THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 9, 1995 TAG: 9509080064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Issues of Faith
SOURCE: Betsy Mathews Wright
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
MILLIONS OF Americans got an eight-page letter last month from Dr. James C. Dobson, president of ``Focus on the Family,'' concerning the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women being held now in Beijing, China.
I got a copy of the letter this week and it's a doozy.
``Make no mistake about it,'' writes Dobson. ``Most of what Christianity stands for will be challenged during this atheistic conference. Every good and perfect gift from the hand of the Creator will be mocked and vilified by many of its delegates. That is their agenda. That is their program. And if they have their way, the family as it has been known since antiquity will cease to exist.''
I have been an admirer of Dobson's, but this letter made me shake my head in disgust. It is incendiary, alarmist and hateful. According to Dobson, the conference is evil. No good will come of it. End of story.
It's that kind of black-white view of the world that concerns me. There is only good and bad, nothing in between.
While that logic might work well when disciplining a 2-year-old - Dobson has a Ph.D. in child development from the University of Southern California - it doesn't cut it in the adult world. People are not all good or all bad, and neither is the Beijing conference.
In Dobson's black-white only version, the 10,000 conference delegates are not individuals, each worthy of God's love and grace. In his version, the delegates all share the same goal of creating a neutered world of promiscuity and perversion. To hear Dobson tell it, the conference is full of family-hating lesbians who despise God and love abortion.
Tell that to Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, an avid opponent of abortion. Tell that to Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, a conservative Christian who will head the Vatican delegation.
Please think about it, folks. Put 10 women in a room, and you're likely to get 10 different opinions about God, homosexuality and abortion. Get 10,000 women together - from more than 180 different countries, each with its own culture - and it's easy to see why drawing up the platform has been so difficult.
Just like men, women have their own opinions. And given the opportunity, they can make their own choices.
That scares some people, maybe even Dr. Dobson.
I am deeply disappointed that Dobson has taken this path. While not a regular listener, when I have tuned into ``Focus on the Family,'' I've found Dobson's wisdom to be sound, caring and useful. I have also enjoyed one of Dobson's videos on marriage, even though I was single at the time. The grandfatherly Dobson is wise, witty and modest. He is humble. He seems to care.
That is why this letter disturbed me so much. Dobson could have voiced his concerns over the conference, but balanced them with some of the good that might come out of it. Instead, we get something else.
In a world where domestic violence is the leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44, Dobson chose to denigrate a conference that wants to make governments accountable for combating this social crisis.
In a world where many women must get permission from their husbands to get the birth control pill, Dobson chose to denigrate a conference that wants to give women the choice to regulate their child-bearing.
In a world where 70 percent of all the poor are women, Dobson chose to denigrate a conference that wants to encourage banks to lend money to women to rectify their lack of access to economic resources.
In a world where no country on earth educates, feeds, represents and protects its women as well as it does its men, Dobson chose to denigrate a conference that hopes, most of all, to somehow balance the scales. MEMO: Every other week, Betsy Mathews Wright publishes responses to her
opinion column. Send responses to Issues of Faith, The Virginian-Pilot,
150 W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510; call (804) 446-2273; FAX
(804) 436-2798; or send computer message via bmw(AT)infi.net. Deadline
is Tuesday prior to publication. Must include name, city and phone
number. by CNB