Tag: Focus On The Family

Focus on the Family Action takes to the airwaves this week with a radio ad opposing SB 88 -- a bill that would add health benefits for same-sex domestic partners of state employees -- because it's just too darned expensive during a "global economic crisis," Right Wing Watch reports. "Coloradans can’t afford this social experiment," argues the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based conservative religious group.

Citing a Christianity Today.com story that we picked up on last week, liberal MSNBC talk show host Keith Olbermann jabs Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger for suggesting that the ‘Religious Right’ seeks a kinder, gentler moniker in order to end the pejorative use of the term to imply political extremism. Except, religious conservatives coined the term for themselves. Do over!

Evangelical religious leaders are bellyaching that their own self-anointed "moral majority" vocabulary is working against them, according to a story in Christianity Today. So they're on a new mission to erase the hard-edge, politically intolerant-sounding catchphrases from the lexicon of journalists.

TCI’s Ernest Luning was a guest on the Jay Marvin Show on AM760 Thursday to explore the $1.25 million contribution to the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 by Focus on the Family and its allies. Listen to the segment where Jay and Ernest debate the merits of the donations while the ministry was laying off staff and a new emerging evangelical movement away from controversial social issues.

Following Focus on the Family's ballot box success on the anti-gay marriage measure Proposition 8 in California, the multi-million dollar Christian publishing empire set it sights a bit closer to home — in Wyoming. But the famously fickle Equality State legislature rejected the "defense of marriage" measure floated by several Mormon lawmakers and backed by the newly-formed WyWatch Family Institute which is reportedly closely aligned with Focus and its affiliate the Colorado Family Institute.

One of the more fascinating elements of today's investigative report on the $1.25 million contributed by Focus on the Family and its allies is how internal campaign-style "bundling" quietly propelled the Christian media organization into the Prop 8 troika with the initiative's more public proponents, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Knights of Columbus.

Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family gave $727,250 in cash and services to the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 campaign in California, according to records released by the California secretary of state, including a $100,000 check in late October, just days before the evangelical media empire announced it planned to lay off nearly 20 percent of its employees. While there has been public scrutiny of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its attempts to influence the campaign to reverse a California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, Focus on the Family and related donors pumped more than six times as much as the Mormon church did into the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, records show.

The usual suspects are sending out alerts urging support or opposition to a state bill headed to its first hearing Wednesday afternoon that would allow state employees to add same-sex domestic partners to their benefits packages. The Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee sits down at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday to hear arguments for and against Senate Bill 88, sponsored by state Sen. Jennifer Veiga and state Rep. Mark Ferrandino, the General Assembly's two openly gay members.

National Association of Evangelicals is in the market for a new top lobbyist, according to The Christian Post. The job description includes a very unusual qualification for a lobbying gig … sincerity:

Being a serial plagiarist may no longer be the professional equivalent of a hair shirt. Look at Vice President Joe Biden. Good thing for ex-Bush administration political operative Tim Goeglein too. He's been named the top Washington, D.C., lobbyist for Focus on the Family, according to a little-noticed "comings and goings" political column in the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette. UPDATE: Focus on the Family Action responds to our post below the fold.