| Michelle Bright
Michelle Bright
Monday, March 12, 2007
Final Paper
Intro to Journalism
Today Dotti Berry and Robynne Sapp return to Colorado Springs to appear in court on suspicion of trespassing charges. On February 19th the two women were arrested and removed from the Focus on the Family campus after initiating an act of non-violent civil disobedience, a ‘sit-in.’ As representative members of Soulforce, a non-profit organization based in Lynchburg, Virginia, Berry and Sapp went to Focus on the Family in response to founder and leader Dr. James Dobson’s recent guest article in TIME Magazine.
“We went in on behalf of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community to non-violently confront Dr. Dobson about his harmful rhetoric,” Berry says. Dobson’s article, titled “Two Mommies is One Too Many,” appeared in TIME in December of 2006. The article was written as a social conservative’s response to the announcement that Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s pregnant daughter, intends to raise her unborn child with lesbian partner, Heather Poe.
In the article Dobson asserts, “more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father.” Dobson writes “love alone is not enough to guarantee healthy growth and development” and adds that “gender matters – perhaps nowhere more than in regard to child rearing.” Dobson moves on to quote the research of Dr. Kyle Pruett and psychologist Carol Gilligan to support his viewpoint that “we (society) should not enter into yet another untested and far-reaching social experiment, this one driven by the desires of same-sex couples to bear and raise children.” Dobson also states “Traditional marriage is God’s design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth.”
In recent interviews both Pruett, a professor of psychiatry at Yale Medicine, and Gilligan, a professor at New York University, have addressed Dobson’s use of their research in this guest article. Pruett states Dobson “overreached considerably in the conclusions he reached.” Pruett adds, “He (Dobson) neglected the part of the book that deals directly with the fate of children of the families that grow up in gay and lesbian relationships. There is no science that says those children are at risk.”
Gilligan took similar issue with Dobson’s use of her research. In her interview, Gilligan asked Dobson to apologize for twisting her words and for taking her research out of context to support what she calls “discriminatory goals.”
“My work in no way suggests same gender families are harmful to children or can’t raise these children to be as healthy and well-adjusted as those brought up in traditional families,” says Gilligan.
Although Focus on the Family officials did not respond to numerous requests for comment, Dobson responded to the research misuse allegations in the op-ed pages of a recent Rocky Mountain News publication. Dobson, who holds a Ph.D. in child development, says the accusations are “a bum rap.” Dobson states the point he made in his TIME commentary was precisely that “the benefits of a child being raised by a married mother and a father have been established in the professional literature for decades.” He continues, “It (the benefit…) was not even questioned until the gay rights movement succeeded in making that understanding politically incorrect.”
Dobson does not respond, however, to the fact that he apparently overlooked or neglects to acknowledge certain aspects of the research: in Pruett’s research, the portion that suggests same sex couples are no less capable and are not harmful, and in Gilligan’s research, the fact that same sex couples were not included as an aspect of the research (the research only explored married couples versus single parents).
Neither Focus on the Family, nor the researchers, nor Soulforce, nor Berry or Sapp deny that two married parents tend to make for more successful families than single parents. The issue at stake is, however, that a majority of research does not include or comment on same sex couples. Dobson still uses this research to support his viewpoint that “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples” and that this should be reflected in the nation’s public policy as “what is best for society at large.”
Sapp and Berry cite specific research with findings directly to the contrary of Dobson’s claims. According to the American Psychological Association, “no credible evidence shows that children raised by lesbian or gay parents differ in any important respects from those raised by heterosexual parents.” Sapp and Berry add that Dobson’s claims “rely on ‘studies that simply do not address gay and lesbian parents and their children.’”
To further their argument, Sapp and Berry cite research of Seattle psychologists Drs. John and Julie Gottman. The Gottman method is often quoted on Dr. Les and Leslie Parrot’s Focus on the Family radio show. Sapp and Berry assert that what is left out of the radio show, however, is the Gottmans’ years of study of lesbian and gay couples. Sapp states Dr. John Gottman’s research “has come to the conclusion that we are not only comparable in relationship with heterosexual couples, but we are far better in some areas.”
For Berry, who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in health and fitness, and Sapp, a medical/clinical researcher, this is the dialogue they arrived at Focus on the Family to initiate. “We are asking that Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family take a first step toward reconciliation with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities by ceasing their misrepresentation of social science research about LGBT families.” The women add that part of their civil disobedience was meant to confront Dobson with the facts, specifically “that our families are not sick, sinful, unfit to raise children, and unworthy of equal protections under the law.”
Berry and Sapp have not yet succeeded in beginning a dialogue with Dobson. When Focus on the Family media representatives told the women on February 19th that Dobson would not see them, they initiated their act of civil disobedience, and responded by refusing to leave the campus until Dobson would speak with them. According to Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger “They were very respectful, very quiet.”
Berry and Sapp say the sit-in was the next step in their continued effort at a dialogue. “By refusing to respond in any meaningful or constructive way to over a decade of requests for dialogue, Dr. Dobson has given us no choice but to engage with him in an ongoing conversation using relentless, nonviolent direct action.”
Berry and Sapp cite the words of Dr. Martin Luther King as reinforcement of their act of civil disobedience. King wrote in a letter from jail, “The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
Soulforce, whose stated purpose is “freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance,” coordinates the “Focus on the Facts” campaign. According to their website, soulforce.org, “Members and allies of Soulforce have confronted Focus on the Family’s anti-gay rhetoric and publicized its harmful impact” for decades.
In the past few years both Soulforce and Berry and Sapp (both during and apart from their time at Soulforce coordinated events) have attempted to communicate with Dobson and to get to know the people of Focus on the Family. Berry and Sapp have had successful interaction with people at Focus on the Family, but not from Dobson directly. According to their website, Soulforce has yet to receive response to its multiple letters and phone calls to Dobson, contact attempts which have been made over a period of years.
In the early nineties Soulforce attempted to persuade Dobson into a dialogue when members Mel White and Nori Rost fasted in front of Focus on the Family for an entire week. Focus on the Family even closed in May of 2005, apparently to disallow entrance of Soulforce members and other LGBT supporters holding a rally in front of the Focus on the Family campus.
Berry and Sapp deliberately planned their first act of civil disobedience to include just the two of them. “We have spent the past two years talking with and developing relationships with people inside Focus on the Family…We are liked and respected by the ones we know inside, and we felt that we could make an impact in a loving, non-violent, yet relentless way, without creating a sense of fear.”
The women, who both grew up in Christian homes, say it is also important that they were not coming in as “outsiders.” Sapp grew up listening to Focus on the Family and the teachings of Dobson. Sapp says that as an adult she was unable to reconcile her spirituality with her sexuality and that “Dr. Dobson’s anti-gay rhetoric took me to a place of contemplating suicide in 2001.”
Berry and Sapp stress that they are not on a campaign to change minds, just engage them. Even with regard to Dobson, they say Dobson is entitled to his own opinion, “a man of [Dobson’s] stature and influence spreading blatantly erroneous information that harms the very families [he] professes to value is unconscionable.” Sapp adds, “We are not trying to tell Dr. Dobson that he needs to change his opinion. If he truly believes that marriage is between one man and one woman, that's his right to believe such. When his beliefs and opinions are passed off to other people as "the truth" and infringe upon our civil rights and protections, and he blatantly lies about who we are, we will not sit idly by and allow this to continue.”
Dobson’s influence is far-reaching to say the least. In his op-ed response Dobson says his “work in the past 30 years has focused specifically on child care, marriage, and the family.” He goes on to say that he has “sold 15 million books dealing with those subjects, and [is] heard on radio and television by 200 million people in 150 countries every week.”
Additionally, Focus on the Family’s website, family.org, is an available tool for Focus on the Family’s teachings. The site tackles many of today’s religious, social, and political issues. Their Citizen Link section, a portion of the website that devotes itself to focusing on social issues, lists “Homosexuality and Gender” as one such issue.
The website states “widespread acceptance of homosexuality and changing views on gender identity have brought about a sea-change in societal mores and values” and continues later to say that society is losing grasp of “what it truly means to embrace God’s created intent for human sexuality and gender.” The page then lists articles that take on this “current cultural fascination with – and crisis over – sexual and gender identity.”
The articles include responses to and arguments against pro-gay theology, pro-gay social arguments, discussions of current politics on gay marriage, “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality,” and “Why does same-sex ‘marriage’ destroy traditional marriage?” among others.
Focus on the Family and Dobson’s influence is a major component of why Berry and Sapp target Dobson as a key component in their fight against anti-gay rhetoric. “We are all being affected by Dr. Dobson’s anti-gay rhetoric and blatant lies,” Sapp states. “Anti-gay rhetoric promotes an atmosphere and an attitude of hate, fear, intolerance, prejudice, bigotry, and injustice.”
Sapp says of her personal experience, “Dr. Dobson’s teachings drove me to hate myself and think of myself as a filthy sinner, unworthy of God’s love, and acceptance, which in essence, was what prompted me to consider suicide.” Sapp and Berry say it is important for people to understand that Dobson’s anti-gay rhetoric also affects the families of LGBT people. “Dr. Dobson’s anti-gay rhetoric has also harmed our very families, who cannot bring themselves to celebrate who we are, or our relationship.”
Although the debate is far from over, both sides are impassioned and determined. As of yet, a dialogue between Focus on the Family and groups such as Soulforce does not seem to be on the horizon for any time in the near future. Sapp and Berry, who attend court in Colorado Springs on Wednesday, March 13th, are not discouraged. The women look to civil rights activists like Dr. King, Gandhi, and Rosa Parks for encouragement and say they “will not give up hope on Dr. Dobson, and we will continue to visualize him in his wholeness, living, speaking and teaching in a manner that strengthens LGBT couples and families versus harming them.” Dobson will presumably continue to either ignore or respond through other sources to what he calls a “barrage of criticism and insults from homosexual activists.”
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