How did we get left off the list?

James Dobson first made a name for himself and his group Focus on the Family back in the 1980s. I saw a series of videos he put out and thought they were quite good, addressing real family health concerns. Alas, Dobson and FotF soon became known for his anti-gay noise and he lost a great deal of credibility (except among Fundies).

Dobson has retired from leading FotF, but still writes columns for their various publications. His latest article is eleven "Great Marriage Killers" and it looks like he gives sound advice. He mentions overcommitment leading to physical exhaustion, issues of money, conflicts with in-laws, selfishness, and addictions to alcohol, gambling, and pornography.

The reason why I mention it is because of something not on the list: gay marriage. Since Massachusetts has had gay marriage since 2004 without civilization collapsing has he recognized that gay marriage doesn't kill straight marriage?

A reflex suddenly gone

Focus on the Family spends a lot of effort describing gays as "evil." Then their spokesman Jim Daly assures us they don't hate gay people. Uh huh.



Jim Burroway has a bit more on the booing of a gay soldier during a GOP debate. Burroway observes that since the Vietnam era the GOP has worked hard to make sure that every time a politician meets a soldier the first thing said is effusive thanks and praise. They even shamed Dem politicians to do the same. This has been going on for decades. But, faced with a gay soldier, that reflex suddenly disappeared.



I don't watch the TV show Dancing With the Stars, though I am well aware of the uproar caused by Chaz Bono being a contestant. The uproar is because he is transgender. Lots of Fundies declared they would not watch as long as he is on. One feature of the show is audience participation in deciding who is kicked off each week and who stays around. Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin notes that Chaz can't dance. Which means he has survived for a few weeks only because the audience likes him and is comfortable with him being transgender.

Trust me, we're handling it just fine

Gay and transgender school kids have long been the target of bullies. Many of these kids feel unsafe going to school and so drop out. Many others commit suicide, including three in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota over the last year. Which means an anti-bullying policy can be seen as an anti-suicide policy.

Also for a long time, anti-gay groups have opposed anti-bullying policies for schools. The Safe Schools bill has been held up in the Michigan Senate for many years. The Anoka-Hennepin School Board claims they take bullying seriously but has refused to implement anti-bullying policies.

That leads to the question: When does opposition to suicide prevention equal murder?

The failure to implement such a policy has the full backing of Focus on the Family. They claim the issue is being hijacked by homosexual activists who are politicizing and sexualizing the issue. These activists, claims FotF, want gay-themed curricula which is sexually graphic and full of anti-religion stereotypes. This should not to be confused with anti-gay stereotypes, which are apparently highly desired in school curricula. FotF portrays gays as full of abject misery.

FotF partner Alliance Defense Fund has a Model Anti-Bullying Policy they are pushing on schools. GLSEN -- Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network -- has the takedown on why this model policy won't actually do anything to protect gay kids. There are four major points to the rebuttal.

* Enumeration -- ADF wants policies that don't specifically say that gay kids (and other groups) are covered. GLSEN finds that when enumeration is left out the weakened policy is no more effective at stopping bullying than not having a policy at all. Much of that is because when gay kids are not mentioned administrators and teachers are reluctant to enforce anti-bullying policies because they are afraid parents will complain that straight Fundie kids are deprived of their free speech. In their reasoning for leaving out enumeration, ADF plays Oppression Olympics -- gays don't have it as bad as other groups of kids who are bullied, so shut up. That clearly misses the point that all bullying is bad.

* No training -- the ADF policy doesn't say how school administrators and teachers are to learn what bullying is, how to identify it, and how to effectively stop it. No training equals useless policy.

* Careful limits on the policy -- state the policy is in effect on school property and school busses. Which means all a bully has to do is wait until his target has left school grounds before attacking.

* Overemphasis on free speech -- The last line of the model policy states:

This policy shall not be interpreted to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of students, and is not intended to prohibit expression of religious, philosophical, or political views, provided that such expression does not cause an actual, material disruption of the work of the school. (emphasis added)

A Fundie church kid can torment a gay kid in the cafeteria and in the halls with threats of hellfire and brimstone as long as the work of the school is not disrupted.

Put another way, the ADF policy is designed to make sure Fundie kids are allowed to create hostile environments for gay kids while giving school officials a way of saying, "See! We're handling the bullying problem!"

Wish he'd take a few more steps

James Dobson has stepped down from the board of Focus on the Family. Alas, he will still host the flagship radio program, write the monthly newsletter, and speak out on moral issues. By not being on the board is he more free in what he can say?

Focus on the Fruitcake

More on the Dobson - Obama spat that I blogged about recently. Apparently, the Obama side of it is from a speech he gave in 2006 and only now, because he is the presumptive nominee, is Dobson bothering to comment. Dobson is head of Focus on the Family.

Dobson's main claim is that Obama has a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution" because Obama said that laws must have a secular rationale. Religious organizations can (and should) say whether they are for or against a particular law (or such things as abortion) but they need to back it up with more than a biblical or papal decree. Dobson also implies that the views of non-Christians can be discarded because they are in the minority.

There is new data out from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that show Dobson's rigid approach to theology is less appealing to Americans. One tidbits of the survey: 63% believe that various sacred texts are the Word of God, but only 33% insist they must be taken literally.

So the louder Dobson and friends yell, the more Americans are driven from Christianity.

A related blog entry notes that Dobson has consistently distorted the Constitution -- such as denying the concept of separation of church and state (the words as such don't exist in the Constitution but the concept is in the First Amendment and Jefferson used the words in a letter to pastors) -- and Obama taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago for 12 years. Who would you trust with your Constitution?

Another look at the Definition of Marriage

I've written about the spat between Focus on the Family and the American Anthropological Association about the definition of marriage. Glenn Stanton of FotF has written a report that apparently fixed many of the objections the AAA had of his original web article (I haven't read it). Now Patrick M. Chapman, anthropologist and author of "Thou Shalt Not Love": What Evangelicals Really Say to Gays has written a critique of Stanton's article. Some highlights:

It is refreshing for Stanton (and FotF to recognize that anthropologists are experts in understanding and defining marriage. It is good to see that polygamy is rejected in the West because Western societies that practice it usually reduce women to property. It is refreshing for Stanton to say that marriage "transcends" religion, thus the term "sanctity of marriage" is not supported anthropologically. It is refreshing for Stanton to acknowledge that gays are capable of longstanding relationships.

Studies of other cultures show that people are seen both in terms of biological sex and also in terms of gender, which in this case means the roles assigned by society to men and women. In societies with such strong roles one member of a same-sex couple will take the male role and the other will take the female role. This has no meaning in Western societies that have done away with gender roles. Because of this FotF cannot claim that a child needs a parent of each sex. Both men and women can take on roles we traditionally assign to men and women. Gender expression is highly varied, so even if the parents are of the opposite sex does not mean they are taking the opposite gender roles. Children do not learn gender from just parents. They also learn it from the extended family and from society (Disney is great at teaching gender roles).

Stanton includes a summary of the anthropological view of marriage, apparently in an attempt to show why it must be reserved for opposite-sex couples. Chapman goes through the list and states each one of them applies to gay couples as well as straight. Both types provide for continuation of people and culture, serve the good of families, provide the needs of children, etc.

After all the refreshing statements by Stanton on behalf of Focus on the Family, it is now time for them to acknowledge they deceived readers when they said anthropologists agree with the "traditional definition of marriage" and to issue public apologies. Failure to do so means FotF is more concerned with its political agenda than its Christian identity.

A Clear Consensus

Focus on the Family is making the claim that there is a clear consensus among Anthropologists about what makes a family. True. Except they don't agree with Focus on the Family. The site Box Turtle Bulletin works to verify/debunk the anti-gay claims, so they put the FotF statements in front of real anthropologists. Throughout human history the types of social, political, or economic contracts used to form a family unit have varied widely and societies around the world routinely included same-sex couples in those contracts. It was not unusual in some cultures for a man (or a woman) to have multiple marriage contracts. The type of marriage that FotF insists must be the exclusive one has developed over the last 200 years and only accepted as standard in the last 60. Thus the American Anthropological Association strongly condemns marriage protection amendments.

The FotF claim and rebuttal are here.

A more complete rebuttal is here.