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Family focus: Jeff Lutes was fed up with the antigay, antifamily rhetoric of Focus on the Family, so he packed up his husband and son and went to their doorstep. They're part of a growing movement to fight the far right where they live
Advocate, The, June 7, 2005 by Greg Hernandez, Matt Kailey
For a long time, therapist and family counselor Jeff Lutes was satisfied with just helping people cope with being gay in a less than gay-friendly world. But the number of those who struggled with the situation never waned, and Lutes eventually developed the need to do something more.
"There really isn't a week that goes by that I don't hear a story from at least one of my clients about how they've suffered in their families and in their churches because of not being accepted for who they are," says the 43-year-old Austin resident. "I got to a point that doing what I could to help heal the wounds didn't seem like enough. I had a sense that it was also my responsibility to confront the source of those wounds."
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That source is the growing religious right in America, Lutes argues. It's a movement embodied in the Colorado-based conservative Christian group Focus on the Family and its influential leader, James Dobson. "In my opinion, there is no one more dangerous or more powerful than James Dobson and Focus on the Family," Lutes says.
So with the backing of Soulforce--a national gay interfaith organization he joined in 1999--Lutes put together a booklet with facts and information about Focus on the Family titled "A False Focus on My Family." And with his partner of eight years, Gary Stein, and their adopted 8-year-old son, Niko, both of whom are deaf, Lutes headed to Colorado Springs for a "family intervention." "We are here to educate the community," Lutes said shortly before the Mayday, Mayday demonstration in front of Focus on the Family headquarters on May 1. "We believe that there are a lot of Americans, a growing number, who are really concerned with the way Dr. Dobson is beginning to use his brand of religion and politics to impose that on the rest of the country."
The rally was a rare show of dissent in the post-election 2004 political landscape, in which political legitimacy in America has been claimed by an increasingly powerful religious right movement--a movement that is becoming ever more hostile toward gay people. And Focus on the Family, a multimillion-member organization with ministries around the world, has become a leader in the antigay crusade. Backed by an annual budget of about $130 million, the group produces books, cassettes, videotapes, and DVDs propagating its ideas. Its newsletter includes well-written articles denouncing homosexuality. The group organizes numerous political rallies and get-out-the-vote campaigns, and its slickly produced "Love Won Out" conferences promote the concept that gays and lesbians can change their sexual orientation.
Dobson is heard every day by an estimated 200 million people in 117 countries in 16 languages on his syndicated radio program, says Lutes, whose Southern Baptist parents were friends with Focus on the Family cofounder Gil Moegerle in the 1970s, before Moegerle left the group and wrote a book denouncing Dobson. "He's become incredibly active politically, very involved in Washington, and a lot of disinformation flows from his organization," Lutes says of Dobson.
Dobson and the movement he represents have been growing and maturing for decades. So it seemed a bit like David versus Goliath when Lutes and about 1,000 other gays and their allies came to Colorado Springs, home to numerous and well-funded antigay religious organizations, evangelical associations, and megachurches. In front of Focus on the Family's mammoth brick building, they huddled together in a light snow and a cold wind, waving rainbow flags and holding signs that read LOVE THY NEIGHBOR and GOD LOVES JUSTICE. Gay Christian singing duo Jason & deMarco performed, and a diverse array of politicians and religious leaders addressed the crowd. "Jim Dobson began as a wonderful family counselor, and now he's become a danger to himself and to the nation," said Soulforce founder the Reverend Mel White. "He has told untruths about gay people for so long, he doesn't know what the truth is anymore. And we're bringing the truth to him because we love him. He is a member of our family. He's one of God's children too."
Jacob Reitan, 23, young adult coordinator for Soulforce, came to the rally with his parents, who stood at his side as he spoke. "Do not be mistaken. Focus on the Family is focused on destroying families. It's as simple as that," he said. "And we're here today to show [Dobson] what it means to be a family."
To counter the rally, Focus on the Family set up a special media tent on its property where staffer Melissa Fryrear was on hand to talk about her former life as a lesbian. She was gay for a decade before becoming Christian and realizing her new life was incompatible with homosexuality, she said. "That's not a Focus on the Family stance. That's a biblical stance," she said.
The next day Reitan's family came back to the Focus on the Family offices along with about 100 others. Reitan's mother, Randi, read a letter she had written to Dobson explaining how his rhetoric is hurting families like hers. Holding a bouquet of roses and struggling to get the words out, she said there was never a moment when she and her husband did not love or accept their son. "But we struggled with how best to see the day Jake is loved, accepted, and understood by society," she said. "As parents and Christians, we felt called to work for justice for all in the gay community."
