🚀 go-pugleaf

From: CENDO RICHARD <cendo@spot.Colorado.EDU>

[published in a full-page ad the July 21 issue of the Colorado Springs 
Gazette Telegraph] 


A response by the Reverend Dr. Mel White to a letter written to him by Dr.
James Dobson(Focus on the Family), published in a full page advertisement 
in the Sunday July 17th, Gazette Telegraph.


July 15, 1994
James Dobson
Focus on the Family
8605 Explorer Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80920

Dear Jim,

Thank you for your letter of July 14, 1994.  I am sorry for the inconvenience
and discomfort all this has caused you.  I have never questioned your
sincerity.  I'm sorry your have questioned mine. By now, you know that a
Ground Zero volunteer thought you had been one of my writing clients.
Immediately, when he discovered his error, Ground Zero explained and
retracted the release.  You must know as well that this fast for
understanding is not about self-aggrandizement nor selling books.  It is far
too dangerous and costly for that.  And I hope you know, too, that I want
nothing but the best for you and for your Focus on the Family ministry, but
in your anti-gay words and political actions, you are causing suffering for
my brothers and sisters and there is no way I can remain silent in the light
of that suffering.

I believe you are sincere in raising up "an army of committed soldiers" to
represent "righteousness and family integrity" in you "moral equivalent to
war."  But in that March 1993 prayer and fund-raising letter's call to wage
war, you use the words "homosexual," "homosexuality", "gay," or "lesbian" 22
times to illustrate your "alarming erosion of morality in the culture."

For years, we have monitored your anti-gay rhetoric.  In the 13-page case I
made against you, everyone of my examples is taken directly from you words or
the words from your broadcasts' guests, from Focus on the Family letters,
books, audio tapes, video tapes, or direct-mail fund-raising appeals. [Your
regular letters to Focus' friends and supporters may not be "hard sell 
fundraising," but when I sit here in the shadow of your tax-free, 
multi-million dollar headquarters in Colorado Springs with 1,300 
employees and a $97 million annual budget, we can be sure that your 
fundraising skills, if not "hard sell," are truly effective.]  I stand by 
my charge that the anti-gay rhetoric in your broadcasts and print/media 
materials lead directly to discrimination, suffering and death for gay 
and lesbian people.

"But I love homosexuals," you are probably thinking.  "And," you add quickly,
"I have never advocated violence against them."  Of course, but do you
actually believe that by saying you "love us," just before repeating your
litany of false changes against us, that you can declare yourself innocent of
the hatred and violence that your anti-gay rhetoric sets in motion?

And if you think you can ease the suffering that you help cause by directing
your false changes at some imaginary "militant homosexual activist," you are
wrong.  Your listeners hear your charges and think that all homosexuals have
"an agenda that threatens American family values," that we all "recruit and
molest children," that we all participate in "ugly and dehumanizing sexual
practices," that we all are "carriers of dread diseases," etc. etc. etc.

It isn't enough for you to caricature and condemn us falsely.  Now you and
your staff have joined with your powerful colleagues from the Christian
Coalition, American Family Association, Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for
America, Traditional Values Coalition and dozens of other national and local
radical right organizations, to put your anti-gay rhetoric into political
action.  I have the transcripts of the secret anti-gay meeting on May 15-17
at the Navigators' Glen Eyrie Center.  That gathering of at least 35
different anti-gay organizations had one primary political goal:  to
eliminate gay and lesbian rights in this country forever.

I have on tape your words of greeting to that political gathering by John
Eldredge, the first, key-note speaker.  "The gay agenda," he claimed quite
falsely, "has all the elements of that which is truly evil.  It is deceptive
at every turn...It deceives those who are drawn into it, who embrace it.  It
presents an extraordinary deceptive face to the public at large."

John was one of the three delegates to that conference from Focus on the
Family. (In fact, Focus had more delegates to this savagely anti-gay
gathering than came from the host organization, Colorado For Family Values.)
 Mr. Eldredge made his goals for gays and lesbians completely clear: "...to
roll back the militant gay agenda wherever it manifests itself...whether in
domestic partnership ordinances...school curriculum issues...pursuit of
minority status...marriage and adoption privileges, so on and so forth."

The goals of that elaborate, expensive, precinct by precinct, city by city,
state by state campaign would eliminate the rights of all gay and lesbian
Americans.  And your men from Focus on the Family helped put that patently
political plan into place.  I believe in your first amendment rights to say
what you believe.  But your non-profit status clearly prohibits this kind of
political action.  And your commitment to Jesus and to the Constitution of
this nation should prohibit your participation in any national strategy to
eliminate the rights of others, even the rights of those with whom you 
disagree.

Jim, can't you see what has happened to you and to my old friends and clients
on the religious right?  You have stopped talking about Jesus and you've
started a political campaign to superimpose your fundamentalist agenda over
the rights of every American who disagrees.  Your actions are unChristian and
unAmerican.  Worse, inadvertently, in your obsession to eliminate abortion
and homosexuality (for just two examples), you have become a primary voice
for intolerance in the land.

Your friend on the radical religious right will applaud you.  To them,
intolerance has become a positive word.  "I want you to just let a wave of
intolerance wash over you," say Randal Terry, your friend from Operation
Rescue.  "I want you to let a wave of hatred was over you.  Yes, hate is
good...Our goal is a Christian nation.  We have a biblical duty, we are
called by God, to conquer this country.  We don't want equal time.  We don't
want pluralism."  (The News-Sentinal, Fort Wayne Ind., August 16, 1993)

You didn't say those words, Jim.  You may not even believe them.  But how far
will you go to exert your view of Christian morality over this nation?  I am
truly frightened by the prospect of where this all might end.  I am a gay,
Christian man.  At the heard of your agenda is the desire to "eliminate
homosexuality" (the phrase your associate Larry Bertoff used yesterday on 
a TV debate with me.)  How else can you "eliminate homosexuality" if you 
don't eliminate homosexuals who refuse to submit to your primitive, 
ineffectual, an totally discredited "ex-gay" therapies?

Jim, you don't mean to be a voice of intolerance, but your anti-gay rhetoric
really does lead to death.  I spoke at a memorial service of a 23-year-old
gay Southern Baptist singer who was kidnapped, humiliated, and shot 29 times
because he as "a faggot and worthy of death."  Two weeks ago a man from my
home town was tied up, stabbed 10 times, and left to die with his throat and
genitals slashed.  In Los Angeles County, gay men are now the number one
victim of hate crimes.

What do you have to do with this brutal and murderous hate?  Is there a
one-to-one connection between what you say and someone's urge to kill?
Yesterday, just minutes after a radio talk show host in Colorado Springs
read your July 14 letter to me on the air, two different callers exclaimed,
"Somebody ought to go up there and kill him."

I know you get death threats, too.  But your death threats don't come because
you've talked with Jesus, or preached the gospel, or given wise counsel to
your listeners (as the Focus on the Family charter clearly implies).  Your
death threats come because of your covert (and sometimes overt) call for
intolerance against this imaginary "militant homosexual agenda."  My death
threats come because I call for tolerance and love and understanding for my
gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered brothers and sisters.  We disagree
about homosexuality, Jim.  It's OK to disagree.  That right is guaranteed to
us both.  But what can we do before your militant fundamentalist agenda leads
to terrible consequences for us and for this nation?

This is all I ask.  If there are homosexuals who do evil, remember there are
heterosexuals who do evil as well.  We don't talk about the "militant
heterosexual agenda" just because there are heterosexuals who produce
pornography, molest children, carry diseases, and participate in destructive
and dehumanizing sexual acts.  Don't blame millions of innocent gays and
lesbians for the evil done by a few.

Come to the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas.  Meet thousands of lesbian
and gay Christians whose live together in loving, long-term monogamous
relationships, who parent children with skill and understanding, who are
doctors, lawyers, university presidents, secretaries, nurses, pastors,
priests, and hairdressers, who serve their nation in all branches of the
military with honor, who are living with HIV/AIDS with courage and Christian
grace.  Ask your friends and employees who are gay, to come out of their
closets and tell you the suffering your rhetoric causes them.  Jim, whether
you agree with homosexuality or not, we lesbian and gay Christians exist.  In
the name of Jesus, we ask your to stop your anti-gay rhetoric.  Your words
and political actions are killing us.

Sincerely,

Mel White




This advertisement was paid for in part from founds freely donated to Ground
Zero by gays and lesbians (and their friends) at the Colorado Springs Gay and
Lesbian Pridefest on Sunday, July 17th, 1994.  These funds were specifically
contributed to pay for the publication of this letter.  Approximately $1,000
was paid for by Ground Zero out of other donated funds. 

The cost of this ad was over $3,000, seventy percent of one month's budget
for Ground Zero for any given month.  To continue education activities,
Ground Zero depends on donations from the community.  If you wish to help in
this continuing effort, please send your tax deductible contributions to
GROUND ZERO, P.O. Box 1982, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80901. 

__________________________________________________________________
Published in the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, Thursday, July 21, 1994.
Paid Advertisement by Ground Zero.