Dobson Gets Kick Out Of Focus On The Family

It seems that James Dobson is no longer going to be a part of Focus on the Family as they want to head in a less confrontational direction:

Now I know many are celebrating but I think, as an atheist activist, this is bad news. I love guys like Dobson and the Westboro Baptist Church because they behave so irrationally and are so over the top in their utter contempt of anything that doesn’t fit their ideologies that they’ve been a fundamental component in helping the decline of American evangelism as well as the rise and success of American atheism over the past few years.

And I guess it also probably helped the rise of vague, wishy-washy, Avatar-like, New Age religions as well because these guys are such douchebags that it turns people off and sends them running for some alternative that doesn’t involve having to become a suicide bomber.

But with Oral Roberts gone and Dobson canned, there’s no need to mourn the end of an era just yet. There’s a lot more fiery Dobsons out there to send people running from Christianity and organized religion in general:  Pat Robertson, Steven L. Anderson, Rick Warren, The Westboro Baptist Church, Bill Donohue, these tools here:

Yup, there’s plenty more Jesus fish in the see to fuel this new Enlightenment, or Glorious Dawn, for many years to come.

Why Focus on the Family needed to fire all those hundreds of employees

Hope it was worth it.

News From Around The Blogosphere 2.2.10

Where's the eye of newt?

1. Herbal remedies may cause cardiac problems – First, homeopathy takes a beating. Then the anti-vaccine movement. And now herbal remedies. The trifecta!  This is shaping up to be a great year for science-based medicine:

Herbal medications can affect the activity of prescription drugs, dampening or enhancing their effects, Jahangir said. For example, St. John’s wort, which is used for a number of conditions, including depression and sleep disturbances, has its major effect on the liver, which is involved in the metabolism of many drugs, especially those for heart disease, he said.

2. Pope Palpatine rips fights for the right to discriminate –

Pope Benedict XVI marked the announcement of his first papal visit to Britain with an unprecedented attack on the ­government’s equality legislation yesterday, claiming it threatened religious freedom and ran contrary to “natural law”.

. . .

The pope’s broadside appeared to be aimed squarely at recent legislation that prevents Catholic adoption agencies from discriminating against gay couples, and the proposed equality bill, which would make it harder for churches to exclude job applications from homosexuals or people who have changed their gender.

And The Guardian did such a great job with the photo that I’m not even going to bother grabbing the Palpatine-comparison pic I’d normally use for a story like this.

3. Apologies more effective when made in the right ear –

Scientists found that when we are angry, the right ear becomes more receptive to sound than the left.

The discovery has led to the theory that by targeting the right ear, the penitent are more likely to succeed in talking someone round.

. . .

Previous research has shown that if you want to persuade someone to do something, you should also speak in their right ear.

They make a cute couple

4. Lesbian albatrosses become proud parents – You can’t go wrong with that headline. Suck it, fundies!

It began with a love triangle between two female royal albatrosses and a wannabe male suitor. But girl power prevailed and the ladies dumped their man and set up a same-sex family together at the world’s only mainland albatross breeding colony in New Zealand.

5. Tell Focus on the Family about your loving gay spouse –

Focus on the Family is holding a Valentine’s Day Contest! All you have to is write a love letter to your spouse (under 300 words) explaining why you want to grow old with them.

As far as I can tell (and I read through the entire set of rules), gay couples are totally allowed to enter. Sure, they say right up front that “marriage between a man and a woman is a sacred commitment,” but at no point do they forbid gay couples from entering.

Focus on the employees

God continues to be punishing Focus on the Family, which is forced to lay off even more employees. This time they’re dropping  another 8% of their staff.

Their explanation is the recession:

“These are tough economic times,” Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger said. “The challenges have made us take a hard look at what we do structurally and strategically so we can accomplish our mission more efficiently.”

And somewhere, the world’s smallest violin is playing.

Maybe Focus on the Family should have focused more on the money?

Ive blogged about Focus on the Family’s financial troubles before. Well, since then, there has been no miracles for Focus on the Family, which now is suffering a “serious budget shortfall.”

Awwwww!

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving organization. This budget shortfall. . .

. . .has prompted the conservative Christian group to issue a special fundraising plea, and contributed to a decision to cede control of its contentious “Love Won Out” conferences about homosexuality to another religious organization, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Phew! For a second there, I thought we wouldn’t have enough conferences for hate groups. Maybe they can work out an arrangement wherein they can share conference space with the Ku Klux Klan and split up the day. In second thought, that could get confusing for attendees who might not be able to figure out which is which.

By the way, those “Love Won Out” conferences are all about transforming homosexuals into heterosexuals, a practice that proven time and time again to not actually work (See: Ted Haggard).

Focus on the Family, founded by child psychologist James Dobson, is on pace to fall $6 million short of a $138 million budget for the fiscal year that began last October, spokesman Gary Schneeberger said.

Once again, can I get a big AWWWWW!

That’s a shame.

Giant sperm and pants!

Okay, I’ve decided to combine 2 stories that have nothing to do with one another except that their both rather silly.

The first involves giant sperm:

Tiny mussel-like creatures living 100 million years ago made giant sperm longer than their own bodies, proving size has always mattered for some animals when it comes to sex, scientists said on Thursday.

Giant sperm are still around today. A human sperm, for example, would have to be 40 meters long to measure up against a fruit fly’s. The insect is only a few millimeters in size but can produce 6 cm-long (2.5 inch) coiled sperm.

You hear that? The giant sperm is still here. I can see the 50’s movie poster now: Attack of the Giant Sperm!

And by the way, for those keeping track, that’s 99,994,000 years before the existence of the whole universe, according to Young Earth Creationists.

Now the other story involves pants. The Christian group Focus on the Family has decided to join finally enter the 19th century and allow women to wear pants:

“Beginning today, men who work at Focus no longer have to wear mandatory business attire, including tie, and women employees don’t have to stick with just dresses or skirts and hosiery. Men can now come to work donning an open collar shirt – but no spandex – and women can arrive decked in dress pants and pantsuits.”

PANTS!!!

Sadly however, there’s still no love for spandex. Still though, this dress code change caused many a Christian to cheer at the arrival of their salvation:

After hearing the announcement about the dress code change at a Tuesday staff meeting, Focus employees erupted in applause, and some women gave President and CEO Jim Daly a standing ovation, Focus spokeswoman Lisa Anderson said.

“We can get rid of the hosiery,” Anderson joked. “Some women wanted to stage a bonfire right on the spot.”

Hurray for pants!!!

Dobson admits evangelicals have lost the culture war

In his farewell address to the staff of Focus on the Family, James Dobson conceded that the evangelicals have lost the culture war:

The battles that we fought in the Eighties now, we were victorious in many of those conflicts with the culture, trying to defend righteousness, trying to defend the unborn child, trying to preserve the dignity of the family and the definition of marriage. We fought all those battles and really it was a holding action. […]

[W]e made a lot of progress through the Eighties but then we turned into the Nineties and the internet came along and a new president came along and all of that went away and now we are absolutely awash in evil. And we are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles, but God is in control and we are not going to give up now, right?

God is in control, so I guess that means all those battles they’ve lost they were supposed to have lost! Amen.

He forgot to mention how they also lost when it comes to slavery, women’s rights, and the whole Earth revolving around the sun thing.

But since Dobson’s bowing out, I should say a little something to send him off with the respect he deserves.

So long douchebag!

Bible Reader Gets Busted Soliciting Kid For Sex

And here’s another piece from The Young Turks:

Yeah, that’s right. This douche worked for Focus on the Family.

Jesus, can you spare a dime?

In a story that makes me smile, Jesus’ favorite organization, Focus on the Family, is broke, having to lay off 202 employees–an estimated 20% of its workforce–after spending $500,000 to pass California’s notorious anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. So that’s 202 down, 950 more employees to go including Founder and President James Dobson. Boy, couldn’t have happened to anyone more deserving.

Season 4 plot of Heroes?

Okay, this blog has absolutely nothing to do with the once-popular and now declining television series, Heroes, but given that this story involves a fictional story about a warning from the future (about 4 years in the future) about world events going terribly wrong (the plot of every season of Heroes thus far–Ugh!), I figured it’d make a good title, especially since more obscure references to X-Men comics might have been lost on some people. But to invoke Heroes one more time, each season of the show has its own title. I think the first season was called Genesis or Origins or something like that. The second (and crappier) season was called “Generations.” And the current (and still pretty crappy) season is called “Villains.” Well, the Christians may have come up with the title for Season 4: “The Gay Agenda!”

In 1212, Hiro becomes gay Broadway sensation.

Apparently, according to a recent work of fiction from the Dobsonites, the world won’t end with a whimper but rather with dudes banging other dudes. You can read the whole thing here. Oddly, like Heroes, the future warning comes from about 4 years in the future. After 4 years of an Obama presidency, the whole nation’s gone wild for the gays. Apparently not much else has happened in 4 years. . .just gay stuff. It’s kinda weird given that Obama’s position on gay rights is pretty much the same as the McCain/Palin ticket.

But let’s not let little details like reality get in the way of a shitty and non-veiled piece of nonsensical bigotry. Nothing in this story makes any sense as events have no logical causes. It’s not surprising that these guys throw out the notion that things gradually change over time step by step and figure that the prime mover, Obama being elected magically makes everything gay and FABULOUS! This will probably prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Christian fundamentalists should stick with genres they can excel at like fairy tales, Where’s Waldo, and coloring books. These guys never color outside the lines. Honestly, do these guys even know what Science Fiction even means? They should stick this story in the same place every Christian book should be, in the Christian Fiction section. And it speaks volumes that they felt it necessary to spell out in a very lengthy fashion the disclaimer that this isn’t an actual prediction of future events but speculation. . . you know, in case this audience got confused.

Remarkably, they somehow manage to accuse the future President Obama of being a freedom-squashing, fascist dictator while simultaneously arguing in favor of freedom-squashing fascism. That’s quite impressive and even partially makes up for the most implausible part of the story: how are they going to mail the letter without a flux capacitor and 1.21gigawatts of electricity?

Though to be fair, this might still have been better than Season 2 of Heroes.