Ryan Dobson

Ryan Dobson Defends his Father's Comments About Sandy Hook, Calling Him 'a Man who is Making a Stand for Righteousness'

Shortly after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, James Dobson weighed in to declare that the shooting was evidence that God has "allowed judgment to fall upon us" because the nation has turned its back on him by accepting things like abortion and gay marriage.

Those remarks, not surprisingly, generated some controversy and so, last Friday, Ryan Dobson sought to set the record straight on "Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk" radio broadcast where he asserted that his father's remarks were taken out of context and that he is the victim of an agenda-driven effort to smear him:

Some of our listeners may have seen some of the buzz on-line, especially on our Facebook page, surrounding comments made by my dad right here on the Family Talk broadcast following the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy that took place on Friday, December 14th.  But believe it or not, people with their own personal agenda have splattered all over the internet and the blogosphere that my dad, Dr. James Dobson, said that God caused the murder of those children and those adults and let me tell you that is a lie, and I believe that is an intentional distortion of my dad's words and it's taken totally out of context.

There have been a lot of accusations aimed at my dad over the years; he is called hateful and a bigot, all kinds of vile things that I would never repeat on the air and I always ask people [to] just quote him. Show me where ... I mean, if he's that hateful, if he's that mean of a person, he's been on air for thirty-five years, he's written over eighty book, if that's who he is, you should have volumes of evidence to bring forth, but there's nothing there!

I just want to say to our friends and our listeners, if you see something distributed about my dad that is outlandish, please consider the source. A lot of these bloggers and online columnists have an agenda and they are just throwing bricks at a man who is making a stand for righteousness.

Of course, our entire original post was built on directly quoting James Dobson himself saying that Sandy Hook was God's judgment:

Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I'm not talking politically, I'm not talking about the result of the November sixth election;  I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he's irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition.  Believe me, that is going to have consequences too. 

And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.  I think that's what's going on.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Grudem: Freedom of Religion 'Doesn't Mean it's Morally Right for People' to be Non-Christians

For the last two days, James Dobson's "Family Talk" radio program has featured a discussion with Wayne Grudem, author of the book "Politics According to the Bible."

In between fretting that the United States was on the verge of permanent collapse due to the policies of President Obama and the poor moral/spiritual state of the nation in general, Grudem was asked by Ryan Dobson just what he should say to people who think that just because something is legal that makes it okay.  The question prompted Grudem to respond that just because something is legal, that doesn't make it moral ... just as our nation allows freedom of religion, but that doesn't mean it is "morally right" for people to be Muslims or Buddhists:

Ryan Dobson: When I speak around the country to all ages, I talk about the difference between legal and right; just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. And oftentimes I hear from churchgoers "well, that's what the law is, what am I supposed to do?" And at what point can a believer say just because it's legal doesn't make it right and I'm going to do what's right even if it's illegal.

Grudem: Well, there are two questions. One is does God require of us more than the civil laws demand? Sure. Our nation, for instance, allows freedom of religion so it's legal to have a Muslim mosque or a Buddhist temple but that doesn't mean it's morally right for people to seek to come to God that way because you and I believe, Ryan, that we only come to God through knowing Jesus Christ as Savior. So there are things that are allowed that are not what God wants us to do.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Dobson: Planned Parenthood Based on 'Evil' and 'Wickedness'

Today on Family Talk James Dobson hosted Students for Life representative Kristan Hawkins. Dobson lauded Lila Rose’s dishonest and edited video “exposé” of Planned Parenthood and claimed that Planned Parenthood is saturated with “wickedness” and “evil,” while Hawkins went on an absurd rant where she explained that Planned Parenthood is an all-powerful “abortion Goliath” that only cares about making money by getting girls pregnant, tricking them into getting breast cancer and ultimately coercing them to have abortions:

Hawkins: I think the videos of Planned Parenthood have really helped to focus and to shed the light on Planned Parenthood because they are the abortion Goliath, I always refer to them as the abortion Goliath, they are the big man on campus, they’re the ones with the lobbyists, they’re getting the government funding, they’re subsidizing their abortions, they’re the ones making the money off all of this. I think the videos are very, very important in exposing their real agenda. You know Planned Parenthood sounds like a nice name, ‘ooh Planned Parenthood, and they’re providing free condoms to me, ooh yay,’ but then when you start peeling back, you know, what’s their method?

We have this new postcard, we make these little flashy postcards and they don’t really give students the answer but they’re there to raise controversy and drive people to our website where they can find out more information. It says, Planned Parenthood’s plan for you: One, give you the lowest ranked condoms that are available on the market today, the lowest ranked by Consumer Reports condoms, so you think Planned Parenthood’s great, they’re giving you bad condoms, then they’re going to give you birth control that can cause breast cancer, they’re going to give you low-dose birth control, and then they’re going to give you an abortion, and this is their plan to make money.

…

Dobson: If you scratch around anywhere near the Planned Parenthood message and the function of Planned Parenthood, you see wickedness; you see evil.

Never one to be left out of an ill-informed conversation, Ryan Dobson said that he hopes that when abortion is re-criminalized the government will force people who lived near Planned Parenthood clinics to walk through them just as Germans during the post-war occupation had to go through concentration camps:

You know what I hope happens, I hope what happens is what they did in Germany after World War II that the people living near concentration camps, they walk them through those areas. That’s what they did to the Germans, those living near the concentration camps, the government walked them through those places where they were killing people every day saying ‘this is what you let happen.’ Every Planned Parenthood and abortion provider in America, the people living in those communities around them should have to go through and say ‘this is what you let happen.’
Brian Tashman's blog

Ryan Dobson on 'Family Talk' Assails Sandra Fluke for 'Sleeping Around'

Ryan Dobson, the son of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, is joining his fellow conservative commentators in attacking Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Yesterday on Family Talk’s Grounded, he railed against President Obama for calling and thanking Fluke after she testified in favor of a mandatory insurance coverage for contraceptives. Fluke testified that many of her fellow Georgetown students must spend $3,000 over the course of three years on contraception because the school refuses to cover it in their insurance plans.

Dobson charged that Obama “belittled himself by calling her” since she “sleeps around enough to where she’s struggling financially because she can’t afford contraception.”

Dobson must have missed the Associated Press story confirming that without insurance coverage, contraceptives can indeed cost $1,000 a year. He also likely never read Fluke’s testimony, in which she pointed out that contraceptives are medically necessary to treat ovarian cysts, endometriosis, hormonal disorders and early menopause, along with preventing unwanted pregnancies.

And, along with many of Fluke’s right-wing attackers, Dobson seems to have missed the fact that the amount of contraception a woman needs is unrelated to the amount that she “sleeps around.”

Dobson: President Obama calls [Sandra Fluke] and says ‘I called you because of my own daughters, your parents must be proud.’ Really? Seriously? So Obama, when your daughter is a third year student at a college who sleeps around enough to where she’s struggling financially because she can’t afford contraception, that’s going to make you proud of your daughter? I cannot imagine a father in this country or anywhere that wakes up in the morning and is like, ‘I’m so glad my daughter sleeps around; it just makes me so proud that my daughter is sleeping around and spending money on contraception.’

…

I just think it’s such a bad precedent for the president, for the President, the President of the United States, belittled himself by calling her.
Brian Tashman's blog

Ryan Dobson and Jeff Wright Agree that 6 out of 10 Gay Men were Abused as Children

Today on Grounded, Ryan Dobson was joined by Jeff Myers of Summit Ministries. Wright succeeded David Noebel, who has recently claimed that Obama is trying to “sodomize the world” and that gay-rights is responsible for the Penn State child abuse scandal, to lead Summit.

While the two spent the beginning of their program talking about Right Wing Watch which reported that Dobson, whose father is Focus on the Family James Dobson, compared homosexuality to alcoholism, they quickly moved on to using the Penn State case to argue that while gays and lesbians are really victims of abuse, they refuse to condemn sexual abuse against children. Dobson and Myers insist that by reporting on anti-gay activists, Right Wing Watch is trying to quash any debate over homosexuality, and then went into push the myth that gays molest children in order to recruit them.

Myers said that “60 percent of the males who end up proclaiming a homosexual lifestyle were abused as children,” even though according to the American Psychiatric Association, “no specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse. Sexual abuse does not appear to be more prevalent in children who grow up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, than in children who identify as heterosexual.” MaleSurvivor also called such a claim a “myth,” noting that “experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation.”

Wright also argued that gay-rights groups must go on record to condemn child abuse, as if their position on the subject is ambiguous and unknown, saying that “it is especially important for those groups to do it because they have aligned themselves so closely in the past with groups that do on purpose promote adult-child sex.”

Myers: This is something that Right Wing Watch has a real problem with, there are some issues they don’t want to have discussed, there are some topics they don’t want to have brought up, because to bring them up is to point out the fundamental hypocrisy and deceptions behind so many of these worldviews. The topic that shall not be named, if you were just to talk about any issue relating to homosexuality or anything of that nature, you are going to be in the hot spot because that’s not an issue that you’re supposed to be talking about, that’s not supposed to be discussed.

Dobson: Correct, I’m not allowed to talk about it.

…

Myers: We know about Jerry Sandusky and the whole child abuse scandal he’s involved in so I went to the website for GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and they said on their website there is no link between pedophilia and homosexuality. I will agree—I don’t think—there is nothing about homosexuality that causes people to prey on children. There are homosexual predators and there are heterosexual predators who prey on children. But 60 percent of the males who end up proclaiming a homosexual lifestyle were abused as children.

Dobson: Oh! OK, OK.

Myers: There is a link, but it’s not what a lot of people expect. So here’s what we did, we sent out information to 600 different gay groups and said, ‘we encourage you to condmen the sexual abuse of children, you need to do this, everybody needs to be thinking about protecting children, that children should not be abused is an absolute truth, so we need for everybody who agrees with that to say so.’

Dobson: You’re not saying join us, and make a statement on your website saying ‘we’re going to join with Summit and Jeff Myers.’

Myers: No, they don’t have to kowtow to anybody. We just want them to say, ‘we oppose the abuse of children.’ And it’s especially important for those groups to do it because they have aligned themselves so closely in the past with groups that do on purpose promote adult-child sex.
Brian Tashman's blog

Ryan Dobson Compares Homosexuality to Alcoholism

Ryan Dobson, the son of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, likened homosexuality with alcoholism yesterday on his radio program Grounded. While speaking with Warren Cole Smith of WORLD Magazine about the case of a lesbian couple who sued a bed and breakfast whose owner denied a room to same-sex couples out of fear that they would “defile the land” under the state’s public accommodation law, he said that people who are born gay are just like unabashed drinkers who say they are born with alcoholism. The younger Dobson, who is divorced, also mocked the lesbian couple for objecting to anti-gay discrimination while reading a news story about the suit:

‘A lesbian couple sues Hawaiian bed and breakfast, two women from Southern California’—shocker—‘suing the owner’—shocker—‘of a Hawaiian inn for denying them a room in 2007. According to the lawsuit, the owner of the Aloha Bead and Breakfast in Honolulu asked the woman booking the room if she and the woman whom she was trying to book a room with were a couple, she said they were, the woman said she was uncomfortable renting rooms to same-sex and any other unmarried couples.’ So now they’re suing, here’s what they want, they want monetary damages, because apparently their feelings were hurt to the sum of a great deal of money.

…

Warren here’s what I wonder, in this way could you sue a bartender for refusing you alcohol if you go, ‘listen I’m an alcoholic I was born this way, I was born this way, I can’t do anything about it, you are discriminating against me because I want more alcohol and you’re not serving me.’ It’s normally up to a bartender’s discretion to say, ‘I’m sorry buddy you’ve had too much,’ and I go, ‘it’s not up to you I had too much it’s up to me because I’m born this way and I can’t help it.’
Brian Tashman's blog

Bachmann Lauds Schlafly, LaHaye for Inspiring Her Political Career

After exalting James Dobson on his show Family Talk yesterday, today Michele Bachmann credited antifeminist luminaries Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye, along with Dobson and his wife Shirley, for motivating her to become a conservative activist. Bachmann has previously called Schlafly, who has endorsed her presidential campaign, her “hero” and “the person that I hope to be someday,” and said that LaHaye is “an extraordinary woman of God.” In fact, Bachmann said that LaHaye’s warnings “on the threats to the family” riled her enough to join LaHaye’s organization Concerned Women for America:

Bachmann: As a young woman I read a lot, I was a big reader my whole life, and I loved reading Phyllis Schlafly, she is just smart as a whip.

Ryan Dobson: Who started off as a homemaker and a mom, and then had a law career.

Bachmann: And who also taught her children how to read at home, she did that, she was self-taught in many ways and she was very interested in national security, as I am, and defense issues, but also very cognizant on financial issues.

And also Bev LaHaye, Marcus and I were brand new newlyweds and I got in our mailbox a cassette tape back in the cassette tape days from Bev LaHaye, talking about where our nation was at. I listened to it, and she was trying to pull the alarm on the threats to the family, like Dr. Dobson was doing, so I joined Concerned Women for America, that was the inception, and started getting materials from her, from Phyllis Schlafly, from Dr. Dobson. Over the course of the years, I’ve poured all of these great women and Dr. and Shirley Dobson into my life, and they’ve really been my teachers.

LaHaye, whose husband Tim is best known for writing the Left Behind series and for his attacks on gays, Roman Catholics and “the Illuminati,” still chairs CWA and has a long history of Religious Right activism. She started CWA because she “knew the feminists’ anti-God, anti-family rhetoric did not represent her beliefs, nor those of the vast majority of women,” and also outlined the “biblical worldview” in politics that Bachmann often talks about: “America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.” According to LaHaye, conservative Christians need to enter politics in order to “stand up against the wiles of the devil.”

Not only does LaHaye have harsh words for feminists and people “who do not use the Bible to guide” their political lives, but also doesn’t take kindly to gays and lesbians, writing in a CWA mailer: “[Homosexuals] want their depraved ‘values’ to become our children’s values. Homosexuals expect society to embrace their immoral way of life. Worse yet, they are looking for new recruits!”

With her role models holding such extreme views, it is no wonder Bachmann turned out to be one of the most far-right figures in contemporary politics.

Brian Tashman's blog
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