James Dobson, founder and head of the Focus on the Family religious education and lobbying organization, is stepping down, the Associated Press reported.
The 72-year-old Dobson, a psychologist by training, has been one of the most powerful religious conservatives in the U.S. for decades. His Focus on the Family organization, despite a financial downturn in recent years, is one of the most influential right-wing Christian organizations. It was a major donor to California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8, and its daily radio program is heard on hundreds of religious radio stations around the country.
However, the Proposition 8 win (after which Dobson said he was "jubilant" over the anti-gay law) may have been the group's high point. Earlier this month they lost a battle when the Colorado House passed a domestic partners health care bill. And while it was giving lavishly to the Prop. 8 battle, it continued to suffer financially, laying off 20% of its staff.
The new head of the organization is a retired Air Force general -- Colorado Springs is also home to the Air Force Academy, which has been the site of alleged proselytizing by evangelical Christians -- who is also a former executive with defense contractor Northrup Grumman.
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Interesting.
Thanks for the update.
I agree with Bill: good riddance. He was part of a horrible movement that did the country more harm then good. They are all stepping off the stage, getting swept off, or just plain dying. I doubt any will be missed.
In the end it's all about controlling others in order to build their empires with these people.
jus' sayin'...
Prop 8 won by only 2% of the vote, and only that because of lies (teachers would not be required to explain gay marriage) and ignorance (stopping gay marriage would not turn gays into male-female married parents, as a pro-prop 8 bumper sticker claimed.)
Before prop 8, prop 22 won with 61%. The trend is against Dobson's kind of hate.
DJohn, I understand what you're getting at. You feel the voters have had the last word on the matter, and you're taking a certain satisfaction in that -- just as I took satisfaction in seeing the Colorado House pass the domestic partners legislation (though I didn't go on to post "We're here, get used to it" on any evangelical websites). Since we're probably not going to agree on Dobson or whether the organization he founded is a positive influence, can I ask you to give a straightforward answer to a respectful question? What is your opinion of the retired general who has been named to head the organization? Are you familiar with him?
It is estimated as the largest single loyal voting block in America at 30 million. That was the power of James Dobson. But here is the catch, since he was not a charismatic leader, and worked behind the scenes more than in front of them--he will be easily replaced.
Anyone who thinks the power of the fundamentalist movement is over because of this, I believe, is mistaken--I don't say that optimistically, but it needs to be seen realistically. In the re-formation of the Republican party, whether the Rove coalition can maintain itself--or how it will be directed is really the question.
The near future should be quite interesting...I wonder what the finances of other fundamentalist organizations look like? My guess is their bankbooks are similarly slim.
M.
The good people of Mississippi did not get to vote about whether or not black people could attend school. It's a sin and a shame that Americans have forgotten what this country is supposed to stand for, but that's what happens when people like you listen to too many people like James Dobson and not enough to your civics teachers.
Really? That's odd. But that's all that really is. All it means are your small group of gay friends don't want to be married. Mine want to, and millions of others do to.
Equal Protection under the Law, is not an assault. It's a justice that's been long overdue. If "Judeo-Christians" wish to stand against equality, then they are equally Anti-American as Communist and Marxists who they so demean in the media.
And minorities aren't imposing anything on anyone else for the ten trillionth time Mr. Bigot. It's the Judeo-Christians forcing their book on the rest of us gay folk and we've had enough.
The problem is that many of these organizations don't do well upon the departure or wounding of the charismatic leader. Bakker's and Swaggart's organizations basically collapsed. Haggard's church membership dropped from 14,000 to 10,000 when he left in disgrace. After some strange sermons Oral Roberts' ministry income fell dramatically. After Robertson's and Reed's departure the Christian Coalition fell upon hard financial times.
Sometimes the departure of the founder works out Ok. The Billy Graham organization has continued on. Last week they announced that they were trimming their workforce by 10 percent, but that probably was due to the deteriorating economy.
It's anyone's guess what will happen to FOTF. Dobson will still be around, but it's hard to know how long that will be. FOTF has had financial problems in recent years. I think even a lot of evangelicals are getting fed up with the relationship between the religious right and the Republican party, and as the Republican Party became increasingly tarnished some of that may have rubbed off on organizations such as FOTF. I doubt that Gen. Caruana will command the same respect that Dobson did.
"Marriage has always been considered between on e man and one woman...period."
You haven't read the Bible, have you, bub? Lots of stories in there about men marrying mutiple women.
Say, have you ever visited a doc? If so, why? Why delay meeting Jesus? If you die, you get to cuddle with Jesus forever and ever. So, avoid docs and hospitals and don't take pills. Jesus wants to cuddle with you!
Where did the myth come from that this was a "Christian" nation? The founders were a bunch of deists and Unitarians. Many of them would have differed very greatly with today's fundamentalists, including on the question of whether Jesus Christ was god.
This silly argument about how gay matrriage will lead to all kinds of odious domestic arrangements (polygamy, child marriage, marriage with animals) is very, very tired. Besides, what's it to you if I marry my cat? We're not going to climb in bed with you and your wife. What is your concern? I don't get why it seems so personal to you what other people do, why you feel that you are losing something that you used to have if gay people get married, too. I'm genuinely curious.
Actually I have several times. Have you? If you had you would not have asked that question. So since you don't know where to find it I will point it out for you:
Gen 2:21 So the LORD God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. He took one of Adam's ribs [fn] and closed up the place from which he had taken it.
Gen 2:22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib and brought her to Adam.
Gen 2:23 "At last!" Adam exclaimed. "She is part of my own flesh and bone! She will be called `woman,' because she was taken out of a man."
Gen 2:24 This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.
This is where God established marriage. NOTICE: One man and one woman. Now many people claim that Jesus doesn't say anything about marriage and the Christians just make it up. Again, only someone who has not read the Bible would say this. Here Jesus backs up what God established in Genesis:
Matt 19:3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for [just] any reason?"
Mat 19:4 And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made [them] at the beginning 'made them male and female,'
Mat 19:5 and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?
Mat 19:6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."
I hope this explains it more clearly for you. MAN has chosen to make his own rules. GOD laid out what His plan for marriage was and made decided to make his own rules.
As far as the doctor is concerned, I go all the time. We are not idiots. People who aviod doctors because they want natural healing do so because they don't understand God. He gave us (mankind) the ability to explore science and bacteria and therefore the advances that modern day medicine has come up with is due to the inspiration of many who have come before. We accept this as God's gift to mankind and we see the doctor regularly. Thanks for being so worried about my health though.
I don't want to hijack this into a "gay marriage" discussion. Over on Hawley Roddick's "Marriage for All or None" post there was an extensive discussion about that in which I took the largely unpopular "negative" opinion, based on a strictly secular argument.
http://open.salon.com/blog/hawley_roddick/2009/02/13/marriage_for_all_or_none
The entire institution of marriage is a violation of the seperation of church and state....marriage is a religious ceremony.....it shouldn't even be recognized by the government unless accompanied by a legal contract....people that choose to live together should be entitled to equal rights under the law....and people that choose to get married should be free to marry whoever or whatever they want....including their parrot, goldfish or whatever their particular church approves of.....
You're afraid of dying. You embody doubt. If you were absolutely certain that Jesus is a magic man in sky, you'd welcome death and walk all its avenues. You'd want your kin to die too. And your friends. But you don't. You scurry to the doctor because you doubt, just in case the eternal grave awaits you.
When you truly believe and manifest that belief that not delaying death, talk to me about talking snakes and magic apples and women made from ribs. Until then, you're citing fairy tales as a basis for public policy and only citing science when it benefits you, by, ironically, keeping you from Jesus.
As far as quibbling about the word, "marriage," I assume you don't call second state-sanctioned and church-formalized sexual unions by that word.
Likewise, I assume, given that one's first sexual partner, according to the Bible, is one's spouse, that you were, when you entered into a legal arrangement with your formalized sex partner, a virgin. Were you a virgin? If not, you're not married, at least according to the Bible. Rather, you're a daily adulterer. And even if you were a virgin and your wife too, most of your fundy friends who assert that they're married are truly and simply adulterers, Biblically-speaking.
"Sirenita Lake--do what you want. Just don't call it marriage."
Well, I'm gonna marry my cat and have kittens and call it whatever I want!
if any other social contract had as dismal a failure rate, fraud and deception as marriage it would have been abandoned years ago.....
to my gay friends......you have the perfect excuse....rather than legalize gay marriage, i would prefer it if they made marriage illegal for everyone.
and another thing....what's this bullshit about the "marriage penalty" tax....single people are the ones that pay a higher income tax rate and are penalized....we subsidize your fat little rug rats in schoos through our property taxes as well...i don't mind and even believe it is my responsiblitity to prepare the next generation but don't give me this crap that married people pay a penalty....the only penalty they pay is being married (which i guess is considerable)
Dobson is an authoritarian fascist....in many cultures he would be ostricized for his absurd theories about child development and social values....
I take your breath away?
You don't have that effect on me. You're yet another person alleging that you live the "christian lifestyle" and yet you fornicate pre-marriage and do everything you can to avoid actually cuddling on Jesus's lap, by rushing to docs when you're ill. You know, you could have fed starving children with the money you've spent on docs.
Michael W. writes: " . . . rather than legalize gay marriage, i would prefer it if they made marriage illegal for everyone. . . . and people that choose to get married should be free to marry whoever or whatever they want....including their parrot, goldfish or whatever their particular church approves of....."
It's interesting to me that so many people who support gay marriage have little or no interest in marriage of any kind. So yeah, if marriage doesn't mean anything, then gay marriage doesn't mean anything either.
I think this is ultimately about whether marriage matters or doesn't matter. And that's fine. But when people are asked to vote for gay marriage, let's just be honest about what we are really being asked to approve.
DJohn writes: "Once you re-define "marriage" you open up a Pandora's Box that will never be closed."
Though I am not a conservative Christian, I have to agree with you. As I have said before on another post (that I referenced earlier here) the majority of gays in long-term relationships -- around 75 percent -- are not interested in monogamy. This is not my opinion -- this is what gays say about themselves, as I documented in the other post.
Everything I have to say about this issue can be found in the comments here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/hawley_roddick/2009/02/13/marriage_for_all_or_none
Read or not read as you choose. I don't want to reproduce it all here. But I think a lot of people are missing some very basic facts on this issue.
You must not live in a college town. You must know little to nothing of hook-up culture. I can walk down the main drag of our town's college neighborhood on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night and witness thousands of straight kids who have no interest in monogamy. Since you're speaking emperically, I assume you have an equivalent experience, where you can display thousands of gay citizens who have no interest in monogamy?
Your rusty saw is so old that it should be retired to the barn.
I'm talking about monogamy after marriage. While there are a few married hetero "swingers," the great majority of hetero couples do not include adultery as a normal and desirable part of married life.
Gay sexuality is just different. As I noted on the other post
"Studies of gay male couples have shown that as many as 75 percent are non-monogamous. In 1992, British researchers found many gay male couples begin as monogamous, but after five years, 72 percent of gay male couples were non-monogamous."
http://gayspirituality.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/the_m_word_mono.html
"As a gay therapist who has seen hundreds of gay couples in a vast range of unconventional, loving and sustaining relationship configurations--including monogamy, semi-open relationships (Thursday nights off), three-partner relationships and more--I have grown to respect the fluidity and customized relationship forms that can work well for gay men."
http://www.gaypsychotherapy.com/MONOGAMYCASE.htm
In a discussion with a gay man on another post, he said clearly that gays do not want the same "thing" (monogamy) as hetero couples. In another recent OS post a gay man talked about how he and his partner, legally married in Canada, each had live-in lovers in the house.
This is not what James Dobson says. This is what gays say about themselves.
For people who don't care about traditional marriage in the first place, they're not going to care about that.
Ultimately I think the real issue is not gay marriage but whether the ideal of marriage as a faithful monogamous relationship between two people is worth preserving. And you don't have to be James Dobson or a member of Dobson's church to be concerned about that.
Now I'm thinking you know little of straight married men. I've had scores of married men hit on me. I think most women have had the same experience. Wouldn't it be great if straight married people were true to their vows? However, they're not. If you want to protect marriage, ban divorce. Force all divorced people to return to their original spouses.
Sure, but adultery in a marriage is typically considered to be a bad thing. People get divorced over it. It's not a trivial thing, and they typically do not include sex outside of the marital relationship as a normal part of married life.
The gay community is different. Note this from a gay man:
"I have never been at a soiree with multiple straight “committed” couples in which someone suggests we take off our clothes and see what happens, but I’m sad to say it’s happened with gay friends in long-term relationships. Of course, I know, many men cheat on their wives. But they almost never define their marriage as something that accommodates adultery."
http://www.gaysdefendmarriage.com/category/monogamy/
I think there is a difference between someone who fails to live up to the ideal of monogamy and someone who doesn't even have that as an ideal to begin with.
Again, I'm not saying that gays are bad people, just that their relationships and expectations thereof tend to be very different from those in the hetero world and thus very different from what we would consider marriage to be all about.
You hang with some wild gay guys! The ones I know go to work, come home, and watch tv.
Michael, I am expressing a point of view that I know is not popular on OS, but given how people vote on this issue -- when they are actually able to vote -- it is a point of view that probably is typical in this country. Last I knew expressing an opinion not popular on OS is not a sign of mental illness. If I said something that offends, the offense was not intentional. I have tried to discuss the issue in a courteous and respectful manner, and if I failed in that, my apologies to you.
Dude, the issue is not whether or not you offend me....you don't...the issue is whether you can stretch your own point of view to understand that society doesn't need to conform to your or my point of view about behavior......America, a great idea, about the ability to live your life the way you choose....even if some people find it repulsive....it is your right and mine to find other people's choices objectionable....but that's where it ends....nobody has the right to tell anyone how to live...unless that behavior violates someone else's rights....which is exactly what you are advocating.
Think about it .....you might change your point of view.....Bob Dylan says that he seldom has the same point of view from day to day....a rather unstable but interesting way to live......
What exactly is the right being asserted, and what is the basis of that right? It's important to know, because SOMEBODY has to end up voting on the issue, whether "we the people" or some small panel of judges. For me this has always been about people understanding what it is they are being asked to approve.
Earlier in the discussion, SirenitaLake said "This silly argument about how gay matrriage will lead to all kinds of odious domestic arrangements (polygamy, child marriage, marriage with animals) is very, very tired."
I agree with her about child marriage and marriage with animals, simply because children and animals could not consent to marriage. As far as "other odious domestic arrangements," that's a different matter, and an open question as far as I'm concerned.
If as you say "nobody has the right to tell anyone how to live," does that include everything related to marriage? In other words, who am I to say that a man can't marry five women? Or that three men can't marry each other and then each marry two women?
Yes, it sounds silly, but under the principle that we can't tell anyone how to live, what is there in that principle that would prevent such arrangements? According to you all I can do is to sit on the sidelines and "find other people's choices objectionable," without in any way limiting their choices.
The ideal of marriage as we know it here consists of a faithful monogamous relationship between two people. But you've already argued against the ideal of traditional marriage -- it's a "fraud and deception," something probably best done away with altogether.
Well, once you jettison the idea of traditional marriage, you also jettison the "two people" part of traditional marriage. And how the larger society might feel about polygamy or these other "poly" relationships is irrelevant, because the "rights" of the individual always trump what the majority of people might want.
Once gay marriage is approved, along with it's many and varied concomitant "relationship configurations," it's not too much of a leap to think that they will also ask to bring some of these relationship configurations under the heading of "marriage." Polygamists will also want the same thing.
And they will use the very argument that you have used: "nobody has the right to tell anyone how to live . . . human rights are not about a voting referendum..."
To say that gay marriage will lead to polygamy and other "odious domestic relationships" is not silly. It is merely an extension of the same argument you've used for gay marriage. And at that point the institution you describe as a fraud and deception will no longer exist in any recognizable form.