James Dobson

A week after President Obama won re-election, James Dobson on Family Talk said that his wife Shirley and her colleague John Bornschein used the National Day of Prayer Task Force to actively pray for Obama’s defeat.

The National Day of Prayer Task Force never did a good job pretending to be nonpartisan, but Dobson’s admission made its far-right bias all too clear.

Of course, with the ‘National Day of Prayer’ scheduled for May 2, we now get to hear Shirley Dobson, who leads the task force, complain during an interview with Janet Parshall yesterday that Obama is not attending.

That’s right, she is angry that Obama isn’t attending a function that her own husband said prayed against his re-election.

She also told Parshall that the Obama administration is leading an “attack” on religious freedom and does not give Christians a seat at the table in the White House.

You know Janet our religious liberties have been under such attack that I think Christians have — I don’t want to use the term ‘have had it’ — but I think their eyes are being opened and they realize that we have to come against this and we have to come out in corporate prayer and different prayer meetings. More than ever I think they want to assemble this year just to make a stand that our country was based on religious freedom and we are not going to give it up easily.

…

We do have different congressmen, Congressman [Randy] Forbes has been a great ally and Congressman [Robert] Aderholt, they participate themselves and we never have a problem at that observance. This year our honorary chairperson is going to be Greg Laurie and he’s going to be giving the main message, Chaplain Barry Black who is the chaplain of the Senate is going to be participating and Chaplain Wannick from the Pentagon is coming over to participate and of course congressman [Frank] Wolf will stand in for the legislature.

We have somebody for every branch but Janet unfortunately we’ve never had anybody come over from the executive branch. Every year we call the White House, we ask how the President wants to celebrate the National Day of Prayer and we appreciate that he does give a proclamation every year and they’ve been good with proclamations proclaiming a day of prayer in our nation, but the answer comes back ‘well the President has decided to pray silently or pray alone’ or there’s always some excuse. So we’ll say, ‘can somebody from his Cabinet come over and represent the executive branch so we can pray for them and pray for the President,’ and they’ve never sent anybody from the executive branch. We pray for them; we have somebody there that stands in the gab. But it really is so sad that they have all these other special interest groups in the White House but the Christians are not represented.

• Fox News reports that "at least a dozen members of Congress have signed a letter demanding the Secretary of the Army rescind and apologize for a briefing that labeled Evangelical Christians and Catholics as religious extremist groups."
• Jim Graves, who barely lost to Rep. Michele Bachmann last time around, will be launching another campaign to face her again in 2014.
• Ken Hutcherson says "progressives on the left side of the debate have an agenda, and it's the same one Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin had."
• James Dobson grieves "over what Obama and the majority of Congressmen have done to the American family" and says " our government is secretly at war with the traditional family."
• Ben Carson has withdrawn as the commencement speaker at the John Hopkins School of Medicine graduation ceremony.
• Finally, apparently being gay is itself a sign that a person had an unhealthy relationship with their parents, which only proves that letting gay couples be parents is a really bad idea: "If two opposite sex parents are necessary to the raising of healthy children, how ironic, then, is the position held by proponents of same sex marriage that they can do the same when in fact they themselves are living out the negative consequences of not having had healthy relationships with two biological parents. They now wish to impose the very same deficits on the next generation of children, and then to declare this arrangement 'healthy.'"

Today, James Dobson’s Family Talk radio program aired a sermon that pastor Jim Garlow delivered at a recent Religious Right conference in which he said that President Obama should have publicly repented during his State of the Union address. Garlow, who during the address tweeted that Obama will “destroy” America and has an “obsession with homosexuality,” said that the president should have repented over his views on legal abortion, marriage equality and the national debt.

We gathered and we huddled around TV sets on Tuesday night to hear the State of the Union address and we never heard the speech that should’ve been given. The speech should’ve begun with the words: ‘My fellow Americans, the State of the Union is tragic, it is very bad, we are in deep trouble. I as your President, who profess to be a born again Christian, come before you in repentance this day. Knowing that the scripture teaches that a baby in the womb should be safe and not ripped to shreds; knowing that marriage is the number one institution that preserves a nation; knowing that the current debt is stealing, theft from our future generations; therefore I as your President repent of sin and I ask us to work together to do what is right and try to preserve this wonderful experience called America.’ That’s the speech we should’ve had, but we did not have it.

Last week, James Dobson stopped by Glenn Beck's television program last week to discuss his new novel "Fatherless," a "faith-based, dystopian thriller" set in the year 2042.

Dobson warned Beck that there is something deeply wrong with a society in which more and more couples are deciding not to have children, which prompted Beck to want to know how we can change the "hardness of people's hearts" that is at the root of this problem.  After Dobson asserted, predictably, that a lack of Christian faith is the ultimate cause, Beck agreed and predicated that, just as Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" played an important role during the Civil War, Dobson's "Fatherless" would play a similar role today because it will "wake people up":

For decades, the Right has attempted to discredit Hillary Clinton with attacks ranging from the disturbing (killing people) to the bizarre (killing cats). But after serving four years as Secretary of State, Clinton is leaving office with sky-high approval ratings. Before she steps down on Friday, we decided to look back on some of the most extreme and befuddling accusations she has faced from the far-right during her term as the nation’s top diplomat.

1. Clinton Engineered Benghazi Cover-Up

While the official report on the U.S. mission in Benghazi found multiple security and management breakdowns that Clinton had already taken responsibility for, many on the right claimed that she actually was behind a massive cover-up. Several Republican politicians and conservative commentators said that the Obama administration withheld military assistance while watching a live feed of the attack. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board report debunked the right-wing conspiracy theories, but that didn’t stop Fox News and conservative talk show hosts from reporting them as fact and arguing that the administration used the attack in Benghazi to pass blasphemy laws protecting Islam.

As the Right’s claims about Benghazi continued to unravel, they shifted to baselessly asserting that the administration manufactured the Petraeus affair in order to preserve the alleged cover-up and that Clinton faked a concussion and blood clot to get out of testifying about the incident. When she did testify, she faced redundant and ill-informed questions from Republicans like Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who skipped a classified briefing on the incident, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who admitted he had no proof to back up his claim that the Benghazi mission was used to send arms to Syrian rebels.

2. Clinton Supports the Muslim Brotherhood

Latching onto rumors that emerged on the far-right fringe, Rep. Michele Bachmann sought to spark a McCarthyite investigation that accused Clinton’s deputy chief of staff of acting as a Muslim Brotherhood spy. Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” and along with a handful of Republican colleagues, made allegations that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was working on behalf of the group.

Of course, Bachmann couldn’t substantiate her claims and literally ran away from a reporter when asked about them. Even Republican leaders criticized Bachmann for starting the witch hunt. But her unfounded claims took off in the conservative media, which was more than happy to paint Clinton and Obama as secret Islamist sympathizers, and eventually caused trouble overseas .

3. Clinton Loves Sharia

Anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists claim that her supposed Muslim Brotherhood sympathies have turned her into a covert advocate of Sharia law. Bachmann said that Clinton was working “to take away the free speech rights of the American people” and “our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press” in order to “empower the Islamists.”

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy claimed that Clinton had accepted “submission to the stealthy Islamist effort to enforce in this country the supremacist doctrine known as shariah” and the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin said the administration had shown “support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.” Rick Joyner, the televangelist who has worked closely with Gaffney and Boykin, was left wondering why Clinton was “advocating” Sharia:

4. LGBT Rights Advocacy Will Destroy America

While the Right’s Benghazi, Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law claims didn’t hold water, they at least got one thing right: Clinton acted as a champion for LGBT equality while leading the State Department. The Religious Right fumed at her work on behalf of gay rights and exploded in anger following a speech in Geneva in which she defended the rights of LGBT people and called for the decriminalization of LGBT status.

Liberty University’s Mat Staver warned that Clinton was backing a “radical sexual anarchist agenda” while Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said that Clinton’s support of “sexual paganization” would bring about God’s judgment on America. Pat Robertson reacted to Clinton’s speech by warning that God may destroy the U.S.

5. Clinton Opposes Religious Freedom

All of the conspiracy theories and accusations seem to come together in an attempt to smear Clinton as an enemy of religious freedom. Conservatives argued that she was using both gay rights and Sharia law to undercut Christianity and religious freedoms. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins maintained that Clinton was trying to subvert the freedom of religion by using the term “freedom of worship,” even though the Obama administration frequently uses the phrase “freedom of religion” and President Bush talked about the “freedom of worship” without receiving a similar outcry from social conservatives.

At the Values Voters Summit, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem even warned that Clinton was planning to “shut down” churches and synagogues this month. Since Clinton serves just one more day at the job, she better speed up with her diabolical plans!

• Oh good, James Dobson's "relentlessly-paced, faith-based, dystopian thriller" is now available for sale.
• Who wants to watch Scott Stapp of Creed on "Life Today" with James Robison?  Anyone?
• The Evangelical Immigration Table has launched a 40 day prayer effort in support of immigration reform.
• We can now add Rep. John Flemming (R-LA) to the list of Republican members of Congress who have no qualms about appearing on Bryan Fischer's radio program.
• Speaking of Fischer, he has penned a long "Open Letter to Louis Giglio" calling on his to stand by his anti-gay sermon while Peter Sprigg says that what is happening regarding Giglio is "downright Orwellian."
• On the same topic, Janice Shaw Crouse claims that "the Obama administration has thrown down a gauntlet, declaring that anyone who espouses historic, biblical Christian teaching will be prohibited from participation in events in the public square."
• Finally, there is honestly no way to coherently summarize this clip of Glenn Beck in which he wildly speculates about how Obamacare will destroy the Second Amendment and force people to euthanize their parents while turning doctors into tools of the Nazi state:

James Dobson in his January newsletter for his Family Talk radio program reflected on President Obama’s re-election and the Democrats’ gains in Congress by lamenting that “moral and spiritual issues” took “a beating on November 6th.” “Nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat,” Dobson said, arguing that the Democratic Party’s platform “represents a kind of spiritual warfare that has not been seen before in American politics.”

The Focus on the Family founder went on to state that “Barack Obama is the worst president in American history” and claimed Obama holds “dictatorial powers.” He also called judges “the most dangerous” threat to America and warned that “the family and the nation will never be the same” if gay marriage becomes legal across the country.

In his post-election Family Talk broadcast, Dobson said that Obama’s re-election was God rejecting the prayers of his wife’s National Day of Prayer Task Force and will bring about divine judgment on America.

Now let me share my heart with you. I'm sure many of you are discouraged in the aftermath of the National Elections, especially in view of the moral and spiritual issues that took such a beating on November 6th. Nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat. Consider, for example, these four shocking components of the Democrats' 2012 platform.

They are:

1. Abortion should be legalized through nine months of pregnancy.

Imagine full-term, healthy babies across the nation being poisoned or dismembered a few days before normal delivery. What a tragedy!

2. Same-sex marriages should be permitted by law in every state in the nation.

In May, Barack Obama was pictured on the cover of Newsweek with the caption, "The First Gay President." His policies for the family were affirmed by liberal voters on November 6th. The Supreme Court recently agreed to consider the same-sex marriage issue. If they rule that it is the law, they will open the door to a redefinition of marriage in every state in the land. The family and the nation will never be the same. Nevertheless, neither Democrat nor Republican Congressmen have uttered a word of concern about it. They are deaf and mute while the very future of this great country hangs in the balance. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed by an overwhelming vote a few years ago, but it will be overridden if the Supreme Court issues an adverse ruling. But, who in Congress cares?

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The brazenness of these policies represents a kind of spiritual warfare that has not been seen before in American politics. The Republicans' Platform, by contrast, was one of the finest conservative documents of this era. It was strongly pro-life, pro-marriage, and contained other components that conservatives cheered. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, chaired the writing committee and he is to be commended for his work.

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Likewise, very little was said by the GOP during the campaign or the debates about terrorism or the makeup of the Supreme Court. The imperious judiciary is arguably the most dangerous issue facing America because it imposes itself on almost every dimension of culture. Nevertheless, it was hardly mentioned by those seeking office. Silence also prevailed in response to the radical U.N. treaties that Democrats are about to raise in the U.S. Senate. If ratified, they will change this nation forever. I will say it again: both parties ignored these and dozens of other critical issues throughout the campaign.

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Well, the election is over and we have a president who often ignores the Constitution and imposes dictatorial powers on the American people. Some people believe, and I am one of them, that Barack Obama is the worst president in American history. Pundits are scrambling to explain what happened and offering advice for the future. Karl Rove and others are telling the nation that conservatives need to abandon their long held moral beliefs, such as opposition to abortion, and become more like liberals. They have said, "We will never win another election unless our party develops a bigger tent." Being interpreted, that means political parties should stay away from the moral and social issues. Those controversial topics, they say, just drive voters away because at the end of the day, "It's the economy, stupid." There we go again!

James Dobson dedicated his radio program this morning to discussing Friday's tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut, which he attributed to the fact that God has "allowed judgment to fall upon us" because the nation has turned its back on him by accepting things like abortion and gay marriage:

Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I'm not talking politically, I'm not talking about the result of the November sixth election;  I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he's irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition.  Believe me, that is going to have consequences too. 

And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.  I think that's what's going on.

• Oh good, James Dobson is now publishing a fiction trilogy "in the dystopian tradition of 1984, Brave New World and The Hunger Games."
• Dick Armey received an $8 million buyout after resigning from FreedomWorks. I'll resign for half that! 
• Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff were seen having lunch together.  Maybe Abramoff was giving DeLay some pointers on how to handle prison?
• Fox News has benched Karl Rove and Dick Morris for being spectacularly bad at their jobs, which must be some sort of first. 
• Gary Bauer warns that the "war on Christmas" is a sign of "cultural rot [that] is really quite dangerous. A civilization that is afraid to defend its values will not survive."
• Sen. Marco Rubio is still "not a scientist, man" but he now has an opinion on the age of the Earth: "Science says it is about 4.5 billion years old. My faith teaches that's not inconsistent. God created the heavens and the Earth, and science has given us insight into when he did it and how he did it. The more science learns, the more I am convinced that God is real."