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SOULFORCE PRESS RELEASE: May 1, 2007
For Immediate Release
Contact: Paige Schilt, Media Director
Cell: 512-659-1771
paige@soulforce.org
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(Colorado Springs, CO) — Soulforce has posted video documenting an ongoing campaign called "Focus on the Facts," which asks Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to cease his misleading statements about research on lesbian and gay parents.
At approximately 10:30 a.m. on April 28, 2007, Christopher Hubble and Leigh Lyon of Denver, Colorado, were arrested and removed from Dr. James Dobson’s ministry headquarters in police custody. The two entered the campus after an earlier vigil during which participants silently prayed for Dr. Dobson’s wholeness and then read aloud numerous inflammatory and dehumanizing statements that Dobson and his associates have published over the years regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and their families.
During the first Focus on the Facts action on February 19, Soulforce was challenged to document Dr. Dobson’s and his colleagues’ negative bias toward LGBT people. Later, in an interview with Reuters, Dobson claimed that he has never made a hateful statement about lesbians and gays.
At the April 28 event, Soulforce members provided ample evidence to belie Dobson’s claims.
Video of the vigil and the recitation of the statements is available at: www.soulforce.org/article/1257
This is the second action in the Focus on the Facts campaign, which is modeled on Gandhi’s Satyagraha campaigns in South Africa and India. In the words of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi "believed in the efficacy of pitting the soul force of the Satyagraha against the brute force of the oppressor and in effect converting the oppressor to the right and moral point."
Soulforce is a national civil rights and social justice organization. Our vision is freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance. For more information go to www.soulforce.org.