I consider James Dobson one of the greatest threats to the rights and safety of LGBT Americans. While writers reference Dobson’s "avuncular manner,” he is in fact a cunning and ruthless opponent to gay rights and freedom of religion as contemplated by the USA's founding fathers. It is precisely because of his scripted efforts to appear "avunclar," that most journalist are duped into thinking he's harmless. Nothing could be further from the truth. A book review on a recent book on Dobson can be found in the May 27, 2007, edition of the New Yourk Times: (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/books/review/Heilbrunn2-t.html?_r=3&ref=us&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin). Here's a description of Dobson's empire:This empire is based at an 88-acre campus in Colorado Springs, with some 1,300 employees and a 75,000-square-foot warehouse filled with DVDs, CDs, pamphlets and books that disseminate Dobson’s advice on matters like how to stop bed-wetting or confront a teenager about drug use, not to mention admonitions against gay rights and judicial activism.
Dobson's Focus on the Family sponsors a bogus ex-gay cure program "Love Won Out" I described in a previous post. In addition, Focus on the Family has affiliates in many states in the USA, including the evil "Family Foundation" here in Virginia. I recommend that readers read the New York Times column. It is important to know one's enemies. Believe me, if your are LGBT, Dobson is the enemy.
1 comment:
All religions and metaphysicians are a threat to all of us. Remember (perhaps, not) when metaphysicians of mind (psychoanalysts or priests of mental divination) claimed they could cure homosexuality. In 1973, pressed to "prove" their claims that homosexuality was a disorder and could be cured by Gay Liberation Movements, their credibility with the larger community required they get the "truth," and overnight a disease became healthy.
Some, apparently, like Dobson, NARTH, LaBarbera, et alia, seem to have gotten the message, but vehemently disagree with it. Why? Because the God of Revelation has divined the "real" truth, not the empirical facts. After all, the God of revelation sure disapproves of homosexuality (Lv 20:13ff, Rom 1:20ff, Jude 7) In fact, the God of Revelation apparently detests his own totally-depraved creatures (Rm 7:13ff), but has selected (predestined, elected, chosen) a few out of the human cesspool to "save." (Rm 8 in its entirety). If they denounce life in the flesh, and walk according to the spirit, they may be among the elect. Life in the flesh cannot please God (even though this same God is purported to have created the flesh - Gen 1-2).
What baffles me is my gay friends studying for the ministry, ignoring those "inconvenient" revelations, and positing a Queer Theology of the Resurrection (an actual course at the Pacific School of Religion). Now, I have always suspected that Jesus and his Beloved Disciple (obviously with a chest fetish) and I have something in common. But that's kind of reading between the lines. And even David's love for Jonathan, superior to that of a woman, is denied to have had a sexual component (that's also reading between the lines). But reading between the line, and quarreling with the literally written, are two different hermeneutics.
Ultimately, it comes down to Why? Why does one NEED to believe what neither his senses nor his reason gives any evidence for? Why is the NEED so great, that it denies the facts of Darwin, rewrites and edits the "inconvenient" parts of revelation(is the revelation true or not?), and then applies Queer Theory to Christianity? One might assume that gays and lesbians, especially, having wrestled with the empirical facts of their same-sex attraction, bucked the hetero-normativity claims, exerted the courage to be, would be the least vulnerable to the other, less credible, if not incredulous, claims of religion (at best a superstition)? But to dissimulate, navigate, circumvent the revelation, edit and rewrite it, isn't that precisely what Dobson, NARTH, LaBarbera are NOT doing? They may, indeed do, lack the proper ontology, the various hermeneutic senses, the contexts, and foundations, but their reading of the God of revelation even at the "literal' level is honest, mainly accurate, and textually verifiable. We can all read it. It says what it says. (It may say much more than the "literal" sense, of which I am sure, but the literal sense is what they say it is.)
If so, then God of revelation is not especially appealing. Besides his emotional imbalances, his jealousy, wrath, indignation, bloodthirstiness, he has some pretty odd Laws and Commands (stoning to death rebellious sons?) All those dietary Laws, not mixing meat-and-milk, no shellfish, no mixing of fabrics and threads. Does God really care about these things? And look at his "rewards." He denies his Prophet Moses the Promised Land, he makes a Faustian Bargain with Satan so that Satan can torment the hell out of Job, he delivers Jonah out of the whale's belly after three days, and he somehow makes his infinitude finite, gets nailed to death, and rises from the dead -- a first! And crucifying his "only-begotten Son" does what? Well, it opens the spirit world, the world Saint Paul is insisting we inhabit, not the physical world of the flesh. Thus, while "in" the world, but not "of" the world? But why? Because it leads to eternal life. Like more of the same eternal life? No. We don't marry or reconnect with those known in the "physical world." But we'll have a perpetual Wedding Banquet. That's the promise.
But isn't a Wedding Banquet about as "fleshy" as it gets? I mean, a man and a woman, two men, two women, have a wedding, celebrating the unions of their flesh, becoming one together, bonding. Weddings are a time for feasting, drinking, dancing, making merry, and in the olden days, the first time to get laid. But this sounds exactly like life SHOULD be right now -- in the flesh and all. But to do this for eternity, we cannot do it now? Why? Because God (that Face in the Clouds somewhere) says so. Where? In the scriptures? Where did the scriptures come from? From God -- get this -- through human agency. God "inspired" men, and only men, to write down in wax and pen, or papyrus, or rolls, whatever was physically handy at the time, their "inspirations." Well, we're right back to flesh again. If God is Spirit, why all this "fleshy" stuff, why not just communicate spiritually, sort of channel like Ramtha does? Why by "human agency" and "physical artifacts" of human invention?
Frankly, it sound very contradictory. Flesh is pronounced "good" one moment, "hostile" the next. The Spirit, however, needs that flesh, because it does not channel the God of Revelation to everyone, just to certain individuals and certain times. Indeed, Saul on the road to Damascus has a "vision," where he encounters what he thinks is the Risen Christ," and from that "vision" Christianity is made. If I dropped acid, like he fell of a horse, if I had a "vision" like he had a "vision," how would mine and his "vision" differ? Why is his vision "right," but my vision "wrong," even sinful, however minutely chemical? I've know some deadhead LSD users, and they espouse the spiritual experiences on acid as superior to the mundane ones of the world. See, Saul and Timothy Leary may have a lot in common.
What reveals the "fraud," alas, is Paul's (Saul's reborn name) calling himself an "apostle." You see, if the Revelation elsewhere is true, then Paul is gravely mistaken. Jesus chose TWELVE apostles (symbolically to tie-into the Twelve tribes of Israel). Hippies and their imaginations. Well, one of those apostles, Judas, hangs himself for betraying God. That leaves ELEVEN. So, the first act the ELEVEN do, is to chose a heir to Judas, and that was Matthias. It's all in Acts 1. The TWELVE have been restored. But Paul makes THIRTEEN. That's not according to the script. Twelve is a divine number, thirteen is demonic. The TWELVE actually establish Sees (we call them dioceses), James in Jerusalem, Peter in Rome, etc. But Paul, not being an apostle, does not have a See. Instead, in his mind at least he is the "apostle to the Gentiles." (Must be part of his "vision" thing.) But it still totals to THIRTEEN, not TWELVE. And Jesus deliberately chose TWELVE. The Eleven reconstitute the TWELVE. So Paul is the oddball, the odd-number, the one that doesn't fit. But HE gets to write the script? Based on that "vision" and his delusion of being an "apostle?"
The rest, as they say, is history. I only wish it were PAST history, because it still "hangs" and causes more disturbances on the way to that Wedding Banquet in eternity. I prefer to party now, not let some visionary who cannot count tell me that I've got to do things HIS way, because his way is God's way. Delusions can cause people to think only in their heads and deny their bodies. We call them psychotics. And if we "believe" it, it will save us from damnation, and produce a Wedding Banquet? Oh my. People actually "put their faith" in this delusional odd-man-out's account of divinations? Why not just visit your local asylum or state hospital?
Post a Comment