gender roles

Focus on the Family Cuts Jobs

Photo credit: Jeff Fusco (Getty Images)Businesses have surely felt the impact of the US economic crisis. This pain has also spread to the non-profit sector as well. While on the whole that is a bad thing, I cannot express dismay at news that Focus on the Family is cutting jobs and their entire operating budget.

While not a significant portion of their budget by any means, Focus spent half a million dollars campaigning against California’s Proposition 8, which, in case you have been without electricity for the last year, was the ballot initiative that passed defining marriage as strictly between one man and one woman. Perhaps that $500,000 could have been spent on better things? Hell, certificates of deposit are earning upwards of 3.5% depending on where you get them.

The majority of the Focus budget is used to spread “marriage and family advice” on the internet, in print magazines, and over the radio airwaves. How much is their 2009 budget? $138 million. That’s after the cuts. I know this is chump change for many organizations out there, but it still frightens me that there is a non-church organization whose sole purpose is to indoctrinate others and they have $138 million with which to do it.

Let’s hope the next job to be cut is Dobson’s.

SEXPOSED!

Of all the archaic “morals”, when will this one finally cease to exist? If someone chooses to not have sex before marriage, that’s fine. I know a lot of people who have made that choice and I 100% respect that. What I don’t respect is that some people have been brainwashed into thinking that it is somehow a sin or devalues your future relationships.

The Bible promotes slavery. As a society, we have all cast a furrowed brow upon that practice. The Bible promotes the subservience of women. As a society, most of us at least, have frowned upon that view as well. When will the same be true of pre-marital sex?

What tickles me the most is when I meet a practitioner of this idea that has done pretty much everything except have vaginal intercourse. Does that even honor the spirit of the idea? If you take the message of the video that you wouldn’t want something that someone else has already used, then how do oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, and other acts “slip through the cracks.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think abstinence is a good idea, but I think discretion is an even better one. Obviously, there are a lot of threats that face people who engage in sex: sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy being the most common. But are there not other ways to avoid those things without fear of eternal hellfire? After all, in accordance with Christian tradition, one could live a life of absolute debauchery and then surrender their heart to Jesus when they’ve finished sowing their oats. The only thing that keeps more people from truly liberating themselves from the shackles of this ancient prohibition is the fear that, if they were to die before surrendering their life to Christ, you know, the hellfire thing.

Baby Does Not Have Book

I know this is an old video; I saw it freshman year. I hated it then, and I hate it now. I suppose its purpose is to make Bible study seem really cool with the younger crowd. What better way to tie in with the younguns than to set a story of piety to the sounds of Sir Mix-a-Lot. Is it just me, or is a song about a penchant for large asses not a good backdrop for tales of Jesus?


If you made it through the entire video, I applaud you. If you now are inspired to go study a Bible, I do not applaud you. I cry for you.