COMMENTARY: Dobson Need Not Fear Diversity

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) I learned an important lesson in the Air Force: If a primary target is too difficult, move to a secondary one offering greater possibility of success. I don’t know whether James Dobson, the president of the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family, also served in the USAF, but […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I learned an important lesson in the Air Force: If a primary target is too difficult, move to a secondary one offering greater possibility of success. I don’t know whether James Dobson, the president of the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family, also served in the USAF, but he obviously knows this lesson.

As a religious right leader, Dobson believes he was a major factor in President Bush’s re-election, and since Nov. 2, Dobson has been rhetorically attacking several political targets, all difficult to damage or destroy.


Days after the election, Dobson slammed Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who was in line to become chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On a TV program, Dobson called Specter “a big-time problem.”

Dobson said Specter’s attempt to serve as committee chair “must be derailed” because Specter warned that any future Supreme Court nominee seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade probably would not gain Senate approval. Despite Dobson’s attack, Specter was not “derailed,” though he did back away from his earlier warning. Specter today heads the Judiciary Committee.

Undeterred, Dobson next threatened six Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2006. Dobson sent letters to 1 million supporters urging them to vote against the six if they attempt to block the appointment of conservative judges to the Supreme Court and the federal bench.

Still in an attack mode, Dobson and several other religious right leaders are alarmed that the president seems to be abandoning hope for the passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. Dobson and company asserted they might not support Bush’s push for Social Security privatization unless the president fully commits himself to the amendment.

Dobson then shifted his targets. Dobson’s newest adversary is not a recalcitrant president, a moderate Republican or Democratic senators.

Speaking at a gala pre-inaugural dinner Jan. 18, Dobson criticized a new children’s video that features the TV character SpongeBob SquarePants and 100 other popular children’s characters. The video, which calls for “tolerance” and an acceptance of “diversity,” is the creation of Neil Rodgers, who more than 30 years ago composed the hit song “We Are Family.”

That’s the same title he has given to a video that is being sent to 61,000 schools for use. It will also be broadcast on several cable channels in March.


Students are asked to pledge “respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own.”

Dobson jumped on the pledge’s call for “respect” and his organization labeled “We Are Family” a “pro-homosexual video” even though it does not specifically mention homosexuality. Rodgers quickly responded to Dobson’s attack: “Cooperation and unity are the most important values we can teach children. We believe that this is the essential first step to loving thy neighbor.”

Because SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple at the bottom of the sea, is featured on the video, many of Dobson’s critics mistakenly focused on the squishy, soft and yellow TV character.

But the religious right’s real target is the video’s call for schoolchildren to pledge themselves to “tolerance” and “diversity.” Dobson believes Rodgers is attempting to “brainwash” children.

“L’affaire SpongeBob” is another skirmish in the religious right’s battle with America’s entertainment industry. Dobson and others perceive “We Are Family” as part of a campaign to indoctrinate youngsters with a “coded language that is regularly used by the homosexual community.” At the heart of his attack is the video’s appeal for “tolerance” and “diversity.”

I wish Rodgers had chosen a better word than “tolerance.” Years ago, the National Conference of Christians and Jews sponsored an annual Brotherhood (sorry, sisters, that’s what it was called) Week in February, which promoted “tolerance” for all peoples.


But the NCCJ recognized that the well-intentioned term “tolerance” did not convey acceptance, but smacked of condescension, and the word was scrapped. I prefer “mutual understanding and respect,” words used at the Second Vatican Council to affirm the Catholic Church’s commitment to positive relations with Jews.

Once people called America a “diverse melting pot,” where everyone would end up sharing the same values. But today “diversity” describes an America that is increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, multiracial; where differences are not simply tolerated, but are often celebrated.

Some people are frightened of “diversity,” and that is understandable. However, the test of spiritual religious leaders, including those from the religious right, is not to decry our nation’s diversity. Rather, it is to work with all Americans to build mutual understanding and respect.

MO/PH RNS END

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s Senior Interreligious Adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

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