Layoffs at Focus on the Family Call Into Question Massive Anti-Gay Spending

by Michael Jones · 2008-11-17 18:20:00 UTC
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James DobsonDespite spending more than $500,000 to help pass Proposition 8, while a member of their board gave an additional $450,000 for the measure, Colorado-based Focus on the Family is laying off more than 20 percent of their workforce. So instead of taking care of their own employees, Rev. James Dobson's Focus on the Family and their board member shelled out nearly $1,000,000 to take away marriage rights in California. Meanwhile, 202 employees start collecting unemployment checks.

To give this some extra context, the money that Focus on the Family distributed to pass Proposition 8 could have funded the salaries of dozens of employees.  And this isn't even necessarily news - 2008 marks the third year that Focus on the Family has had to lay off employees.

Local LGBT rights activist Mark Lewis, who helped organize a Join the Impact rally for marriage equality this past weekend in Colorado Springs, said that the Focus on the Family membership should be appalled.

That [Focus on the Family] would spend any money on anything that’s obviously going to get blocked in the courts is just sad. [Prop. 8] is guaranteed to lose, in the long run it doesn’t have a chance — it’s just a waste of money.

And Californians Against Hate organizer Fred Karger had this to say about Focus's efforts to fund an anti-gay measure in a state hundreds of miles away:

They should do more with their half-million dollars than spending it to collect signatures to take the rights away from a class of people...They came in early to make sure the measure got on ballot; they’ve got muscle and they are out to hurt a lot of people and destroy a lot of lives.

Add to the lives being destroyed more than 200 employees who, six weeks before Christmas, have just been given a pink slip.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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