“Dr. Dobson Answers Your Questions” and “What Homosexuals Need Most” by Bob Davies, Focus on the Family, March 1991.
Winning the New Civil War by Robert P. Dugan, Jr. (Multnomah, 1991, 226 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Oscar Wilde’s wisecrack that “there is no sin except stupidity” is not nearly wise enough. But it does echo wisdom of ancient Egyptian and Hebrew sages who saw no excuse in pretending ignorance of the oppression suffered by others: “If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?” (Prov 24:12) Stupidity is sin when it’s a willed and studied stupidity, a practiced obtuseness that is insensitive and unreceptive to the cries of the oppressed and the testimony of their honestly concerned neighbors. The sin of stupidity is especially detestable when its seeming piety hides a selfish desire to preserve political and economic advantage. A few have always been caring enough to risk everything to rescue the oppressed in times like the Nazi horror and eras of American slavery and segregation throughout the Bible Belt, when evils were excused by most “good, conservative Christians.” Many blithely “preach the Bible” and somehow miss the discomforting and even painfully repetitious fact that God is biased toward the helpless and acts in wrath on their behalf. Even at their most innocent, these moralists are the fools about whom the wise warned, “answer before listening” and “find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions” (Prov 18:13, 2). They don’t grasp the realities of their everyday lives because, as Simone Wiel saw, they’re amusing themselves with lies.
Psychologist James Dobson should know the professional literature better than to promise: “If parents will provide a healthy, stable home and not interfere with the child’s appropriate sex role, then homosexuality is highly unlikely to occur.” And he should know, as well, that his dichotomy of “hating the sin and loving the sinner” cannot apply when he insists on defining as sin any and all expression of a same-sex orientation that is every bit as intrinsic to the homosexual’s personal experience as is Dobson’s heterosexuality to his own. He should know better than to promise: “This condition can be treated successfully when the individual wants to be helped”. Here’s an empty “cloud and wind without the rain” (Prov 25:14) Has he really never heard of the utter failure of psychotherapy and the “ex-gay” movement to change sexual orientation? He should know better than to link up with the dishonorable history of appeal to “timeless standards” as over “man’s changing attitudes and social customs”. He should know better than to pose as a Bible scholar and so easily dismiss what he calls “the revisionist view of Scripture” when so much of what he takes for granted as Christian came by a “revisionist view of Scripture”.
Davies, too, should know better. He’s the “ex-gay” director of Exodus International, the “ex-gay” network founded by gay Christians who never changed and who now say they never saw anyone change at Exodus. Contrary to the best scientific data, Davies sides with Dobson on familial determinism. But he adds “that even when circumstances are less than ideal, family factors don’t cause homosexual behavior”. His stress on behavior is important to note. Since the fact of innate homosexual orientation does not square with the “ex-gay” viewpoint, it is said not to exist. What Davies cites as one mother’s effort to help other parents overcome shock and anger at a child’s homosexuality can be taken as this mother’s endorsement of “ex-gay” claims. It is not. Davies’ slippery use of terms is confused and confusing. For example, he writes of the “homosexual desires” and “homosexual activity” still experienced by the “former homosexual”.
National Association of Evangelicals executive Robert Dugan complains: “Pressure for gay rights never seems to let up”. Christians who are indebted to the graciousness of God should rather complain that pressure against gay rights never seems to let up. Never mind that God sends rain and sunshine on everyone regardless of “lifestyle”. Never mind that when we were sinners Christ died for us all. Some Christians insist on “higher standards” than God does – especially for others. Strangely, liberal Senator Mark O. Hatfield endorses Dugan’s handbook as an “inspiring … nuts-and-bolts political textbook”. Not surprisingly, the other endorsements come from Beverly LaHaye, D. James Kennedy, Chuck Colson and other stars of the Right. Senator Bill Armstrong supplies the Foreword.
The book is divided into three parts: “Seizing our Rights” (“our” means conservative Christians), “Strategizing for Change”, and “Steering the Course”. It’s standard Right-wing rhetoric with special attention to homosexual issues. “Homosexual Rights”, in Dugan’s opinion, “may provoke the bitterest and most prolonged battle of all. Homosexuals”, he says, “seem determined to make this decade ‘The Gay Nineties’ in a manner unthinkable a century ago. … They have managed to make AIDS a politically protected disease. … They have thrown some denominations into turmoil. … No conflict better illustrated the clash between cultural conservatives and cultural radicals. … In the civil war of the ‘90’s, government must uphold conservative cultural values if our society is to endure”. It’s ironic! Dugan writes Winning the New Civil War from the heart of the old Confederacy, dogmatically rationalizing an old order of majority rights against a minority people more despised in the name of God, Bible proof texts and conservative cultural values than ever the Old South despised the slaves.