[1]MONTGOMERY, Ala. (BP)–Saying that people of faith are involved in a “great moral struggle,” Focus on the Family founder James Dobson told a rally Aug. 28 that the focus of the Ten Commandments controversy should be on the federal judiciary, and not on the monument itself.
Pointing to rulings legalizing abortion, taking the Pledge of Allegiance out of schools and threatening the definition of marriage, Dobson told the crowd — estimated at more than 1,000 — that national media reports have focused on the wrong issue.
“They have not understood it at all, and that’s why I came here to say to you it’s not about the Ten Commandments,” he told supporters gathered in front of the Alabama Judiciary Building. “It’s about everything else.”
The issue is about “un-elected” and “non-accountable” justices who are “determined to shove their wishes down our throat.”
“We need to go to the Congress and we need to demand, absolutely demand, that they rein in this court,” Dobson said, calling the judiciary an “oligarchy.”
Saying it was “very, very ironic” that the rally was taking place in Montgomery, Ala. — the heart of much of the civil rights movement — Dobson told the story of Rosa Parks, the black woman who was jailed for refusing to give up her seat at the front of a bus for a white man.
[2]“We’re in a great moral struggle of our own,” Dobson said. “… It can be said that people of faith are being sent to the back of the bus, and we’re not going to go there.”
Dobson went down a list of court rulings he said have led America to where it is today: the 1963 Supreme Court decision removing administration-led prayer from public schools, the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and the 1980 Supreme Court decision taking the Ten Commandments out of Kentucky classrooms.
The courts “are heading straight as an arrow for the sanction and constitutionality of same-sex ‘marriage,'” Dobson said. “That is what will happen if we don’t get involved.”
Dobson encouraged people to support the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would add language to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex “marriage.” Several pro-family groups, including Focus on the Family and the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, support it.
“You can’t sit this one out, because we’re down to the last year or two,” Dobson said of the same-sex “marriage” issue. “I’m absolutely convinced of that.”
If America continues to backslide, it “could very easily be like Canada is today, where you can’t even preach [about homosexuality from] the first chapter of Romans,” Dobson said. “I couldn’t even say the things I’m saying today on my radio stations in Canada. I will not be able to air this. … [What’s occurring in Canada is] coming here, and a whole lot more, if we don’t get in and fight it.”
Dobson pointed to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showing that 77 percent of Americans oppose the court order requiring the monument’s removal from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building. It was moved to a side room in the building Aug. 27.
“If there are 200 million adults in this country, that’s 150 million that are standing with you today,” he said.
Dobson concluded by challenging rally attendees to make their “convictions known in the wider public square” and by opposing any legal action against Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who faces possible dismissal from his position for refusing to obey the federal court order.
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