Furious with Focus

Focus on the Family has gone too far this time.

Not only did the leader James Dobson create the atmosphere that had me suicidal until the age of 22, he is now fear mongering the radical right about Senetor Obama, a group I'm worried will try an assassination. His recent letter from a fake christian in 2012 includes threats such as "Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts."

His anti-gay rhetoric has included that cow milk makes you gay (I was age 4 or so when we drank goat milk to keep the gay "away"), that it's better to die and go to heaven than be gay and go to hell (I was age 10 or so for that news), that gays can "change" (I heard this for years, I tried and it didn't work... though my parents still offered to send me to his facility for my 24th birthday, its a process decried for its methods that hurt those unfortunate enough to be intered there), that gays will destroy the familiy (what does that even mean?, it was a lot of pressure on a 12 year old), etc... It gets more desperate every year.

He has long used his manipulation on the easily scareable fundamentalist community I grew up in, one spread between the mega-churches and homeschool groups of this country. Like witch burnings years back, an easily controled mob is a dangerous tool for desperate people. Threats of "kill him" at rallies and intimidation of voters is already widespread, not to mention the girl who faked being beaten and mutilated by an Obama supporter, only to have it come out that she did it herself and it was the McCain camp that pushed the story into headlines only to lie about that after.

Dobson is not a puppet of the McCain camp certainly, in many ways it has become the reverse. McCain has moved far to the right this election cycle to garner the support of the people who put Bush in the whitehouse. Dobson is getting desperate though as young evangelicals are becoming less easily manipulated by single issue scare tactics such as insinuations that gay marriage will mean childrens virtue is at stake (one of the most henious examples of fear mongering out there. Gay marriage honestly saves lives, of all those gay children who kill themselves rather than live in the world Dobson has framed for them. The only reason I didn't kill myself for my entire formative years was that I didn't want to go to hell for suicide, I had only hoped that somehow I'd be killed).

This message is certainly strong, yet it is not a rash reaction. It is the cry of someone who knows what this kind of message can do and will not stand for it. It is the same anger reserved for rapists, murderers and theives, except that this, in a way, is worse than all three. This letter and the organization behind it defile the innocense of children inflicting a cycle of self hate for their natural orientation. It kills the intellect of the community members who react emotionally and create an atmosphere of fear and hate. It robs the love that should be for equality, peace and respect from that community and their children, moving forward a cycle of abuse as evil as racism.

I urge you to write him to retract this letter of hate. The only email contact I found was a form on his website Alternately, you can write him at:
Focus on the Family
(street address not required)
Colorado Springs, CO 80995

God is faithful and pharasitical ranters such as Dobson only hurt those who listen. I pray that his audience is ever less captive as they see how their positions damage the children they try to protect.