You said “I was sent to counseling for a few days at least partially over being gay.” --if you don’t mind my asking (and sorry if this is common board knowledge–I don’t keep track of who is and who isn’t for the most part) *are *you gay? Or was it just suspected? If you are, how has that affected your relationship with your family? I’ll wait until you answer before asking other questions that would be irrelevant depending on which way you answer. 
Good thread!
… Yup, you’re right. Sorry about that, Antinor01, I got excited and posted before fully thinking it through. I’ll stop hijacking now.
My post wasn’t meant as a criticism of yours!! I’m sorry if it sounded like that. I kind of figured that you, at least, were ‘a Christian homeschooler’ but I can’t claim such a close relation. 
No worries, I didn’t take it as such. I just realized that I haven’t been here long enough to know if homeschooling is something that’s been hashed and rehashed here already and may not need another go-round from me.
I was a Christian homeschooler and fairly conservative, but not specifically Gothard. I think I went to one of their basic, week-long courses and I didn’t agree with all of it but didn’t find it particularly extreme either. I don’t know what in-depth Gothardism involves, so I can’t really speak to that.
He is. And his significant other is just as cute as Antinor.
Yes I am. It’s been a wild ride to say the least, we spent a number of years barely speaking. Things have mellowed out a lot, I think partially because my parents are getting older and realizing that life is too short for us not to have a good relationship.
They are on the far edge, yes. For some comparison, the church we went to was a non-denom, very conservative one. They thought Billy Graham was too liberal because he allowed Catholic priests to work at his crusades. Even they thought he was out there.
Our family varied on the level of strictness over time. Sometimes it would be ‘no tv, no movies, we’re getting up early every morning for Bible study’ and sometimes we’d loosen up some although by general US standards we were always on the conservative end.
Feel free to answer anything you’d like. 
It’s been a while, actually–it’s probably time for another round. I’m willing to do a thread next week if anyone wants one, but this week is my last week of work before break, so not quite as convenient.
Thank you for answering all these questions, Antinor01. I do have a few more:
When you were growing up, how did those in the church community feel about those outside it?
Since leaving, have you run into any non-family members of that community?
Finally, what’s the deal with conservative religions and women’s hair?
Just to clarify, our church group and home school groups rarely overlapped. Our church group mostly thought we were weirdos for home schooling and most home schoolers thought we were weirdos for being in ATI.
That being said, our church was fairly evangelical and considered the rest of the world as a mission field. Other more liberal churches, denominations etc fell into that category as well.
I moved from central Ohio to Los Angeles in 04 so I almost never see any of them.
The hair thing comes from a few things. Mostly it’s about modesty. The view is that she (the general she) should not appear provocative and should dress and style herself conservatively. To be fair, the same goes for the men. Short hair, no beard, no piercings. That comes from the passage that says it is a shame for a man to have long hair. The beard thing is mostly a reaction to 60s hippy culture. The earring thing comes from a passage in the old testament talking about slaves being pierced by their master.
Could you please explain how much ATI goes in for the practice of minimally educating girls and keeping them out of college on the theory that they are destined to be wives and mothers, so education would be either useless or corrupting? I’m not always sure which organization says what. I know Vision Forum goes in for that pretty heavily. Would you say that VF is more extreme in general, or less? How about Answers in Genesis, did you have contact with them?
But OTOH you say that most of your ATI group was not into homeschooling, so maybe you didn’t run into that so much.
In my experience, college wasn’t really recommended for anyone. Yes, the girls were mostly expected to to end up as stay at home moms. But college usually involves debt which is strongly discouraged.
How does your family treat your partner? I’m glad that you have a good relationship with your family.
My perspective as a fellow former-homeschoolee/ conservative church goer is that these types of programs/cultures tend to be far more harmful to women than to most men. What is your perspective on that? If you look back at your homeschooling/church cohort, are most seemingly satisfied in their lives? Is there a perceptible difference in how well the men have done vs. the women? By this, I don’t mean wealth or necessarily education- more, are they happy with their lives? Are they in the type of two-parent family structure that was promoted to them as young kids as ideal?
To go into a little more detail; I never got the impression that girls in particular shouldn’t be educated. College isn’t really pushed for anyone, for both the debt reason and that it would put you out from under your father’s umbrella of authority. Something to remember though, the girls are going to be the future mothers and will need to be able to teach their own children. Keeping them uneducated would be counterproductive to that.
I’m not really familiar with either VF or Answers in Genesis.
Sorry if I was unclear before, we had 3 main circles of people. Church, Home schoolers in general, and ATI home schoolers. The three didn’t overlap much, although we did have another ATI family at our church for a while.
They are cordial to him, but not that close. Although we did have a breakthrough a few years ago and my Mom spent a week with us. She really seems to have loosened up around the issue to some degree. She will never really accept it, but doesn’t go out of her way to try and save my soul anymore.
My relationship with my family will always be complicated. Aside from the ATI stuff and the conservative church my brother is a pastor now who was trained at Bob Jones University and my sister is possibly going to marry a guy from BJU who also plans to be a pastor.
For the most part these days, we avoid controversial topics such as that I’m gay.
I don’t really know very many of them anymore, since I moved 2500 miles away. I haven’t heard anything strongly negative though.
To use my own family as an example;
- Me, male, 36. I’m somewhat to very happy with my life. I have a loving husband of 10 years, we own a home together, we both are on a good career path and are planning a solid future. If I could do it again, I would want to be home schooled although not necessarily in the same way.
- My brother, 31. He seems to have been the one of the family to take most of what we were raised with to heart. He has a master in theology from BJU and is now an associate pastor. He has been married for 8 years and is planning a family. He seems to really love his life the way it’s going. Following the Gothard style of courtship, he was never alone with his now-wife or had any physical contact before they wed. Their first kiss was at the altar.
- My sister, 26. She’s still a bit of a wanderer and reminds me of myself a lot. She is currently working on her masters in counseling. She seems happy enough, but like me, I believe she struggles with depression so it’s been rough on her. It seems to me that she’s ending up more liberal than the family and is having a tough time reconciling that against the very conservative way we were brought up.
- My brother, 18. He is a real mix, I gotta say. He has struggled the most with school but is the most physically gifted of us. The boy is 6’5" and trained in several martial arts. He doesn’t want to follow his other siblings to BJU but I’m not sure how much planning he’s done for the future. I’m hoping to have him live out here for a while and get him into community college or something.
Sorry if this got a little long winded.
The thing that strikes me when I’ve watched 19 Kids and Counting is how, unlike groups like the Amish, the Quiverfulls don’t seem to value things like farming, gardening, building things, sewing, cooking, canning food, making things homemade, etc. They don’t seem particularly skilled in any of these areas, and in fact, pretty unskilled. It just doesn’t seem like they’re doing anything productive at all with their lives. I always thought the point of having a bunch of kids is so they can assist and learn these things to help sustain the family’s living. Would you say that’s how it was with the Gothards you knew, or were some of them more productive than the Duggars and their ilk?
Indygrrl, I’ve read other Quiverful families write about having the family participate in home-based businesses or farming. The Duggars are a little odd in that area, based on what I’ve read, but again, I’m coming at the situation from an outside perspective.
Antinor, I grew up near BJU, and I gotta say - the fact that your brother is still even talking to you is a major accomplishment for him, given the expectations of that branch of Baptist.
It seems more specific to that family. Your perception is more like the reality of most home schooling/ATI/etc families.