Why Do They Call Daniel Webster "Taliban Dan?" Is It Fair?

More than a few progressives have questioned the wisdom and "the fairness" of Alan Grayson's Taliban Dan ad... and some Villagers have been positively gleeful in clobbering Grayson for his tactics. But as we've been pointing out since the advent of the firestorm, even if the portrayal was a little clumsy, it was never less than completely accurate. In fact, it's impossible in a 30 second ad to explain the full degree to which Webster ascribes to-- and has acted in a manner consistent with-- the worst tenets of religionist fundamentalism that would be more at home in backward areas of Afghanistan than in Orlando... or even Kabul. Yesterday TPM did the full report that Florida media has been to lazy--- or too biased-- to bother with. As they point out, Webster's been with Bill Gothard's religious cult, the Institute for Basic Life Principles, for decades and publicly admits to being a staunch supporter and follower. An ex-member of the cult Vyckie Garrison, watched the ad and explained to TPM that Grayson's ad hit the nail right on the head. "I watched that ad, that video that the Grayson guy...and after I watched it, I thought, yeah, that's definitely provocative, but I don't think that's an exaggeration to compare Dan Webster and IBPL ideals to the Taliban because, as far as women go, we are reduced to non-personhood status." Garrison divorced her husband and left the cult when one of her daughters attempted to commit suicide. She now blogs about Gothard's dangerous cult-- to which Webster (as well as Mike Huckabee are both devoted) at No Longer Quivering.

What we now call IBLP was founded decades by Bill Gothard, an influential, and deeply conservative minister. In a Time Magazine article written over 30 years ago, Gothard, then 39, was quoted as advising women, attacked by their husbands, to pray, "God, thank you for this beating." His group has existed in different forms, until it was finally incorporated as IBLP about 20 years ago.

According to Garrison, IBLP gets its hooks into evangelical parents by offering them a program for home schooling their children, to protect them from the evils of public schools-- "Satan's indoctrination centers." (Webster's six children have all been home schooled.)

"The next thing we heard was to trust the Lord with our home planning," Garrison said.

They pretty much pushed in IBLP the primary ideal is that you will not use birth control, that you will accept all the blessings the Lord sends your way. There's all these code words, but basically what they're saying is women should not use birth control for any reason. In my case I had a lot of health reasons, it was recommended to me after my third that I not have any more kids-- I'd had a C-section-- but once I got into this whole teaching, I felt that I was going against Scripture by not allowing the Lord to bless me and I needed to trust that if he was going to give me a baby he'd protect me."

So Garrison had four more children.

Those children, and Garrison herself, wound up in a position of complete subservience. Whether Webster preached it directly or not, the Institute teaches that women should indeed submit themselves to their husbands.

"There's a big emphasis on this authority structure within Gothardism and the whole IBLP. If you're submitting to him that's how you obey God, that's how you gain physical, spiritual, financial protection, is being basically obedient to the spiritual head, which would be your husband, or if you're a child, your father," Garrison told me. "Being in submission, that's how you're going to keep the devil from ruining your life."

"The main trouble for us was there's such a focus on this patriarchal teaching, that the husband is the head, he is the leader, the wife is to submit, the children are to obey," she described. "And it gives so much authority and power to the man that it turned my husband into just a tyrant. He had the idea in his head that as our spiritual covering he had a responsibility for my spiritual life, our children's spiritual life. And if he feels like he's the one who's ultimately going to answer to God, he has the authority and the responsibility and the obligation to use so much control over all our actions, down to our thoughts and beliefs."

Kathryn Joyce, an expert on Gothardism and similar lifestyles, estimates that tens of thousands of people in the country live their lives this way. The movement is known as the Quiverfull movement, because, as Garrison put it, "children are arrows in the hands of the holy man." Adherents believe themselves to be in a "battle for the Kingdom of Righteousness, and you want to have as many arrows in your quiver as you can and you want them to be sharp, you want them to be focused...you are raising up an army for God."

I asked Garrison whether it would be possible to be a member of IBLP and not adhere to the patriarchal aspects of its teachings.

"No," she insisted. "It's one of the foundational principals. It's what gets you into it. There's the whole thing: This is what a godly woman looks like. There's very clearly delineated roles for women, and those roles are all based on submission, they're based on self denial, on obedience, and respect, and even the word respect translates into 'you just take it, and with a smile.' Because that's how God would have you respond to tyranny and abuse."

Does it sound something like the Sharia Law of fundamentalist Muslims? It should-- because it is, "with strict instructions on how to dress, date, and run a home, and with strict consequences for disobedience." According to Gothard, "Once they are married, the husband 'gives the law' and the wife 'works out the proper procedure to carry it out.' Equal authority in marriage is 'Satan's goal.' The key to a happy marriage is 'the wife's submission and the husband's sacrifice'."

As I've detailed in a recent Alternet story, Daniel Webster's intimate, over three decade long involvement with evangelist Bill Gothard appears similar to a classic guru-disciple or mentor-pupil relationship and has included speaking multiple times at Gothard's conferences, traveling with Gothard to Korea in 1996, using Bill Gothard's material to homeschool his six children, making an instructional video for Gothard's Institute For Basic Life Principles, and, when Webster became speaker of the Florida legislature in 1996, hiring four of Gothard's IBLP employees as high-level Florida State House staffers.

As I describe in my Alternet story, Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, according to the Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute, before the institute's founder, father of Christian Reconstructionism R.J. Rushdoony, died, Rushdoony nearly struck a deal with Gothard that would have allowed him to distribute Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law book, a template for implementing Biblical law in government.

Rushdoony was a virulently racist Holocaust denier who believed in Geocentrism, the proposition that the Sun, and all the heavens, rotate around the Earth, which is the center of creation.

Although the deal fell through because the two men held clashing positions about divorce (Gothard wanted to ban it altogether) they otherwise were in agreement including, apparently, on R.J. Rushdoony's vision of instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for murder, adultery, homosexuality, idolatry, apostasy, and witchcraft.  
 
Asked about his 1996 trip to Korea with Bill Gothard, Daniel Webster told the Florida Gainesville Sun, for an August 5th, 1996 story, "I respect (Gothard) as much as anybody. I wouldn't have gone [with Gothard to Korea] but he wanted me there."

Interviewed for a February 16, 1997 story from the Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, Webster stated, on Gothard, "I enjoy the advice he's given. I think it's been a major part of my life. I'm not ashamed of that. What he has said I believe to be the truth."

...As I describe in Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, other notable teachings [aside from female submission and obedience] and practices of Bill Gothard include,

• The claim that schizophrenia is merely a form of "irresponsibility."

• The need for believers to submit to all forms of authority, which is put in place by God.

•  As charged by several conservative Christian critics, the claim that Cabbage Patch and troll dolls are evil and inhibit childbirth.

• As charged by author Cora Anika Theill, the claim that rebellious wives can be 'cured' by casting out spirits of 'rebellion.'

• The doctrine that rock music is demonic and can cause possession by evil spirits.

Gothard and Huckabee and Webster are all entitled to their religious beliefs-- as long as they don't rape minors-- but the danger to society is when their primitive, self-serving beliefs are inserted into the political system by members like Webster who stealthily manage to get into official positions and attempt to use the underlying tenets of the cult in crafting legislation. One of the Founding Fathers' greatest gifts to our country was a wall they built-- a wall between church and state. Otherwise, we'd be just as screwed up as... well, the Taliban.