We're Not Saying You Should Troll the Duggars' Kissing Challenge

The Duggars are both a beautiful family and a very impressive business enterprise, with patriarch Jim Bob and his wife Michelle presiding over nearly two dozen God-loving, abortion-hating, completely tax-exempt (because they’re registered as a church!) children/parishioners/publicity opportunities. They’re both an object lesson in the beauty of a traditional family and a great lesson on how to monetize that traditional family. And with daughter Jessa’s recent marriage to Ben Seewald, we can gear up for both another generation of Duggars and, probably, a spinoff show on TLC.

So much to celebrate! So much to look forward to! Yet Ben and Jessa got caught in a little controversy last week, after she posted a photo to Instagram that showed the two kissing steamily. It wasn’t the first time Jessa’s Instagram got her in trouble (there was, of course, that little boo-boo where she compared the Holocaust to abortion). But the kiss photo, paired with a (possibly fake) blog post alleging that Ben and Jessa did the nasty in the church mere moments are they were legally wed is leading to lots of conversation about whether Jessa is an appropriately modest Christian bride.

So Jim Bob and Michelle responded to the controversy over the kissing photo by posting one of their own to Facebook. It’s accompanied with this caption:

God designed marriage to be a loving, dynamic relationship between a husband and wife for a lifetime. God loves marriage and it is supposed to be full of love, joy, fun and romance. Marriage is where romance belongs! Recently, Ben & Jessa received some criticism for posting a kissing picture. We are so grateful they waited to share their first kiss until after marriage. We’ve been married 30 years and are still in love! We had fun trying to duplicate Ben and Jessa’s happily married kissing picture. We challenge all married couples to take a happily married picture and post it here.

Obviously, this is a time to celebrate heterosexual, God-sanctioned, Christian, maritally-bound lovin’. It is not a time to troll the Duggar’s Facebook page with any of the following:

– Photos of yourself kissing your same-sex spouse

– Photos of yourself kissing your same-sex not-spouse

– Photos of yourself kissing someone you have no intention of marrying and whose last name you’re honestly a little fuzzy on

– Photos of yourself smooching a puppy, a Ken Doll, the Eiffel Tower, a particularly ravishing box of Kleenex, or any other animal or inanimate object for whom you nurse unholy, not-Duggar-approved passions.

Don’t even think of it, even though, as Christian Nightmares points out, this whole thing has the potential to get very real very quickly. Don’t, for example, do what Jezebel features editor Jia Tolentino did and take this opportunity to celebrate her deep, pure, totally normal love for this odd stress ball with troll hair that sits on her desk.