Focus on the Family
m (removed Category:Christianity using HotCat) |
PintOfStout (Talk | contribs) (→External links) |
||
| Line 30: | Line 30: | ||
''"While both Dobson and Minnery deny working with Abramoff, email exchanges between Abramoff and associates Ralph Reed and Michael Scanlon appear to contradict Dobson and Minnery's claim that Focus on the Family's activities in opposition to the expansion of a Louisiana casino had nothing to do with requests from Abramoff or Reed."''<ref>http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2009/04/via-memeorandum-the-colorado-independent-reportsa-colorado-springs-man-who-narrates-the-bible-in-spanish-on-cds-and--works.html</ref> | ''"While both Dobson and Minnery deny working with Abramoff, email exchanges between Abramoff and associates Ralph Reed and Michael Scanlon appear to contradict Dobson and Minnery's claim that Focus on the Family's activities in opposition to the expansion of a Louisiana casino had nothing to do with requests from Abramoff or Reed."''<ref>http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2009/04/via-memeorandum-the-colorado-independent-reportsa-colorado-springs-man-who-narrates-the-bible-in-spanish-on-cds-and--works.html</ref> | ||
==External links== | ==External links== | ||
| − | |||
*[http://www.focusonthefamily.com/ Their website] | *[http://www.focusonthefamily.com/ Their website] | ||
*[http://respectmyresearch.org/ Respect My Research]: Website established by [http://www.truthwinsout.org/ Truth Wins Out (TWO)] that seeks to call attention to Focus on the Family's skewing, misrepresenting or just outright lying about scientific research to fit its [[homophobic]] positions. | *[http://respectmyresearch.org/ Respect My Research]: Website established by [http://www.truthwinsout.org/ Truth Wins Out (TWO)] that seeks to call attention to Focus on the Family's skewing, misrepresenting or just outright lying about scientific research to fit its [[homophobic]] positions. | ||
Revision as of 20:36, 2 December 2011
| Christ died so we could write articles on |
| Christianity |
| Random examples |
| Resources |
Focus on the Family is a *ahem* nonprofit evangelical Christian organization, run by James Dobson and based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It specializes in family issues approached from a fundamentalist standpoint, espousing homophobia and strongly advocating capital corporal punishment for children. Its meddling attitude can be summed up by the bumper sticker slogan "FOCUS ON YOUR OWN DAMN FAMILY!"
Contents |
Political advocacy
Although Focus on the Family itself is technically apolitical (in accordance with federal requirements for a tax-exempt religious organization), it has recently created a political action committee called Citizen Link, which is utterly committed to ensuring that biblical values prevail in Washington. These values literally always line up with the Republican party line, not just on standard Christian issues which have a minute biblical basis (abortion, homosexuality, divorce) but on things which have no biblical basis (health care reform, taxation, unions). Citizen Link has also been very vocal in the ENDA controversy, arguing constantly for the right of Christians to discriminate against gays and Muslims. The group has not yet become famous for its ability to find "anti-Christian discrimination" in anything that happens anywhere, but rest assured that this will happen any day now.
Although federal law would seem to require James Dobson to limit his political outbursts to Citizen Link-related media, Dobson has, on several occasions, branched out into politics on the Focus on the Family Daily Brodacasts, doing everything from asking radical Republican lawmakers what hate crime legislation is really about (outlawing disliking homosexuals, obviously) to attempting to rehabilitate Tom Delay's image. He also interviewed a converted Ted Bundy in prison about God's saving grace, ruining one of the few pluses of the Biblical god actually existing (that although unbelievers may suffer forever, at least we won't be joined in eternal damnation by Bundy and others who actually deserve such treatment).
Focus on the Family has also recently created a website called "True Tolerance," which is, of course, dedicated to intolerance, and also features some of the Alliance Defense Fund's typical idiotic free legal documents.[1] They also have crafted "Stand for Christmas," which provides shoppers with a list of which retailers are "Pro-Christmas" (the site is very useful, in as much as it tells a secularist which shops to avoid).[2]
On an unrelated note, hearing James Dobson say "necrophilia" is literally the funniest thing ever.
Children's Ministry
Focus on the Family has a long-running children's adventure series called Adventures in Odyssey which is broadcast by radio, published on CDs, and more recently available online. It mostly takes place in the fantasy of every fundamentalist, a small American town full of almost exclusively deeply religious people who never got the notice that the 1950s ended. Wacky hijinks inevitably lead the one new kid in town who isn't a Real True Christian to a saving knowledge of his Lord and Savior. In the words of a pastor's testimonial on their website, "The stories provided a much-needed balance to the 'critical' method of approaching faith that I was being taught in the classroom." Who needs critical thinking when you can approach the fundamental questions of the universe with the ignorance of an indoctrinated child? "Lessons" that your child can learn from the show include the virtues of offering up your daughter as a burnt sacrifice (because God says so).
Adventures in Odyssey has a Very Special Collection called "For God and Country" which teaches a... unique perspective on American history.
They also put out a series of teen novels which re-imagined Old Testament events as steampunk, giving God's favorite murderers access to 1800s technology and (white, very white) European sophistication. They were actually quite good, as it turns out that whitewashing the tale of King David to make him not seem like a homicidal maniac, while ALSO giving him a gun, vastly improves the original story.
Scandals
Child sex scandal
In 2009, Focus employee Juan Ovalle was arrested on two felony accounts of soliciting sex with a child via the internet. Ovalle was arrested when he drove to Lakewood, Colorado to meet a 15 year old girl who he had cybered with online - the "girl" turned out to be an undercover police detective. [3] Ovalle worked in Focus' Spanish broadcasting department, and was FOTF's Spanish language narrator of their Bible in Spanish CDs and their "Adventures in Odyssey" radio show.
Jack Abrahamoff casino scheme involvement
In 2006, Media Matters reported:
"On the February 17 broadcast of his radio program, Focus on the Family president James C. Dobson and Tom Minnery, the organization's vice president of public policy, sought to fend off questions arising from reports of their alleged collusion with convicted felon and former gambling industry lobbyist Jack Abramoff in a scheme to shut down competition to his [Abramoff's] clients' casinos.
"While both Dobson and Minnery deny working with Abramoff, email exchanges between Abramoff and associates Ralph Reed and Michael Scanlon appear to contradict Dobson and Minnery's claim that Focus on the Family's activities in opposition to the expansion of a Louisiana casino had nothing to do with requests from Abramoff or Reed."[4]
External links
- Their website
- Respect My Research: Website established by Truth Wins Out (TWO) that seeks to call attention to Focus on the Family's skewing, misrepresenting or just outright lying about scientific research to fit its homophobic positions.
See also
- Family values
- Traditional values
- American Family Association
- Concerned Women for America
- James Bopp
- Their arch-nemesis
Footnotes
- ↑ True Tolerance website.
- ↑ Stand for Christmas website.
- ↑ http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2009/04/via-memeorandum-the-colorado-independent-reportsa-colorado-springs-man-who-narrates-the-bible-in-spanish-on-cds-and--works.html
- ↑ http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2009/04/via-memeorandum-the-colorado-independent-reportsa-colorado-springs-man-who-narrates-the-bible-in-spanish-on-cds-and--works.html