Focus on the Family?

There seems to be a lot of commotion about an upcoming TV commercial on the Super Bowl. In the first place, I can hardly see why there is such interest in a commercial at all, much less one that will be shown during the Super Bowl. We have already been inundated with commercials during this spectacle that pretty much prove that American advertisers have both a dearth of originality and writing talent so it seems that one more bad commercial isn’t going to really hurt anyone. This particular commercial however seems to be stirring up quite a controversy. It seems that Tim Tebow and his mother have made a commercial for the Focus on the Family group. Rumor has it that the Tebow’s commercial will push the pro life agenda.

As far as I know, no one has seen the commercial yet but there isn’t much doubt about the message. The Tebows are well known and unapologetic fundamentalist Christians so it is hardly surprising that they would make such a commercial with such a well known right wing fundamentalist group. They have every right to push their agenda and if a wealthy activist group like Focus on the Family wants to bankroll them in this effort more power to them. Since one of the more recent commercials during the super bowl featured a horse farting into the face of two occupants of a carriage behind him, I think we can hardly rule out anything on the basis of good taste as far as the Super Bowl commercials go.

In the interest of putting the proper descriptive term to the Focus on the Family Group I decided to do a little research on the group itself. Some of what I found explains why so many people are getting upset at the idea; it isn’t the message as much as it is the messenger. In the first place the name Focus on the Family is a misnomer to start with as their own website points out:

Mission Statement:
To cooperate with the Holy Spirit in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as possible by nurturing and defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide.

While it could be argued that this mission statement at least contains the word family it seems that the “focus” is actually on the Holy Spirit and sharing the Gospel. The “family” in this case only exists because God ordained it to be so and is secondary to promoting biblical truths worldwide. In modern times the Church is often seen as the sponsor of marriage but this is in fact a fairly recent development as the Christian church for much of its history deemed marriage to be at best a secondary institution that was both spiritually less fulfilling and less pleasing to God than celibacy. Reading the writings of Jerome and Augustine it becomes obvious that the early church saw marriage as something of a lesser sin, a necessary evil; but the Church itself didn’t stoop to dirtying its hands with marriage vows until much later. As a matter of fact up until the ninth century marriages were not church involved in any way. It wasn’t until the thirteenth century that vows were exchanged in a church building and religion itself was interjected into the marriage ceremony sometime after that so it is plain to see from history that the Christian church is not the source of marriage or the family.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a truth that Focus on the Family is either unaware of or desperately seeking to cover up. At any rate, the focus of this group on family is secondary to its focus on spreading the gospel. If you doubt this consider the following quote from their website:

Guiding Principles:
Since Focus on the Family's primary reason for existence is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through a practical outreach to homes, we have firm beliefs about both the Christian faith and the importance of the family.

Remember this is how Focus on the Family defines their principles, it isn’t my interpretation. It seems that the cat gets out of the bag pretty quickly when you read their literature. Focus on the Family is an evangelical group with a decided political involvement which is probably why so many of the Free Choice groups are a little upset that they are advertising during the Super Bowl, no matter what particular message they are pushing in this commercial. Maybe it would be interesting to see how Focus on the Family has used their considerable influence in the past to see what their real agenda might be.

Focus on the Family is the brainchild of James Dobson who created the organization in 1977. Mr. Dobson is an author whose earliest work, “Dare to Discipline”, was a work that glowingly praised the use of corporal punishment at a time when most child experts were calling for more lax methods of discipline. The success of this book led Mr. Dobson to retire from his position as assistant professor at USC and write full time. Soon after he found a way to reach a wider audience and formed “Focus on the Family” with himself as the founder and chief executive officer. At the end of 2008 this organization had a 160 million dollar a year business and Mr. Dobson’s political influence was a well known fact as he worked closely with the younger Bush during his glory years and regularly supported and pushed for even more right wing agendas amongst national candidates.

As a 501 3c tax exempt corporation Focus on the Family is not supposed to directly advocate any particular political candidate even though their magazine, Citizen, is exclusively devoted to politics. Focus on the Family headquarters is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado on an 81 acre complex which has its own zip code. Dobson employs some 1300 people and sends out over 4 million pieces of mail each month. He is heard on some 6300 radio stations worldwide every day with an audience estimated at 200 million people. He is seen on some 80 television stations in the US every single day and sends out news alerts to over 104,000 activists each day through his Focus Citizen’s Link email system. Clearly, Mr. Dobson’s organization is influential, both within his listener base and within the political parties that he lobbies. While he has predominantly worked for the election of conservative Republicans they can sometimes feel his wrath as well.

In 1996 six contenders for the Republican nomination visited Colorado Springs in search of Mr. Dobson’s support. Dole, who was eventually the Republican candidate that year, incurred Mr. Dobson’s wrath by attempting to soften the anti-abortion plank in the platform at the convention. Mr. Dobson reacted by throwing his support behind Howard Phillips of the US Taxpayer party. Phillips’ campaign statements ranged from the misinformed to the patently absurd during the campaign. He suggested the Clintons were guilty of murder, linked the deterioration of the American family to “the liberation of the wife from the leadership of the husband”, and finally compared Reagan’s treatment of the Soviet Union to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany. Presumably, anything short of an all out nuclear blitz would be coddling of the commies according to Mr. Phillips.

In 1998 Mr. Dobson wrote a letter to one of the candidates he had helped put in office, Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma listing his legislative demands: cutting off government funding to Planned Parenthood and other “pro-abortion organizations,” eliminating “so-called safe-sex and condom distribution programs,” passing parental consent laws pertaining to both abortion and contraception, banning human cloning, ending funding of fetal tissue research programs, and defunding the National Endowment for the Arts. He also voiced support for government funding of religious education via school vouchers, the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, and a ban on so-called “partial-birth abortion.” As ridiculous as much of this sounds, it is worth noting that the GOP agreed to hold floor votes on these issues that same year.

Also in 1998 Mr. Dobson appeared in a political commercial and officially endorsed Randall Terry in his bid for a seat in the US House of Representatives. Terry is the founder of the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. His sterling character that Mr. Dobson admires so much was on display during a 1989 rally against a Boulder, Colorado family health clinic when he publicly prayed for the assassination of the clinic’s doctor. In a later speech Mr. Terry further expressed his views by threatening abortion providers in this excerpt from one of his speeches:

“When I or people like me are running the country, [abortion providers] better flee because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you.”

Presumably, Mr. Terry would wait until after such a possibility becomes the law of the land but one never knows for sure when dealing with people of his ilk who propose to know the will of God. Let us hope that “people like him”, and I am including Mr. Dobson in this generalization, never get to the point where they are running the country.

Mr. Dobson also seems to have a predilection for homophobia which displays itself in various ways in both his writings and those of the candidates he prominently supports. In his 2004 book “Marriage Under Fire”, Dobson likens proponents of gay marriage to the Nazis:

“Like Adolf Hitler, who overran his European neighbors, those who favor homosexual marriage are determined to make it legal, regardless of the democratic processes that stand in their way.”

Really? While this is kind of a world winning stretch of logic from most reasonable people’s point of view seeing that Hitler was bent upon founding a superior race, conquering the world, and eliminating a whole race of people from the face of the earth while the people Mr. Dobson are referring to are simply asking for equal rights under our system; it is fairly typical of much of the logic one will find in his writings. Presumably God whispered this in his ear one night when he was fervently praying for the survival of the family or maybe it was the same night God told Bush to take Hussein out; one can never be sure about such things unless he is a religious zealot in direct contact with an all knowing being.

Since the early 2000’s this predilection seems to be at the center of many of Mr. Dobson’s efforts. He has put great effort into pushing for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. Unfortunately, he seems to have been otherwise occupied while classes concerning what the Constitution actually contains were being held at the learning institutions he attended. Perhaps he was listening to a voice from above at the time but he seems to have missed the point of how responsibilities are divided amongst the three branches, judicial, legislative, and executive. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have made the following statement at an October Mayday for Marriage rally on the Mall in Washington, DC. In an attempt to explain to tens of thousands of supporters that day how marriage could be saved by means of a housecleaning in the US Senate he uttered the following:

“We can’t get our hand on the courts…. They’re out of reach. They’re unaccountable. They’re un-elected. They’re arrogant. They’re independent. They are imperious and they think they rule this country… We can’t reach the court, but we can reach the Senate, and we can do that on November the second. I urge you to remember in November… We must change the make-up of the Senate. We must get the Senate to limit the power of the court, one way or another. We must turn out the vote.”

I am at a loss as to what he meant by getting the Senate to limit the power of the court but then again I am not privy to daily revelations from an all knowing being. He is right about one thing. The court is un-elected. After that I am afraid his speech kind of degenerated into the same kind of logic that equates homosexuals to Hitler. Mr. Dobson has a special affinity for candidates who agree with this agenda. As a matter of fact, they seem to have a kind of one-upmanship quality to their speeches in describing the horrors contemplated by gay people who dare to ask for equal rights under the system. Witness this excerpt from a speech by Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn at a meeting of GOP leaders:

“The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power…. That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sex partners? That’s a gay agenda.”

Infiltrated? How do you suppose they did that? By getting elected? Those decadent gays are the rationalization for abortion as well it seems. I wonder if Mr. Coburn would think it is ok to abort gay babies; especially since they are the greatest threat to freedom we face today. If that is the case, the world can breathe easier and we can quit worrying about communists, terrorists, and global warming and just euthanize the gays to protect our freedom and make the world safe for democracy, the family, and Mr. Coburn.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Dobson soon released a speech in support of Mr. Coburn’s assertions that contained the following:

“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage… It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”

Top that Mr. Coburn. I double dog dare you.

Tea Party of the Religious Right?

Being unusually interested in the idea of government of the people, by the people I sometimes find myself drawn to movements who purport to express such sentiments. I would basically define my political leanings as moderate to libertarian, depending on which particular issue I happen to be pondering at the moment. I reserve the right to be proven wrong and jump at the chance to learn something new with the reservation that I don't like smoke being blown up my ass, no matter what particularly fine blend it might happen to be.

Recently I have noticed some excitement over a grassroots movement known as the Tea Party Movement. Portraying itself as a movement of the "we're mad as hell and not going to take it any more" type I have noticed it has a decided leaning to the right of the political spectrum judging by its loudest proponents but as it defines itself as a movement of the people I found the idea interesting. Anything that can stir the American public beyond its lethargy of an American Idol Dancing with the Stars induced coma could be a step in the right direction. Of course the original Tea Party which illegally dumped what in today’s terms would amount to some one million dollars worth of private property into the sea can be construed many ways depending on what perspective you have. Still, it is a little ironic that so many right wing conservatives with their mantra of private property rights would seize upon an incident whereby private property was randomly destroyed to make a political point as the fulcrum upon which to leverage their arguments.

On a recent edition of a local morning talk show that I sometimes listen to I was interested to hear two of the founders of the Tea Party Movement here in Huntsville discussing their movement. One of the basic tenets they were espousing that day had to do with trying to force candidates for office to stand on their principles. In other words, the representative of the group on the show was asking that politicians simply stand up for what they believe in rather than pander to whatever idea seems the most likely to get the most votes. I have long held the opinion that this would be a marked improvement over the way elections are currently carried out so I was interested to learn more about this movement. I was directed to their website to further my education about their purpose.

The website proposed that the purpose of the group was to promote their core principles in each and every level of government:

“fiscal responsibility, limited government, individual freedoms, and the free market system”

I found these principles to be much in line with most of my own core principles so I did a little more perusing of the website. It occurred to me that these principles are about as vague and general as one could possibly get but I liked them just the same. Still, I wonder if a group that is interested in getting a candidate for political office to stand up for his principles would accept these as a statement of his purposes. I decided that if the group was incredibly naïve and vacuous they probably would but most intelligent individuals would require more information about a candidate before deciding whether to throw their support his or her direction. Maybe there is a difference in a candidate and a political group as far as how specific they should be in espousing their principles but I suspect there probably shouldn’t be.

One of the sections of the Huntsville Tea Party website listed books that presumably would further the reader’s understandings of what the movement’s core principles are. After all, if I am being asked to contribute money and support to such a group I would like to know what I am contributing to in a little more detail than such a vague statement of values. An alarm bell went off when I saw some of the books on the recommended reading list. “Original Intent” and “America’s Godly Heritage” by David Barton were the first two that seemed to be noticeably out of place on a website considering “individual freedoms” to be one of their main tenets. I am pretty familiar with Mr. Barton and his ideology. Mr. Barton is founder of a movement known as “Wall Builders” which is dedicated to tearing down the wall between church and state in our constitutional government. His movement seeks to inculcate Christian ideology into our school systems through the means of historical revision and outright deception by numerous dubious and disproven claims among which one is how the Supreme Court has misquoted Jefferson in making its separation of church and state a part of our legal edifice. Mr. Barton himself claims that he received a message from God to study SAT scores and compare the decline in said scores with the removal of religious prayer in public schools. Evidently, God is punishing us for no longer praying in school by making morons out of our children. I presume all the locusts and frogs were too busy elsewhere or he was too busy causing earthquakes in Haiti to punish them for making deals with the devil to remove the French so he just decided to make our children stupid instead. Besides, it would be a more directly cause and affect relationship so that such brilliant oracles as Mr. Barton could more easily make the connection between the terribly devastating effect of removing prayer from school and the fact that our education system is failing. Forget all that stuff about more money and better teachers; just start praying in school again and we will instantaneously turn a failed system back into the shining example of education it was in the good old days.

As far back in history as you care to look you will be hard pressed to find many instances where conservative religious leaders have been champions of “personal freedoms” and it doesn’t appear that they are today either. Mr. Barton’s group lists their goals as follows:

WallBuilders' goal is to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena.

I suppose this could be construed as championing personal freedom; provided of course you either don’t understand anything at all about what either term actually means or you are simply so ignorant of history that you never heard of inquisitions or dark ages.

The second author on the list is a man named H. L. (Bill) Richardson who is the founder of Gun Owners of America amongst other things. Mr. Richardson is an ex Senator from California who is also the author of “Slightly to the Right” which is somewhat of a conservative primer for taking on the Communists and Socialists amongst us. In June of 2009 he posted the following in a blog in response to a question as to what could be done to correct the political problems we have today:

“No matter what the response, I have to tell them anyway. Why? Because the Scripture tells me that if I know the answer, I should give them an ear full. In Ezekiel 3:18, the prophet Ezekiel was told to inform the people to shape up or else. The Lord commanded him to tell the impudent and stubborn children, both the good and the bad ones, to repent and ask for forgiveness. God told Ezekiel that if he didn't tell them, their blood was on his hands. What was good advice for Ezekiel was meant for all of us today. If we know and don't tell, the blood is on our hands as well.”

Presumably, this message was delivered from something less than a burning bush but with no less authority. Mr. Richardson later in the same blog goes on to describe Darwin as “thoroughly discredited and debunked my modern science, logic and time.” I would surmise that he is also a proponent of the same “intelligent design” theories that Mr. Barton is pushing so hard to have inserted into our public school system. Once again, an agenda that seems somehow diametrically opposed to the core belief of “personal freedom”.

I was concerned to find such rabid Bible thumpers on the Tea Parties recommended reading site but more concerned that the group itself couldn’t seem to recognize the disparity between what they say they promote and the thoughts contained in their recommended reading section so I contacted the local leader of the group via email to point out these discrepancies. This leader was kind enough to respond to my email with an email that included the following:

“The purpose of the Huntsville Tea Party is not at all to promote specific religious agenda. It is to teach, promote, and secure our core principles: limited govt, fiscal responsibility, individual rights, and free market.”

She explained that she hadn’t actually read any of these books but the “core leadership” of the group recommended them. Because this seems to be very much where I started in researching their site I responded by asking how it is possible to promote such an agenda while simultaneously recommending literature which is diametrically opposed to one of these basic principles. I have yet to receive a reply to my last question but I will be glad to pass it on when I do.

It seems that the Huntsville Tea Party is pretty good at saying one thing while simultaneously doing something else. Maybe they should run for office. No wait… I have a better idea; they shouldn’t actually run for office or put an agenda out there so that everyone knows what they stand for because they could easily gain more power by simply telling everyone else who to vote for while simultaneously hiding their own agenda.