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.