As she so often does, Amanda Marcotte has noticed something in the Christian conservative worldview that I’ve never seen pointed out before. The tabloids are apparently having a minor freak-out over the gender presentation of one of Angelina Jolie’s children, you see, and in order to present an “expert voice on parenting,” Life & Style Magazine went to Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton, of all people. Britney Spears was apparently otherwise tied up and didn’t have time to comment, I guess? Anyway, reacting to the fact that little Shiloh is going through some sort of tomboy phase, Stanton had this to say:
Says FotF’s Glenn Stanton, “Little girls have never been women before. They need help, they need guidance of what that looks like.”
Oh, how right you are, Mr. Stanton! Let’s make sure this poor misguided tot gets to spend some time with a traditionally feminine woman—say, one with long silky hair, pillowy lips, bountiful curves, perhaps even one considered the hottest sex bomb Hollywood’s ever seen! But where oh where are we going to find a woman like that for Shiloh to emulate?
Heh.
So anyway, off ran Amanda Marcotte’s brain, and she noticed that there is a huge, glaring contradiction in the teachings of Focus on the Family and similar groups on gender, gender presentation, and sexuality. I’m going to excerpt a good bit, and then you should read the whole thing:
[W]hat’s really interesting to me is that social conservatives want to have it both ways—they argue both that gender is innate and unchangeable, and that it’s learned. When feminists criticize domestic sexism, conservatives are all about how gender roles are natural and fixed—and in complete opposition to each other. That men are naturally boorish pigs and women are naturally nurturing, so women who resent being told to nurture people who can’t even be expected to show gratitude are bucking nature and need to learn to live with our debased roles. But then they turn around and say things like Stanton did, which is basically to admit that femininity (they also believe this about masculinity) is a learned behavior, and not only that, but it’s a long, hard process learning your gender. You’ll hear from conservatives that boys are naturally drawn to trains and girls to dolls, and then they’ll flip around and tell each other that it’s extremely important to steer your children towards the “right” gender roles.
Their homophobia is clashing with their sexism, and showing how intellectually bankrupt both positions are. Social conservatives portray homosexuality as a “choice”—which makes sense. They want gays to get in the closet, and they’re just portraying that as authentic heterosexuality. But in order to argue that it’s a choice, you have to position homosexuality as a serious temptation and gays as simply very weak people who give in. If you buy into that argument, then you start to see homosexuality as a temptation that preys on all people, and your job as a parent becomes about shoring your child up to resist that temptation. Focus on the Family has long taught its followers that homosexuality can be warded off with strict teaching of gender roles. In other words, they’ve been forced to make explicit what they’ve always pretended wasn’t true, which is that gender roles are learned and performed. The irony is that the one avenue where they’ll admit gender roles are learned is the one avenue where they’re not actually going to have as much influence as they think. Forcing a little girl who wants to be a tomboy into dresses is not going to make her not be a lesbian, and also that many lesbians prefer to present a feminine manner to the world. And a lot of little girls allowed to be tomboys grow up straight.
What groups like Focus are unable/unwilling to grasp is that concepts of gender and sexuality are actually unique for each of our lives, and they can’t handle that reality. Even if one were to grant that their “god” created us (I do not, obviously), they can’t stand the fact that the humanity they think he created simply doesn’t fit into artificially proscribed gender roles. I was talking to someone the other day, whose high-school aged son recently came out, and the father was apparently doing some of that all-too-typical “If I had only introduced him to more guy stuff, this wouldn’t have happened” thing, and I said, “Actually, even if he had, and the kid turned out to be the most talented football player in the state, he would simply be a gay teen who happens to be the most talented football player in the state!”
It’s ludicrous. The teachings of James Dobson and pals are so stupid, so completely unaccredited by any real parenting experts, that it’s obnoxious to have to spend time refuting them, but the sad fact is that lots of normal garden-variety Evangelicals read his titles for advice. In his book Bringing Up Boys, Dobson actually spends a significant amount of time talking about “preventing homosexuality” by enforcing strict gender roles. It’s laughable to us, because we know that homosexuality isn’t a disease to be prevented. It’s a simple fact that homosexuality exists, and it bears no relation to a person’s gender presentation, or how well they fit into societally proscribed gender roles. The only thing Dobson can really teach parents to do is to make their gay kids hate themselves so much that they’re driven to depression, general unhappiness, inauthentic living, and in some cases, suicide. (I’m never quite sure whether that’s not Dobson’s actual goal in the first place, the insipid dog-abusing monster.)
So yeah, Focus, etc., are wrong on all counts. In the world of actual human beings, most of us, if we’re honest, are sort of a composite of the characteristics ascribed traditionally to “male” and “female.” Likewise, there are many, many kids who go through experimental phases where they like to dress up like the opposite gender, and most of these kids just sort of outgrow it. Others, as they mature, find themselves to be transgender. Still others find themselves somewhere in between the two! And others, and others, and others… It’s the same with sexuality. All you have to do to realize this is to spend five minutes in a large gay or lesbian bar and do some people-watching. Sure, there are those who conform to stereotype. Others don’t. Still others find themselves somewhere in between. The point is that the reality of gender and sexuality is complex, and those like Glenn Stanton will always be wrong as long as they insist on interpreting the world though a disproven, black-white, good-evil, male-female dichotomy that doesn’t exist in the real world.
Anyway, three cheers to Amanda for picking up on yet another example of extreme cognitive dissonance in the Christian conservative worldview. There are so many, it’s hard to keep track sometimes.
The New York Times confirms details about the unholy reasons for James Dobson’s separation from Focus on the Family.
Dobson’s son, Ryan, is a 39-year-old adulterer who tells youth audiences to “Be Intolerant” of their peers — and whose response to the Haitian catastrophe was to say, in his surfer-dude lingo, that the nation was always kinda “gnarly.”
The senior Dobson views his adulterous and less-than-humane son as the answer for a nation “in a moral decline of shocking dimensions. I have asked myself how can I sit and watch the world go by without trying to help if I can. That is what motivates me at this time.”
Focus on the Family refused Ryan a leadership position due to his divorce and Biblically invalid marriage to a second woman. One may regard FOTF’s position as morally principled, but apparently the Dobsons view it as unforgiving of a vice that the Dobsons seem to think is proof of heterosexual masculine virility.
Under new leader Jim Daly, meanwhile, FOTF has moved toward a big-government philosophy: one that uses government and private social-service agencies to recruit rigid Christian Rightists to adopt children who might otherwise be adopted by better-qualified, more loving, less ideological gay and lesbian parents.
No longer restrained by FOTF, the Dobsons’ new radio program may reveal heretofore unseen levels of self-righteousness, according to the Times.
“The organization has been trying to moderate its image,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociology professor at Rice University who studies evangelical leaders, “and I imagine that Dr. Dobson will now speak out on public policy issues with a louder voice than his organization exercised.”
The competition may further depress FOTF donations.
Paul D. Nelson, a board member with Focus and former chief operating officer, said that he had seen many ministries survive the exit of their founders, but that this situation with Dr. Dobson created a “big unknown.”
“Focus on the Family is losing its icon, it’s losing its face and its voice,” said Mr. Nelson, formerly the president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. “You have to reinvent yourself, but that reinvention is all about delivery, not about change of values.”
With these difficulties in mind, FOTF’s planned Super Bowl ads — expected to affirm perseverance and discourage abortion among couples with problem pregnancies — may be seen either as an effort to leap ahead of Dobson in the public mind, or as a $5 million act of desperation in a year when when the organization’s budget plummeted by $21 million.
Son Ryan was adopted as an infant — a curious development, since James and Shirley only have one other child, and they have devoted their lives to the idolization of procreative marriage.
Of Ryan’s book, “Be Intolerant: Because Some Things are Just Stupid,” Publishers Weekly said it had “all the subtlety of a two-by-four to the side of the head.”
Even before he officially leaves Focus on the Family, James Dobson has vindictively started a rival organization and radio show with his son Ryan, who runs KOR World Ministries.
Focus on the Family is trying to put a happy spin on the situation, but we all know this is not good news for the long-time right wing behemoth.
“He has the chance to share his life’s work and passion with his only son,” Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus, said in a statement congratulating Dobson on his new venture. “What man wouldn’t choose to do that?”
Focus on the Family has long been a cult of personality, based on the name recognition of James Dobson. Clearly, his move will siphon off many of this organization’s followers, potentially placing jobs at risk in a time of economic recession.
Focus on the Family already announced mass layoffs in Sept. 2009. Additionally, in a cost-cutting measure, the group recently pawned its “ex-gay” roadshow, Love Won Out, to Exodus International. How will Dobson’s move help Focus on the Family recover?
There are many ways to describe James Dobson, but “loyal” is clearly not one of them.
I predict that Dobson’s new venture will be even more hard core than Focus on the Family. He will have fewer constraints and will use it as a platform to spew anti-gay views and promote anachronistic ideas.
We had hoped to throw him a retirement party. I guess we can officially put away the confetti.
These are the backward savages who now control the Republican party. What century are they living in?
Tragically, the life and death of millions of Americans is riding on the ability of these Neanderthals (no offense to the cave folk) to have a rational discussion and debate. If I weren’t an optimist, I’d say our nation is doomed.
It was announced that both “ex-gay” organizations Love Won Out and Exodus will merge, which begs the question, is one better than two?
Love Won Out is the brain child of right wing evangelical “leader” James Dobson. Dobson has a long history of over thirty years of anti-gay rhetoric, which started in 1977 with the inception of Focus on the Family. He then formed the organization Family Research Council 1981 which attempts to imposed its right wing evangelical Christian views in government, politics,and law making.
Exodus is also a right wing evangelical organization that was founded in 1976. Since its formation Exodus has been marred with controversy. Exodus was founded by five alleged “ex-gay” men, two of which (Gary Busse and Michael Cooper) later left the organization, reneged their prior claims, and announced their love for each other. In more recent years another controversy emerged when John Paulk, a self proclaimed “ex-gay” and Exodus chairman, was caught by Wayne Besen in a Washington DC gay bar in 2000. This came after years of Paulk attesting to be “cured” from his former “gay life”. This proved to be a huge embarrassment to Exodus, contradicting years of claims preaching just the opposite. Paulk was removed and relieved of his duties with the organization.
Interestingly enough Paulk is also connected with James Dobson, as they co-founded the organization Love Won Out in 1998, a subsidiary of Focus on the Family, to specifically address and promote an “ex-gay” agenda.
Exodus and Love Won Out work to the detriment of the GLBT community as they promote conversion and reparative therapy, claiming its effectiveness to change ones orientation. These claims are asserted without any empirical evidence or peer reviewed studies and at the condemnation of 13 medical and mental health organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). These 13 organizations vehemently oppose reparative and conversion therapy and its damaging ways so much they actually formed the “Just the Facts coalition” which clearly states their disapproval of such actions and tactics.
www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/justthefacts.pdf
This merger just reinforces the need to remain steadfast in our efforts to expose the “ex-gay” movement for what it really is, present facts and promote love and acceptance rather then shame and self loathing.
Sun to Set On Focus on the Family’s Infamous ‘Pray Away The Gay’ Road Show
BIRMINGHAM – Truth Wins Out (TWO) announced today that its Founder, Wayne Besen, would speak on the dangers of the ‘ex-gay’ myth on Thursday (7PM) at the University of Alabama Birmingham. The UAB presentation coincides with Focus on the Family’s final Love Won Out conference, which they sold to Exodus International in the midst of financial trouble. TWO has worked with local gay advocates across the nation to stage protests against Love Won Out, and in 2000, Besen photographed its “ex-gay” organizer, John Paulk, in a Washington, DC gay bar.
The multi-media presentation is sponsored by UAB’s Office of the Vice President for Equity and Diversity, The Alliance for GLBT Equality at UAB, Equality Alabama Birmingham, Central Alabama Pride, Covenant Community Church and PFLAG.
The event will take place Thursday (7PM) at Hill University Center Alumni Auditorium, 1400 University Blvd. It’s on the NE corner of University & 14th Street S.
“The sun is setting on a dangerous program that has brought much darkness and pain to families across America,” said Wayne Besen, Founder and Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “I look forward to sharing the history of misery and misinformation Love Won Out has brought to countless people. I hope to get out the facts and let gay and lesbian people know they are fine just the way they are.”
Throughout the week, Besen will join a coalition of Alabama gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocates responding to Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conference, which encourages people to “pray away the gay.” This includes a protest at the “Love Won Out” conference at Metropolitan Church of God. The peaceful protest is planned on public right of way near the entrance of the church, which faces Interstate 459 near the Acton Road exit. (Read More)
Who says that Fundamentalists are against the environment? In what promises to be one of the biggest reductions in noise and air pollution in decades, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson will end his radio career at the end of February. Last year, Dobson stepped down as chairman of the anti-gay group he founded in 1977 but remained the group’s primary radio voice.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no shortage of divisive figures who would like to fill his shoes, although none have yet to attain his prominence and stature. Rick Warren, Sarah Palin and Maggie Gallagher are potential successors. And Doug Coe from The Fellowship [also known as The Family] may be even more powerful than Dobson. So, there is hardly time to throw a victory parade.
Nevertheless, Dobson’s retirement will help clear the airwaves of at least a little bit of noise pollution. I’d hate to calculate how many lives his show has ruined and families torn apart by his anti-gay rantings.
Focus on the Family today welcomed what it called “good news” that Carrie Prejean would not lose her Miss California USA crown. However, the organization continued to conceal news of Carrie Prejean’s repeated and recent erotic-photo shoots as well as a permanent demotion that Prejean received from California pageant officials, after she discarded her pageant duties in favor of photo-ops with the religious right.
Instead of discussing the facts, Focus on the Family promoted a two-part radio broadcast in which Dr. James Dobson talked with Prejean about her perceptions of persecution and her stand against marriage.
The purpose of inviting Miss California to Focus on the Family was not to “debate the merits of beauty pageants, or the swimsuit competition or the profession of modeling,” Dr. Dobson said. “We agree with those in the audience who oppose that kind of sensuality.
“That’s not our purpose here. I want everyone to know the behind-the-scenes story related to the answer Carrie gave.”
Unknown to Focus readers and listeners, Prejean refused to participate with other pageant winners in a Miss California USA public service announcement that promoted civility, respect and diversity. Instead, Prejean assured Focus on the Family that she is the role model for these values:
“I hope I have inspired others to maintain compassion, civility, respect and tolerance while staying true to your convictions, and to never, ever compromise your beliefs … regardless of the consequences.”
Even as Donald Trump prepared to give Carrie Prejean a second chance as Miss California USA, Prejean continued on Monday to use her title as a soapbox for fundamentalist bigotry — appearing on James Dobson’s daily Focus on the Family’s radio program and playing hooky from official pageant assignments such as this one:
While other pageant winners were promoting California’s diversity, Prejean was promoting her own superiority. According to U.S. News’ God & Country blog, Prejean told Dobson on Monday:
I felt as though Satan was trying to tempt me in asking me this question [about allowing gay Americans to marry]. And then God was in my head and in my heart saying, “Do not compromise this. You need to stand up for me and you need to share with all these people . . . you need to witness to them and you need to show that you’re not willing to compromise that for this title of Miss USA.”
In other words, it seems:
Perez Hilton is Satanic for asking a reasonable question and following it up with a sexist slur
it’s Satanic to affirm marriage, as equality advocates do, and
it’s Satanic to oppose the bigotry, sleaze, and compromise that Prejean represents.
The great compromiser in the scandal is, of course, Prejean herself: She freely mixes pro-family rhetoric with erotic photos, contractual infidelity with talk of integrity, icons of women’s progress with stunning ignorance, demands for one-way tolerance with contempt for diversity.
In 1988, Don Wildmon’s American Family Association (AFA) went after Mighty Mouse. The Tupelo, MS group claimed the naughty pixilated mouse had snorted cocaine. Yeah, I know the rodent is hyped up sometimes, but the charge still seems a little bizarre and far fetched.
The cartoon’s creator, Ralph Bakshi, had fallen under suspicion by the AFA because of his role in making an X-rated animated feature, “Fritz the Cat.” However, Bakshi had also won an award for “Mighty Mouse” from Action for Children’s Television.
In the disputed episode, Wildmon charged Bakshi with portraying Mighty Mouse as experiencing drug-induced exhilaration after inhaling the petals of a flower. Mighty Mouse had sniffed cocaine, Wildmon contended.
Bakshi defended his cartoon, insisting that Wildmon had interpreted the scene out of context. However, Bakshi said he was removing the scene because of his concern that the controversy might lead children to believe that what Wildmon was saying was true. Wildmon interpreted the cut differently. “This is a de facto admission that indeed Mighty Mouse was snorting cocaine,” Wildmon said. “We have been vindicated.”
Well, this was the beginning of James Dobson claiming that Sponge Bob Square Pants was gay and the late Rev. Falwell saying that the the purple teletubby Tinky Winky was gay. In terms of nuttiness, Wildmon was way ahead of his time – and the AFA’s crusades rage on today.
(Partially excerpted from the Media Coalition, Christopher M. Finan and Anne F. Castro)
In 1988, Don Wildmon’s American Family Association (AFA) went after Mighty Mouse. The Tupelo, MS group claimed the naughty pixilated mouse had snorted cocaine. Yeah, I know the rodent is hyped up sometimes, but the charge still seems a little bizarre and far fetched.
