Focus

Via Warren Ellis, I learn that Bloody Foxtongue has figured something out about James Dobson's ministry / political organization Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family, the horrid anti-gay evangelical church based in Colorado Springs that wields too much power for anyone's good, has a store on their website that will give you books, CDs, and DVDs absolutely free of charge. Usually people pay for their items by donation, raising millions of dollars to help Focus on the Family produce more hate-propaganda featuring “experts” on homosexuality who claim it's a curable “sickness”.

She has detailed instructions. Perhaps, like me, you'd like to get your hands on some of their propaganda at their cost instead of yours. Or maybe you'd like them to just set you up with some Chronicles of Narnia goodies.

If you're wrestling over the ethics of creating nuisance expenses for these guys, let me equip your judgement about who exactly they are.

They've got money. According to People for the American way, their 2000 budget was just shy of $130 million. They are major media propagandists. They are major players in politics on the right.

Dobson is now America's most influential evangelical leader, with a following reportedly greater than that of either Falwell or Robertson at his peak.

Dobson earned the title. He proselytized hard for Bush this last year [2004], organizing huge stadium rallies and using his radio program to warn his 7 million American listeners that not to vote would be a sin. Dobson may have delivered Bush his victories in Ohio and Florida.

They are Dominionists who want theocracy in America.

James Dobson, the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family .... is perhaps the most powerful figure in the Dominionist movement. He was instrumental three years ago in purging the moderate chairman of the NRB from his post and speaks frequently with the White House. He was a crucial player in getting out the Christian vote for George W. Bush .... While teaching at USC, he wrote his book Dare to Discipline, which encourages parents to spank their children with “sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.” (The book has sold more than 3.5 million copies since its release in 1970.) [my link—ed.] Dobson now works out of an eighty-one-acre campus in Colorado Springs that has its own zip code. He employs 1,300 people, sends out 4 million pieces of mail each month, and is heard on radio broadcasts in ninety-nine countries. His estimated listening audience is more than 200 million worldwide; in the United States alone, he appears on 100 television stations each day. He calls for a constitutional amendment to permit prayer in the public schools. He sponsors a group called “Love Won Out,” which holds monthly conferences around the country for those “suffering” from same-sex attraction. He likens the proponents of gay marriage to the Nazis, has backed political candidates who called for the execution of abortion providers, defines embryonic stem-cell research as “state-funded cannibalism,” and urges Christian parents to pull their children out of public-school systems.

Personally, I'd like to slow these folks down any way I can.