Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Pharisees, frauds, and fakers

By David Lecam/ Commentary

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity I am become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal." - St. Paul

Time Magazine in its Evangelical Issue (2-7-05) describes Dr. James Dobson as The Culture Warrior. "The founder of the Focus on Family wants everyone to know that his sprawling campus in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is devoted to his radio program, publishing empire and maintaining his 2.5 million-strong e-mail list of supporters. While it may be true that only a sliver of the activities there are political, Dobson stepped down as president of the organization in May 2003 so that he could become involved in politics. Now he's not only advocating policies calling for a ban on gay marriage and restraint of the judiciary but also threatening to target democratic Senators at the polls if they don't vote the way he likes on President Bush's judicial nominations.

Maureen Dowd continues the Dobson biography in the Sunday New York Times (1-23-05) "It took James Dobson, the conservative Christian leader and gay marriage opponent, who claims the president's re-election was more a mandate on his ideas than George W. Bush's, to point out the insidious underside of the popular cartoon character Sponge Bob Square Pants.

"Holy Abe! Dr. Dobson outed Sponge Bob at a black tie inaugural fete last week for members of congress and political allies. He said that a 'pro-homosexual video'-- starring Sponge Bob, Barney, Jimmy Neutron, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy-was set to go to elementary schools to promote a 'tolerance pledge,' including tolerance of 'Sexual Identity.'

"What in the name of Davy Jones's locker would a sponge be doing holding hands with a starfish or donning purple and hot-pink garb if it weren't a perverted invertebrate?"

To further refine Dr. Dobson's biography, Miss Dowd recounted an interview of the "Good Doctor" by George Stephanopoulas in a column entitled "Slapping the Other Cheek"(11-14-04).

"Mr. Stephanopoulas asked Dr. Dobson about his comment to The Daily Oklahoman that 'Patrick Leahy is a 'God's people hater.' 'I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people,' noting that it was not a particularly Christian thing to say about the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. (Especially after that vulgar, un-Christian thing Dick Cheney spat at Mr. Leahy last summer.) 'George', Mr. Dobson haughtily snapped back, 'do you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about?' Why not? The TV host is the son of a Greek Orthodox priest."

"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust adulterers, or even as this Publican.'"

Ward Harkavy penned an article for www.westword.com in 1997 which dealt with a book written by an ex-Dobsonite, and former aide named Gil Alexander-Moegerle. Alexander-Moegerle produced Dr. Dobson's radio show and was his first "on-air side-kick" for a decade, as well as a board member and chief aide."

"One particular incident in November 1986 stands out to the ex-Dobsonite. It occurred during a discussion of pornography. Dobson was bemoaning the lack of hard evidence that pornography was dangerous. He reasoned that such research could be done but that most research scientists weren't interested. And this wasn't the only instance of liberal bias among scientists, he told his executives. Weren't black Americans the descendants of slaves, who were bred for physical strength? And didn't it make sense that blacks, while becoming physically superior, had become intellectually inferior? Research to prove that, he lamented, wouldn't be done because it smacked of racism. Just then Focus executive Rolf Zettersten told a joke about a black child who was asked to use the word "before" in a sentence and who responded, "Two plus two be-Fo!" Dobson and everybody howled with laughter, says Alexander-Moegerle.

"Toward women, Dobson had a similarly patronizing view, privately regarding himself as a protector of the naturally weaker sex and publicly declaring that feminism was the bane of Western civilization." Such sentiments put Dr. Dobson very much in league with other well known purveyors of Christian Charity as the Reverends Falwell and Robertson evidenced by the pair's notorious comments on 9-13-01:

"I really believe," said Falwell and seconded by Robertson, "that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way-all of them who have tried to secularize America-I point the finger in their face and say you helped to make this (9/11) happen."

I, on the other hand, can only paraphrase Miss Maudie Atkinson, Atticus Finch's erstwhile neighbor in "To Kill A Mockingbird" who opined that

The Bible in the hands of some men is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.
Somebody say, Amen!)

But wait! Just when it seemed that fraudulent fundamentalism would swamp us all, a voice of reason, elegant in its simplicity, truthfulness and strength emerges out of all places, Oklahoma City and the Mayflower Congregational Church. It is the voice of the Reverend Doctor Robin Meyers as he addressed the Oklahoma University Peace Rally on November 14, 2004.

"I am a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about what exactly constitutes a moral value. I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are a people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and what is wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you a few reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side: When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will and that your critics are either unpatriotic of lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral but immoral.

"When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to count them, you are doing something immoral. When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.

When you wink at the torture of prisoners and deprive enemy combatants of the rules of the Geneva Conventions, which your own country helped to establish and insist that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral.

"When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero you are doing something immoral.

"When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral. When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral. When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporation that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton."

The Reverend Peter Gomes, a professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University, provides a fitting coda to this essay: "History indicts those who in time of trouble and transition choose the past over the future."

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http://www2.townonline.com/weymouth/opinion/view.bg?articleid=180048