Those darn gays and their desire to treated like any other American couple...they've forced James Dobson's Focus on the Family to announce layoffs of approximately 20% of their work force, or 202 employees, due in no small part to the more than $500,000 spent on the Yes on 8 campaign. Colorado Independent:
Focus on the Family announced yesterday afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950.
Focus on the Family is poised to announce major layoffs to its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire today. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California.
Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of the ministry.
“If I were their membership I would be appalled,” said Mark Lewis, a longtime Colorado Springs activist who helped organize a Proposition 8 protest in Colorado Springs on Saturday. “That [Focus on the Family] would spend any money on anything that’s obviously going to get blocked in the courts is just sad. [Prop. 8] is guaranteed to lose, in the long run it doesn’t have a chance — it’s just a waste of money.”
In all, Focus pumped $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into the measure to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country. The cash contributions are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.
In addition Elsa Prince, the auto parts heiress and longtime funder of conservative social causes who sits on the Focus on the Family board, contributed another $450,000 to Prop. 8.[..]
Lewis, the Colorado Springs activist, wonders whether the families who donate to the nonprofit ministry, realize where their funds really end up.
“Seriously, I would imagine their supporters have got to be asking the question about whether their church is really practicing their theology.”
Frankly, I've been questioning that long before they started laying off employees. More importantly, the California Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal on Prop. 8, and it appears it is on the question of legality of revising the state Constitution as opposed to amending it.
And if you really want to get conspiracy-minded (meaning an area that the Supreme Court would never actually touch), Mark Crispin Miller wants to know why the exit polls show that Prop. 8 was defeated, by the same ratio it was eventually passed. Remember, discrepancy in results like that were exactly the justification we gave for overturning and demanding a new election in the Ukraine.
