A Letter to Dr. James Dobson

Dear Dr Dobson,

You don’t know me.  But I am one of millions that you have influenced.  I always looked up to you, and you, through your books, gave me advice that may have saved my life.  I’ll tell you more about that later.

My mother read your books too and all your early titles were a part of our family library.  I listened to Focus on the Family growing up.  Your organization was our family's and our faith community’s favorite resource- your voice was trusted and familiar when we heard it on the radio, year after year.  In a way, your strong kind voice was a substitute for the dad I never really had.

Then I got married.  And some things went very wrong, and I didn’t know why, and I couldn’t talk about it to the people around me.  I eventually found out why- my husband was addicted to pornography.  But we were in full time ministry and he was in leadership, and there was no one who would believe me, or be on my side.  So, I turned to who I knew I could trust- Focus on the Family.  You were the only Christian voice I had ever heard that was regularly open and passionate and clear about the dangerous of pornography- so I knew I could turn to your organization for help and I wouldn’t be blown off nor my situation minimized.

And Focus on the Family had resources for me.  Referrals to counselors and support groups to help me know what to do now that I had found out my husband had been viewing pornography.   Books to read to help me understand, like, An Affair of the Mind.  And one very important one, written by you personally –Love Must be Tough. I ordered them and read them through my tears.

Due to a horrible coincidence of my dad dying unexpectedly, I had a few days away from my husband soon after I found out the truth that he was a sexual addict.  I took a week to cry, read books,find out as much as I could, pray, get advice, and try to figure out what to do.  In your book Love Must Be Tough, I found many of the answers I needed.  It was the first place I read such clear advice such as, if you husband has an affair and you want to forgive him and stay in the marriage, tell him you will only do it once, and if he ever does it again, you are getting a divorce.  And then be willing to do it.  You made it clear that he couldn’t be given a free pass to keep cheating with no consequences.  Your book also said it was always okay to leave if I wasn't safe.

I desperately needed to hear that. Your book may have actually saved my life, because it helped me see right and wrong more clearly and not compromise so I was eventually able to get out of a dangerous situation.

You see, Dr. Dobson, no one else at the time in the Christian community was speaking out that strongly against pornography, or discussing affairs and abuse and how to handle these things.  All the Christian around me were minimizing what my husband had done, and emphasizing that I must forgive him.  Everyone was saying it was in the past, and I should think of the future of our marriage and our kids.  Everyone but you. You didn’t pull any punches.  Your writings and advice were pro-marriage, but not at any cost, and you did not advocate wives staying in abusive relationships- a radical deviation from the advice I got from most Christians.

You didn’t over spiritualize the way many Christians did.  You were the one who interviewed the serial murderer and rapist Ted Bundy on death row who said that looking at pornography was the gateway to all of his violent crimes.  It was this interview that fueled your crusade against pornography and you called it what it was- dangerous.  Not something all men looked at in locker rooms and kept under their beds.  No boys will be boys or men will be men excuses from you.  Your uncompromising stand gave both me and women like me hope and strength to stand up as well.

Dr. Dobson, after battling all your life against the evil of pornography, after your clarion call to America that pornography destroys intimacy, marriages, families and souls, are you going to vote for a man who (among many other moral failures) has a lifetime of openly participating in this kind evil and promoting it? 

You, who were on the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in the 1980s and were part of publishing a 1,960 page report on every aspect of this evil and its effect on our culture?

Trump opened the country's first in-casino strip club inside Trump Taj Mahal (where no doubt many things happened that destroyed many families). Trump gave interviews for Playboy magazine and actually stared as himself in a porn film. Trump said of the owner of Playboy: “Hugh Hefner really understood the art of using mass media, better than anybody else of his generation. He did something that really has been done very rarely — he made himself the company, in terms of his image. And it's been a huge asset for Playboy. It's really become such an amazing brand."

This is not the kind of man you usually support. 

In 2008 you went on record and said you wouldn’t vote for Republican John McCain as a matter of conscious. Your reasons?  Among others you said adultery, ethics, violent temper, profane behavior, and his acceptance of gambling and alcohol money.

Here is what you said then, “The Senator is being touted by the media as a man of principle, yet he was involved with other women while married to his first wife, and was implicated in the so-called Keating scandal with four other senators.  He was eventually reprimanded by the Congress for the ‘appearance of impropriety.’ The Senator reportedly has a violent temper and can be extremely confrontational and profane when angry.  These red flags about Senator McCain’s character are reminiscent of the man who now occupies the White House.”

Dr. Dobson, you felt pretty strongly about McCain’s character and you weren’t afraid to say so and apparently to abstain from voting even though he was the Republican Party candidate. There were some similarities to the current election. In spite of his short comings, McCain was pro-life, and Obama wasn’t.  But in that election you didn’t say of McCain, “these are misdeeds in his past” or “let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” You didn’t suggest we should forgive McCain for the sake of our party getting into the White House and for the sake of our important pro-life cause, or the future of our country.

(Actually, I find out, you more or less did.  Other readers, see correction footnote at the end of the blog.)

So let’s hold Trump up to this same standard you held McCain. Trump also committed adultery with other women while married to his previous two wives. Trump also “reportedly has a violent temper and can be extremely confrontational and profane when angry” – we have seen many examples of this during his campaign alone, not even counting previous to that.  You said just a couple of days ago, "To my knowledge, Donald Trump has never abused women physically or had oral sex in the Oval Office with a vulnerable intern.”

Well, he hasn’t gotten to the oval office yet, but he’s obviously exactly the kind of man would who abuse women physically and have oral sex or some other kind of sex with a vulnerable intern when he does get there- or maybe he would “just” grab her genitals and try to kiss her.  This is a man who has publicly bragged about his sex life for years on the radio with air trash talk with radio shock jock Howard Stern:

“You could’ve gotten her, right?” Stern asked Trump on-air shortly after Princess Diana’s death in 1997. “You could’ve nailed her.”

“I think I could have,” Trump said.

How about singer Mariah Carey? “Would you bang her?” Stern asked. Trump replied, “I would do it without hesitation.”

Or maybe you prefer to believe what Trump said that time when Stern asked him,

“Is oral sex important to you? Man to man, and I’ve had this discussion with many men.”

Trump: “No, it’s not important to me.”

We have on tape evidence that he is a sexual predator and that he forces unwilling women to accept his advances. And many women continue to come forward confirming this is a regular pattern, and behavior not just talk. 

Dr. Dobson, you are the one who taught me through your radio shows and writings on marriage not to naively believe empty words, nor promises, but to look for changed behavior before trust is given.  

I don’t see the changed behavior.  I see no evidence that Trump is any different than the man who did all these things consistently for most of his life.  And isn’t it pretty logical to look carefully at the whole history of a person before electing them?  Why does Trump get the “forgive and forget” pass when it has never been issued before by us conservatives?  What else can we use to make a determination on what a person will do in the future, except his personal history?

   

If you could abstain from voting in a previous election because you felt there were no good choices, it seems to me you could do it again, and I would be so bold as to suggest it is even truer now than it was then.

(Or you could flip-flop, see update.)

And Dr. Dobson, with all due respect, you did take the Bible out of context.  You said, "I do not condone nor defend Donald Trump's terrible comments made 11 years ago. They are indefensible and awful. I'm sure there are other misdeeds in his past, although as Jesus said, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.' "

In the scripture you referenced, (John 8) Jesus was not defending from stones a man like Trump who had forced himself upon women and made statements just one year ago that he had never asked God for forgiveness.  He was defending a woman on her face in the dirt in shame and repentance before Him, who was a victim OF men like Trump who had thrown her there and were attacking her out of their own self-righteousness and political agendas.

And once more for the record, Dr. Dobson, they are not just comments. They represent a lifetime of behavior.  

You used to be a defender, Dr. Dobson. You defended women like me and families like mine and said that pornography and immorality would destroy us, and we could take a stand against it, and not tolerate it in any form.  You defended women like me and said we deserved to be treated with respect and dignity.

But now you are willing to put a man in the White House who has spent a lifetime not just looking at pornography and practicing immorality but promoting it, who repeatedly brags about “banging women”, repeatedly brags about how many women he has slept with, repeatedly brags about sex outside of marriage, and even brags about being a sexual predator.  He rates women’s value by the size of their body parts. He says pumping breastmilk is disgusting and pregnancy is inconvenient to employers.   

In short, he has spent his entire lifetime trampling on the family values you have fought for Dr. Dobson, and he has done it consistently, openly and unapologetically.

Dr. Dobson, you are now aligning yourself with a man who victimizes instead speaking up for his victims.  By your vote, you are supporting the very behaviors that caused me immeasurable pain and ultimately, the destruction of my family.  It feels to me like you have switched sides, and now are part of a political system that considers women and their pain collateral damage to a bigger agenda.

Dr. Dobson, I’m challenging you- would you trust your daughter Danae in an elevator alone with Mr. Trump?  If not, then how can you send him to the White House where he will have that kind of access and power over many, many women in that situation?  Can you look them in the eye?

Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz said if he voted for Trump he wouldn’t be able to look his 15 year old daughter in the eye. 

How about you, Dr. Dobson?  Can you vote for Trump and look your wife and daughter and all of us in the eye?  How about the victims of sexual violence?  And the victims of pornography?

I can’t tell you how disappointed many of us are that you didn’t stand up for women this time. You threw us all under the bus for the sake of a candidate who pays lip service to being pro-life (though he was pro-choice not long ago) and might possibly make better nominations to the Supreme Court. His lack of morals and any victims of that immorality are just collateral damage to a more important agenda - "the future of this nation."

It’s as if you personally are standing there, watching Trump grope all of us and grab our body parts and try to force himself on us and you turn a blind eye and pretend you don’t see because what really matters is that he agreed to vote pro-life and appoint a conservative Supreme Court justice and because Hillary is evil.

That’s how it feels as a woman to hear men say after we are humiliated, assaulted, raped or cheated on, “Sure that was awful what he did, but there are worse things, and anyway we should forgive because we are Christians,” (And I’m not the only one to feel that way, apparently Beth Moore does too.)

This is the message you personally are sending the every single victim of sexual violence when as a Christian leader you support Trump instead of condemning him- that what happened to them isn’t that bad.  We don’t hear you sending the message that Hillary is worse and the future of our country is at stake.  We hear the message that being a sexual predator doesn’t disqualify a man from being president… that what happened to us isn’t criminal, just “terrible.”  

What about being “pro-life” for our lives?  What about justice for us?  What about the evil of minimizing this kind of treatment of women?  What about our future and the future of our daughters in a country where the president has set an example that insulting, exploiting, harassing and assaulting women is okay?  Isn't that a threat to the future of this nation as well?

Because make no mistake, Dr. Dobson, when you can listen to that tape that was released, when you can read all these things I’ve mentioned about the way Trump treats women, talks about women, disrespects women, and sexually assaults women, and say you will still vote for him, you ARE minimizing and condoning this behavior.   You can say all you like that his comments are “indefensible and awful”, but apparently they- and the behavior they described- aren’t bad enough to withhold a vote when something “bigger” is at stake.

Furthermore the way a man treats women says a lot about his character in other areas Dr. Dobson, and I think you know that.  The editorial in the Deseret newspaper said it well.  “What oozes from this audio is evil. We hear a married man give smooth, smug and self-congratulatory permission to his intense impulses, allowing them to outweigh the most modest sense of decency, fidelity and commitment. And although it speaks volumes about sexual morality, it goes to the heart of all ethical behavior. Trump’s banter belies a willingness to use and discard other human beings at will. That characteristic is the essence of a despot.”

I suspect you may find what you lost with this endorsement is much greater than what you gained, for you have lost your reputation as a man of discernment and character and consistency who champions family values without agenda and who stands up against injustice.

You said in 2010, “We are in a moral decline of shocking dimensions. I have asked myself how I can I sit and watch the world go by without trying to help if I can. That is what motivates me at this time.”

I wish you had just watched; it would have been better than this.
We are indeed in a moral decline when you, James Dobson, the champion of family values are voting for a candidate who has no family values or morals at all. For me, this is one of the greatest losses of the election so far.  I expected nothing from Trump, but that he would be who he has always been. 

But I expected that you would do the same, Dr. Dobson- that you would be who you had always been- a man who stands up for values- and stands up for us. 

I was wrong.

10/15/16 Update:

One of my more politically astute friends pointed something out to me that bears updating.

The quote I posted about Dr. Dobson not voting for John McCain was originally spoken early in 2000 and he stuck to that for quite a while saying he would not vote for McCain under any circumstances. But in August of 2006 Dr. Dobson actually changed his mind and decided to come out in support of McCain  “If flip-flopping is a sin, then I am a sinner," he said.

On the one hand, it now makes sense why it was easier for Dr. Dobson to support Trump in this election, another immoral man he doesn't approve of. On the other hand, it gives me real hope that once again, Dr. Dobson might consider "flip-flopping", only this time the other way.  He is obviously willing to change a public position when convicted to do so.

What about it, Dr. Dobson?  How about flip-flopping on your support of Trump and sending a message that you do care about how women are treated?  You wouldn't be the only Christian leader to honorably flip-flop. Wayne Grudem, prominent evangelical theologian, recently did just that.  

Your position in supporting Trump has added much ammunition to the lie that Christians don't really care about values or women, just power.

Would you like to prove them wrong?