Tag: Focus On The Family

Maybe Focus on the Family commentator Stuart Shepard should have just kept his “Merry Tossmas” campaign to one year — last year — and put a lid on this year’s efforts to threaten retailers who don’t wish him a Merry Christmas in a satisfactory enough way. His Merry Tossmas threat, coming just as hundreds of his colleagues were laid off doesn’t help much by way of public opinion for the guy who got his last whiff of fame for a video praying to God for Noah and the Ark-like rain to drown Barack Obama’s speech at Mile High Stadium during the Democratic National Convention.

Reports on the numbers in Colorado were varied: between 500 and 1,000 in Denver ; 300 in Fort Collins, a hundred in Colorado Springs; several hundred in Boulder; two dozen in Aspen. The numbers weren’t huge, but the passion — in response to California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 — has been tremendous.

UPDATE: Focus on the Family announced this afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950. Focus on the Family is poised to announce major employee layoffs today from its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay marriage ban in California. Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the last round of dismissals in the organization, as a sad commentary on the priorities of the families on which the ministry is truly focusing.

Stop the presses! They have found the guy who’s going to miss George W. Bush! It’s Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002 to 2006, and, in a column originally published in The Wall Street Journal, Towney talks about how he’ll miss Bush’s “bedrock decency.”

President George W. Bush may be entering his last 10 weeks in office with a 68 percent disapproval rating, but not everyone is unhappy — indeed some are downright pleased — by the president’s performance. Take the conservative Colorado Springs Focus on the Family ministry and media empire for example, which is reminding supporters it’s not too late to thank Bush for “defending the preborn” – and for his legacy of hard-right Supreme Court justices. You too can take advantage of sending Bush a message of your own via Focus’ auto-generated customizable letter-sending software.

Colorado evangelicals are on the political outs. At least that's what Salon.com reporter Mike Madden says. Madden visited Colorado Springs' legendary New Life Church on Sunday, and found that Pastor Brady Boyd was less-than-partisan during his sermon, a phenomenon that the Colorado Independent noted last month.

In a wide-ranging discussion with Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin says she believes God brought her Down Syndrome child, Trig, into her life to help the "hardcore pro-lifer" movement. The interview was taped Monday during Palin's visit to Colorado Springs and airs Wednesday on Christian radio stations.

The news, that same-gender couples have the right to marry in Connecticut, has gays and lesbians rejoicing — and James Dobson of Focus on the Family fuming http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000008410.cfm. But hey, at least his Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire has something to celebrate: McDonald’s has removed the “Gay Agenda” from its menu, and now Dobson can supersize his Big Mac special value meal with pride.

I would go listen to former Colorado Senator Gary Hart give a lecture on just about anything, even sea slugs, but I don't think my editors would let me write about it. Luckily, today the Obama campaign hosted a "round table" with Hart and Congressman Ed Perlmutter on national security, a more palatable topic for a political column. Hart has become something of a well respected elder statesman and Perlmutter has quickly established himself as one of our delegations go-to guys on the issue, so you can imagine that as a former Military Legislative Assistant I really enjoyed this forum.

Read more of Jeff's commentaries: • My crystal ball: Obama '08 • October surprose gets less surprising • McCain hot foots it out of Michigan

A New York Times blogger discovers the news is not good for John McCain in Colorado Springs, where a lifelong Republican on the city council says she is abandoning her party's nominee to vote for Barack Obama this year. Further endangering McCain's prospects in Colorado's largest Republican stronghold, the pastor who replaced former GOP heavyweight Ted Haggard leading one of the city's largest mega-churches is staying on the sidelines, urging his flock to vote "for any political party."