‘Those on the liberal end of the spectrum…have no value system’

November 25, 2006

Focus on the Family’s James Dobson made yet another hour-long appearance on CNN’s Larry King live this week, and because the interview was aired the night before Thanksgiving, it didn’t generate much in the way of attention. Like Fred Clarkson, I think that’s a shame — Dobson was in rare form.

Dobson said, for example, that progressives aren’t in a position to question others’ morality, because we don’t believe in right and wrong.

“We’re all inclined to look at other people, but it’s interesting to me that those, again, on the more liberal end of the spectrum are often those who have no value system or at least they say there is no moral and immoral, there is no right or wrong. It’s moral relativism…. So they say there is no right and wrong. But when a religious leader [Ted Haggard], especially an evangelical falls, guess who is the most judgmental of him and calling him a hypocrite and those things? Those that said there is no right and wrong in the first place.”

It’s fascinating. Dobson seems to literally believe that liberals have no moral compass at all. Given recent events involving the most pious among us — Haggard, Swaggart, Bakers, Falwell, Robertson, Roman Catholic sex scandals — I’m not quite sure why Dobson believes Christian conservatives have the moral high ground. Larry King didn’t ask.

And speaking of Haggard, Dobson said he wants to “cure” his “friend” of homosexuality, but he’s a little too busy for this kind of charity work.

KING: Have you spoken to him?

DOBSON: I have talked to him. I was asked to serve on a three person restoration panel and I originally wanted to be of help and said that I would, but I just don’t have the time to do that. And I called my board of directors, we talked about it at length and they were unanimous in asking me not to do that, because this could take four or five years and I just have too many other things going on.

KING: How’s he doing?

DOBSON: I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since it happened.

A friend in need….

Dobson was even kind enough to put on his “doctor’s” hat and explain homosexuality to CNN’s audience. Dobson said gays don’t choose to be gay, but he has his own ideas.

DOBSON: I said that on your program one time and both of us got a lot of mail for it. I don’t blame homosexuals for being angry when people say they’ve made a choice to be gay because they don’t.

It usually comes out of very, very early childhood, and this is very controversial, but this is what I believe and many other people believe, that is has to do with an identity crisis that occurs to early to remember it, where a boy is born with an attachment to his mother and she is everything to him for about 18 months, and between 18 months and five years, he needs to detach from her and to reattach to his father.

It’s a very important developmental task and if his dad is gone or abusive or disinterested or maybe there’s just not a good fit there. What’s he going to do? He remains bonded to his mother and…

KING: Is that clinically true or is that theory?

DOBSON: No, it’s clinically true, but it’s controversial.

It’s “clinically true”? Care to back that up, Dr. Jim?

And, finally, Dobson also got to play historian.

KING: But we have a separation of church and state.

DOBSON: Beg your pardon?

KING: We have a separation of church and state.

DOBSON: Who says?

KING: You don’t believe in separation of church and state?

DOBSON: Not the way you mean it. The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution.

He’s quite the Renaissance man, isn’t he? Dobson misunderstands science, history, politics, society, culture, and religion with equal ignorance. It’s almost impressive.

And of course Dobson’s big solution to “detaching” the boy from mommie dearest is to pull out the old brass-studded leather belt and whack him into compliance.

How I’d love to have that ratbastard fuckwit alone in a room for 20 minutes, armed with one of those belts myself.

This shitbird’s entire career demonstrates Mencken was right about at least a significant portion of the public: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Or P.T. Barnum’s observation that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

As far as Larry King not asking the right question, the amazing thing would have been if he did. That guy is living proof that brains and financial success are not connected in any way.

  • Soooo, buggery of underaged boys, corruption, torture and murder are everything a good conservative country needs?

    Someone needs a huuuuuuug! C’mere, ya big loug! (jerking up right knee to Dobson’s crotch.)

    Maureen Dowd: “After the Thanksgiving Day Massacre of Shiites by Sunnis, President Bush should go on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and give an interview headlined: ‘If I did it, here’s how the civil war in Iraq happened’.” Ouch. And so it begins…

  • DOBSON: No, it’s clinically true, but it’s controversial.

    Should it be any surprise that Gobson is repeating the prattlings of Sigmund Fraud? As “clincally true,” no less. Guffaw. We already know the Reverend is attracted to one coke-snorting paranoiac with delusions of grandeur, I just wonder if Gobbie likes Bush because he reminds him of Freud or vice versa?

    Note that according to Reverend D, lesbians are figments of our imagination (Freud often had to be reminded that women existed). And women with abusive husbands should ditch them for a better model lest their sons turn out to be gay. I guess gay men who get on very well with their fathers are…faking it? What an arsehole, can we just lock him in the room with Tom Cleaver before he speaks again?

  • KING: But we have a separation of church and state.

    DOBSON: Beg your pardon?

    I wonder how many times Dobson practiced that innocent “Beg your pardon” so he could be ready for that statement?

    Cartoon of a psychiatrist in a chair and a patient on a couch.
    The patient says “Doctor, all my friends think I’m crazy.”
    The psychiatrist replies “Why don’t you kill them.”

  • Evangelical Christian hypocrisy: “I could help cure your homosexuality, so that you don’t end up burning in Hell, suffering eternal torment, I have to balance that against the four or five years of inconvenience that I’d face.”

  • It should be pointed out to the Reverend that calling someone a hypocrite depends on recognizing that the hypocrite has transgressed their own moral standards, rather than the moral standards of the person identifying the hypocrisy.

    Despite being an atheist, I do in fact have principles and standards of right and wrong. When I’m attacking someone who transgresses my standards, I use entirely different terms than “hypocrite”. For example, I consider that Dobson is a heartless, intolerant, evil, and ignorant fool whose contributions to society are mostly negative.

    (I’d keep going, but the most appropriate words would cause me to violate some of my own moral standards regading civil discourse, and that would be wrong of me. Possibly even hypocritical.)

  • The only “values” possessed by the irresponsible Quack Dobson are his overt lust for money, fame, and wealth. His “Bible” teaches him to forego such things and serve those in need. Yet in the case of his “friend,” he cannot do such a thing, regardless of how simple it’s supposed to be for folks like you and me.

    “As you do to the least of these my brethren….”

    Does the Dobson hear those words? Does he still refute his “friend?” Does he understand the equation between his “friend”—and his God?

    Funny thing about roosters; they’ll crow any time, day or night, if they’ve got a reason to crow.

    Does the Dobson hear the crowing rooster?

  • Tom, you know how I’ve often given you a hard time for your (as I’ve seen it) excessive stridency and anger?

    Not here: Preach on, brother. If there’s one person I could remove from the last ten years of American history, it would be an eyelash-close call between Dobson, Rove, and Norquist. The quantity of poison those three have collectively dumped into our public life is almost inconceivable.

    Monsters really exist; they roam our TV screens, preaching greed and anger and fear and above all, hate.

  • The Religious Far Right is firmly stuck in the ’60s. All of their causes, their world view are trapped there. While the rest of us have continued reading, listening, learning, they haven’t digested anything since then. Attributing a man’s homosexuality to his relationship to his mother has not been seriously presented since the early ’60s. How many times do they have to be proven wrong before a vestige of self-doubt creeps in.

    As Nadine Gordimer wrote of a character: “The self sufficiency of his ignorance was awsome.”

  • “And women with abusive husbands should ditch them for a better model lest their sons turn out to be gay.”

    Actually, TAIO, what Dobson believes is that abusive husbands don’t exist – they are merely men exercising their traditional right of headship who are showing a woman their willingness to exercise their authority in the same way they show their children the same thing. After all, if that woman knew her role in life, which is to submit to her husband, she wouldn’t need the extra discipline to break through her denial of God’s truth.

    I am not kidding. These guys have a booklet, “the 1870 husband” and they hold out the 19th century abusive husband as the proper role model for a man who is exercising his God-given “headship.”

    Never mind that all this comes from thinking with the little head…

  • KING: We have a separation of church and state.

    DOBSON: Who says?

    KING: You don’t believe in separation of church and state?

    DOBSON: Not the way you mean it. The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution.

    The US Constitution says the following:

    “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

    and

    “No religious test will be required for any office or public trust under the Constitution of the United States.”

    This language establishes a statutory separation between the state and religion. This is why prayer in school cannot be mandated by government.

    Just ask Rick “fuck my dog” Santorum how far being an out-loud-and-proud Christianist got him. Dobson and his Christianist dittoheads think that by repeating this familiar shibboleth the separation between their religion and our government will cease to exist merely because they insist it isn’t there.

    Good luck with that, Professor Douchebag.

  • Authoritarians (and most male religionists are authoritarians) seem to have an impaired inner wealth of love and strength…due perhaps to how they were raised…. I would bet you anything that Dobson had a non-loving or harmful upbringing…anybody know for sure?

    And that is why they can’t believe that others have internal values. It is because they don’t have internal guidelines…..so in their own experience the only values that can possibly exist are external values (codified in religion or other power).

  • I guess Dobson’s moral compass points wherever his board of directors tells it to. And right now they’re telling him to cut & run from his scandal-plagued friend (who Dobson can’t even talk to because he’s so busy).

    Funny how these rat bastards preach that people should help others, then cut and run from even their own friends. But what do I know about right and wrong? I’m just an atheist.

  • If you choose to follow the link in the post above, be prepared to be chilled a bit by the number of folks who still think that corporeal punishment is a good idea.

    Brrrrrr……

  • I watched the clip and Dobson never mentions homosexuality and how it relates to women. He’s probably for it so long as they are pretty.

    What a sad joke he is.

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