The Importance of James Dobson for the Christian Right

Tuesday November 8, 2005

First there was Jerry Falwell. Then there was Pat Robertson. Each were important, influential leaders of America's Christian Right who are today mere shadows of their former selves. The current leader of the Christian Right is indisputably James Dobson, founder of the American Family Association.

The January 2005 issue of Church & State describes his influence and ideology:

In summer 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that struck down a Texas law criminalizing gay sex. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, invalidated the law, concluding that it violated the Constitution’s Due Process Clause. Dobson reacted to Lawrence with anger and bombast, citing frequently Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent that the ruling would result in “a massive disruption of the current social order.”

Toward the end of 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, citing Lawrence, did rule that the state could not forbid gays from entering into legal marriages. “I simply could not sit this one out,” Dobson told the Denver Post in an interview on his high-profile efforts on behalf of Bush’s re-election. “I just feel this year, I had to do everything I could to keep the loony left from capturing the United States Supreme Court and shaping its liberal decisions for the next 25 years.”

People like Dobson complain about liberals "capturing" the Supreme Court, but their explicit policy for years has been to "capture" that and other courts with judges who rule on the basis of religion rather than secular law. If it seems implausible that Dobson and his ilk seek to supplant secular, civil law with religious ideology, just read on:

Most importantly, Dobson argues that government and society must not tolerate laws that offend his evangelical Christian brand of religion. “A life in keeping with God’s design and instruction brings the greatest possible fulfillment, while any deviation from His design invites disaster,” Dobson writes in Marriage Under Fire. “This is why the Bible warns against all harmful forms of sexual behavior, including premarital sex, adultery, prostitution, incest, bestiality and pedophilia.”

Dobson believes that “the homosexual activist movement and related entities” are the forces working to undermine God’s plans. “The institution of marriage and the Christian church,” he insists, “are all that stand in the way of the movement’s achievement of every coveted aspiration.”

I don't think that he could be much clearer: the standards of the laws should be his interpretation of what his god wants, not the secular Constitution of the United States. What's interesting is that Dobson seeks laws which conform to God's will not simply because God is right, but because God will punish America if we don't — and that punishment will affect not just the godless, but also the godly.

Thus, Dobson is seeking to appease a god which will cause suffering and death to its devout followers simply because there are other Americans who disobey this god. Dobson's ideology is based upon devotion to a mythical being whose sadistic, immoral behavior he lauds as the origin of all morality. This, in turn, means that Dobson's own morality can't be trusted.

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