Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 13th, 2009
If you’re old enough, you might remember the good ol’ days, the days when Dr. Dobson provided advice to parents on how to raise their kids. When spiritual advice was provided to help newlyweds deal with stress and build a happy marriage. When Focus on the Family focused on, well, the families of their listeners.
Those days are over.
Now FotF has a different purpose – focus on your family and how to harm it.
Sonja Swiatkiewicz, Focus\’ director of issues response, spoke with Everyday Christian:
She said gay marriage issue is now one of the largest for Focus.
“I would not consider gay marriage as something we are just keeping an eye on,” Swiatkiewicz said. “Protecting the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman is one of our primary goals. We receive about 250,000 communications a month from folks who have very deep hurts on this issue and request resources. We know the impact it has on the breakdown of the relationship between men, women and children.
“We work to protect or restore marriages as closely as we do on the sanctity of life beginning at conception and protecting religious liberties.”
Yes, Focus on the Family has become an issues advocacy organization, and not for issues that directly impact any of their listeners or contributors. Their mission is no longer to advise Christians; instead they demand that non-Christians or others who disagree with them do what Focus commands. They’ve de-emphasized providing care to Christian families and now are dedicated to imposing their polical will on others.
You might say they’ve lost their focus.
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Matt
July 13th, 2009
To quote a bumper sticker I once saw,
“Focus on your OWN #### FAMILY!!!”
Burr
July 13th, 2009
“We know the impact it has on the breakdown of the relationship between men, women and children.”
As applies to every argument bigots make: [Citation Needed]
Ben in Oakland
July 13th, 2009
“We know the impact it has on the breakdown of the relationship between men, women and children.”
I would dearly love to hear how this works. That idiot Stanley Kurtz, of course claims this, but seems to be as short of detail and logic as he is on facts and science.
It isn’t science. It isn’t statistics. It isn’t even sociology. And, as Saul Alinsky said, a sociologist is someone you pay $30,000 in order to find the only whorehouse in town. (Full disclosure– I have two degrees in soc).
I know. It must be economics. We’ll make up stuff, you send us money, we’ll use it to stimulate our, I mean the economy.
Maajour
July 13th, 2009
James Dobson is obsessed with homosexuality. Back in the day, I used to get his monthly newsletters. After YEARS and YEARS of receiving them, I began to see a pattern.
In EVERY monthly letter, there was always something….something negative about gay persons. I eventually got turned off by it and removed myself from any affiliation of their organization.
I contacted them and asked them why they are so anti-gay. They said that God loves me but that it is their duty to call sin, sin. Black is black and white is white. (Apparently the Creator of the Universe has no gray areas.)
I recall Dobson early on talking about using the ministry for political purposes or if they should continue to focus on families only. He justified his homophobia in the name of righteousness on earth. How could he turn his back when evil was winning?
It is my opinion that James Dobson, someday, will fall from his throne because of his spiritual abuse towards gay persons. Unless he changes his ways, Love has no room for hate. Hypocrisy took down Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Larry Craig, and many more. Dobson is committing a grave harm against the lesser of these.
I have always wondered why Dobson is obsessed with gays. Could he be gay?
Lynn David
July 13th, 2009
Institutionalized homophobia brought about by a religious conviction, who’d have thunk it?
KZ
July 13th, 2009
“folks who have very deep hurts on this issue and request resources…”
What kind of hurts? Did the gay next-door neighbors of a Christian couple get married and both the Christian husband and wife instantly develop black eyes?
Focus of the Fiction has an uphill battle considering how younger generations feel about SSM.
Christopher Waldrop
July 14th, 2009
I find their emphasis on “protecting religious liberties” interesting. Well, I guess there’s really a lack of emphasis, since they spend so little verbiage on it. And of course those “religious liberties” they’re so interested in protecting don’t extend to all religions, or even all forms of Christianity–just their own. What they really want is the freedom to take away the rights of others.
GDad
July 14th, 2009
I’m with KZ. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the types of “deep hurts” there are. I can think of two, neither of which seems earth shattering to me.
1. Offends my religious sensibilities.
2. Makes me realize that I don’t have to be trapped in a sham marriage.
Item 1 would seem to me to be the first steps in an examined faith, since an unexamined one isn’t worth having. Item 2 would certainly break up a few relationships, but those were founded in lies. To be fair, both of these can be painful, but 250k/month?
Brady
July 14th, 2009
If they get over 250,000 communications a month asking for resources about homosexuality, wouldn’t that make them the largest Christian organization dealing with homosexuality and not Exodus as Exodus claims?
Chris McCoy
July 14th, 2009
@Chris Waldrop – since all other view points are Wrong(tm), and Evil(tm), so what does it matter if they aren’t protected.
Dennis
July 14th, 2009
Why are we paying for this organization. According to their website, they are a 501(c) tax exempt, non-profit. Not only does our constitution protect speech which is generally a good thing even when it is hateful and targeted at me, but we get to pay for it as well. Insult and injury.
Maajour
July 14th, 2009
Brady and GDad:
250,000 month…that is a lot! Surely James Dobson is spinning the truth. I live in the South Seattle area and I don’t think that our emergency 911 gets that many phone calls a month!
See, this is just the kind of thing that FOTF does… twist up the data to fit the broad brush of the picture they want to have us believe.
You can’t trust Focus on the Family for an honest examination of facts or opinions. They have a pathos running through the leadership.
Eventually Dobson, Falwell, they all will fade away. And then, there will dancing in the streets; the gays who are religiously oppressed will be liberated from the judgment and condemnation of their oppressor.
But, their is always opression even if Dobson wasn’t here. Religious zealotry is always gearing up, planning and getting ready to oppress. History shows us that education, information, democracy, separation of church and state, and, mutual respect are the tools to a reasonable life in a safe society.
FOTF should focus on families. They should consider that even gays have families. Wow. FOTGF.
Richard Rush
July 14th, 2009
Like all businesses, FOTF is focusing on selling the product that brings in the big bucks. Their main product is gay-bashing.
FOTF = Focus on the Finances
R Holmes
July 14th, 2009
“protecting religious liberties”
FOTF: fighting to protect the religious right to be a git.
Disclaimer: I know that only a minority of religious people are gits.
Zeke
July 14th, 2009
As a person who was subjected to daily sermons from Dobson while growing up in a very fundamentalist home in the early eighties, I can assure you that Dobson has ALWAYS pushed an obsessive, homophobic agenda. Even in the very early 80’s there was hardly a day that went by that he didn’t rail against homosexuals and homosexuality. As a gay teenager being forced to listen to it, it was devastating, depressing and soul crushing.
He is also very much responsible for why my parents threw me out of the house and disowned me the night I came out to them.
He is now, has always been and will continue to be until he draws his last miserable breath, a hateful bastard who has caused NO end of hurt and pain. But you’ll never hear Ms. Sonja piously talking about these people’s REAL hurt and pain.
cd
July 14th, 2009
So they’re now fully Focus On The Gay.
B. Savarese
July 15th, 2009
Although I totally disagree with the editor of this site and his numerous videos against Focus, Exodus and his understanding of what denying oneself means, I have to say the real message has been hijacked by those who are anti Christian. There is a double standard concerning Christians and those in the gay community who do not believe in tolerance of other views.
Prior to going to the cross, Christ, in prayer to his Father, said, “your will, not mine” – meaning that he would do the will of HIS FATHER, God. This is what denying oneself means and exactly the context of what Alan Chambers said. We all on some level, in some way, in light of something in our lives have to learn to deny ourselves. Maturity is involved, understanding God’s word is critical, and listening to what Christ really said and meant is the message…
Mike Airhart
July 15th, 2009
Bert Savarese, please be honest about your bitterness — expressed in PFOX forums, Exodus discussions, and elsewhere — about your son being openly gay, about the failure of ex-gay therapy to change your son, and about your family members being supportive of your son’s honesty.
Bert, you have prayed for bad things to happen to make your family turn straight and become clones of you. You have scapegoated your son’s father for your son’s sexual orientation. And you cling to grudges and vendettas. In short, your contempt for Christian values and family welfare is appalling, Bert.
Timothy Kincaid
July 15th, 2009
The Will of my Father is that his children treat each other as they’d like to be treated. This is by far the most difficult of His commandments and the one we all fail at the most.
Focus needs to listen to the words of Christ and set aside their will to harm their gay neighbor and take up the Father’s Will that they treat their gay neighbor the way they want to be treated.
But if they were to do that, they’d have to abandon anti-gay activism and support civil equality for gay people. And they’d rather defy God than do that.
Mike Airhart
July 15th, 2009
Precisely, Timothy.
Focus, Exodus, and their followers demand that their own will be done — not God’s will.
True tolerance is a two-way street, but Focus demands tolerance and freedom while lobbying to deny tolerance and freedom to anyone who isn’t conservative, evangelical, and Republican.
This situation has not changed since James Dobson retired, unfortunately. His successors Jim Daly and Patrick Caruana are cut from the same cookie cutter.
ravenbiker
July 16th, 2009
Agreed. They lost their focus.
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