James Dobson, Religious Right personality and founder of Focus on the Family, is circulating a letter from the future. Dobson’s vision of America under the limp-wristed leadership of President Barack Obama is as dark and twisted as the “Chick tracts” that label non-fundamentalists as the spawn of Satan (especially liberals and Catholics). It’s like an Onion parody.
Dobson’s Letter meanders on for a dozen pages but the central premise is painfully simple: the ultra-liberal (ACLU-affiliated) judges President Obama will appoint to the Supreme Court are going to run amok. Not only will they legalize gay marriage, they will sanction any church, school or Boy Scout troop that refuses to celebrate gayness. Books critical of “the gay agenda” will be pulled from the shelves of Barnes and Nobles. Home schoolers will be punished for teaching their children that homosexuality is wrong or that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Sex education classes will rejoice in the gay life style and teachers and parents who refuse to go along . . . well, you get the idea.
The letter is aimed at the naive evangelical Christians who, polls suggest, are flocking to the Democratic candidate in surprising numbers. These deluded souls thought they were voting for change; instead they unleashed a liberal apocalypse.
Dobson et al make a pretense of dissociating Obama from this scourge of the liberal fundamentalists. The poor man never dreamed that placing a few ACLU types on the court would transform America into Sodom and Gomorrah in a mere four years. Obama wrings his hands in disbelief as the Frankenstein monster he has unleashed rampages through the heartland.
Dobson’s Obama, following the lead of Bill Clinton, fires all the US Attorneys in America, replacing them with card carrying members of the ACLU eager to punish former Bush officials.
If you want to tell Dr. Dobson what you think of his letter (please read it first) you can go to the Matthew 25 website. But I have come not to scorn Focus on the Family but to lament the demise the implosion of an organization that once did good work.
When Nancy and I were starting out in pastoral ministry, Dobson’s organization produced a series of parenting manuals and practical videos aimed at the evangelical mainstream. The basic themes were tough love, the need for clear parent-child boundaries, consistent consequences, and the idea that parenting is a high calling. If children are allowed to rule the home, Dobson taught, they will become unhappy tyrants who grow into undisciplined and unloving adults. Think of a biblically based “Super Nanny” and you’ll have the right idea.
Then Dobson ran off the rails. Every year his comb-over became more extreme and his religion more political. Before long, Dobson was Rush Limbaugh with a Bible. His gay-hating, gun-toting, free enterprise-loving, militaristic Jesus became harder and harder to square with the Jesus of the Gospels.
And now we have this fear-mongering letter. Dr. Dobson clearly has no idea how progressive Americans think and feel. Tragically, an equal and opposite ignorance can often be found on the extreme left. Dobson’s exercise in self-parody simply widens the gap.
Friends of Justice 
What’s so bad about the future America depicted in the letter? This is the future the American people want!
I don’t want to live in a country in which the government tells churches and private institutions what to think and how to behave. The gay community should be free to live as full citizens. Conversely, folks ought to be free to think otherwise. It is the element of thought control that I find objectionable in Dobson’s vision of the future.
If Obama becomes President? With the large number of threats to his life, shouldn’t we be more concerned about Joe Biden becoming President? He, himself, said that Obama “made a mistake” choosing him as Vice-President! What will this country look like THEN? I don’t want “bottom dwelling” to be encouraged in this country and the American dream killed. I believe in what Dr. James Dobson says. He is a very educated man and knows what he is talking about!
The religious right has turned into a ignorant lynch mob – what happened to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness gentleness, faithfulness and self-control? Jesus is right – by their fruits you will know them.
It seems that James Dobson, the Southern Baptist Convention, and other groups are attempting to establish another Holy Empire. When will they learn that when religious leaders get involved in politics they end up more corrupt than common laypersons? I used to respect James Dobson, but he got a taste of power and now he is in the same category as Rush Limbaugh – a raving lunatic.
James Dobson is like a lot of Pseudo Christians in leadership positions in the American christian community.
He no longer follows God, but rather assumes that he has some kind of special “Enlightenment” that makes HIS opinion superior to others,
EVEN FELLOW CHRISTIANS!
Throughout history we’ve seen these “Snake oil
Salesmen” in action. Text in THE BIBLE ITSELF even warns us of such “CON ARTISTS”.
When mortal men assume their vision of religious guidance is superior to others and above reproach, and choose to act on their “delusions”, serious complications can be the result.
James Dobson IS a “Serious Complication” that we MUST be aware of. A man such as James Dobson can AND WILL do GRAVE HARM to mankind if left to his own devises unchecked.
And he will do these things “WITHOUT GUILT”, for in HIS MIND, God gives him the right to take extreme measures without the approval or consent of ANY MAN but himself.
This is the thought patterns of a “Fundamentalist”. No matter what religion you claim to represent, a fundamentalist view is wrong because this view allows a person to act ABOVE the authority of God, basically James Dobson takes on the role of GOD himself!
NO MAN IS ABOVE GOD!
THAT INCLUDES YOU DR. JAMES DOBSON!