From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Focus haunted by 'the rumor'
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 02:55:18 GMT

By Steve Rabey, Religion Editor
Gazette Telegraph, Colorado Springs

Group's founder denies targeting gays in schools

The rumor has been circulating in Colorado Springs for months:

Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson (or a Focus employee, or one of 
the organization's nearly 2 million supporters) contacted Colorado Springs 
School District 11 (or Academy District 20) and requested (or demanded) a copy 
of personnel lists showing marital status (or clues to sexual orientation or 
promiscuous behavior).

Like many rumors, this one has had many lives, circulating again and again 
regardless of how often or how loudly it was denied.  But this rumor, fueled by 
recent controversies over gay rights, was given new life this week when it was 
broadcast on a nationwide radio show.

"The Gil Gross Show" is a three-hour call-in talk show that airs 6 to 9 p.m. 
weeknights on 100 stations in the CBS radio network.  The show is carried 
locally on KVOR.

On Monday, a female caller who said she was affiliated with a Denver gay and 
lesbian advocacy group alleged taht Focus was trying to get school district 
lists to identify single teachers with no children.

The woman's comments were rebroadcast on another radio station, and other news 
outfits began making inquiries.

D-11 spokesperson Tracy Cooper said there is no basis to the rumor.  And that's 
what she's been telling people ever since she first looked into the charges in 
the spring.

"It's an urban myth--the kind of story that doesn't seem to die," said Cooper, 
who will write about the controversy in an upcoming issue of D-11's employee 
newsletter.

Academy District 20 Superintendent Thomas Crawford is more outspoken.

"It's crazy," he said.  "It's really frustrating for me, and I think the whole 
damn story ougot to be killed."

But if Crawford thinks he is frustrated, he ought to talk to Dobson, who in a 
letter to D-11 Superintendent Kenneth Burnley sad, "Such an idea would never in 
a thousand years have entered our minds!"

In an interview, Dobson said the persistent rumors are "part of a concerted 
effort to discredit Focus on the Family and me by planting stories that have no 
basis in truth.  There is an effort to make us look extremist, hate-filled and 
vicious in the way we deal with the homosexual community, and it's unfair."

KOA News Director Jerry Bell said his station aired the comments on its local 
morning news show.  For balance, the station broadcast a caller from the 
Springs who said Denver Mayor Wellington Webb should quit publicizing his 
opposition to Amendment 2 because he isn't representing the majority of the 
state's voters.  Amendment 2 passed in November by Colorado voters, prohibits 
laws protecting gays from discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"I realize that there is a perception that develops when somehting like (the 
rumor) goes uchallenged, so we have invited Focus to come on the air and 
correct that impression," said Bell.

As of Friday, Focus had not responded to Bell's offer.

D-20's Crawford also said even if someone did ask for employee lists, school 
districts can't just hand them out because of federal privacy laws.

"People can't get at any of those lists," he said.

But Amy Divine of Citizens Project, a Colorado Springs group formed to counter 
the religious right, said she has heard too many firsthand reports about 
requests for teacher information to dismiss the issue.

"I believe that schools and individuals have been approached by people looking 
for names," she said.

"I do not believe this is coming from Focus on the Family--it is not their 
style.  But somebody who is concerned about gay and lesbian teachers is using 
Focus's name for leverage."

Dobson says the rumors spring from his organization's ideological opponents.

"If you dare step in front of this movement, this juggernaut called the 
homosexual agenda, you will be made to pay an incredible price for it, and I 
believe that's what's happening in the form of these undocumented rumors and 
the incredible hostility expressed to us in this community," he said.

And Dobon said opposition to Focus is more than mere words.  Focus's main 
downtown building has been plastered with posters saying "Hate is not a family 
value", a brick has been thrown through a window,and a bomb threat was received 
Thursday morning.

"When you talk about hate, you need to find out which direction that hate is 
flowing," he said.


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