The Financial Collapse of Focus on the Family?
Published August 13, 2009 @ 03:51AM PT
OK, maybe it's a bit too premature to call it a financial collapse. But suffice it to say, one of the loudest anti-LGBT organizations is facing huge money problems, to the point where they've been forced to outsource their anti-LGBT programming. Focus on the Family, according to AP, is about to fall $6 million short of its annual budget. While they sent out an emergency fundraising appeal to try to close that gap, one thing is clear: Focus on the Family's rabid anti-LGBT actions are becoming so increasingly unpopular, even many conservatives don't want to fund them.
In Maine, for instance, a Focus on the Family affiliate blamed marriage equality for rainy weather and a potato blight. In Florida, Focus on the Family activists are behind an effort to tax heterosexual marriage, as a means of making marriage unavailable to people with limited means. These activists have prepared a campaign that would allow couples to get a refund on their marriage tax, so long as they complete several sessions of premarital, Christian-infused classes. Focus on the Family activists even launched a Web site with a bassett hound mascot to promote their anti-LGBT agenda. The point of the Web site? To say that bassett hounds weren't born to moo like cattle, and people weren't born gay.
So while Focus has paid money to consultants to create anti-LGBT Web sites starring bassett hounds, or funneled money to state affiliates who support taxing heterosexual marriage and forcing couples to undergo premarital counseling, or sending money to statewide activists who blame gay marriage for a bad potato crop, it seems a whole lot of people have wised up and stopped donating to the organization.
Which may be the reason that this week Focus on the Family has just outsourced their anti-LGBT events, known as "Love Won Out," to the slightly more frightening Exodus International group in Florida. Here's what a staff member at Focus on the Family told the Denver Post about the decision to eighty-six the "Love Won Out" program:
Love Won Out is not an inexpensive event to stage, and rarely, in over 50 cities where it's been held, have we ever made back our investment.
Ah, I see. And in that regard, "Love Won Out" is kind of like Clear Pepsi. Certainly a lot of marketing behind it, but when it comes down to it, people just don't like it. And how interesting that Focus's decision to get rid of their ex-gay therapy programming comes the same week that the American Psychological Association announces that ex-gay therapy, like the story of Prometheus or the tale of that cereal kid from the 1970s who died eating Pop Rocks and soda, is simply just a myth. In other words, ex-gay therapy don't work.
The truth in all of this is likely somewhere between these two points: Focus on the Family didn't manage its budget well during the economic downturn, which has already forced the organization to lay off more than 20 percent of its workforce. Couple that with the fact that support nationally for the organization is at an all-time low, and it makes sense that they'd have to start out-sourcing programs.
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Comments (4)
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Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.
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Focus on the Family is an intolerant organization which has an incorrect view on LGBT rights. The organization keeps saying nonsense and is creating ways in a futile attempt to oppress the LGBT community. Oppression against the LGBT community is unjustified. It's good that Focus on the Family has a financial crises and it's also good that conservatives are refusing to donate to an intolerant organization which ties same-sex marriage to an argicultural problem.
Posted by Edwin Bonilla on 08/13/2009 @ 02:42PM PT
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The sooner all the homohaters go out of bussiness...
The better.
Posted by Thomas McHugh on 08/13/2009 @ 07:35PM PT
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Even if we were to use explosives to eradicate the FOTC building, the damaged they've sewn into the hearts and minds of people across the globe might never be undone; especially those who have become so repressed they now call themselves Ex-Gay.
Posted by Chris Marshall on 08/14/2009 @ 08:50AM PT
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Would think they would have read from one of their many online articles instructing how to get out of debt and be financially stable. Guess not.
They actually do good for some people and have probably helped many (hetero) couples work things out - but their obsession with anything LGBT is over-the-top and what has become legendary. Given that, it's almost funny that it's their anti-gay program that is causing their financial demise. Everything happens for a reason, as I learned in church years ago!
Wonder if they are seeing it the same way?
Posted by Jeff S on 08/18/2009 @ 12:07AM PT
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