by Lorette C. Luzajic
Part 27 of Pillars of Faith

Guilty as Spongebob

Jim’s writings were revered like Apostle Paul’s in my childhood home. His Focus on the Family propaganda is so wholeheartedly American that it became brand. After three decades of homo-terror warnings, not even his ridiculous boycott of Spongebob made him lose credibility among disciples. Spongebob is guilty of “homosexual advocacy,” Dobson says.

He was born in Louisiana in 1936 and born again at three. He received his doctorate in child development in 1967, and later founded both Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

Both oppose women, gays, and science. Dobson describes gays as “Nazis” and “THE greatest threat to your children. It is of particular danger to your wide-eyed boys, who have no idea what demoralization is planned for them.”

They want more funding for abstinence ed, a proven failure since the U.S. has 70 times the rate of gonorrhea among youth than European countries with sex ed, and among the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world.

The Same Song and Dance

His evidence is often based on the work of Paul Cameron, disbarred from the APA for making up research. Other sources have made it clear that Dobson has twisted their work or not even read it.

Dobson quoted in Time, Drs Carol Gilligan, of Harvard: Kyle Pruett, of Yale, and Angela Phillips, of Goldsmiths College. All 3 were irate that he lied about data, among a barrage of letters from experts he’d used in various works. Some asked him to post their letters on his Focus website with a public apology. He didn’t.

Dr. Robert Spitzer was among the outraged. He helped remove the disorder status from homosexuality in 1973. And so his 2001 research showing that “gays could change” was praised by Dobson for the “courage” to overturn the “myth.”

But Dr. Spitzer said Focus “once again reported findings of my study out of context to support their fight against gay rights.”

Calling Dobson on his lies doesn’t faze him. “Communities do not let prostitutes, pedophiles, voyeurs, adulterers, and those who sexually prefer animals to publicly celebrate their lifestyles, so why should homosexuals get such privileges?”

Poor Little Wiener Dog

Unruly wiener dogs are another thorn. Jim brags in one book about beating his dog for not heading to bed on time. “That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other,” he writes.

His other pet issue is against “population control.” Dobson supports fringe extremist prolifers like Randall Terry. He thinks taking the Pill or the morning after pill is abortion, too.

Tubal ligation? “For obvious reasons, the Bible is absolutely silent on these recent technological procedures.” Umm, yes. Obvious reasons.

But for a man who concerns himself with “helping families thrive,” he sure hates children. “… pain is a marvelous purifier,” he has famously written. In one of many parenting guides, he calls kids: bratty, pugnacious, anarchists, horrid, negative, sour, sullen, selfish, insane, obnoxious, spoiled brat, groaning lump, and so forth.

Dobson also demanded the resignation of a minister who asked Christians to care about creation! The climate controversy is shifting the “emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence…”

Let it Rain

But does any of Dobson’s nonsense really matter?

Time Magazine called him “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader.” His media empire spans 150 countries and 7,000 TV stations, reaching 220 million daily. Chris Hedges called him “perhaps the most powerful figure in the Dominionist movement.” He is widely accredited with rallying the Lord’s troops to vote for and land the win of George Bush.

Obama of course is “lowest common denominator of morality” with a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution, who edits “God’s word to fit his liberal worldview.” So Dobson’s servants released a video commanding Christians to pray for “rain of Biblical proportions” on the day of Obama’s historic nomination speech.

It was sunny all day. But rain it did — at the Republican convention. Hurricane Gustav hurled itself at the southern Bible belts, causing the largest U.S. evacuation exodus in history with 2 million people headed north.

The Lord has spoken.