Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are famous for their ultra-conservative views and their reality TV show, Counting On. While they may be among the most famous ultra-conservative Christian families, they aren’t the only ones who are trying to take the media world by storm. A sister-duo, who publishes videos under the moniker Girl Defined, has spent serious time cultivating a YouTube following and has often caught the ire of followers critical of their lifestyle and beliefs. Now, it looks like the duo is guilty of plagiarism.

Who are the masterminds behind Girl Defined?

Bethany Beal and Kristen Clark are behind the Girl Defined brand. The two sisters, with more than 150,000 subscribers on YouTube, take aim at what they perceive as cultural sins and discuss everything from pornography to courting in a chat format. Beal, who is married and expecting her first child, also regularly posts to Instagram, where she has 24,000 followers.

Beal and Clark are considered small-time YouTubers. They pander to a relatively small demographic, but as Buzzfeed notes, they were launched to semi-stardom — at least by internet standards — when Cody Ko and Noel Miller parodied the sister’s videos in 2018. A series of memes featuring the sisters have made their way around the web.

The duo has since written several books, and they’ve become relatively well known among people who follow the fundamentalist Christian community. In fact, Beal, in particular, is spoken about regularly on a Reddit community dedicated to snarking on fundamentalist families. While they don’t have a ministry in common with the wildly discussed Duggars or Bates family, they share many of the same ultra-conservative values and view the same behaviors as sins. One thing they apparently don’t consider a sin, however, is plagiarism.

What’s the current Girl Defined Controversy all about?

Without a Crystal Ball took to YouTube on Feb. 7 to discuss Beal and Clark’s dating questionnaire. The sister-duo explained what they looked for in men before finding their husbands in a YouTube video earlier this week. They spent much of the video running through a lengthy list of questions that they feel every girl should ask her potential suitors before getting serious. The questions, all 134 of them, are precisely what you’d expect from an ultra-conservative Christian dating in the modern world. There are questions about childrearing, questions about work ethic and a ton of questions about faith.

It all seems pretty standard, at least for members of that particular religious sect, but Clark and Beal have added a copyright to the bottom of the list. There is one problem, though; a large portion of the questions have been lifted directly from the Duggar family’s 423-question survey for potential suitors. The lengthy list was posted by Free Jinger back in 2014.

While the Duggar family hasn’t copyrighted the content they created, many followers believe Beal and Clark are committing intellectual theft, because they’ve chosen to copyright the content that they’ve essentially stolen. The duo also claims to have come up with the questions themselves, which seems unlikely. The items, for the most part, are copied, word-for-word, from the Duggar family’s questionnaire. The Duggars have never mentioned when they developed the questionnaire or if they are the original authors.

Will the Duggar family respond?

In terms of family controversy, this situation is rather small for the Duggar family. The family of 19 is pretty busy dealing with a couple of issues. First, they have a looming investigation by the Department of Homeland Security hanging over their home. While police haven’t been spotted on the property recently, findings from the investigation could be released at any time. The family is also dealing with the fallout from Derick Dillard’s social media rants, which has turned into a public relations nightmare, of sorts.

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar | Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

It’s unknown if the Duggar family is even aware of Girl Defined, and their alleged ministry. If they catch wind of their dating questionnaire being lifted by an entity trying to make money off of it, they may just take legal action. Followers will need to keep their eyes turned towards Girl Defined to figure out what, if anything, will happen. The Duggar family is unlikely to address the issue publicly.