Soulforce Releases Video of "Focus on the Facts" Campaign

Colorado Springs, CO (PRWEB) May 3, 2007

Soulforce has posted video documenting an ongoing campaign called "Focus on the Facts," which asks Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to cease his misleading statements about research on lesbian and gay parents.

At approximately 10:30 a.m. on April 28, 2007, Christopher Hubble and Leigh Lyon of Denver, Colo., were arrested for trespassing and removed from Dr. James Dobson's ministry headquarters in police custody. The two entered the campus and refused to leave after an earlier vigil during which participants silently prayed for Dobson's wholeness and then read aloud numerous inflammatory and dehumanizing statements that Dobson and his associates have published over the years regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and their families. Hubble and Lyon were processed at a nearby facility and then released.

During the first Focus on the Facts action on February 19, Soulforce was challenged to document Dobson's and his colleagues' negative bias toward LGBT people. More recently, in an interview with Reuters, Dobson claimed that he has never made a hateful statement about lesbians and gays.

At the April 28 event, Soulforce members provided ample evidence to belie Dobson's claims.

Video of the vigil and the recitation of the statements is available at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-809226073899638175&hl=en

"As a mother, I am here to stand against the condemnation that Dr. Dobson and his colleagues heap on gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people and the parents that raise them -- because it results in suicides and alienation from God. I want to see this end and I am here to say NO MORE! God loves us all," said Lyon.

Dr. Dobson and associates frequently attempt to discredit LGBT parenting with references to "more than 10,000 studies that have showed that children do best when they have a mom and a dad." According to the American Psychological Association (APA), such claims rely on "studies that simply do not address gay and lesbian parents and their children." Moreover, "no credible evidence shows that children raised by lesbian or gay parents differ in any important respects from those raised by heterosexual parents." In recent months, several social scientists -- including Dr. Carol Gilligan of New York University and Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale -- have publicly rebuked him for mischaracterizing their research conclusions.

This is the second action in the Focus on the Facts campaign, which is modeled on Gandhi's Satyagraha campaigns in South Africa and India. In the words of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi "believed in the efficacy of pitting the soul force of the Satyagraha against the brute force of the oppressor and in effect converting the oppressor to the right and moral point."

Soulforce is a national civil rights and social justice organization. Our vision is freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance. For more information go to http://www.soulforce.org.

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