From Media Matters for America:
Focus on the Family founder and chairman James C. Dobson predicted on his radio program [MP3 file] that allowing same-sex marriage in the United States would lead to “group marriage,” “marriage between daddies and little girls,” or “marriage between a man and his donkey.” Dobson called this vision of the future “more or less a prophecy,” though, he stressed, not a “divine prophecy, but a prediction.” He said that his specific examples, as well as “anything allegedly linked to civil rights,” will be “doable, and the legal underpinnings for marriage will have been destroyed.”
Prophecy? Prediction? No. Just another example of arrogant, pornographic, blasphemous snobbery committed without a trace of repentance by the man who is head of Focus on the Family and de facto godfather of Exodus and the Family Research Council. Unhindered by his army of yes-men at Focus on the Family, FRC and Exodus, Dobson appears to have evolved into the religious right’s leading blasphemer and potty-mouth.
Dobson also claims that, due to gay marriage, “young people are not getting married in the Netherlands.” MMA points out, however, that since the 1970s, Dutch couples have (wisely, perhaps) been waiting longer to get married; same-sex unions have only been legal since 1998.
Addendum: Wayne Besen comments.
One stamp for “I do”, two stamps for “I don’t”?Will a signature be required for the registry, or just an inky hoof print?But it got me thinking — re the other post about biblical inerrancy and all — how God managed to overlook Woman until after Man had checked over all the other creatures and pondered the fact there was no “help meet for him”. Ooops! Sorry about that… lend me a rib will ya.(P.S. it’s obviously the second version of the creationist story in Ch.2.)
I’ll just comment that the fact that Dobson can fantasize in such a manner only provides further evidence for the fact that he is mentally disturbed.
I wonder whether he rants like this because donations to his organization are down. Follow the money.
Raj, you hit the nail on the head. When Focus’s donations are down, fear and smear is used to bolster the funds. It is a very clever tactic deployed by televangelists for decades. I remember Jim and Tammy’s 80’s campaign to bring them back to “victory” after Tammys downward spiral into drugs and Betty Ford. The only way things were going to improve was to bilk people out of their hard earned cash and they were very skilled at it. To this day, Tammy’s “insight” is still credible at CNN (Larry King has her on at least 1-2 times per year). Dobson uses similar tactics and he is successful, people are willing to contribute to lessen their fears. Even when those fears are something as impossible as a man marrying an animal or child. That is not even remotely similar to same sex marriage, but it is very real through the repetitious use of fear tactics employed through charisma and a false sense of being a powerful figurehead.
This reminds me of growing up in a Dobson/American Family Association household (the magazines and letters from those two organizations were some of our only available reading material outside of Reader’s Digest and Guidepost), and all the junk we’d get whenever there was some kind of huge issue.
I remember in particular when the gays in the military thing was a huge deal — my parents would get hysterical letters from Dobson and others stating things like if we let gays in the military, AIDS would soon take over our whole military (because of the practice of giving transfusions directly from one person to the other in case of a medical emergency in battle, out in the field).
I remember that being thrown around and the hysterics about the straight men in America being forced to live with AIDS because of those infected gays who would join the military to get medical benefits.
Anyone else remember this stuff? It’s just the same old stuff, different day — but always with a plea for money to battle the current evil.
Peterson blogged today about the fear behind the anger and rhetoric from these folks, and I think what he says is absolutely true.