A couple weeks ago, James Dobson‘s Focus on the Family posted a video on its website urging viewers to pray for rain — Specifically on the night Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President. The video features Stuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action:
The video was meant to be “mildly humorous.”
I guess it’s hard to distinguish Focus on the Family’s sense of humor… these are the same people, after all, who (seriously) said that Spongebob Squarepants was part of a pro-homosexual agenda.
In any case, Focus’ own people didn’t like the idea that their prayers should be used to inflict harm on others — (It’s not like Obama’s gay, right?)
They complained.
Focus has since removed the video from their website.
I think the money quotation comes from Tom Minnery, Focus Action’s vice president of public policy. He may be talking about the “Rain on Obama’s Parade” video but I think we can extrapolate it to just about everything Focus does:
“If people took it seriously, we regret it,” Minnery said Monday.