Back in the day, I listened to Dobson on a daily basis. I won't go so far as to say I idolized the man but he ranked quite high. (Please don't ask,,,roflmao,,,it musta been a delusional state I was in.) The politics weren't as obvious in those days as the Reich we know today was just in its infancy; I was able to brush his anti-gay stance off as our walks in faith were different. But now, I am at a loss,,,can Dobson really be that stupid?
Here is a man, a psychologist who has made a portion of his living "educating" people about homosexuality and bisexuality. One would think he would actually know what the term bisexual means.
"I would like them to think, just for a moment, about 'LGBT,'" Dobson said. "The 'B' stand for bisexual! That's orgies! Are you really going to support this?"
Michael Stone over at Progressive Secular Humanist makes an interesting point along the same vane of thought I had:
It is difficult to believe that a man who claims to have a Ph.D. in psychology does not know the meaning of words like “bisexual” and “orgy.”
Indeed, it may be the case that rather than being ignorant, Dobson was simply being dishonest when equating bisexuality with orgies in a despicable attempt to smear ad denigrate individuals who identify as bisexual, and by extension, the LGBT community as a whole.
To which Libby Anne of at Love, Joy, Feminism adds:It should also go without saying that there is nothing morally objectionable to consenting adults engaging in “orgies” or sex parties or group sex or polyamory. What is morally objectionable is the dissemination of false and misleading information in the attempt to defame and shame individuals.
Evangelicals’ understanding of LGBTQ individuals is less about reality and more about crafting an image that fits within their worldview. In evangelical parlance, homosexuality, orgies, and pedophilia—these things all naturally go together. This is why evangelicals believe that gay people are naturally promiscuous and that transgender individuals are likely to abuse children in public restrooms. This image they have crafted of LGBTQ individuals may not resemble the reality, but it does allow them to fit the issue snugly into their belief system.
As more people have openly gay individuals in their lives, evangelicals are increasingly faced with a choice. They must either deny the lived experience of the (often few) LGBTQ individuals in their lives, or they must reject the image they have been given of LGBTQ individuals by their pastors or other evangelical leaders as false. If they do the latter, they have to find a way to adjust their belief system to account for this new understanding of LGBTQ individuals. And there are evangelicals today who are doing this, though I don’t have percentages. The past of least resistance, however, is to simply deny, deny, deny, and hold tight to the unquestioned belief system, and that is what most seem to be doing, at least for the moment. It’s certainly what Dobson is doing, though I’m unsure whether he knows any LGBTQ individuals.
The problem here isn’t just religion, though it certainly is that when it comes to LGBTQ issues specifically. When we look more broadly, it’s ideology in general that is the problem. Any time people set out to fit the world around them into a specific preconceived ideology, without a willingness to also look critically at that ideology, they will end up twisting pieces to fit them into their preexisting puzzle. Religion may be the most obvious example of this, but there are others, too. Think of communists or libertarians, for instance. Any time an individuals proclaims an ideology supreme, they run the risk of finding themselves twisting pieces to fit them into it rather than being willing to adjust the ideology when things don’t fit.
James Dobson Does Not Understand Bisexuality: 'That's Orgies!' | Right Wing Watch
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