With typical chutzpah, Focus on the Family co-founder James Dobson on Tuesday declared that rational and reasonable Republicans like conservative Kathleen Parker are hereby excommunicated from the U.S. conservative movement and the Republican Party.

According to Dobson’s ghost-writer, if you don’t smugly shout out that God and the Bible are on your side in every speech or essay, then you’re no longer a conservative:

Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left.

Dobson limits the totality of moral concern to his own self-serving interests — sex and reproduction — in order to state, misleadingly:

Ms. Parker cites the election of Barack Obama as evidence that Americans no longer care much about the moral-values issues that have historically driven conservative voters to the polls.

As evidence, Focus cites just one issue: freedom for sexual minorities and orientation-tolerant Americans from orthodox religious tyranny. Specifically, Dobson cites the votes in three states to withdraw or deny the freedom to marry to gay and lesbian Americans — votes that were won with support from misinformed members of the antigay religious left and that were opposed by many conservatives who favor limited government and true religious freedom.

Focus doesn’t seem to fully know left from right — or rather, it is redefining “conservative” and “Republican” to favor big government, federal bedroom police, and federal arbiters of religious correctness.

Focus falsely accuses Parker of taking “gratuitous swipes” at Sarah Palin’s vacuous displays of shallow pop spirituality. Parker criticized Palin for this transparently thoughtless and egocentric remark:

I’m like, okay, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is…. And if there is an open door in (20)12 or four years later, and if it’s something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.

Such notions are to be expected from spiritually immature teen-agers, not mature leaders — whatever their religious affiliation.

When Parker says Americans live in a “diverse” nation that “is no longer predominantly white and Christian,” Focus responds not by documenting a coherent case to the contrary, but by vaguely suggesting that readers search Google for some kind of evidence to reinforce their prejudices.

Dobson seems most angered at Barack Obama’s past suggestion that democracy “requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. … I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

In the view of Dobson and the Southern Baptists that dominate both Focus and the ex-gay movement, it is heresy to recognize beliefs other than fundamentalist Christianity. And it is deeply threatening to require a rational basis for law. Dobson asserts that simply requiring reason and recognizing diversity is “rescinding the invitation” for conservative Christians to speak at all.

Focus on the Family hopes to silence both liberals and conservatives who oppose its smug presumption to speak as America’s sole political, moral and religious authority. Meanwhile, Focus whines that it is being silenced simply by being compelled to share U.S. political movements with people who hold different viewpoints and who don’t want government bureaucrats dictating the religious and moral beliefs that Americans — and their religious institutions — are allowed to hold.

Dobson whines: “We’ve never been that marginalized in our culture and government — and won’t be anytime soon, the efforts and epithets of big media notwithstanding.”

So long as Dobson presumes to speak for all conservatives and for all moral or religious people, he deserves to be marginalized.

eHarmony — a dating service founded by Neil Clark Warren to serve the pre-marital dating desires of conservative evangelicals — has settled an antidiscrimination complaint in New Jersey by setting up a separate-and-unequal dating site for sexual minorities.

Ex-gay industry pundits promptly sought to exploit the news.

Peter LaBarbera accused the gay man who filed the lawsuit of exploiting New Jersey’s “special rights law” — even though the state law equally protects residents regardless of their gender, race, or sexual orientation. LaBarbera further took the opportunity to distort Exodus International officials’ position that sexual attraction is an “identity” that can be changed as easily as one changes one’s political party label or denominational identity:

Evidence that homosexuality is a behavior — and not an “identity” — issue can be found in the many ex-gays and ex-lesbians who have found freedom from homosexuality through Christ — and true love and marriage with a member of the opposite sex.

No one at Exodus has corrected LaBarbera.

Meanwhile, Focus on the Family — whose supporters have, until now, used eHarmony to sanitize their pre-marital sexual desires — sought to project its allies’ questionable morals onto government:

“It’s basically the power of the government being used to force people across the country to accept beliefs that they know are not moral,” said Kelly Shackelford, president of the Free Market Foundation and chief counsel of the Liberty Legal Institute. “It’s an attack on freedom, and people better get ready to fight.”

I have yet to find a gay activist that fully supports the settlement. Personally, I would prefer to know that a company is antigay before I do business with it. I don’t want to be diverted by the company to an afterthought website for second-class citizens — and while I don’t believe businesses should be permitted to harass or fire workers on the basis of a minority status, I’m not sure I really want government to force companies to pretend to be tolerant toward clients when they’re not.

Advocates of equality and freedom will continue to shame eHarmony (and Focus on the Family) for their ongoing opposition to equality and moral consistency. But perhaps gay dating services should begin to wonder whether they might soon be forced to cater to the desires of antigay fundamentalists.

The best course of action may be to support dating services that don’t discriminate in either direction: Services, such as Chemistry.com, that focus on relationship-building and not the gender — or genitals — of their clients.

Hat tips: Good As You, Republic of T

Call it karma, but Focus on the Family is now in big trouble. At the group’s peak, it had nearly 1,500 employees. This week, they announced another round of layoffs  - shedding 202 jobs, an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. This brings the new total to around 950 workers, according to the Colorado Independent.

The move to can workers comes after the group threw away $800,000 on Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage in California. One wonders if Focus on the Family will cut staff from its failed “ex-gay” Love Won Out road show? This extravagant traveling circus must cost a lot of money and it doesn’t work.

The fact is, if this organization would butt out of gay relationships, it might be able to actually help heterosexual families. If it would stop its “ex-gay” propaganda - which helps no one and destroys lives - it would not have to downsize.

I think donors to this organization should focus on the money flushed down the toilet to uphold bigotry and discrimination at the expense of families.

Last week, so-called “ex-gay” activist James Hartline tried to swift boat me on an op-ed I wrote about race and Proposition 8. I responded by pointing out that he was nuts. He had claimed to have prayed away AIDS and is so extreme that he once attacked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as “one of the biggest anti-christian supporters of homosexuality and abortion in the American government.”

Well, today he sunk to new depths of dementia by claiming protests against Proposition 8 are the cause of wildfires in California. According to Hartline:

God keeps trying to get their attention. They, for their part, are shouting so loud for the acceptance of homosexuality, that they cannot hear the thunderous warnings of God: ‘Repent! For the judgment comes soon!’Each time homosexual activists attempt to force their agenda on California, there have been raging, massive, incinerating fires sweeping across the California landscape.

The sad thing is, Hartline is what passes for an ex-gay “leader.” With this bizarre post, Hartline’s small shred of remaining credibility has now been turned to ash.

On Nov. 8, Truth Wins Out and the Gay Liberation Network joined a coalition of local, state and national groups to protest Focus on the Family’s James Dobson’s induction into the Radio Hall of Fame.

A crowd of several hundred people came out to demonstrate on a frigid night in Chicago. They were also energized by Proposition 8 being passed in California, which prohibited same-sex couples from marrying.

Group espousing treatment of gays cites her work

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

A national group that advocates “treatment” of homosexuality is being criticized for allegedly distorting a Utah researcher’s work to advance the theory that people choose their sexual orientation - a controversial notion rejected by mainstream psychology.

Lisa Diamond, a University of Utah psychologist whose sexual identity studies suggest a degree of “fluidity” in the sexual preferences of women, said in an interview Tuesday that the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, misrepresents her findings. Position papers, some penned by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, an adjunct professor in the U.’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, point to Diamond’s research as evidence that gays’ sexual orientation can be straightened out through treatment - much to Diamond’s dismay.

“If NARTH had read the study more carefully they would find that it is not supported by my data at all. I bent over backward to make it difficult for my work to be misused, and to no avail. When people are motivated to twist something for political purposes, they’ll find a way to do it,” Diamond says in a videotaped interview posted on the Internet.

Diamond made those remarks two weeks ago as Californians were debating Proposition 8, the divisive ballot measure that mandates marriage as solely between a man and a woman.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints encouraged members to give time and money to the successful campaign, triggering a cascade of criticism and protests.Diamond’s comments specifically targeted Encino, Calif., psychologist Joeseph Nicolosi, co-founder of NARTH and the author of “Healing Homosexuality,” and “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” says Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies, in the videotape. “There’s no chance this is a misunderstanding or simply a different scientific interpretation. … It’s illegitimate and it’s irresponsible and you should stop doing it.”

Nicolosi did not respond to an interview request and Byrd claimed he did not know why Diamond, a fellow U. faculty member, took umbrage with NARTH’s citation of her work.

“NARTH’s view is that people can adapt any way they want and there is freedom of choice,” Byrd says. “If it says ‘fluidity’ it says ‘fluidity.’ How you interpret it is something else.”

Diamond, who has never met Byrd, said in an interview that NARTH “cherry picks” findings or references from her work that appear to support their position. Her denunciations of NARTH was instigated by Truth Wins Out, a New York City-based watchdog that patrols social conservative groups’ use of social science in support of hot-bottom agendas.

“They use these fake statistics and distort science to support bigotry and discrimination. It’s important to take these tools away from them,” founder Wayne Besen says.

NARTH is based in Nicolosi’s California office, but maintains an office in the same downtown Salt Lake City building as Evergreen International, a Mormon faith-based group that encourages gays to abandon same-sex attraction. While the two groups do not advertise their association, NARTH’s sole paid staffer last year was Evergreen’s executive director David Pruden, according to tax documents.

NARTH is no stranger to controversy. One past president, the late psychiatrist Charles Socarides, campaigned for years against the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to discontinue listing homosexuality as a mental illness. The American Psychological Association likewise maintains a stance of deep skepticism toward reparative therapies that seek to convert patients to heterosexuality.

“To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation is safe or effective,” the APA says on its Web site. “Furthermore, it seems likely that the promotion of change therapies reinforces stereotypes and contributes to a negative climate for lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons.” Diamond goes even further.

“The therapists are saying, ‘We can change your orientation,’ when all of the data, all of the data suggest that is not the case. They say same-sex attractions can disappear - they don’t,” she says. Reparative therapies “do additional damage” with techniques that incorporate electroshock and nausea-inducing treatments “that leave people feeling greater shame, greater guilt, worse about themselves.”

California Proposition 8 explicitly eliminates equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian Californians. It also overturns religious freedom for California religious institutions that affirm marriage for same-sex couples. Proposition 2 in Florida and Proposition 102 in Arizona do the same.

The ballot propositions impose on the states — and all their residents — the sectarian religious belief that homosexuality is immoral and that gays and lesbians are not entitled to be treated equally under the law.

But the religious-rightists who support these propositions can’t win popular support by telling voters the truth. So instead, Focus on the Family, Exodus, wealthy Mormon donors, and others have caved in to the immoral gutter instincts of dirty politics, illegal Internet attacks, and alleged election-law violations.

The L.A. Times editorial board today listed some of the deceptions of the lawless forces behind Proposition 8: (Read More)

“In a time of utter political incivility, it shows the kind of negative Christian leadership that has become so embarrassing to so many of your fellow Christians in America,” Jim Wallis writes. “Such outrageous predictions not only damage your credibility, they slander Barack Obama who, you should remember, is a brother in Christ, and they insult any Christian who might choose to vote for him.”

The Matthew 25 Network similarly criticized Focus on the Family:

“As you can see, Focus on the Family Action has abandoned reasonable appeals and resorted to shameless tactics of fear mongering. They have abandoned the belief that voters can make informed decisions and have instead appealed to fear as their fundamental motivator.

“As Christians, we stand appalled and ashamed at such tasteless demagoguery. We believe that civil, educated, and compassionate dialogue should and can occur with the active engagement of our faith, but believe that Focus on the Family Action has, in this letter, stepped far outside of reasonable boundaries into pure sensationalism. We believe that such thoughtless expressions coming from an organization that purports to represent Evangelicals continues to mar our legitimacy and voice in the public arena, and damages our basic Christian witness.”

Hat tip: Obama Politics

Free-lance journalist Rex Wockner reports that about 15,000 antigay Californians attended an anti-marriage rally in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium Nov. 1. Rally officials falsely claimed attendance of 33,000.

James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council headlined the event. At least one Exodus ex-gay activist, Yvette Cantu Schneider, spoke against the rights of gay couples. Good As You has audio clips of Dobson, Perkins, Schneider, and others talking in patronizing and pitying tones about homosexuals and trivializing the subject of sexual orientation.

Dobson blames the love of gay couples for “the destruction of Western civilization.”

According to Wockner:

The crowd prayed, sang, spoke in tongues, prostrated themselves, sobbed (for California, for marriage, for the homosexuals) and, on numerous occasions, whipped themselves into a true frenzy.

Lots of words came into my head during my hours there: Cultlike. Brainwashing. Frenzied. Frightening. Depressing. But, interestingly, there wasn’t really any hate on display. They seemed to just want to “save” marriage. And, as for the homosexuals, they love us, they pray for us, they want us to be set free from sin and demons.