the streets."
In summary, the average child sexual predator’s profile is: married, male, white, heterosexual, religious, surrounded by friends and family, and a parent.
My favorite line: "Government regulation is poison. Self-regulation is like manna from heaven." 🤣
Eleven years ago, homeschool alum Thomas Umstattd declared fellow homeschool alumni "a bigger threat to homeschooling than any teacher’s union." Not child abusers. Not leaders promoting child abuse. But rather the homeschool alumni calling them out.
"Rational or impressive as our adult theologies may be, if they are hurting children, Jesus cares little for them. He would rather such theologies sink to the bottom of the ocean."
"In summary, the average child sexual predator’s profile is: married, male, white, heterosexual, religious, surrounded by friends and family, and a parent. If you put that all together, you get the average, church-going husband or father—the very person many faith communities think is safest..."
Jack Crabtree wants to know what “neighbor” means in the original Greek; Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz wants to find her neighbor and free her.
"It’s not unusual for ‘hard-core’ child molesters — with more sexual-offense convictions, more victims and younger victims — to be well-respected members of Christian congregations, and to be actively involved as church leaders."
"When people get angry with their children or grandchildren, they used to hit them physically or curse them verbally, but now we are teaching them the dharma about non-violence."
Agreed!
"The average child sexual predator’s profile is: married, male, white, heterosexual, religious, surrounded by friends and family, and a parent. If you put that all together, you get the average, church-going husband or father."
If you care about protecting children from abuse, it is necessary that you understand who the actual child sexual predators are.
A child protection policy is not something you create once, post online, and then forget about. You have to review and assess and update it annually and actually implement it in your interactions with children.
Thinking of Tegan Giesel, who we lost 5 years ago. We've lost so many brilliant and passionate homeschool alumni. 💔🕯️
Before exvangelicals and deconstruction, there was...
"We lived in three places where the churches we attended never checked on us. Like, we had one car and my dad had it all the time and no one once asked if we need help going to the doctor, grocery shopping, or if we wanted to have a play date."
"All theology has to start with self-disclosure." ~Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz
I was safe from school shootings by being homeschooled! I wasn't safe from incestuous rape, sexual molestation, physical abuse so horrific I'm permanently disabled, damage that led to cPTSD, religious trauma, emotional abuse, etc. But hey, I didn't get shot, only burned/punched/beaten/ripped open.
"Growing up, my mother told us nothing about sex. Nothing. As girls, she didn’t educate us about having your period, bras, body changes, nothing."
Homeschoolers have always used school shootings as marketing. After the 1999 school shooting at Columbine, Howard Richman from PA Homeschoolers wrote, "With the increase in school violence we have a new bumper sticker, ‘Homeschool: The Safe Alternative.'”
“It’s not just about the way we raise children, but also advocating for issues that matter to children, whether those are issues like food insecurity, access to medical care and poverty."
Mainly acquaintances and relatives (and rarely strangers)... web.archive.org/web/20090126....
zero percent surprising. “families solve everything” is absolute garbage ideology.
In the United States, sixty-one percent of murdered children under 5 years old are killed by their own parents: 30% by their mothers and 31% by their fathers. Source: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/....
It is true that political violence transcends demographics, but it is equally true that rightwing extremists perpetrate the vast majority of political violence in the United States. Both truths deserve our attention.
"It is unusual for federal border agents to make arrests during the fighting of an active fire." "Unusual" might be an understatement.
"It’s important to create space for children not just to know that disobedience can be good and holy, but also to give them opportunities to practice this."
...some people should probably take a look at their youth ministers...
The traditional nuclear family has been the site of the majority of child abuse—with parents as the primary perpetrators.
Whereas homeschool alumni had to spend our actual childhood acting like adults and being paraded around as mature, we now spend our actual adulthood being rejected as immature children who are simply bitter at our parents.
Way too many people see their children as property. Children are little PEOPLE🤦♀️ Why are you treating people like property? Is it because they're smaller than you? Because that would make you a piece of shit bully.
I've seen so many liberal and progressive homeschoolers who believe children are their property as well.
Three times as many children are shot in domestic violence incidents as in school shootings and eight times as many die. The majority of these children are intentionally shot by a parent, stepparent, or guardian.
I apologize, I forgot the alt text. It is a screenshot of the title of this article titled "James Dobson was right all along about the family" by J.P. De Gance for Religion News Service: religionnews.com/2025/08/27/j...
As one of @rns.org's "new leaders in the world of faith to follow in 2025," I would like you to follow me in questioning their decision to publish this opinion piece praising child abuse apologist and animal abuser James Dobson as "prophetic" and "right."
Democratic consultants need to learn the lesson… The Party of Neglect: When Democrats Forget About Kids open.substack.com/pub/bruceles... (2)
How did Catelin Drey (D-IA) resoundingly overturn that Iowa State Senate seat by double digits? Drey (Moms for Iowa) made children’s issues, including public education, health care, and children’s care, a centerpiece of her campaign. Children’s issues > culture wars #VoteKids (1)
"Republicans dominated the 2024 narrative with fearmongering about trans kids and 'parental rights,' while many Democrats offered little affirmative vision for families. This silence is political malpractice." ~ @brucelesley.bsky.social
Homeschooling parents (and their leaders and lobbying organizations) love making grandiose claims about the impact of homeschooling on their children. Actual homeschool alumni outcomes, on the other hand, tend to be more nuanced and complicated.
He was a child abuse apologist who beat a dachshund with a belt. This opinion is not worth publication.
Ugh...Come on, RNS. You're next article about the unholy eugenist father of animal and child abuse better be something like this:
This is extremely disappointing from @rns.org.
"Similar to the gun lobby’s refusal to concede any regulation despite its popularity, HSLDA considers any restriction of homeschooling to be a nonstarter."
"Children under 15 years old made up almost a third of outpatients treated for wounds in field hospitals run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Gaza last year, statistics published in The Lancet reveal."
"Doctors, nurses, or teachers typically notice these cases and report them, but since the child was not in school or may have been homeschooled, the pregnancy went unnoticed."
Ah, we've reached this point.
States rights is now a Democratic issue. The GOP is all in on a big invasive federal government. The parties have switched places in real time before our eyes. The question is whether the Dems can build infrastructures of resistance to hurt the dying dictator and his wannabe successors.
Pretty much. 🤷🏻♂️
Homeschool lobby is incredibly powerful and has gotten rid of a bunch of child protections because a lot of them think children are property and society has no role in protecting them. To train up a child and other abuse manuals are frequently followed. I loathe them.
absolutely, and it’s been a blindspot in the world for a long time, any effort to center children runs in the face of millenia of assumptions. RL’s got some great resources on the particular war that homeschoolers have had against anyone trying to protect children
i don’t know if you’ve ever encountered @rlstollar.bsky.social’s work, but he’s an ex-homeschooler who is a child advocate (and child liberation theologian). i think he’s doing incredibly important work.
if you're wondering how the government could possibly have become so cruel, you should be aware that where they got it from is the religious right culture where you're property of your parents until age 18, which is fully enabled by our society's laws and rules. it's a dehumanizing system of abuse.
After a century and change of witnessing just how utter a piece of shit the Evangelical movement is, the audacity of men like him in not even waiting a minute before explaining their latest plan in helping us stupid heathens and apostates finally learn how to be moral upstanding citizens.
Alan Noble using the death of James Dobson to preach about how much we need evangelical institutions is Will Estrada-level bullshit. Just, like, spit in your friends' and survivors' faces while you're at it.
Never-ending. 🫠
"The need for evangelical institutions is not going to go away." As a Christian, I completely disagree. There's zero need for evangelical institutions.
To evangelicals, parental rights mean more than adults having duties towards the children they bring into existence. Parental rights mean ownership. Children literally belong to, or are property of, their parents.
"Liberation theologies have tended to focus on suffering and marginalized adults. Where are the children in liberation theologies?"
"It’s not unusual for 'hard-core' child molesters — with more sexual-offense convictions, more victims and younger victims — to be well-respected members of Christian congregations, and to be actively involved as church leaders."
The Memphis-Area Home Education Association has no child protection policy posted on their website.
Andreus Shannon, a basketball coach for the evangelical Memphis-Area Home Education Association (MHEA), was sentenced to 144 months in federal prison for traveling in interstate commerce to engage in sexual activity with a minor and stalking.
"The worst part of Dobson’s cruel legacy was not the pain — it was the shame and the erosion of safety in a generation of children."
This 100% reflects what I knew growing up, and what now, as a parent, I've tried my hardest to never be or do. Dobson and people like him really damaged alot of us. The whole 'I'm doing this out of love' really doesn't ring true when you're getting the shit beat out of you.
Seeking alternative approaches to children and childhood for your family, faith community, or religious organization that eschew the authoritarianism of James Dobson? Check out @rlstollar.bsky.social's book "The Kingdom of Children" from @eerdmansbooks.bsky.social: www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Chil....
Are we really surprised?
"[Dobson] mainstreamed authoritarian parenting, then helped translate it into politics. What started as family 'discipline' became the foundation for an entire culture of obedience — one that extended into pulpits, voting booths, and national policy."
"A United Nations-backed hunger monitor confirmed for the first time that more than half a million people were experiencing famine in northern Gaza – the first such designation ever recorded in the Middle East."
Snoop Dogg, defender of family values.
The family I grew up in used corporal punishment. I cannot ever imagine doing so to my child. Has what I lived with as a child caused harm? Yes. To all five of us. I also believe it hurt both my parents.
To evangelical homeschoolers, child protection will never be a proper use of government.
An acquaintance of mine had some mental health issues as a kid and his fundamentalist parents decided he was possessed by the devil and subjected him to frequent beatings. He's still dealing with the aftermath 20 years later.