Focus on the Family Readies Anti-Family Ad Blitz

by Chris Cassidy · 2010-08-13 11:57:00 UTC
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Focus on the Family's target market: football fans.

Earlier this year, football fans met Focus on the Family, which supports depriving women and families of the right to make their own reproductive health decisions. The anti-choice, homophobic organization aired an ad at the Super Bowl featuring the then-college football star Tim Tebow and his mother Pamela discussing her concerns over whether he would survive, which came as part of a larger anti-abortion message detailed on their website.

The details of Pamela's pregnancy and Tim's upbringing shed considerable light on Tebow's endorsement of Focus on the Family's radical evangelical mission. When Pamela was pregnant with Tim, she and her husband Robert were serving as Christian missionaries in the Philippines. During her pregnancy, she contracted a life-threatening illness and slipped into a coma. The drugs used to revive her and treat other symptoms caused a problem with her pregnancy. Pamela refused the abortion that doctors recommended to save her life and she survived. Tim also survived, of course, was homeschooled by his mother who adamantly instilled the family's Christian beliefs in her children, and went on to become a football star and evangelical poster child.

Tim's story demonstrates the power of family history in supporting one's faith and may be a powerful tool for those eager to strike down the separation between church and state. Focus on the Family, ever a savvy political player, is greedily latching on to Tebow's story in hopes of advancing its theocratic agenda.

Tim was drafted by the Denver Broncos earlier this year. Denver fans are heavily represented throughout the Mountain West, including in nearby Colorado Springs, where the population's commitment to socially conservative, born-again Christianity has earned it the moniker "the evangelical Vatican."

Fully aware of these demographics, Focus on the Family will mark Tebow's debut season in professional football with an onslaught of ads during Broncos' games. It's a perfect storm for advancing their anti-choice agenda: a missionary family raises a miracle baby who toes the party line and is drafted by a professional team whose fans and media market are disproportionately susceptible to a socially conservative message.

"Focus on the Family denies that the crossover appeal of religious rookie quarterback Tim Tebow is the sole reason the conservative Christian ministry has, for the first time, bought statewide TV ads to air during Denver Broncos games," reports the Denver Post. "But it didn't hurt."

[Hat tip: Amanda Terkel]

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Chris Cassidy writes on law, judicial nominations and the Constitution as they pertain to criminal justice reform and women's rights.
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