Entertainment

A Homophobic Move By the Duggars

by Eliza Castile

Remember yesterday when same-sex couples hilariously started trolling the Duggar kissing challenge with pictures of their happy relationships? Well, it looks like the family didn't see the humor in the situation, because the Duggars are removing the same-sex photos from their Facebook page. To be honest, I can't say I didn't see this one coming.In case you're having a case of tl;dr and don't feel like following the link above, here's the cliff notes version. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar issued a challenge earlier this week after one of their legion of children posted a photo of her and her husband kissing. There was controversy, of course, because what isn't controversial about a newlywed couple putting a picture of themselves kissing on Instagram? (Oh right, everything.) In support of their daughter, the Duggar parents replicated Jessa Seewald's photo with themselves as the subjects and posted it on the official Duggar Facebook page, along with a challenge to all happily married couples to post kissing photos of their own. What could possibly go wrong when a family known for their stance against gay marriage and connections with an anti-LGBT organization tells the Internet to post photos of themselves kissing?

Sure enough, gay couples started posting pictures of themselves kissing, making it the first time in history trolling has ever been cute. Astoundingly, most of the comments on the thread are supportive, despite the few inevitable heated debates. (My personal favorite comment was "Stop using God to excuse your sins." Oy vey.) Still, overall, nothing too crazy went on.But the Duggars didn't see it that way. Yesterday they started quietly deleting photos of same-sex couples, and the people who posted them found themselves banned from the page. (As of right now my photo with a picture of Frida Kahlo is still up, probably because nobody cares about the romantic relationship between a woman and a piece of paper.) It didn't take long for people to notice the removal and start commenting on it, and suddenly there are a lot more same-sex photos showing up. The Duggars' plan completely backfired; by removing the photos, they drew the attention of the LGBT community. Even if they put their entire small army of children and in-laws to work deleting the photos, I don't know if they could keep up with the influx of new ones.Poor things, forced to look at happy couples that make them uncomfortable. I sure would feel bad if fellow LGBT readers went and posted a photo of their own.Oh look, here's the link for the page! How did that get there?

By the way, the photo of the butch-femme lesbian couple that Fox News mistakenly ran in a "traditional marriage" article hasn't been taken down by whoever's deleting the photos yet.

Image: MKFautoyere/Flickr, hotguyslaughing/Tumblr, Giphy (2), Duggar Family Official/Facebook