I was fascinated to learn from Barry that Dobson and Wildmon rejected this compromise plan because, in their view, to accept it would have meant supporting the existence and sale of pornography. As a result of the rejection, our children can freely access telephone pornography today. In other words, conservatives like Dobson are responsible for American children being unprotected from Dial-a-Porn because their conservative approach to public policy issues is all or nothing, take it or leave it, rather than compromise and consensus.

      The perspective I offer to you is this: I found James Dobson, family advisor, to be a source of encouraging homespun common sense wisdom about marriage and raising children, but the James Dobson I helped become a powerhouse in the political arena is more than wrong: he is out of step with the American way and even, at times, dangerous to great principles of democracy such as diversity, tolerance, and compromise. Surely at work here is the proverbial "peter Principle," the management theory that companies have a tendency to promote successful people until they reach a job at which they fail. A man who by all accounts was a capable member of the research staff at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles was promote by society to a position of capable writer and speaker on family issues and then to capable national broadcaster and publisher of family life materials. Then we made the mistake of promoting him one more time, to national public policy leadership. There, sadly, he failed because, among other things, the requisite skills of crafting compromise and consensus had not been essential in his previous roles and successes, but they were crucial in this one.

      Democratic government is the search for a middle ground between conflicting positions that can provide all parties with at least some of what they feel they need and with the satisfaction of knowing that their views are represented in society's resolutions of its conflicts. And that's why we hear it said of the political process that those who are mentally agile at the business of compromise are our statesmen and women. These are the individuals who walk into the well of the Senate or House chamber and do aggressive battle with those differing views and then have the remarkable ability, after the battle is resolved, to speak so graciously of the esteemed gentleman from Virginia or the distinguished gentlewoman from Pennsylvania. those of us who have never worked in the political arena sometimes wonder what is going on. It's the process of debate, of give and take. It's the search for common and middle ground.

      This, it seems to me, is critical to our success as a democracy. At the end of any given day it would be appropriate for congressmen and women to return home, nourishing the positive feeling within them that they have helped to craft some very strong compromises between conflicting viewpoints that have led the country forward. It is important that you understand of James Dobson that there is nothing about that type of process or about the word compromise that is positive to him. There are few conservative American Protestants who grow up believing that compromise is a good thing. We are taught to see the world as black and white, as food and bad, as right and wrong; to defend the right, to oppose the wrong. And so, unless we adopt a different paradigm as adults, we come to public policy issues not with the view that compromise is a good thing but with the view that we must prevail in our position. There are no right-wing religious types involved in public policy who go home at the end of the day and say to their spouses, "I had a wonderful day compromising." to say those words would be exactly the same for someone like James Dobson saying, "Today I set aside part of that which is right and accepted some wrong into my position so that in the process my new position, partly right and partly wrong, could be agreed to by many people with whom I work." For a person like Dobson to pursue the work of compromise would mean saying at the end of the day, "During the course of my day I incorporated some sin into my position so that in the process I was able to achieve some unanimity with my fellows."

      Compromise of a certain type is literally impossible for James Dobson. He is a combatant in part because of his religious ideology. He is an antagonist in relation to his foes. He is poorly equipped, dangerous, and not to be trusted as a leader in the public policy arena. His objective is not to meet those who disagree with him on some common ground; it is to overcome and dominate them." pp. 70-72

      You are seeing here the origins of another distinctive feature of Dobson's religious group - a robust epidemic of judgmentalism. It is inevitable that any group that expends this much energy maintaining lists of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, cultivating an outward appearance of abhorring one list and living by another and taking pride in being different from society, will emit a strong odor of finding fault with others." p. 96-97

      For starters, Dobson forgoes a salary not for sacrificial reasons but so that he will be free of the customary accountability that accompanies a paycheck. If the company doesn't pay Jim the net result is that the company is indebted to him, giving him much more control than a regular CEO would have. How can the board question vigorously or terminate someone who works for free? How could the board demand that the company turn left at the next fork in the road when its no-cost CEO wants to turn right? In human relationships, wherever debt is created that's where power lies and one thing that Jim has mastered is the creation and use of power. He has structured an employment relationship at Focus where he has power in excess. When Jim tells his audience he takes no salary honesty dictates that he should add that he likes it that way because the balance of power is in his favor. What he leaves out of the picture is that he and Shirley have become multimillionaires under this "sacrificial" arrangement. He has lost nothing and gained a great deal. This is a fabulous compensation package.

The Money Machine

      How is Dobson's compensation arrangement with Focus so lucrative if he draws no salary? It is enormously profitable by virtue of the fact that Focus on the Family is essentially a publicity-generating machine for Jim. three million households receive positive advertising impressions of James Dobson weekly - James Dobson the writer of books, the maker of educational films, and the seller of audiocassette albums - all of which are available at your local religious bookstore, where Jim is always in the top ten authors category.

      For example, Dobson's November 1996 fund-raising letter announced to his donors a new Focus on the Family venture: youth rallies in major cities across North America called "LOTE: or "Life On The Edge." Dobson said of this new enterprise: The first [rally[ of its kind was held in Cincinnati on October 5. Some 3,200 teenagers and their parents spent all day listening to [a variety of youth speakers, including members of the Focus staff.] From all the reports we've received, the seminar was wonderfully successful. We had to turn away hundreds in Cincinnati. If resources permit, it is our plan to take this program to fifty or more cities in the next couple of years.

      On the surface, the observer sees nothing in such an announcement other than James Dobson, care provider to the nation's youth. But when one looks more closely, one sees a national event strategy into which hundreds of thousands of dollars will be poured, creating immense visibility and market interest in "Life On The Edge," which is more than the name of the event; it is the title of Dobson's latest book as well as of a video and film series, all Dobson's personal property, from which he earns immense royalties.

      Jim does not donate the income from his books and many of his communications products to his nonprofit corporation, as do many heads of ministries. He retains control of the revenues they generate, and foremost among all who benefit from the massive marketing and publicity generated daily by Focus on the Family is James Dobson himself. Furthermore, since a guest spot on the Dobson program turns other authors into instant best-sellers, his promotional power puts him in a position to demand higher-than-normal personal advances and royalty percentages from publishers of his own books.

      Another way of explaining the difference between Jim's public and private approach to the issue of taking a salary would be to describe to you the way Billy Graham has handled the same issue with his nonprofit corporation. I'm told that early in his work, Reverend Graham stated to his board of directors that he was concerned about the problems with power that heads of successful privately controlled nonprofit corporations often encounter and that he was intent on avoiding the abuse of power in his career. He observed that one such pitfall was the mishandling of money. He asked his board of directors to conduct a survey of the average income of American pastors and then to pay him whatever that figure was. For that story to have meaning you need to understand that, commercially, Billy Graham is one of the best-selling authors in the country. His many books, including his classic, Peace with God, have sold in the millions of copies and would have made him and his family a fortune had he kept the proceeds. But Graham included in the compensation arrangement he made with his nonprofit a plan whereby all royalties from his books would go to the organization rather than to him. One of the results was that the control and the balance of power between him and his organization rests with the corporation and its board of directors, not with Graham.

      Dobson has chosen the opposite path. By the way, Jim and Shirley are major donors to Focus, in specific recognition that Jim is the primary beneficiary of its enormous capacity to promote the sales of his private product lines and to generate the related royalties. Their contributions are, of course, tax-deductible. So they offer him yet another financial advantage.

      One of the ways Jim benefits financially from Focus on the Family is the relationship he has established between the ministry and his private for-profit corporation, JDI, or James Dobson, Incorporated. For example, JDI owns the copyright to all "Focus on the Family" broadcasts as intellectual property. Then Jim donates them back to Focus on the Family for a tax deduction. Dobson thus uses program material developed for the Focus broadcast for the production of his own products, such as books, cassettes, videos and films, contracts he negotiates and owns privately. Let me add that James Dobson is the only person at Focus on the Family with proprietary rights over the material developed and used by the organization. Guests on the broadcast sign over to the organization ownership of the content of their interviews. Dobson's co-hosts, myself included, retain no intellectual property rights to the ides they bring to the table. In some ways, Focus on the Family is Jim's personal product factory, including perhaps the most powerful marketing research system in existence. When Jim takes an idea first developed at Focus, either by him or a guest, and walked across the hall to JDI to prepare a new profit-making product, he and the publisher know before one sentence of their new contract is written that they are creating a runaway best-seller. The jury is already in about market demand, because Focus has received 40,000 letters responding to the broadcast where the idea was floated as a trial balloon.

      In short, Jim Dobson is an extremely shrewd businessman, for which he should be congratulated. He has taken advantage of every business benefit legally available to him at Focus and has skillfully maximized the relationship between his high-profile role in his successful nonprofit enterprise and his closely connected and highly profitable private company. In the process, he has structured a job for himself that gives him unprecedented personal freedom. Nice work if you can get it." p. 118-121

      Our executive team was exclusively white and male and Jim spoke openly about the exclusion of women from that group." p. 145

      Members of Carolyn's department were instructed by policy that if married women wrote to Focus on the Family, regardless of how they signed their name, if their donation check, their stationery, their return address, or the body of the text gave us the name of their husband, our return letter was to be addressed to "Mrs. (husband's first name) (husband's last name)." This meant that if Mrs. Deborah Smith wrote to us and it was clear she was married to Mr. John Smith, then our staff was to address her return letter to "Mrs. John Smith," not "Mrs. Deborah Smith." Carolyn pointed out to me the dilemmas created by this policy, not only the general disrespect it can sometimes convey but several specific problems that seemed extremely insensitive. I was shown a letter, for example, from a woman who wrote Focus on the Family asking for advice and encouraging books or tapes we might be able to send back to help her through the painful experience of her husband recently leaving her for another woman. Our staff was forced by Focus policy to address that woman by her husband's first and last name.

      I recall vividly the moment when I presented this problem to our weekly executive staff meeting and made the recommendation that we change our naming policy. It became one of several moments toward the end of my working relationship with Jim where a silent alarm sounded deep in my consciousness signaling that my ability to work with James Dobson was coming to an end. In my presentation I told my fellow executives the story that I had learned from Carolyn. I expected concern and support for the woman abandoned by her husband who would be addressed by that man's name when we wrote back to her. To my surprise, no one in the room supported my concerns. Not one Focus leader.

      Jim personally led the opposition. There was an aggressive edge to Jim's voice as he opposed Carolyn's perspective on women. He was upset with my critique of a naming protocol that he himself had established. Jim attempted to explain why addressing women by their husband's name was a traditional and acceptable concept and that he was opposed to the efforts by the women's movement to discredit that tradition. Clearly, it had never crossed his mind, whether, if traditional roles were reversed, he might be uncomfortable being addressed as "Dear Mr. Shirley Deere." Included in Jim's remarks that afternoon was his routine opposition to titling women "Ms." It was clear that the extreme example I had offered - an abandoned woman being addressed by her husband's name - made on impression on Jim whatsoever. He concluded his forceful rejection of my recommendation by taking a disrespectful swipe at the woman who was to become my wife. "Don't breath that stuff too deeply, Gil," he warned. The look in his eye and the tone of his voice made it clear that Jim was warning me about departing from "the Focus way."

      Jim expressed an even more overt attitude of sexism on those numerous occasions when he would be talking a stream of consciousness with those of us close to him, about the relative difficulty of the work day for someone like him compared to a housewife. His public statements of reverence for homemakers notwithstanding, Jim expressed candidly his belief that women whose sole responsibility was to care for children and a home had an easy life, and that their day's work was not to be compared to the rigors of an executive like himself. "How hard can it be, guys," he would say, "to make a shopping list, to go to the grocery store, and fix a meal?" The speed at which he had to work and the tremendous weight of the responsibility he had to carry would, in his view, crush the typical woman." pp 148-149

      Those who would scurry to the defense of Dobson, in response to any charge of racism, would point to the fact that he is generous toward needy people - minorities and the poor in developing nations of the world. Friends would make the point that surely these kinds of gestures remove any questions about Jim's inner views toward fellow human beings of other races. But often within charity can be found the very seeds of racism. If you examine people's gift giving it's possible that the reason for giving a gift is that they have concluded that this poor, sorry group of beneficiaries are in their needy state precisely because they are inferior while the benefactor stands tall in his affluence and power, capable of being a benefactor precisely because he is superior." pp 157-158

      If sexual conduct triggers the greatest levels of judgmentalism within the ultraconservative, then the specific sexual practice that heads that category of wrong conduct is homosexual behavior. How completely foul, I would say to myself, that a person would have sex with someone of his or her own gender. And this overwhelming emotional reaction against people engaged in homosexuality short-circuits the capacity not only for friendship but even for whatever rationality the ultra-orthodox person my be capable of." p. 160

      Jim saw it as his business to assess the private lives of people and decide if they merited a book contract by his publisher or not." pp. 174-175

      Jim has something of a fetish about being accused of changing positions. It's part of the essential conservative temperament I described in previous chapters to be seen not as open minded, flexible, fluid, or experimental but rather as staid, rock solid, unshakable.. . . He portrays himself as understanding and communicating immutable, unchangeable truths rather than faddish social experiments. To suggest that he once took one particular immutable position only to change to a different immutable position is just a little embarrassing. . . . One of the things he currently says he knows to be true is that abortion for any reason is wrong. What about in the case of rape? It's wrong. What about in the case of incest? It's wrong. What about when the health of the mother is threatened? It's wrong.

      These common exclusions are where Jim's change has taken place. When I began working with him in the seventies his position was the standard conservative one - abortion is morally wrong and should be illegal except in those three cases." p. 211 - 212

What to Do?

      "Consider the story of two book publishing companies, Focus on the Family, Incorporated, and Word, Incorporated, one of the largest publishing houses serving the conservative Protestant world. Both solicit, sign, publish, and pay authors for manuscripts and then publish and sell those books in commercial bookstores, making a profit in the process. Both solicit manuscripts from exactly the same pool of authors - those written by conservative Christians on subjects that would be considered of religious or spiritual help to the reader. Both produce books for sale in exactly the same bookstores. Both advertise and promote. Both enjoy revenue from such sales. However, one of these companies does all the above and pays its fair share of taxes while the other insists that it should not have to pay taxes and does not do so. this second business claims that it has a right as a 501(c)3 to opt out of its share of taxes but still used the government services that taxes pay for. Why? What is the difference between Focus and Word with regard to the book publishing enterprises of each? Is one a national treasure like the Grand Canyon that we've all decided to preserve and subsidize while Word is on its own to sink or swim in the great competitive marketplace? Are we, as American taxpayers, interested in digging a little deeper into our pockets when our tax bill arrives in order to support the publishing efforts of Focus on the Family, all the while discriminating against the equally valuable work done by Word by not subsidizing their enterprise?" p. 296

      "Allow me to make one final observation about taxation and employee rights. Doesn't it strike you as odd that religious institutions should adopt policies and procedures designed to allow them to do less rather than more than nonreligious organizations? A regular American corporation asks of itself, "How can we compete successfully, address bottom line needs, pay our share of taxes, and contribute to the community as a good neighbor?" But Dobson asks, "How can I compete, address the bottom line, and contribute to the community while avoiding my share of taxes? A regular business asks, "How can we met all federal and state obligations to our employees as well as provide a competitive work environment that attracts and retains the very best workers?" But Dobson asks, "How can I attract and retain the very best while exempting myself from as many of my nation's employee rights laws as possible?" If you ran a religious organization, wouldn't you want to be known for doing more for your community and your workers, in the name of your God, rather than less?" pp. 300-301

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