A couple weeks ago, Christianity Today reported that Focus on the Family is blurring the line between its tax-deductible operations and its partisan political advocacy for Republican candidates. The magazine noted that the two operations share the same staff members, offices, and workplace benefits.
This blurring of Focus’ religious and political operations is borne out in an article published by Focus’ tax-deductible arm on Friday.
Democrats of good conscience disagree strongly over the issues of homosexuality, gay marriage and amending the U.S. Constitution. Instead of acknowledging this, the Focus article overgeneralizes that the entire party is pro-homosexual and criticizes the Democrats for not being the gay-activist extremists that Focus wants them to be.
Yet the factoids raised by Focus only undermine the organization’s argument. Focus says (without offering a link, nor any context) that the Boston Globe reported that 62 percent of Democratic convention delegates “favor gay marriage.” But did they really “favor” gay marriage, or merely express tolerance of gay marriage, or merely oppose a constitutional ban? In any case, the nearly 40 percent opposition seems to be invisible to Focus.
Focus also complains that 236 delegates to the Democratic convention were gay. That sounds like a lot, until one discovers that about 4,000 delegates were not gay. Even by conservative estimates of the percentage of gays in the general population, gay people appear to be sorely underrepresented among Democratic delegates. Focus overlooks this, as well.
Chris Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute sums up Focus on the Family’s position, accusing the whole Democratic Party of “duplicity” instead of division, and demanding, “You can’t have it both ways.”
Focus seems to be intolerant of disagreement within political parties — and determined to crush the political party that confounds political absolutism and stereotypes of liberals.
“Focus also complains that 236 delegates to the Democratic convention were gay. That sounds like a lot, until one discovers that about 4,000 delegates were not gay. Even by conservative estimates of the percentage of gays in the general population, gay people appear to be sorely underrepresented among Democratic delegates. Focus overlooks this, as well.”
Huh? I think I must be missing something.
236/4236 (your approximation)= 5.7% “By conservative estimates of the percentage of gays in the general population”, what’s so “sorely” underrepresenting about that?
Thanks, Johanna! My quick mental math was WAY off. Gays weren’t overrepresented.
I still kinda suspect Focus would voice some alarm no matter how many/few gay delegates there were.
I hope things are going wonderfully for you these days.
Hi Mike,
Yeah, the whole article was pretty dumb. Like they’re just groping after something to complain about or be alarmed about. They sure are irked that the Democrats aren’t cooperating by playing the liberal bogeyman. And I have no idea what the point of the “236” stat was.
Things are going quite well these days. Hope the same is true for you.
peace,
Johanna
I guess Focus ignores the fact that people aren’t going to be selected to be a delegate unless they run. Maybe so many gay people were selected was because they ran. I suppose that if the lazy people at Focus tried to run to become delegates some of them might be selected. Of course, they just want to bitch about it.