Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar Donated Money To Anti-LGBT Lawmaker Who Threatened To Show Woman His Penis
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar aren’t as politically outspoken as they used to be, but the former 19 Kids and Counting stars do use a portion of the wealth that TLC blessed them with to influence politics. One of the politicians that they’ve supported in the past is currently making headlines for a bizarre outburst: He allegedly threatened to show a woman his penis because he thought that she looked like a man.
According to Raw Story, the Fayetteville, Arkansas, councilman in question is tax attorney John La Tour. When La Tour was running for city council in 2014, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar donated $2,000 to his campaign. It’s possible that the Duggars supported La Tour because they agreed with his stance on a Fayetteville anti-discrimination ordinance that protects members of the LGBT community. Jim Bob and Michelle are against this ordinance, as is La Tour. The Duggars’ biggest issue with the ordinance seems to be the equal rights that it guarantees transgender women, and it seems as though John La Tour is also transphobic.
According to the Arkansas Times, La Tour recently made quite the scene at an Arkansas eatery. He encountered a waitress who didn’t meet his standard of what a woman should look like, so he challenged her to prove her gender. He was at an Arsaga’s coffee shop in Fayetteville when the incident took place, and a witness later described the incident on Facebook.
“He demanded she pick a gender declaiming loudly that he couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman,” the Facebook post read. “She is not transgendered and does not in any way present any ambiguity about gender in any way. She’s a woman.”
“He then explained that he was a man and could prove it by dropping his pants and showing his penis.”
The witness went on to mention that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have donated money to John La Tour.
John La Tour later told his side of the story to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and he admitted that he asked the waitress about her gender. He said that he wanted to ask the woman to dance with him, but he wanted to confirm her gender first.
“You can declare you’re a man or you’re a woman, whatever you want to,” La Tour said. “I’m not going to ask a man to dance with me.”
La Tour also shared some of his exact words, saying, “I am a man and I can prove it.”
In response to John La Tour’s behavior, over 2,500 upset citizens have signed a Change.org petition demanding the alderman’s resignation. However, La Tour has refused to resign.
During his encounter with the waitress, La Tour blamed the Uniform Civil Rights Protection ordinance for his behavior, and this just so happens to be the same ordinance that Michelle Duggar made headlines for fighting against. It protects members of the LGBT community from being evicted or fired based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. As the Inquisitr previously reported, Michelle Duggar tried to turn Fayetteville residents against the ordinance by lending her very recognizable voice to a robocall. In the recorded message, the former 19 Kids and Counting star equated transgender women to child molesters and claimed that the ordinance would make it easier for predators to attack women and girls in women’s restrooms.
“Males with past child predator convictions [could] claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls,” Duggar said.
“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.”
Fayetteville city attorney Kit Williams responded by pointing out that transgender people are “far more likely to be the victims of harassment and violence if forced to use a bathroom that is inconsistent with their gender identity.”
According to the Fayetteville Flyer, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were so against the ordinance that they donated thousands of dollars to all of the city council candidates who opposed it. They spent $10,000 trying to make sure that the ordinance didn’t become law, and they initially succeeded. However, according to the Arkansas Times, the ordinance was passed last September after it was tweaked a bit.
A few weeks before the ordinance passed, Michelle Duggar’s robocall came back to haunt her—she was labeled a hypocrite when it was discovered that she and her husband did not take appropriate actions when their own son, Josh Duggar, sexually molested four of his younger sisters and another girl.
During an interview with Megyn Kelly, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were asked to respond to the critics who were calling them hypocrites for equating transgender women to child predators while defending their son’s predatory behavior. According to the Washington Post, Jim Bob tried to claim that Josh Duggar is in a different category from the sexual predators Michelle mentioned in her robocall. He told Megyn Kelly that Michelle Duggar “actually said ‘pedophile’ in that [robocall].” However, this is not true.
“And actually a pedophile is an adult that preys on children,” Jim Bob said. “Joshua was actually 14 and just turned 15 when he did what he did. I think the legal definition is 16 and up for an adult preying on a child. He was a child preying on a child.”
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s only punishment for failing to take action when they first found out about Josh’s behavior was a TLC demotion — now they are only supporting stars on their family’s reality show. However, they just can’t seem to put their many controversies behind them. Because of their connection to John La Tour, their questionable comments and behavior are a topic of discussion yet again.
[Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images]
