An April 2004 newsletter of Focus on the Family declares that God will destroy the United States and Western civilization will crumble if life-long gay couples are allowed to marry or celebrate civil unions.
Dobson accuses the undefined “homosexual activist movement” of having a 40-year “master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family.”
Dobson continues with another 3,600 words of largely unsubstantiated accusations, insults and threats. He expands upon statements earlier this month, in which he listed 10 reasons why gay couples in love post a mortal threat to God and humanity — the last and perhaps most important reason being an end to the cherished culture war.
Citing a single Bible passage (2 Chronicles 32), the Focus on the Family leader concludes by warning of — and, I believe, wishing for — God’s destruction of the United States if gay couples are ever granted equality.
Dobson generously appends a list of (expensive) resources to help supposed Christians destroy gay relationships and save the nation.
- Be Intolerant (Item Code: BD785)
Alarming numbers of young adults have accepted a “whatever” tolerance of
religion and worldviews. Ryan Dobson proclaims there’s nothing wrong with
righteous intolerance. Paperback. Suggested donation $10.00. - The Homosexual Agenda (Item Code: BH005)
Think the homosexual movement is gaining ground on just a few isolated
fronts? Think again. Paperback. Suggested donation $15.00. - Why You Can’t Stay Silent (Item Code: BL148)
How involved in the culture should Christians be? Discover why Christ
calls you out of the church pew and into the world to make a difference. Hardcover. Suggested donation $18.00. - Blessing Your Husband (Item Code: BL165)
You love him, you live with him — but when was the last time you thought
about blessing him? Hardcover. Suggested donation $19.00. - Why Marriage Matters (Item Code: BP449)
Are you finding it difficult to defend the benefits of marriage to your
friends or struggling with the issue for yourself? Here’s help. Paperback. Suggested donation $14.00. - Respect: A Marriage Essential I-II (Item Code: CD301)
When a woman feels unloved, she reacts in ways that may seem disrespectful
to her husband. And when a husband feels disrespected, he often reacts in
ways that his wife perceives as unloving. This guest has a suggestion that
can put an end to this cycle. Broadcast CD. Suggested donation $9.00. - Marriage Collection II (Item Code: CD607)
Fortify your marriage with insightful advice from this collection of
popular broadcast CDs! 6 Broadcast CDs. Suggested donation $42.00. - Is Marriage in Jeopardy Pack (Item Code: F00015T)
Latter-day marriage confusion? This booklet delivers the truth — and
nothing but the truth — about the same-sex marriage controversy.
20 booklets. Suggested donation $6.00.
Addendum, April 1: Dobson’s history of the gay “movement” is severely butchered and off the mark by at least two decades. The Washington Post notes that the leftist sexual-social revolution died out among gays in the 1980s and early 1990s. For years, conservative gays across the nation have been demanding assimilation. With conservative and independent demand for marriage dominating gay activism, sexual and cultural revolutionaries whose ideals date from the 1970s say they are upset at being consigned to the fringe, and some are reconsidering whether they want to identify with the gay or queer labels anymore.
But as Steve Miller at IGF briefly indicates, the revolutionaries of 1969 did not launch gay equality as a political issue in the first place. That cause was launched decades earlier by gay assimilationists and moderates like Frank Kameny.
To oversimplify a complex situation: There have always been, arguably, at least two different gay movements — assimilationist and revolutionary — and I count additional, rival movements divided by conflicting religious, social, political, and sexual goals.
Focus has a link on its main page to an article “refuting” evolution. What can you expect from such people.
The only question we should be asking is how many of them are they and how we can defeat them politically.
Dobson accuses the undefined “homosexual activist movement” of having a 40-year “master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family.”
Which part of that do you take issue with, that there is an activist movement? Or that destruction of the family is one of its centerpeices?
Marty, with all due respect, if you knew anything about the gay civil rights movement, you would know that the various organizations (including HRC, NGLTF, GLSEN, Log Cabin Republicans) can barely agree on an agenda for a meeting, never mind agreeing on a 40-year plan to “destroy the family.” In fact, 40 years ago, there was barely a gay rights movement, although a handful brave and courageous people like Frank Kameny were working to change society for the better.
More importantly, the lie that gay people want to destroy the family is simply intolerable. Yes, there were early gay liberationists, who came out of the “free love” movement, who advocated an end to the traditional family, but that was in the early 1970s. I should not and will not be judged on the actions or statements of people who I have never met.
Gay people are part of the American family – why would we want to destroy that? We did not come from another planet, we have all been raised (or at least 99.9% of us) in more or less traditional straight families (and those families had the same amount of both happiness and dysfunction as all other families). Why would I want to hurt my sister’s marriage, or somehow deprive her two children of both their mother and father? The accusation does not stand up to logic or rational thought.
Finally, the gay rights movement, and the gay community, are not some monolithic force with world domination as its goal (although those accusations do sound similar to the ones lofted at the “international Jew” in the post WWI period – see the other thread on the comarison of anti-gay and anti-semitic arguments on this sitet).
You’ll forgive me if i don’t beleive you.
“[We need] to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits, and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely — to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution — The most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake…is to transform the notion of ‘family’ entirely.” – Michelangelo Signorile.
The “gay agenda” is just one small pawn in the game of secular humanism dominated by atheist and lesbian feminists. Willingly or not, you are being used.
Hey Marty, I think you left out “demon-possessed” and “Illuminiati,” too.
Wow, talk about xenophobic.
I’d appreciate it if you could provide a link to the article from which that quote is lifted, so I can read it for myself in context.
Lastly, after your response to CPT_Doom’s reasonable explanation, it is clear that engaging you in intelligent conversation is not something you’re looking for on this site. I’m sure posting your unquestioned belief statements may make you feel more righteous, but what does that accomplish, other than to make you look small-minded and unhelpful?
Regards,
Stupid me, I just wanted to be able to have people treat me based on my merits, not on who I want to share my life with. I just wanted to be able to live in a world where I could put a picture of my partner on my desk and not have to hear about how I’m trying to turn people gay or how I’m sick and will get AIDS and burn in hell. I just wanted to know that I can see my partner in the hospital when he’s sick or needs me.
Thanks Marty, for reminding me of my real plans of world domination.
Part of what Marty seems to be refering to is a thread of radical feminism which rejects ‘traditional’ male dominated, patriarchal marriage. This is seen clearly in Z Budapest (who I feel is one of the most influential lesbian authors) and other feminists. Among gay men I am not aware of anyone who has taken this position. Marty may be refering to critcal findings about the actual versus the ‘traditional’ family. But beyond that I don’t know what his problem is.
Looks like it hit a sore spot. Sorry about that.
My goodness, a quick calculation shows that Dobson wants to milk the rubes for a cool $133 for the entire package. I wonder if they get a free stand if they buy the whole set.
Dobson’s group must really be hurting for money.
Well, Mel Gibson did well with his Passion for the Cash. Looks like rubes are easily taken in.
The only ones in my experience who want to destroy families are Focus and their ilk. By reinforcing lies and stereotypes, they are separating parents from children and siblings from one another. Don’t quote me the “Jesus said he came to divide…” verses. It would be horribly out of context. If the institution of the family is destroyed it will be by the hand of heterosexuals who treat it with disdain. Focus on your own families!
And yes, it is a sore spot with me. As well it should be.
Excuse me sharon, but i have never been divorced, neither have my parents, nor grandparents. And I will teach my children that divorce is not an option when a vow of “til death do us part” is taken before God. I beleive this is perfectly consistent with the Focus on the Family ideal.
Sorry if that makes me a “stereotype”, but i intend to preserve the traditional family of a man, a woman, and thier biological children for my own daughter and her own children’s sake.
I suppose that makes me a bigot, huh? sticks and stones…
But before you blame all us heterosexuals for making a mockery of marriage, remember it was the radical lesbian feminist ideal that brought us no-fault divorce, abortion, and destigmatized fatherlessness, all of which have done a great job of destabilizing the family.
Some heterosexuals fell for it. Luckily, my folks didn’t.
Did i mention that the gay agenda is just the next salvo in that same old war?
Marty,
The very fact that you continue to use the term “gay agenda” and that you use the writings of Signorile and “radical feminists” to blast all gay people (or maybe it is just gay leaders) is what makes you a bigot. You are showing bigotry because you are assuming all gay people are the same and want the same things – not to mention assuming that all gay people want the same things as the radicals of the early 1970s (whose ideals are still carried in a very few enclaves of academia).
For the record, my parents were never divorced (Ma died after 35 years of marriage) and my sister is in her 12th year of marriage, to a high school sweetheart. In addition, both my gay cousin (15 years) and my gay great-uncle (40 years) were with their partners until death they did part.
You see, gay people are just as capable as you of honoring commitment and wanting to be part of a life-long partnership. The only difference is that the government, because of laws based on religious “morality” instead of common secular values, refuses to recognize those committed and loving relationships.
You can teach ’em “divorce is not an option”, but that doesn’t mean it is the truth, nor does it guarantee it won’t ever happen. Sure, life-long commitment is the “ideal”, but there are definitely situations in which divorce is the only rational course of action. When I got married, I assumed it would be forever. It wasn’t meant to be. She wanted a better man … and so did I. 🙂 When my parents got married, they probably assumed “forever”, too — but that was before alcoholic, drug addictions, and violence got in the way. It’s nice to have ideals and standards, but it is intelligent to recognize them as ideals and standards, and not some unrealistic and impossible goal that, if we don’t achieve it, we are somehow damned for eternity.
It is a lie that gay and lesbian people (as a group, I mean — a few radicals notwithstanding) are out to “destroy the family”. Just like radical funda-gelicals don’t represent all Christians, neither do a few outspoken radicals represent all gay people. Nor do all the gay folks on Bourbon Street or the Castro or West Hollywood represent all the millions of generic, every-day, garden variety gays and lesbians in middle America who just want to go to work, share their lives with someone special, and have the same rights as straight folks do. We don’t want what others don’t have. We want no more than what others have when they commit to share their lives, their hearts, their resources and their future together.
We came from families and would dearly love to know that the families we came from were as accepting of us as their are of their straight childen and relatives. We don’t want to destroy the family. Indeed, we are trying to be part of the solution for healing the family unit, bringing them together, and making it stronger. It’s the religious folk who refuse to deal with it rationally who do more damage to the family. Specifically, it is religious folk who destroyed MY family and disrupted my relationship with my children.
Oh yes… and after over 20 years out of the closet, I STILL haven’t gotten my copy of the “Gay Agenda”, so I don’t even know if I’m doing it “right”. How odd that only the religious fundagelicals are the only ones who seem to have an insight into some alleged “Gay Agenda”. Hmph… makes one wonder what closet that came out of, back behind the baptistry?
(I can’t believe I’m the only one sick of hearing about the “gay agenda” … it doesn’t exist, any more than there’s a “straight agenda”. We’re just people, trying to live our lives the best we can. We’re in every race, every ethnicity, every religion, every polical persuasion, every career and occupation, every socio-economic category… just like straight folks. Any argument based on some trumped up ‘gay agenda’ is false on its face.
If gay union is such a threat to God and the Family, how weak must the two of them be?
I thought God was all-powerful, and the family a strong and fundamental foundational of humanity.
If gay union can destroy them, they can’t be very big or strong.
Secular humanism? Gay agenda? Aren’t they terms that Christians invented?
Perhaps these fundamentalists need to look within their own churches, the commercialisation of religion, the Pharisaical nature of their judgements and condemnation of people not like them, the lynch-mob mentality, the cheating pastors who lie to their wives, the underage sex occurring in youth groups, the cultural irrelevance of their printed material, the declining membership lists in the church databases, the factions and fractures within the larger “body” on issues of Mary, post and pre-tribulation eschatology, arguments on hermeneutics, ordaining of women, etc etc etc.
The gay marriage debate is just the latest bandwagon for them to hop on and react to. They never propose new solutions, just always hark back to their Bibles and their interpretation of the English text… you won’t see them explaining what the original Greek and Hebrew actually said about their favourite condemnations. Their uneducated support base wouldn’t understand it.
Focus On The Family is a reactive organisation that relies upon firing up the conservative base to ensure that it has books, tapes and leaflets to sell, in order to survive.
Any self-perpetuating organisation is doomed to die eventually, especially those with celebrity figureheads. I draw upon Jimmy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. What happens to Benny Hinn Ministries when Benny Hinn dies? What happens to Insight For Living when Chuck Swindoll dies? What happens to Focus On The Family when Dobson dies?
Like the plethora of self-styled celebrity-headed ministries before them, they will fade into obscurity, and another ministry with a more charismatic figurehead and a better distribution network will replace it. And so the cycle goes on.
They need scandal to survive and line their pockets. They are the paparazzi of the political spectrum.
While time marches on, they keep on marching back to the good old values of the 1950’s, when things were so much better. Women stayed at home and made dinner, kids were well-behaved (apparently), prayer in school was taken seriously (um… really?) and everyone went to church (um…no they didn’t). There were no dirty people from non-white cultures (ah, yes there were), and homosexuality didn’t exist (yeah, right!).
The fact is Dr Dobson, that most Americans don’t know who you are. Most of them don’t go to church and most of them can’t stand self-righteous loud-mouths like yours.
You must be so happy that the gay marriage debate has come up… at last! A chance to clear the warehouse of all those back-copies of tapes and books that you haven’t been able to sell.
Now, excuse me while I return to doing something worthwhile.
Marty is right!
You can read all about the gay agenda right here
Thanks dan, but i speak for myself and myself alone. They can bury me next to fred phelps when i’m dead, but until then, please don’t try to paint me as you average pentacostal homophobe. You will only look silly to the people who actually know me.
Please check out the addendum to my original post.
Also, for the record, the gay agenda is really located here.
(I expect Raj and Dale to object to that assertion just as strongly as Marty. See, you all have something in common.)
Marty,
Your true colors are showing! The link I posted (for those of you who didn’t check) is for a hateful anti-jewish web site.
Apparently our good friend Marty did not have a problem with that.
Marty, your kind is losing this war. Your children will grow to think like we do. If not your children then your children’s children.
Get used to it!
Dan
Actually, i find a good cross-section of the agenda here, and of course “here”.
And kudos do dan for admitting that he DOES plan to pervert my children, and my childrens children. True colors indeed…
Now what was mike saying earlier about NAMBLA?
How does saying that children will eventually become pro-gay equal “perverting” them? Are you saying that if a man and a woman wanted a child to approve of their relationship, they would be perverting him? That they would molest him in order to get his acceptance?
If someone says, “I’m gay”, and the child grows up knowing this person is gay and that he lives with another man, how is that perverting him? Unless there is some kind of mental or physical harm done to the child, it is not.
Mike A. at April 1, 2004 12:01 AM
>Also, for the record, the gay agenda is really located here.
>(I expect Raj…to object to that assertion…
The “gay agenda” is really located at Indegayforum? Oh, my, no. The real gay agenda has been revealed! THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA!
I go to Indegayforum every once in a while. It may contain the agendas of a few gay Republicans, but that’s about it. The fellow who runs their CultureWatch column is particularly–um–out about his sentiments.
James at April 1, 2004 10:34 AM
>How does saying that children will eventually become pro-gay equal “perverting” them?
Marty’s post (to Dan’s previous post) strikes me as showing that he has a bit of an obsession with sex.
I love Betty Bowers.
I don’t want to single out specific persons here, but it is apparent from some posts that the writer(s)is/are the type that feed(s) off of negative energy; more interested in producing heat than light. Best not to engage them, since a meaningful exchange of ideas and solutions is not in their mix. Engaging them in a battle of the words only provokes them. That’s my personal solution, at least.
Why would I object to including IGF? It is a good site. Their late lamented discussion board was simply wonderful. It closed for reasons not really clear. No problem with it. Dale
Marty,
“i have never been divorced, neither have my parents, nor grandparents.”
Gee, me too, and I’m a (legally) married homosexual. Been with my partner 19 years (in 4 more days). Go figure.
However, despite having been strictly raised in a Pentecostal/Salvationist home, 2 of my 3 (VERY hetrosexual) sisters HAVE been divorced – and (GASP!) re-married. Whoda thunk it?
“And I will teach my children that divorce is not an option when a vow of “til death do us part” is taken before God.”
And what happens if and when one of your children comes to you and says “Dad, I’m gay. And in love. And wish to commit to my partner for life.”
You gonna be a good focuser and kick ’em outa the “family”?
“I beleive this is perfectly consistent with the Focus on the Family ideal.”
Trouble is, the “ideal” leaves no room for reality.
“Sorry if that makes me a “stereotype”, but i intend to preserve the traditional family of a man, a woman, and thier biological children for my own daughter and her own children’s sake.”
Honney, take a pill. The fact that I am married in no way “destroys” (or “de-sanctifies”, or “diminishes”, or “demeans” or “debases” etc. etc. etc.) YOUR “marriage”. And like I said, what if YOUR daughter is a lesbian?
“I suppose that makes me a bigot, huh?”
I think you answered your own question.
“sticks and stones…”
Yeah, yeah, we’re kinda used to it too.
“But before you blame all us heterosexuals for making a mockery of marriage,”
I don’t think anyone has. Now, if you take a look at the OTHER ‘foot’…
“remember it was the radical lesbian feminist ideal that brought us no-fault divorce, abortion, and destigmatized fatherlessness, all of which have done a great job of destabilizing the family”
You so FUNNEE.
“Some heterosexuals fell for it. Luckily, my folks didn’t.”
Nor did MINE. What’s yer “point”?
George Olds introduces an interesting point… I’m assuming George and his partner live in a country other than the U.S. if they are legally married. In their country they are considered married. So, if they come to visit the States, would you treat them as a couple, or as two singles? I would say they are a couple. They are recognized legally as a couple in their country, so why would I not consider them so here? Perhaps the legal system wouldn’t admit to the obvious, but human people can rise above the law on such things and do what is right… right?
Wow, this really sounds like Nazi propaganda. You don’t have the right to tell others how or how not to live and love. As a straight, loving, and open hearted 14 your old, I’d say your scalding hate is a very sad major example of what is wrong with the world we live in. If you choose to opress ANYONE, than you are trash, and that is all there is too say. I wonder whom hurt you so badly to make you hate this way. I wonder all the same things for your Author.
Savannah
A danger in resurrecting this old chestnut, but the original subject was on Being Intolerant, and referencing Ryan Dobson (son of James) and his book by that title as a resource (nice way to shill your own son’s book — no wonder it became a best seller).
Do a Google search on “Ryan Dobson” and “divorce”. Guess what? Apparently, Ryan Dobson went thru a divorce in 2001. (No I haven’t looked up the Court records to verify)
Isn’t that ironic? I am not raising the issue to trivialize what is a very painful situation for anyone going thru it (I know personally). It is just interesting that Dobson can broadcast such a message of intolerance against gay marriage (because it allegedly destroys the institution of marriage)at the same time as, in his own family, a marriage imploded for reasons I am going to guess had NO relationship to the gay agenda!
Ponder that!
Addenda:
On Ryan Dobson’s website https://www.ryandobson.com/journal.aspx
he notes that he is again…. engaged!
I personally am happy for him, but surely he knows that a goodly number of his father’s (James Dobson, not the Father) would say that this is living in adultery.
As Ryan would say, “Ironic, to the max!”