That the Colorado Springs Christian organization Focus on the Family is anti-LGBTQ is not in question. The group loudly proclaims as much. Focus on the Family declared last year, “The Bible says homosexual behavior is a sin.” The organization stated in 2018, “Transgenderism violates God’s design.”
If you think that being anti-LGBTQ is inherently hateful, as I do, then you will consider Focus on the Family a hateful group. Based on its tracking from 2024, the Southern Policy Law Center places Focus on the Family on its “hate map” because of its anti-LGBTQ stance.
In a May document, SPLC offers a lengthy review of Focus on the Family’s anti-LGBTQ history. SPLC summarizes, “The organization’s online Daily Citizen demonizes LGBTQ+ people, claiming they are unnatural and un-Christian, and promotes anti-trans pseudoscience, such as conversion therapy that seeks to change their sexual or gender identities of LGBTQ youth.”
The term “demonization” here is not just figurative. SPLC cites a 2024 article by Glenn Stanton claiming that Satan is behind gay marriage and claims of transgender identities. In 2004, quotes SPLC, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, said that homosexuality will “destroy marriage” and “destroy the earth.”
Focus on the Family certainly does not deny that it is anti-LGBTQ; it denies that such a stance is hateful. Stanton, the group’s director of Global Family Formation Studies, responded to the SPLC listing by telling the Christian Post, “To be honest, our reaction was ‘What took them so long?'” Fair point. Stanton said he is “glad to be listed with so many other great organizations.”
As Colorado Politics reports, Focus on the Family’s president Jim Daly referred to the SPLC listing as “slander” and a “dangerous and reckless myth.” He said, “Their inflammatory rhetoric has incited violence against innocent believers. … It would appear that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has championed its faux hate list for years, always finds a way to hate Christians.”
It is, of course, nonsense that SPLC promotes violence toward Christians or criticizes all Christians, and it is nonsense that all Christians are anti-LGBTQ. A February 26 Pew report finds that “57% of U.S. Christians say homosexuality should be accepted by society,” while “55% say same-sex marriage should be legal.”
True, U.S. Christians are not as accepting of transgender identities. Still, Pew reports, only a minority, 47%, saw “increased acceptance of transgender people as a change for the worse,” whereas 51% said either it’s a change for the better (29%) or it “hasn’t made much of a difference” (22%).
A Regressive Agenda
Focus on the Family’s anti-LGBTQ stance is part of its broader regressive agenda. The organization advocates what it sees as Biblically defined gender roles. As SPLC notes, the organization opposes abortions and hence the bodily autonomy of women.
In an article titled, “Submission of Wives to Husbands,” Focus on the Family asserts that wives should “confidently submit” to their husbands (and their husbands should be loving and nurturing) and advocates “a certain hierarchy” in marriage, with men at the top. This contrasts with a healthy view of marriage as a relationship of coequal partners. Thankfully, Focus on the Family expressly opposes “all forms of sex-based mistreatment and injustice.”
Focus on the Family also advocates for what I would label physical assaults of children. In its article “Is Spanking Biblical?” Focus on the Family affirms the use of spanking in “extremely unsafe” situations or if a child is “deliberately defiant and disobedient” or “severely disrespectful.” For why Focus on the Family’s position is stupid and evil, see a 2022 article or a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Obviously, Focus on the Family’s anti-LGBTQ stance is part and parcel of its general traditionalist, hierarchical, male-dominant view of the family.
Stanton’s Cockamamie Theology
In previous articles I have discussed what the Bible says about homosexuality (it’s negative) and transgender identities (not much). For accounts aiming to reconcile the Bible with homosexuality and transgender identities, see the relevant Human Rights Campaign articles.
The broader point is that it should not matter what an ancient book of mythology says about such topics. The Christian Bible obviously got lots of things wrong (e.g., “slaves obey your masters“). Yes, we should learn from the Bible what lessons we can, as we should learn from all ancient literature. But we should approach issues of our day through reason informed by science, with a focus on the hard-earned lessons about the importance of (broadly) liberal democracy and human rights.
Still, it is worth further examining Stanton’s ludicrous theological claims. Stanton claims that the legalization of gay marriage was part of a “push to redefine and de-gender marriage,” and this opened the door to the “trans movement.”
Marriage now is “de-gendered” in the sense that it is not defined as between a man and a woman. But almost all marriages continue to be between straight cisgender people (not gay or transgender), and even among the exceptions almost all married people claim a gender. So it’s hardly as though gay marriage has destroyed the concept of gender.
Stanton then writes, “The gender activists’ agenda is nothing short of redefining what it means to be human.”
This is not surprising coming from an organization that places such importance on gender hierarchies. But, for most of us, what defines us as human is not fundamentally whether we have a penis or a vagina, but the fact that we are (as Aristotle pointed out) rational beings.
Then Stanton gets into his theological case. He claims that, through Jesus, “God became humanly gendered from a Father who is divinely gendered.” This presumes that gender necessarily relates to genitalia, and Jesus had a penis so he was a man. But what does it mean for God to be “divinely gendered?”
Stanton reminds us that Jesus was born to a woman. To Stanton, this proves: “Male and female, as objective realities, are intrinsic to the incarnation, the very thing that sets Christianity apart from all other faiths or philosophies.”
This is silliness. That a boy was born to a mother does not “set Christianity apart” from anything. Recognizing “male and female as objective realities” hardly is distinctive to Christianity, and it does not conflict with recognizing transgender identities.
Stanton reminds us that Jesus invokes the story of Adam and Eve, saying that God “made them male and female.” To Stanton, the conclusion is obvious: “Therefore, we are either male or female in body, mind, and soul. Those are the only two types of human beings.” In other words, you were born either with a penis or a vagina, and if you are born with a penis you are a man (the male gender), and if you were born with a vagina you are a woman (the female gender). (And never mind, I guess, that a small number of people are born with chromosomes that do not match their genitalia or with both male and female genitalia.)
Remember that Stanton claims that God is “divinely gendered.” What can that possibly mean? One might be tempted to think that Stanton thinks God has a male soul or something like that. But that doesn’t seem to be where he’s headed.
Stanton points out that, according to Genesis, God made people in his image. Hence, Stanton concludes, “Male and female are, equally, the very image of God Himself.”
This is where Stanton’s case breaks down. If a unified (yet trinitarian) God projects an “image” that is both male and female, then that implies that God is either both male and female or neither male nor female, in either case literally “gender nonbinary.” The notion of a gender nonbinary God readily lends theological support to human transgender identities.
Obviously Stanton does not mean to imply any such thing. I am merely pointed out that, in his attempt to demonize transgender people (recall, he says Satan is behind the entire movement), he has tied himself into a theological knot.
Again, in reality, whether transgender identities are real or legitimate has nothing to do with what the Bible says. I think it’s pretty obvious that biological sex pertains mostly to our chromosomes and genitalia while gender pertains largely to our psychology, and the usual relation between the two can flip in a small number of individuals. This is not surprising, and it is not a problem. We can just respect transgender people, treat them well, and recognize their rights.
To recognize transgender identities is not, of course, to have easy answers regarding athletic competitions, prisons, women’s spaces, and gender-affirming health care for minors. I think the proper positions are nuanced, based on relevant physiological differences, and as inclusive as feasible while providing for everyone’s safety.
Questioning SPLC’s Categories
Recently I was driving through Broomfield and I saw stuck to a traffic post a note from a straight-up white supremacist organization.
My concern with SPLC’s categories is that they include groups that are extremely different from each other. Obviously I am no fan of Focus on the Family. I think the organization’s advice often is terrible and that its theology is bogus, regressive, and mean-spirited.
But Focus on the Family is not in the same league of evil as Joe Oltmann’s organization Faith Education & Commerce United (FEC United). Oltmann, recall, suggested that political leaders including the governor should be executed.
Focus on the Family is not saying anything remotely as deranged. Also on SPLC’s list for Colorado is Patriot Front, an overtly white nationalist organization. Whatever the faults of Focus on the Family, it isn’t in the same camp.
I don’t have specific advice for SPLC, but I hope the organization can make finer distinctions in the future. If people come away with the notion that SPLC regards Focus on the Family and Patriot Front as comparably evil, that will tend to discredit SPLC’s project.
But none of this changes the fact that Focus on the Family is explicitly anti-gay and anti-transgender. Although staff of the organization will deny they are promoting hate, that is exactly what they are doing.
