Well, well, well. It seems that Eason Jordan, an executive with CNN, has officially resigned over comments he made at a panel discussion in Switzerland. (Much more here, here, here, here, and heck, just about any blog you visit.) It’s pretty clear that the powerful blog storm which resulted from his ill-advised (some would say treasonous) remarks is the direct cause of his resignation.

It has become abundantly clear over the last year that the blogosphere and similar web sites now wield incredible power. The Swift Vets and POWs For Truth campaign was organized around their web site and was the single largest factor which prevented John Kerry from winning the election. The blog storm over the 60 Minutes story based around fabricated memos not only exposed the memos as frauds, but also destroyed and overshadowed the original story. It also lead to firings at CBS and a loss of influence for Dan Rather. Similar effects are being felt in newspapers offices around the country and in the halls of government as the internet allows nearly instantaneous dissemination of information and coordination on a national scale.

These results are entirely commendable because they are based on the pursuit of truth. Those who have been brought low claimed to be proclaiming the truth, but the light of the blogosphere exposed their claims for the lies that they are.

For nearly a century, the mainstream media — newspaper conglomerates, radio and more recently, television — has held a virtual monopoly on the dissemination of information. The resulting attitudes, sloppiness and shallowness has made the media giants easy targets for the quicker, more diversified, less centralized, more interactive and vocal internet based media. I am sure that bloggers everywhere are feeling flush with power and success. I’ve already been reading statements pondering which journalist will be taken down next.

But is attacking journalists all there is? Is merely exposing lies enough? Heck, are we even exposing all the lies being spread? I don’t think so.

One of the internet’s biggest strengths is to go into depth on a topic. To dig beyond the surface appearance and sound bites of a story. To dig down to the “story behind the story” to where the truth lies. To provide easy access to original sources which can confirm or deny the validity of a statement. And to do so with more breadth and authority than any form of communications in history.

I am concerned that this strength is being frittered away on a mere show of strength against the mainstream media. The blogosphere has been flogging the Eason Jordan story hard for the past week. It was nearly all I saw on various news and politics oriented blogs while other issues went almost completely ignored.

There is one example which has been bugging me. Just before the Easongate story started making the rounds of the blogs, the media attack on Dr. Dobson was the hot topic. I am aware of exactly one blogger, David Huntwork, who immediately went to the We Are Family Foundation website and honestly checked on Dr. Dobson’s actual concerns. Shortly after his article appeared, the pages which demonstrated the truth of Dr. Dobson’s concerns began to disappear from the WAFF website.

Mere days before Eason stuck his foot in his mouth, Dr. Dobson released a lengthy response to the controversy detailing his concerns. But by that time, the proof that his concerns were legitimate had disappeared from the WAFF web site. A good number of bloggers reproduced or commented on Dr. Dobson’s statement. However, as far as I am aware, only two bloggers actually bothered to do the research to find what had been removed from the WAFF site: Emily E. and myself. (Emily had better success than I did.) I’m aware of only two christian/conservative bloggers who had been critical of Dr. Dobson who even posted a retraction. For the most part, evidence that Dr. Dobson was telling the truth was largely ignored by the blogosphere. I think this was largely due to the Eason Jordon story which was just starting to gather strength.

The result is that the media’s sliming of Dr. Dobson appears to have been a raging success, just as Dr. John Mark Reynolds warned us it would be. The slander about him was widespread, the evidence of his integrity was not.

So in the last two weeks, the score is Mainstream Media: 1, Blogosphere: 1. If all the blogosphere does is destroy people, then we are doing nothing but creating a vacuum; one which may not be filled with a truth-teller, especially if we allow them to go down in flames due to our lack of support.

“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

(Matt. 12:43-45, NASB)

The MSM is currently an easy target because their lies are easily exposed. But unless we make the truth known, the lies we expose will only be replaced with more lies which are harder to expose. (Imagine forged documents from the ‘70’s without a superscripted ‘th’.) We must make the truth known or we will eventually be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of lies that can be told.

So is the blogosphere as a whole interesting in pursuing Truth with a capital ‘T’? Or are we more interested in Power, the ability to attack enemies? From this chair, it appears to be the latter.

Here is my challenge to bloggers: Focus more on promoting truth than on exposing lies. If you find someone promoting the truth, you do not necessarily have to make a comment. Simply pointing to someone who tells the truth in an excellent fashion is far better than ignoring the truth completely because you don’t have time to comment. If the blogosphere is to surpass the mass media and be a positive influence on the world, we must take advantage if our ability to bring breadth and depth to bear while maintaining a slavish devotion to truth and integrity. If we do not maintain our integrity, then we will be no better than those very journalists we condemn.

Update: Rony Abovitz, the man who first posted the Eason Jordon story, expresses similar concerns.

Emily E. has done her own SpongeBob Cache Diving. In the process, she managed to locate some pages which I had not. (See my original entry on SpongeBob Cache Diving to see what I found.)

Emily managed to find a list of allies of WAFF which is still on their web site. (My cached copy of this page is here*.) Here are some of their allies:

• Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) — “The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.” (From here)
• Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) — “GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.”
• Human Rights Campaign — “Working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights.
• National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — “Founded in 1973, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation (the Task Force) was the first national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and advocacy organization…” “The Task Force is the organization that builds grassroots political power of the LGBT community in order to attain complete equality.” (from here and here)
• Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians & Gays — “PFLAG promotes the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons, their families and friends through: support, to cope with an adverse society; education, to enlighten an ill-informed public; and advocacy, to end discrimination and to secure equal civil rights.” (from here)

Even better, Emily managed to track down the actual PDF files which used to available from the Writing For Change pages on the WAFF site. She found them on tolerance.org where they have their own section devoted to the Writing For Change program. (The index page is cached here*.) I’ve added those files to the cache on my own site:

• “1.4 Talking About Being ‘Out’”
  Here are some of the questions asked in this section:
  • Do you know of any people in your school whose sexual orientation differs from yours?
  • What are some factors that might encourage or discourage a person about being “out” as homosexual or bisexual in this class or your school?
  • What are, or what do you think would be, the consequences of a person being “out” as homosexual or bisexual in this class or your school?
  • Variation
    Answer the above questions in regard to people in your class or school who consider themselves atheist. [The implications of this variation are fascinating!]

• “1.5 Uncovering Attitudes About Sexual Orientation”
  Here is a shortened list of what’s discussed:
  • Objectives: Introduce the concepts of homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality. Analyze and discuss the effects these forces exert in students’ lives.
  • Instructor Directions: Ask your students to study the definitions of the terms “homophobia” and “compulsory heterosexuality” and identify ways in which these forces are at work in their lives.
  • Definitions:
  • Homophobia: Toughts, feelings, or actions based on fear, dislike, judgment, or hatred of gay men and lesbians/of those who love and sexually desire those of the same sex.
  • Compulsory heterosexuality: The assumption that women are “naturally” or innately drawn sexually and emotionally toward men, and men toward women; the view that heterosexuality is the “norm” for all sexual relationships. The institutionalization of heterosexuality in all aspects of society includes the idealization of heterosexual orientation, romance, and marriage.
  • Variation: Racism: The systematic mistreatment of people of color based on the belief in the inherent superiority of one race and thereby the right to dominance. [Equating opposition to homosexual behavior with racism has become a common tactic in forcing the acceptance of such behavior.]
  • Find some examples of compulsory heterosexuality in your daily life. What assumptions and values do these venues represent?
  • Do the same with examples of homophobia.
  • How are you affected by compulsory heterosexuality?
  • How are you affected by homophobia?
  • How would you be affected if your sexual orientation were different than it is now?
  • How would others you know — friends, family members, classmates, members in your clubs or organizations — be affected?
  • How will understanding these definitions change your thinking about compulsory heterosexuality and homophobia?

The “We Are Family” video is intended to be a gateway which introduces young children to the organizations which teach this stuff. Do you still think it’s all just harmless fun? Now contrast this with Jesus’ teachings about little children:

“And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

(Matt. 18:5-6, NASB)

Great job, Emily!

(* Files marked with an asterisk have had a <base href> tag added so images and links will work. No other modifications have been made to the HTML code.)

Update: Emily E. has located more important information which I had missed. I’ve organized and archived those files in SpongeBob Cache Diving, Redux.

Update: Dr. John Mark Reynolds has posted a truly excellent article on why the lies being spread about Dr. Dobson are harmful to all Christians. That is why they must be opposed. Of course, the best antidote to lies is the truth. Do you know what the truth is?

Dr. James Dobson has posted a lengthy response to the controversy over his statements about the “We Are Family” video. It’s a must read for anyone who cares about the truth.

But while the video is harmless on its own, I believe the agenda behind it is sinister. My brief comments at the FRC gathering were intended to express concern not about SpongeBob or Big Bird or any of their other cartoon friends, but about the way in which those childhood symbols are apparently being hijacked to promote an agenda that involves teaching homosexual propaganda to children. Nevertheless, the media jumped on the story by claiming that I had accused SpongeBob of being “gay.” Some suggested that I had confused the organization that had created the video with a similarly named gay-rights group.  In both cases, the press was dead wrong, and I welcome this opportunity to help them get their facts straight.

I want to be clear: the We Are Family Foundation — the organization that sponsored the video featuring SpongeBob and the other characters was, until this flap occurred, making available a variety of explicitly pro-homosexual materials on its Web site. It has since endeavored to hide that fact (more on this later), but my concerns are as legitimate today as they were when I first expressed them in January.

When the controversy first broke out, David Huntwork of Men’s News Daily immediately weighed in with “Bait and Switch: Feminist/Gay Axis Using SpongeBob to Fight ‘Compulsory Hetrosexuality’” where he documented some of the pro-homosexual agenda which has since been removed from the We Are Family Foundation’s web site. He concludes with:

This entire debacle of Leftist psycho babble indoctrination can be viewed at http://www.wearefamilyfoundation.org. I encourage you to hold your nose, jump into the deep end of the culture wars and give it a visit. The PC police are on the march this spring and, using cartoon characters as their cover, they are coming to an elementary school near you.

Serge at Imago Dei has also covered Dr. Dobson’s statement, noting:

Alan accused the WAFF website taking down a number of links that promoted a pro-homosexuality agenda (not mere tolerance), and it appears that he was correct.

I can already see the response by those who don’t want to believe Dr. Dobson’s claims about the We Are Family Foundation. They’ll claim that there is no evidence and that Dobson is lying. In fact, mumon, a regular skeptic in the comments section of the evangelical outpost, wrote this in the comments at HobbsOnline:

Dobson’s full of it, and it’s not holiness.

I’ve documented Dobson’s lies elsewhere, and the letter you’ve quoted above is another instance of Dobson’s patholical dishonesty: notice that not a single media outlet was quoted!

Moreover, note that specific charges that had been levelled against him go unrefuted!

The bottom line charges laid down by Dr. Dobson is that the We Are Family Foundation is promoting (among other things) a pro-homosexual agenda. Furthermore, there IS proof.

Let’s start with pages which are still available on the WAFF web site. The first is an article about Miss America 2004. (If the article disappears, I have cached a copy of the article here*.) The article is much more about “diversity” and “tolerance” than it is about Ericka Dunlap. As Dr. Dobson points out:

I’m sure you can see, now, why I expressed great concern about the intention of the We Are Family Foundation in using SpongeBob and company to promote the theme of “tolerance and diversity,” which are almost always buzzwords for homosexual advocacy.

The words “sexual identity” in that last sentence hold the key to understanding what is going on here. They reveal a very clever and subtle intent lying below the water line. The stated purpose, as we have seen, is to teach children to respect each other and to accept those who are different. We are entirely supportive of that message. I have been teaching it for years. There appears to be another agenda operating here, however, that has serious implications for your kids. Quite simply, it is to desensitize very young children to homosexual and bisexual behavior.

In another page, titled “101 Ways To Combat Prejudice” (Cached here*) they list recommended actions, including this suggestion:

Meet with school and community librarians and local bookstores to discuss ways to highlight literature that is representative of all cultures and sexual orientations.

Okay, so “diversity” and “tolerance” can be taken many ways. That doesn’t actually prove that WAFF is changing their web site to hide from Dr. Dobson’s charges. Where’s the beef?

One of the truly interesting aspects of the internet is that if you put up a web page, the odds are that it will wind up stored on a hard drive somewhere and it can still be accessed even if that page is later changed or even removed entirely from the original web site. Two prime tools for such “cache diving” are The Wayback Machine and Google. So I decided to make use of these tools and see if they proved Dr. Dobson’s charges.

Here is Dr. Dobson’s discussion of one of those changes:

During my remarks in Washington, I shared my suspicion about children being coerced into signing this “Tolerance Pledge.” My critics quickly sought to marginalize my warning. Nile Rodgers exasperatingly explained to “FOX News’” Bill O’Reilly that, “Even on our Web site, we don’t ask people to sign the pledge.” Oh really? Prior to my speech, the pledge, as it appeared on the foundation’s Web site, concluded with the following paragraph:

“To fulfill my pledge, I __________________ will examine my own biases and work to overcome them, set a positive example for my family and friends, work for tolerance in my own community, speak out against hate and injustice. We share a world. For all our differences, we share one world. To be tolerant is to welcome the differences and delight in the sharing.”

Once the individual filled in his or her name, there was a “submit” button to the right of the pledge that would, ostensibly, officially record that “pledge” commitment. This portion of the pledge has also disappeared from the Web site.

The Wayback Machine shows that Dr. Dobson’s charge is, in fact, true and that Nile Rodgers of WAFF was lying. You can see their cached copy of this page here. (Just in case, you can find my cached copy here.)

One of WAFF‘s programs which has since been removed from their web site is a course titled “Writing For Change.” They state its purpose like this:

Second, and perhaps more importantly, we recognize the unique and paradoxical role of language in our lives. We use this powerful tool to shape our thoughts and experiences, yet patterns and structures in the language itself can shape us in return. In the words of one activist, “Our words create our world.”

If language creates reality, we decided our best hope of shaping the reality we would like to see is to examine the negative and harmful underpinnings of this powerful but often invisible tool, and refocus them to begin creating a language of equality and inclusion.

In other words, to focus is to change how children think by affecting how they use language. Of course, you will no longer see the page which includes this statement on their web site. It has been removed along with the rest of the pages pertaining to Writing For Change because an examination of the materials supports Dr. Dobson’s charge that WAFF is pushing a pro-homosexuality agenda.

So, you might ask, if those pages have been removed, how did I find them? Google also caches web pages for some period of time. By searching their cache, I was able to find a number of pages giving an overview of WFC. (The details are apparently in PDF files which Google does not cache.) Four of those pages expose the fact that WFC is intended to change how children think and that the lie that all ideas — including sexual practices — are equally acceptable. As with the other pages I’ve discussed, I’ve archived copies on my site.

(Note: These pages are copies of the page displayed by Google from their cache. The only change to these pages is renaming the files to treat them as HTML files. Google provided the URL to their cache in the header of the page, so you can compare my copies with Google’s cached version for as long as they last.)

Introduction (Google’s cached copy) This page was captured by Google on January 8, 2005.

Using This Guide (Google’s cached copy) This page was captured by Google on January 9, 2005.

Section 1 (Google’s cached copy) Notice the multiple activities discussing sexual orientation. This page was captured by Google on Januay 23, 2005.

Resources (Google’s cached copy) For a “writing course” WFC sure uses a lot of pro-homosexual books! This page was captured by Google on January 8, 2005.

So who is really lying here? Dr. James Dobson when he says that WAFF is pusing a pro-homosexual agenda? Or is it the We Are Family Foundation when they say they are not? The evidence says that Dr. Dobson is telling the truth and that WAFF is lying through their teeth.

(If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my previous post about the logical fallacies being used to attack Dr. Dobson.)

(* Files marked with an asterisk have had a <base href> tag added so images and links will work. No other modifications have been made to the HTML code.)

It has been truly fascinating to watch the recent controversy over James Dobson’s complaints about the video being put out by the We Are Family Foundation. What makes it even more fascinating is that I’m currently working through a book with my kids on identifying logical fallacies called “The Fallacy Detective”. The counterattack against Dr. Dobson’s concerns has been impressively effective even though it’s based on two simple fallacies.

First, a straw man fallacy is set up to change Dr. Dobson’s concerns from “I’m concerned that they are pushing a pro-homosexual agenda” to “Dobson hates SpongeBob.” (Notice that they are not the same statement.) Then that straw man is being used as a red herring to drag the discussion away from the core issue, which is, “Is it really appropriate to be teaching six year olds that all kinds of behavior is acceptable?”

Serge at Imago Dei has an excellent take on why the video is so dangerous. He also has an excellent followup here where he posts an alternate “Tolerance Pledge” which is biblical:

Tolerance is a personal decision to value every individual based on the fact that every human being is made in the image of God (Imago Dei). I believe that our value does not come from our abilities, beliefs, cultures, race, or behaviors. Although some human beings may choose to behave in ways that are against their moral nature and divine design, I believe we should show them love and sensitively share with them the truth while respecting their value as human beings. 

Since marriage between a man and a woman fulfills God’s design and provides the best environment for human flourishing, I pledge for myself and to encourage others to restrict sexual activity to within the bounds of a covenant marriage. Not only will I tolerate others with a different point of view, I pledge to engage them in dialogue in order to respectfully speak the truth to them in love.

Go, Serge, Go!

Alan Levering added a comment pointing to this web page which discusses the pro-homosexual agenda of the We Are Family Foundation and their removal of content from their website in an attempt to cover up that agenda.

I will definitely have more to say on this subject in the future. Stay tuned…

Michelle Malkin notes an article discussing prom dresses which look like they were designed for porn stars. Dory of Wittenberg Gate has an excellent biblical take on the story.

Modesty is that quality which flows from a humble, reverent, and chaste mind and heart, and manifests itself in speech, behavior, and dress that communicates a moderate estimation of one’s own worth and importance, and a high estimation of the beauty of purity in Christian marriage.

Lest we become too prudish about modesty, let us remember that women are told to adorn themselves with modesty, but they are not told not to adorn themselves. (1 Tim 2:9) Even the Proverbs 31 wife is described as being adorned in purple and scarlet. As in many things, we must walk that line between legalism or pietism on the one hand and licentiousness on the other. I think the best way to do that in regards to modesty is to ask the question, “What am I communicating?” and if we are to err, err on the side of caution.