100,000-strong petition calls for TLC to cancel ’19 Kids and Counting’ over homophobia
Over 100,000 people have signed a petition calling for the cancellation of family reality show 19 Kids and Counting, over the family’s ties to listed hate groups.
The show stars Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their extensive – and rapidly growing – family, who have come under fire in recent months, after the pair associated with listed anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, and lobbied against an equal rights law.
The petition states: “Michelle Duggar of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting is warning Fayetteville residents that transgender people are child predators and that the law will somehow protect that predatory behaviour.
“Josh Duggar has also taken a position at the so called ‘Family Research Council’.
“The Family Research Council is such a hate-filled, anti-gay organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010 labelled it a ‘hate group’ for its ‘dissemination of false and demonizing propaganda about gays and lesbians.’
“The Learning Channel & Discovery Networks need to separate themselves from this bigotry and put an end to the Duggars’ show.”
So far over 120,000 people have signed the petition calling for the channel to drop the Duggars’ show, which was originally titled 17 Kids and Counting, but has changed its name as the family grew.
Campaigning against an equal rights law this summer, Ms Duggar said: “I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls.
“I doubt that Fayetteville parents would stand for a law that would endanger their daughters or allow them to be traumatized by a man joining them in their private space. We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child.”
TLC is yet to respond.
