News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
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The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.Porno Pete Calls Focus On The Family A Bunch Of Sissies
Jim Burroway
April 29th, 2010
Jim Daly, Focus On the Family’s new CEO who replaced James Dobson, has been trying to move the organization into a more kinder, gentler sort of an anti-gay organizations. Of course, none of their policies or tactics have actually changed and it would seem that the contributors to the Drive-By… err, Drive Thru blog don’t seem to have gotten the memo on the niceness thing. But there are reports that Daly wants to make Focus’s mean policies magically appear somehow, I dunno, softer in their meanness, all to attract more “millennials” who hold a distinctly dim view of Focus’ anti-gay politics.
The mere hint that Focus might put on a veneer of civility has Peter “Porno Pete” LaBarbera in a tizzy. His latest headline: Is Jim Daly Emasculating Focus on the Family?
Dobson To Quit Radio Broadcast
Jim Burroway
November 2nd, 2009
Focus On the Family founder James Dobson has announced that he will be leaving his radio program at the end of February. Last February, Dobson stepped down as chairman of Focus On the Family last February. Dobson will also stop writing his monthly newsletter and turn it over to Focus President Jim Daly. Daly insists however that Dobson is not moving into retirement and “will continue to make his voice heard in the public square.”
[Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch]
Focus President Jim Daly Misrepresents Anthropology
Daniel Gonzales
July 29th, 2009
This isn’t the first time Focus has misrepresented the entire field of anthropology. Last year Focus staffer Glenn Stanton and Citizenlink claimed:
Glenn Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, said there’s a clear consensus among anthropologists.
“A family is a unit that draws from the two types of humanity, male and female,” he said. “Those two parts of humanity join together, create new life and they both cooperate in the legitimization of the child, if you will, and the development of the child.”
Stanton’s claim prompted rebukes from actual anthropologists including Bill Maurer, the anthropology department chair at UC Irvine and Damon Dozier, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Director of Public Affairs. Dozier reminded us in 2004 the AAA Executive Board issued the following statement in response to President Bush’s proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage:
The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
But Focus apparently didn’t learn anything about anthropology in the last year since Stanton’s bone-headed remarks. Yesterday, Focus president Jim Daly wrote in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog:
And that is why marriage is universally and fundamentally about male and female. Examine how leading anthropologists over the last 80 years – from the Royal Anthropological Institution’s Notes and Queries, to Edward Westermarck, George Murdock, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski, Kathleen Gough, Ward Goodenough and Pierre van den Berghe – define marriage across all cultures – religious and secular – and see how constantly you encounter references to male and female, procreation and off-spring legitimization as the universal and primary qualities of this sacred institution.
It should be noted according to Daly’s bio on Focus’ website, his only degree is a BS in business administration.
But most of all I find it disappointing Daly and Focus are again misrepresenting an entire field of science in their war against gay families.
Focus President Jim Daly may be contacted at: jim.daly@fotf.org
And the Washington Post’s “On Faith” editor can be reached at: onfaith@washingtonpost.com
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