by

JC Schildbach, LMHC

Praise Jesus! Joshua Duggar has been cured of his addiction to pornography in just a few short days!

Okay, maybe not so much cured, as that he just removed a reference to pornography addiction in the ‘official statement’ he issued on his family’s website/Michelle’s Blog.

Who, other than Josh, his family, and probably their lawyers, know why he removed a reference to pornography addiction, as well as to “my actions that happened when I was 14-15 years old,” in the official statement he made regarding his use of the Ashley Madison website to engage in extramarital affairs?

Let’s engage in some wild speculation, shall we?

With an ongoing trickle of information about a lawsuit by the one, non-sister victim of Josh’s “actions that happened,” Child Protective Services incidents at the Duggar home, questions of impending bankruptcy, and other Duggar-related strangeness over the months since the public first became aware of Josh’s troubled teen years, it’s likely that the Duggar family isn’t entirely ‘out of the woods’, legally speaking. Porn addiction you say? Extramarital affairs you say? Sexual assault of minor females you say? Hold up! Strike that! It’s only extramarital affairs. Nothing to see here, folks.

Okay, legally speaking, I don’t think there is really any way that anybody could determine that authorities need to, say, seize Josh’s computers and phone, and whatever other devices he used to feed his “pornography addiction” in order to make sure that his viewing habits didn’t include any material involving minors. There needs to be much stronger probable cause than one’s sexually assaultive teenage behavior. Although, if Josh hadn’t actually escaped legal punishment for his behaviors, he might still be banned from accessing pornography at all.  But…

There are still hackers and others out there who, with the information they already have, could potentially make the connection between Josh and whatever pornography he viewed—especially if he accessed it using any of the same email accounts or payment methods as he did for his Ashley Madison account.

Such digging won’t necessarily turn up anything illegal, but Josh (just like anybody else) probably wouldn’t really want any personal details about his pornography viewing habits to be made public. Just imagine the scandal if, say, there was any gay pornography in there; or even some “shemale” (sorry, that’s the porn industry term) pornography.

I’m guessing, though, that the real reason has to do with the Duggars doing as much damage control as possible—if that were even possible. After all, Josh’s parents and the two of his sisters who came forward as victims, are working with The Learning Channel (TLC), along with other groups, on an hour-long special about child sexual abuse. The parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, were reportedly hoping to parlay that collaboration into another reality show where—and I’m not making this up—Jim Bob and Michelle would counsel victims of childhood sexual abuse.

On the eve of such an important TV event, the Duggars probably don’t want to remind the public that their connection to childhood sexual abuse is not just that they are the parents of victims, but also that they are the parents of a perpetrator. The Duggars also probably don’t want greater public awareness of the expanding list of Josh’s unresolved sexual compulsions while they are pretending to know anything about how to counsel anybody with a history of sexual abuse—especially given their insistence that they had handled Josh’s sexually assaultive behaviors “in house.”

Still, a show where Jim Bob and Michelle counsel sexual abuse victims would be fascinating television—I mean, if you could get past the completely unethical situation of subjecting sexual abuse victims to the ongoing harm that would come from having a couple of unqualified, uneducated, sexual abuse enablers conducting therapy sessions.

Of course, it’s possible that Josh’s ‘official statement’ was revised so that we can all focus on what’s important in this whole situation: the cheating. Why cloud that up with a bunch of side issues like pornography? I mean, we already know about the Ashley Madison account, and that Josh paid for the ‘affair guarantee’ package, and that he also had an OKCupid account, where he used some DJ’s selfie for his profile pic. But, really, why address situations that nobody else has bothered to expose, yet—right?

Then again, maybe Josh just realized that he was using the term “pornography addiction” wrong. Pornography use doesn’t really rise to the level of an addiction until it’s causing some serious problems in one’s life—and not just the kind of problems that arise when one is publicly exposed as having cheated on one’s wife via a web site designed for cheating spouses, despite having served as a “family values” spokesperson. See, that’s not even really related to using pornography at all—except for all the Ashley Madison pop-up ads that are connected to pretty much every porn site on the entire Internet.

Rather than Josh talking about pornography addiction, I’d like to just start calling it compulsive masturbation involving pornography, but there are clinical differences between pornography addiction and compulsive masturbation. And who knows?  Maybe Josh was just doing a lot of looking.  But really, just looking at pornographic pictures and/or videos for, say, thirty minutes a day until you can rub one out hardly reaches the level of compulsion. In today’s wired world, with plenty of access to free porn, that’s practically normal behavior.  (And by ‘normal,’ I mean it’s pretty damn common–not that it’s necessarily healthy–but that’s a discussion for another time).

Porn addiction, in contrast, involves an ongoing compulsion to consume ever more pornography, to the point where it’s occupying vast quantities of one’s time, and leading one into trouble. For example, imagine that every time you popped onto Facebook, you were, instead, hopping onto the Internet to find more pornography. That’s getting closer to the “addiction” range.

Josh probably just wanted to keep that clear. After all, it wouldn’t look good if he really did have an addiction to pornography. That might suggest that he continues to struggle with sexually compulsive behaviors, and that maybe the ‘treatment’ he got all those years ago didn’t quite root out the whole problem.

Of course, if Josh has graduated to affairs with adults, and is only looking at pornography with adults, at least that means he’s gotten away from the children. You have gotten away from the children, haven’t you, Josh?

At any rate, now that we’ve made it to this stage, who wants to bet on just where Josh’s affair partner(s) will turn up first? I’ve got my money on a Megyn Kelly exclusive interview, unless her spat with the Donald has caused her to lose favor with the Duggar demographic (I’m guessing they’re more a Huckabee crowd than a Trump crowd—but it’s hard to know). Something tells me, though, that I probably shouldn’t rule out the affair partner(s) turning up in a full spread in Playboy, or Penthouse, or Hustler—if those all still exist—if not a full-blown porno movie with a Josh lookalike—or maybe Josh himself if he falls on hard enough times.

Well, that’s probably enough wild speculation for now.

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Whew! Now that I’ve gotten all that out, I think I feel okay. I just hope I can get through another day, another week, before I feel compelled to write more about Josh or any of the rest of them.

Pray for me.