Colorado Springs – A national gay advocacy group plans to hold a picnic and rally outside Focus on the Family headquarters next week to protest what the group calls “hurtful rhetoric” from Focus and its founder, James Dobson.
Soulforce, headed by gay minister Mel White, expects 600 to 1,000 people from gay-friendly churches and advocacy groups in Denver and Colorado Springs to protest outside the ministry’s north Colorado Springs campus.
Soulforce will have to share the streets with Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kan. That group, led by Fred Phelps, accuses Focus on the Family of being gay-friendly because the ministry hosts “Love Won Out” conferences, which tries to help gays return to heterosexual lifestyles.
“We’re getting simultaneous picketing to balance things out,” said Paul Hetrick, spokesman for Focus on the Family. “Fred thinks we’re soft on homosexuality, and the other group thinks we’re too hard on homosexuality. I guess we’re sort of in the middle. I know now what it feels like to be moderate.”
Soulforce plans to ignore Phelps, but it would like to meet with Dobson, whom White calls the “primary enemy” of gays.
“Dobson has become the primary source of misinformation about gay and lesbian people in the world,” White said. “He is single-handedly doing more damage to truth than anyone else, in our opinion.
“I say he’s the most dangerous man in America right now.”
White said that in leading the crusade for a federal marriage amendment, Dobson has misused statistics and made assumptions portraying gays as a threat to “everything, including the universe, families, children, the church, the country, the nation, the world.”
Dobson will be in Washington all week for National Day of Prayer events.
The picnic and rally starts at 12:30 p.m. May 1.
On May 2, the group plans to deliver thousands of letters from people “who have suffered from his rhetoric,” White said.
White said the group plans to get the letters to Dobson or Focus even if it requires an act of civil disobedience.
Hetrick said Soulforce’s two-day effort is a media stunt.
Though Soulforce has asked to meet with Dobson, Hetrick said: “I kind of wonder what purpose a meeting would have. We offered to meet with them in a debate format a week before they’re coming.”
Soulforce has declined the invitation.
On Monday, Focus representatives and members of gay advocacy groups will meet at 6:30 p.m. at Vanguard Church in Colorado Springs to debate the Bible and homosexuality.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
