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On Saturday, February 19, Focus on the Family brought their homophobic conference "Love Won Out" to Houston, TX. ARA chapters from Dallas, Denton, Houston and Central Texas mobilized against it. What follows is a collaborative account of what happened, what we learned, and information we feel others may find useful as they confront these bigots. For more information on what Love Won Out is, see their web site: www.lovewonout.org. It will be clear to you that the project is based on religious and "psychological" persecution of gay people. It promotes an effort to get "Christian" parents to carry out mind control on their gay and lesbian children. It coerces homosexually oriented adults into seeing their feelings as sickness and sin that must be driven out through "therapy" and prayer.
Focus on the Family (FOF) itself is one of the premier Christian Right organizations, with a budget of over $128 million a year. James Dobson, the founder and guru, preaches that Christian women obey their husbands and Christian children obey their parents, and that Christian parents must keep their children from being gay. On their web site, they say "According to Dr. James Dobson, it's best to start disciplining your children when they're young, approximately 14 months of age. Youngsters are more pliable until they're around 4 years old. After that, the concrete hardens a little and you have to work harder at breaking it up. Many times, we as Christian parents think disciplining our children simply means that we don't allow our kids to do or watch certain things. There's a place for prohibition. But that is not the core of discipline; rather, it's to find a way to help the child experience negative consequences proportionate to his bad behavior. For this task, parents would be wise to keep a large repertoire of disciplinary strategies in their hats."
According to People for the American Way, FOF is one of the most politically active Christian right organizations. It conducts seminars across the country to help evangelical Christians become involved in the political process. FOF uses its radio show and magazine, Citizen, to urge "pro-family" voters to become active in state and local primaries and caucuses. "FOF is anti-choice, anti-gay, and against sex education curricula that are...