Awwww. Focus on the Family's advocacy group CitizenLink is coming up short on donations this year. They've sent out a cry for help to their members in an effort to raise $2.3 million in the next 30 days.

Via The Gazette:

CitizenLink this week sent an email to constituents pleading for $2.3 million in 30 days to avoid a budget shortfall. If the money is not raised, “our ability to act on your behalf will be severely, and perhaps irreparably, hurt,” wrote Tom Minnery, CitizenLink executive director.

“The threat is still very real,” Minnery writes. “If we don’t stay vigilant, last year’s victories can AND WILL be taken from us!”

Like most nonprofits, CitizenLink has experienced a dramatic drop in donations in recent years. In fiscal 2009, donations were $6.5 million, according to CitizenLink financial records. A year later, donations fell to $5 million. In the run-up to the November 2010 midterm elections, the organization received a sharp increase in donations. But since then, Minnery said Wednesday, giving has fallen off to a worrying degree.

CitizenLink’s 2011 fiscal budget is $5.8 million. The $2.3 million shortfall needs to be balanced by Sept. 30.

Hmmm, let's see if I can do the math. For the fiscal year ending 9/30/2009: $6.5 million. For 9/30/2010: $5 million. For 9/30/2011, with less than 30 days left, they're short $2.3 million for a $5.8 million budget which means their giving is off by about 50 percent.

Minnery has promised to cut back programs rather than lay people off. What programs have they been actively promoting?

According to their 2010 financial disclosures, they spent $700,000 to fund the fight to keep Proposition 8 in force via the California Family Council Foundation, as well as funding all sorts of action against legislative issues. $75,000 went to Coloradans for Liberty. Here's their empty website. Pretty hefty cost for a one-page site, eh? Oh, wait. I did find a little more on their site, thanks to the Google. It looks as though they're funding a ballot initiative to add a "religious liberty amendment" to the Colorado state constitution, similar to other amendments they're promoting in Florida and North Dakota, among others.

Also according to those disclosures, CitizenLink ran about $1.5 million in the red last year. If they've got a shortfall this year, here's the strategy:

As for CitizenLink’s money woes, Minnery said that if the budget is not met by Sept. 30, none of his 46 staffers will be laid off. Instead, CitizenLink will cut back on its projects.

From his lips to God's ears.

[h/t Right Wing Watch]

It appears that Target's anti-gay PR problems are getting bigger by the day. Looks like they have themselves a few "the Bible tells us it's wrong" fundies at the helm:

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wants us to believe that when his company threw money into Tom Emmer's campaign for governor last month, it wasn't because Emmer's a raging homophobe, but because he's a raging pro-business tax-cutter.

But Steinhafel's limp non-apology apology last week hasn't satisfied his critics, and now it's getting harder to take his "no homophobe" plea seriously.For one thing, the apology came out the same day that the Huffington Post pointed out that Target employees had put quite a bit of money behind California's Proposition 8 measure. It's not really fair to hold a company responsible for the actions of individual employees, but the news served to muddle Steinhafel's message of (sort-of) contrition.

It's gotten worse from there. This weekend, The Awl noted that Target's work against gay equality goes well beyond the $150,000 it gave to the Pro-Emmer MN Forward fund. Steinhafel sent his daughter to Wheaton College, a Christian institution where being gay will get you expelled. The younger Steinhafel also studied at the Focus On the Family Institute, one of the leading proponents of therapy to cure gayness.

Meanwhile, one of the other executives with his hands on Target's political donation purse-strings has an even stronger homophobic pedigree: Matt Zabel, the company's VP of government affairs, is a former staffer for Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota senator who supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and sought to outlaw gay adoption.

When the Awl tried to ask Steinhafel directly whether he personally supported the legalization of gay marriage, this response that came back: "Unfortunately, we are unable to address the points or the questions in your e-mail to Mr. Steinhafel."

That settles it: Newt's made up his mind to run for president, or he wouldn't be spreading this little story of his soul's redemption around the national media, would he? (Kind of traditional for Republican candidates to take a quick run through the All-Purpose Drive-Thru Jesus-Lovin' Sin Washer!)

Setting the stage for his entry into the presidential race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., gave a radio interview to be broadcast today with Focus on the Family's James Dobson, in which Gingrich for the first time publicly acknowledged cheating on his first and second wives.

"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them," Gingrich said during the interview. "I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm not only not proud of, but I would deeply urge my children and grandchildren not to follow in my footsteps."

What, you mean asking for a divorce while your wife's recovering from cancer surgery, Newt? You mean there was something wrong with that?

Gingrich argued that the Clinton case was different from his personal transgressions.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," he said, arguing that Clinton had "deliberately committed perjury."

Because he had been through a divorce, Gingrich said, he knew the importance of telling the truth during a deposition.

"The standard is: In a court of law should somebody who's popular get away with perjury?" Gingrich said. "And I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept felonies and you cannot accept perjury in your highest officials."

Even though Bill Clinton did not commit perjury, and Gingrich knows it.

It's worth noting that Gingrich did not limit his comments about Clinton and the Democrats to legalistic allegations of perjury.

Constantly espousing family values even while he carried on an affair, Gingrich linked his party to wholesome family values and Democrats to, well, something else.

During the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Gingrich said, "Woody Allen having nonincest with a nondaughter to whom he was a nonfather because they were a nonfamily fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

In 1994, Gingrich linked Democrats to Susan Smith, a woman who had murdered her two children in 1991.

Even though it turned out she'd been molested by her stepfather, a South Carolina state GOP executive, of course.

"I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," he said. "The only way you get change is to vote Republican."

I really hope Gingrich does run. Because there's a question I've wanted to ask him for years (Hill staffers are such gossips!): "Can you confirm or deny the allegations that, during the same period you were attacking Bill Clinton for adultery, you were serviced by your employee/mistress (soon to be Wife No. 3) in the front seat of your car while waiting in the parking lot of your kids's school?"

Because I've heard that story for years and inquiring minds want to know. I mean, that's some real family values, right there. Maybe we should call Ken Starr to look into it.

Man, there are plenty of people to diss in the world these days, but Stupak managed to diss nuns, of all people. Wow, nuns. Hasn't he been beating on the ladies enough?

RH Reality Check:

In two interviews yesterday, Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak revealed a great deal about himself, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, politics and the internal workings of our "pro-choice" Democratic party.

First, in what shouldn't be surprising to anyone, Stupak told Fox News that he doesn't listen to nuns.

Why would he? They're only women, after all. And we know the men run the institutional Catholic church. If they didn't, there wouldn't be an international pedophilia scandal.

{}

According to Fox:

Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich, responded sharply to White House officials touting a letter representing 59,000 nuns that was sent to lawmakers urging them to pass the health care bill.

The conservative Democrat dismissed the action by the White House saying, “When I’m drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns.” He says he instead confers with other groups including “leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee.” [emphasis added.]

Consult the nuns? People who, despite their vows of chastity, also menstruate, and work directly with--indeed touch every day--the people who are most in need?

Yet, despite his unyielding efforts to front for the USCCB and the male "right-to-life-except-for-women" elite, Bart apparently wants us to feel sorry for the backlash he is experiencing in his crusade against women's most basic rights.

The Hill reports that "Leading a revolt against President Barack Obama’s healthcare legislation over abortion has been a “living hell” for Rep. Bart Stupak."

As Digby says:

The last people any good Catholic should consult are nuns. What the hell do they know? Much better to listen to Bishops who cover up for pedophiles and people who believe men should take their sons into the shower to show them their big penises so they won't be gay.

Those are just the people who should by making the decisions for American women.

Please help Connie Saltonstall to unseat this douche and donate to her campaign here.

Here he is with Matthews still lying about what's in the bill:

James and Shirley Dobson call in to FRC Prayercast, December 2009

James Dobson was forced out of his leadership position by FOF.

Dobson is - was - THE leader of the religious right. They didn't come any badder than him. I remember a Republican friend telling me, only a few years back, that the GOP tended to think of the religious right as nutballs, other than Dobson. Dobson they feared.

Not any more.

A prominent friend and supporter of James Dobson believes Dobson was pushed aside by the new leadership of Focus on the Family, who want the powerhouse evangelical ministry to project a softer image on issues ranging from abortion to gay marriage to relations with President Obama.

"[T]the board of directors voted privately on Wednesday -- before we got there -- to ask for my resignation, although their request was made with kindness and respect. We can only guess the reason for their decision because frankly I don't fully know," Dobson said. "But it apparently has to do with the desire for closure on my tenure and the beginning of another."

The article goes on to quote our good friend, arch-homophobe Pastor Ken Hutcherson. You might remember Hutcherson from a few years back when we were both sparring over Microsoft's support for gay rights (I won).

This article substantiates everything Joe and I have been writing for the past year. The LEAD religious right group forces out the LEAD religious leader because he's too harsh on abortion and gay rights.

His legacy will live on only in a much kinder and softer version. They will use fluffy pillows to attack gay rights and the pro-choice community and the Villagers will be awed.

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C&L Flashback. Evangelicals and Mormons don't really like each other very much except when they want to attack Liberals.

The first order of business was for Beck and Dobson to lovingly embrace each other like long lost lovers for the FOX followers because in late December Dobson was forced to take down a Beck article off his website because Glenn is part of the Mormon Cult. Pam has the story.

Dobson Caves to Evangelicals Who Call Glenn Beck a Cultist

Good times, good times. To dispel the so-called rumors of a rift between the two, Beck says he got a Christmas card from Dobson and oh, how they are so much in love.

Dobson: Boy Glenn, I have no idea where that came from. It's just goofy.

It came from his Christian followers. Ahhh, all is forgiven...Now to the meat of the segment. It's about a "moment of silence" law passed in Ill. back in '07 that was rejected by America's governor, (Blagojevich) but was still passed through his veto. Just another coded attempt at injecting religion into the public school system. A lawsuit was then filed:...read on

Pretty interesting, don't you think? An entire media mythology has grown up around the noble missionary who carried her child to term against a doctor's advice, and the child grows up to become a devout Christian and football star.

Or maybe not:

As Joe Jervis points out, we’ve been hearing the propaganda for weeks now about how Tim Tebow’s mother was confronted with a difficult pregnancy, encouraged to have an abortion, and made the heroic and courageous choice to carry the pregnancy to term, so that her son Tim would one day sport Bible verses in his eyeblack and have a really hard time at NFL tryouts. As you all know, the propaganda has become even fiercer as Focus on the Family has spent $2.5 million on an anti-choice ad to be aired during the Super Bowl featuring Tebow’s story.

Yeah, well, Gloria Allred begs to differ:

In her exclusive interview with RadarOnline.com, Allred slams the ad and CBS’s decision to air it, pointing out factual inconsistencies with Pam’s story. One glaring one is the fact that the act of abortion is totally illegal in the majority Catholic country of the Philippines – under all circumstances including rape and incest, and even without a provision in the circumstance that the mother’s life is in danger. The law has been in effect since 1930.

Allred says she believes it an impossible scenario to believe that [Filipino] doctors would [have] ever suggested abortion as a viable option for Tebow in the first place. And when you learn that physicians and midwives who perform abortions in the Philippines face six years in prison, and may have their licenses suspended or revoked, and that women who receive abortions – no matter the reason – may be punished with imprisonment for two to six years, it’s easy to see why.

Gloria Allred is threatening to sue CBS if they run the Tebow ad, saying if the ad fails to disclose that abortions were illegal at the time Tebow made her “choice”, "I intend to file a formal complaint of misleading advertising with those federal commissions.”

Seeing Tim Tebow wear eye black that spells Bible verses under his eyes has caused a minor controversy in college sports, although the NCAA obviously is behind this move. I've wondered if they would allow a college football star to write a few words supporting the Muslim faith in the same fashion? How would that play out in America?

Anyway, I don't like it myself and I know some Christian sports fans who don't like it either, but now Tebow and his family are teaming up with Focus on the Family to air a very controversial ad on Super Bowl Sunday.

With one move, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow has stepped into America's most contentious legal debate.

The Florida Gators football star plans to appear in a Super Bowl commercial funded by a Christian values group that critics say will send an anti-abortion message. The ad, paid for by Focus on the Family, is expected to recount the story of his mother, Pam Tebow's, pregnancy in 1987 with a theme of "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life."

After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim, who went on to win the 2007 Heisman Trophy while helping the Florida Gators reach two BCS championshipship. Abortion rights groups are up in arms.

"An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year, an event designed to bring Americans together," said Jehmu Greene, president of Women's Media Center, which is protesting the ad with the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and other groups.

The network said it has approved the script for the 30-second ad and has given no indication that the protest would have an impact. A network spokesman, Dana McClintock, said CBS would ensure that any issue-oriented ad was "appropriate for air."

That's why a woman has the right to choose in this country. She gets to make up her own mind one way or the other.

The sports elites are going to try and influence American politics as we move forward, it would appear, and that's a bad thing. Tebow was an incredible college QB, but now he's made himself a vocal spokesman for his religious beliefs and is a pawn for James Dobson. You can expect the NFL to cater to him in all ways because they will see him as a cash cow if he becomes a successful player in the NFL. He'll definitely have a big career for the religious right no matter what, if he so chooses.

Is CBS hurting that badly for ad revenue on the biggest payday they have all year to risk this type of blowback? I love sports because it takes me away from the political world, but that gap is closing fast now, and the Tebows will help divide this country even more as time moves forward. If watching the Super Bowl means I have to wind up supporting an attack on women's rights, the set is going off.

UPDATE:

The Washington Post reminds me that they rejected an add by the UCC Church because they supported gay rights.

Thirty-second commercials during the Super Bowl are selling for $2.5 million to $2.8 million. Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, said funds for the Tebow ad were donated by a few "very generous friends" and did not come from the group's general fund.

-

The protest letter from the Women's Media Center suggested that CBS should have turned down the ad in part because it was conceived by Focus on the Family.

"By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will damage its reputation, alienate viewers, and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers," the letter said.

All the national networks, including CBS, have policies that rule out the broadcast of certain types of contentious advocacy ads. In 2004, CBS cited such a policy in rejecting an ad by the liberal-leaning United Church of Christ highlighting the UCC's welcoming stance toward gays and others who might feel shunned by more conservative churches.

CBS was criticized for rejecting that ad - and perhaps might have worried about comparable criticism from conservatives if it had rejected an ad featuring such a charismatic and well-known figure as Tebow. CBS noted that it had run some advocacy ads in recent months, including spots taking conflicting sides in the debate of a national health care overhaul.

I cover the Sports Village because I do like sports, but also because it has a big influence in our country as we are witnessing right now.

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Notice that peculiar odor arising from the news that Sarah Palin plans to speak at the National Tea Party Convention planned the first week of February in Nashville?

It's got the distinct whiff of a scam. Take, for instance, Palin's insistence last night on The O'Reilly Factor -- in her debut as a "Fox News Analyst" -- that "I will not be financially gaining anything from this".

Well, yeah, except for that $100,000 speaking fee. Palin insisted she was going to "turn it right back around and contribute to campaigns, candidates, and issues that will help our country."

Right.

But exactly what kind of movement is it that locks out the press and operates behind closed doors? As Dave Weigel says:

This really is unusual. As a journalist, I’ve been allowed into sessions, dinners, everything at conferences hosted by the Eagle Forum and by Focus on the Family. Extra credit to Eagle Forum here — when I was covering the How to Take Back America Conference in St. Louis, Phyllis Schlafly’s son Andy, an organizer, invited me away from my media seat and into a seat at his dinner table to chat with more activists. And some of the most controversial speakers at the National Tea Party Convention, like Rick Scarborough, happily chatted with me inside and outside of their sessions at previous events.

One major implication of this, of course, is that for the third time since the presidential election — the first at a speech in China, the second at a speech for a pro-life group in Indiana — Sarah Palin will give a political speech that members of the media are not allowed to attend.

The National Tea Party Convention is being largely spearheaded by Tea Party Nation, which styles itself an independent operation. But if you look at the list of speakers, among them is WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, who's keynoting the Friday dinner.

WND, you may recall, has been promoting an assortment of conspiracy theories about Obama, including the "Birther" theory and the claim that concentration camps are being planned for rounding up conservatives. (Weigel has more on this.)

Even the redoubtable Erick Erickson at RedState is sensing the odor:

I think the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be.

That’s not to say it is in every case. I have much good to say about groups like Tea Party Patriots, but I think this national tea party convention smells scammy.

Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number.

That scammy smell is what you get whenever you combine money and far-right wingnuttery.

Our friend Max Blumenthal has a great new book out titled Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party that explores the toxic effects that the religious right has had not just on the national discourse, but on movement conservatism itself.

Max discussed some of this in New York Times op-ed. Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! has a terrific interview with Max that explores the matter in some depth:

Blumenthal: [James] Dobson is a fascinating figure, because although he’s leading what is widely considered a religious movement, he’s not a religious leader. He has no theological credentials. He’s not a preacher. What is he? He’s a child psychologist. And the way that he’s won so many followers is by, you know, doing radio shows about common, mundane problems, like bedwetting, for example, or dealing with a child that has, you know, issues with their sexuality, something like that. And he has a correspondence department in Focus on the Family that’s so large it occupies an entire zip code in Colorado Springs. People write in with their personal problems. He sends them—his workers send them Dobson-approved advice. After they get into the database that Dobson maintains, he bombards them with political mailings and slowly cultivates them into Republican shock troops. So Dobson has, you know, turned personal crisis into political resentment.

Where did Dobson’s fortune come from? How did he erect this empire? It came mainly from one book, which I quote from extensively in my book, Republican Gomorrah—Dare to Discipline, which is essentially a manual for corporal punishment, for beating your child. In this book, he says pain is a marvelous purifier that a child should be—that pain goes a long way with a child, that pain should be dispensed sufficiently enough to make a child cry, but then the child will crumple to your breast, and you should welcome the child with warm, open arms. This is a recipe for sadomasochism. And sadomasochism, as I discovered in—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And he saw himself originally as the antithesis to Benjamin—Dr. Benjamin Spock.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Dr. Benjamin Spock, who tells you to basically pick your child up and cradle it. And, you know, I mean, I was—you know, for whatever it’s worth, I was raised along those guidelines. When your child’s crying, you pick up the child.

By creating a belt-wielding army of millions, Dobson created the next generation of Republican shock troops, who are more radical than before. And sadomasochism—I know this sounds a little strange—is what defines the essential character, you know, that—this is what—at least what I’ve discovered—of the Republican follower of today. They’re sadistic in that they want to lash out at deviants, at people who are weaker than them, homosexuals, immigrants, foreigners, socialists. At the same time, they’re masochistic. They are followers of a higher cause, of a strong leader, a magic helper like Dobson or George W. Bush or the macho Jesus archetype that they worship. And this is what defines this movement.

So many of the people that Dobson has been able to get close to and work with in the Republican Congress and in American culture have been viciously abused as children. And he understood that by advocating violence against children, deliberate violence, he was creating this sensibility, which would produce a radical generation of political followers.

Be sure to get your copy. It's a fascinating and enlightening read.

Most of us are familiar with James Dobson's Focus on the Family outfit, since they've played a major role in promoting the religious right's positions for the past decade and more nationally: "The group supports the teaching of "traditional family values". It advocates school sponsored prayer and supports corporal punishment. It strongly opposes abortion, so-called militant feminism, homosexuality, pornography, and pre-marital and extramarital sexual activity."

Now, Michael Reynolds at JulyDogs has a series of posts detailing how FoF's influence is spreading south of the border too -- and it isn't pretty:

On Saturday an internal intelligence report on La Familia from the Mexican justice department surfaced in Milenio, bringing the news that the faith-based cartel grounds its indoctrination program on the writings of macho Christian author and veteran Focus On The Family senior fellow John Eldredge, who now heads Ransomed Hearts Ministries in Colorado Springs.

There are four separate references to Eldredge in the Mexican intelligence memo on La Familia. The cartel has conducted a three-year recruitment and PR campaign across Michoacan featuring thousands of billboards and banderas carrying their evangelical message and warnings. La Familia is known for tagging its executions and other mayhem as “la divina justica”–divine justice.

The report says La Familia leader, Nazario Gonzalez Moreno aka El Loco o More Chayo (”The Craziest”) has made Eldredge’s books required reading for La Familia and has paid rural teachers and National Development Education members to circulate the Colorado-based evangelical’s writings throughout the Michoacan countryside.

Reynolds goes on to cite Christian blogger Tim Challies:

John Eldredge became a major player in the evangelical world with the release of The Sacred Romance which he co-authored with Brent Curtis (who has since died). Following The Sacred Romance he wrote Wild at Heart, Waking The Dead, The Journey of Desire and more recently, Epic. I have read all of these except for Waking The Dead and The Journey of Desire. Eldredge’s books are targeted primarily at men and his writings have great appeal for men, many of whom feel that society has forced them to be like Mr. Rogers – harmless and just a little effeminate. Eldredge encourages men to be real men – to head to the wilderness and be the rugged warriors we all want to be if we look deep inside ourselves. Eldredge continually writes about William Wallace of Braveheart or Maximus, the main character in Gladiator – real manly men.”

As Reynolds explores in two follow-up posts, the way this has translated on the ground in Mexico is a wave of violence directed against not merely rival drug gangs, but also anyone who fails to live up to its version of "masculine Christianity":

“La Familia doesn’t kill for money, doesn’t kill women, doesn’t kill innocent people. It only kills those who deserve to die. Everyone should know this: Divine justice.”–message left with five severed heads on the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra nightclub in Uruacan, Michoacan, September 6, 2006.

... From all available information so far, it appears that La Familia has developed into a faith-based right-wing populist social movement emanating from and orchestrated by an organization that happens to be a well-armed, well-financed violent criminal enterprise.

... La Familia is strongly pro-family (and all that that implies) and requires its members to abstain from alcohol and drugs. There is an indoctrination program all La Familia recruits must go through that inculcates “ personal values, ethical and morlal principles consistent with the purposes of the organization.” Last year La Familia brought in two motivational speakers to lecture its members. The group is hierarchic and maintains a strict top-down emotional control of its members.

Think of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, only with more money and firepower and you get the idea.

So maybe Tony Perkins' bashing of Dr. George Tiller just prior to his assassination was not an accident after all.

Just don't tell Glenn Beck or Michelle Malkin. Their heads will explode.