Elizabeth Esther

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"True Tolerance:" how Focus on the Family is missing the point

Focus on the Family is missing the point. Here's why:

  1. If the TRUE "heart-cry" of Focus on the Family is protecting the most vulnerable of our society, then marginalizing a minority group is pretty much the exact opposite of that.
  2. Putting the word "true" in front of the word tolerance sounds pretty disingenuous.
  3. If you're tolerant, it's self-evident.
  4. Only intolerant people go around telling everyone they're truly tolerant.
  5. Christians who mess around with semantics like this are engaging in straight-up intellectual dishonesty.
  6. If Focus on the Family truly wants to protect innocent children, they should start by being intellectually honest.
  7. How about a Focus on the Family project called "True Honesty"?
  8. The first lesson in this project would be how saying hurtful, dishonest things about gays and lesbians in a nice, "reasonable" way is still hurtful and dishonest.
  9. Worse, it's insidious.
  10. What are "homosexual lessons" anyway?
  11. Which is scarier? So-called "homosexual lessons" hiding under the "cover" of anti-bullying programs or True Homophobia hiding under the cover of True Tolerance?
  12. When Christian media outlets like Focus on the Family use fear-based rhetoric to scare Christians parents (ie. BEWARE! Gay activists are out to get your children!!!! AUUUUUGGGH!) they produce fear based reactions like...
  13. Christian parents sending letters written by lawyers to schools.
  14. Because threatening legal action is a super awesome way to promote the True Gospel, amen?
  15. Before Christians accuse gay activists of "politicizing" sexuality in the classroom, maybe we ought to examine the ways we politicized sexuality in our society by creating constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
  16. Maybe instead of condemning anti-bullying measures at public schools, Christians ought to examine the ways we've used our bully pulpits to condemn gays and lesbians inside our own congregations and families.