c. 1998 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ One of the largest Christian ministries in North America has been rebuked by Canada’s broadcast ethics watchdog for airing allegedly questionable commentary about homosexuals.

The Focus on the Family show, which airs on hundreds of radio stations in Canada and more than 2,300 in the United States, has been found in breach of the human rights code of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.

CBSC, the Canadian radio and television industry’s self-regulating ethics body, recently issued a decision taking Focus on the Family to task for allegedly portraying the gay movement as “malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial.”

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson hosted the disputed 30-minute, syndicated program. Officials from both Focus on the Family and the CBSC agree the program could not be censured in the U.S., where notions of free speech are far less restrictive than they are in Canada.

The Canadian president of Focus on the Family, Darrel Reid, demanded Sunday (Sept. 13) that CBSC withdraw its rebuke.

CBSC, Reid said, is trying to squelch debate about homosexuals for”politically correct purposes.” Focus on the Family is a $100-million-a-year evangelical Christian ministry based in Colorado Springs, Colo. Its programs air 60,000 times a week in 58 countries and it is widely known as one of the most effective conservative Christian pressure groups in the United States.

In Canada, Focus on the Family’s headquarters is in downtown Vancouver, where it has a staff of more than 60 people.

Canadian Focus on the Family spokesman Jim Sclater maintained that every comment made about homosexuals on the show’s controversial radio program “was on pretty solid ground,” even though the CBSC found it discriminatory and abusive.

U.S. citizens, Sclater said, might find it difficult to understand why free speech, including the right to criticize homosexuals, is curtailed the way it is in Canada.

“I think Americans look up here and say, `Whoa! We don’t want that in the U.S.,”’ he said.

Ironically, on the U.S.-recorded program, titled”Homosexuality: Fact and Fiction,”Dobson makes a point of telling his listeners around the world that he fears some day it will become “illegal to speak in certain terms about homosexuals, as it is in Canada today.”

The rebuke of the Focus on the Family program by the broadcast ethics body followed a complaint from a listener who heard it last year on CKRD radio station in Red Deer, Alberta.

In the program, Dobson encourages a panel of evangelical Christian family specialists to debunk the “homosexual activist movement” and its reliance on what Dobson refers to as “false use of statistics,” particularly those pertaining to teen-age suicide.

In response to Dobson, Bob Knight, of the Family Research Council in Washington, ridiculed a study showing a high suicide rate among homosexual teen-agers, saying “like all gay science, it really has very flimsy foundations.” Knight also refers to homosexuals’ alleged attempt to get their “agenda” into schools as “the spirit of the anti-Christ.”

The Family Research Council is also a Dobson creation.

The CBSC ruling against the show said: “Religious programming does not have any inherent entitlement to say whatever it wants in the name of religion. While Focus on the Family is free to describe the homosexual lifestyle as sinful, the program has gone much further.”

Since membership in the CBSC is voluntary, it does not have the power to penalize the radio stations that air Focus on the Family programs or the show’s producers. The council’s sway comes from drawing attention to ethical transgressions by the 430 Canadian radio and TV stations that are members, and in refusing membership.

The chair of the CBSC, Ron Cohen, said in an interview from Ottawa that Dobson’s show included “homophobic” comments and “gross generalizations” about homosexuals.

“In Canada, we respect freedom of speech, but we don’t worship it the way they do in the U.S.,” Cohen said. Canada’s Charter of Rights, he said, makes it clear that “free speech is very important. But it’s a value that must be held in balance with other values, such as respect for another person’s human rights.”

IR END TODD