Focus on the Family to Women: You Can Wear Pants Now

The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family is becoming slightly rebellious… maybe because James Dobson is no longer steering the ship.

They’re changing up the dress code for employees:

Beginning [this past Tuesday], men who work at Focus no longer have to wear mandatory business attire, including tie, and women employees don’t have to stick with just dresses or skirts and hosiery. Men can now come to work donning an open collar shirt — but no spandex — and women can arrive decked in dress pants and pantsuits.

Next thing you know, the women will want to make important policy decisions, too…

Using Focus on the Family’s brand of logic, though, this slight bit of caving in will soon lead to Naked Tuesdays. I’m sure of it.

[Focus spokeswoman Lisa] Anderson said easing up on formal attire also will help Focus draw younger families to the ministry, make employees seem more approachable when they’re assisting families in the field and encourage tourists to hobnob with Focus employees.

Really… The slightly relaxed dress code would do all that? If you want to attract younger people, how about just being less homophobic? Right now, the anti-gay attitude just scares young people off…

John at The J-Walk Blog adds this about the tourist line:

That makes perfect sense. If I planned a vacation to see the sites at the Focus On The Family office, I wouldn’t do much hobnobbing if everyone was wearing formal attire.

True story: Colorado Springs is where my book’s publishers are located. When I visited the offices a couple years ago, you could see FotF headquarters from the office windows. I *totally* wanted to visit. But we didn’t have time.

MikeTheInfidel

Deuteronomy 22:5

“A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.”

OH NOES!
Terence

Hmm it’s funny how tourists would even want to visit the FOTF office. Since when has it become a tourist attraction??
Miko

Eventually, they’ll drop the anti-gay too, or they’ll vanish. That’s how the free market works: any business (or non-profit, church, political party, NGO, etc.) that discriminates against a sizable number of people and refuses to change will be out-competed by a rival business that doesn’t. (The film Milk has an excellent demonstration of this, in which Harvey organizes the local gays to boycott the bigoted businesses in Castro.) The Religious Right has survived this long by using political regulation to thwart the invisible hand of the market, but at the end of the day the market is stronger than the politicians, which is why we’ll win.
Anonymous

Using Focus on the Family’s brand of logic, though, this slight bit of caving in will soon lead to Naked Tuesdays. I’m sure of it.

Yes! This is a dangerous slippery slope which will irrevocably lead to office orgies.
trixr4kids

@ Miko,

I’m sure if we just adopt the correct economic system, bigotry–hell, all our problems will be solved!

*adoring sigh* laissez faire–is there anything it can’t do?
«bønez_brigade»

Men can now come to work donning an open collar shirt — but no spandex[…]

That’s quite a leap from open collar shirt to spandex. Do they consider such a style of shirt as “gateway clothing” to stereotypically “gayer” things like spandex? (whereby one must exercise much restraint)

I also agree with Miko. FotF must evolve or go extinct.
HP

bonez, Clearly, men in spandex has been a problem for FotF in the past.

“But Reverend Dobson, I rode my bike to work! I was planning to change as soon as I got to the men’s room!”

(When my company went through a change of ownership a few years back, the new dress code expressly forbade men from wearing “river thongs.” So far, I’ve resisted the urge.)
anonymouse

what is a river thong??
Greta Christina

Shame! Shame! Won’t somebody please think of the children?
mikespeir

Won’t get to ogle the women’s legs anymore? Must be a bummer to work there now.
Corvus

My AP exams my senior year of High School were held in one of their buildings. I found the employees to be quite unfriendly. Maybe they were jealous of my jeans-and-t-shirt comfort?
Erik

Yes! This is a dangerous slippery slope which will irrevocably lead to office orgies.

Promise?
numsix

Naked Tuesdays

Now there is a tourist attraction.
bill

i’m pretty sure “hobnobbing” constitutes sexual harassment…
KeithLM

Now what I want to know is what are those women doing working? This is “Focus on the Family” after all, shouldn’t they be home raising babies and cooking their husbands’ dinners?
Alexis

I always wondered why jesus and the disciples wore dresses. Didn’t moses (who also wore dresses) forbid that?
GG

I’m deeply offended that they allow women to show their ankles and have their heads uncovered. Don’t they know that could lead to lesbian mud wrestling and breakroom porn shoots?

I’ve visited FoF before. Granted, I was about 12 years old at the time, but who cares. I survived!
gr8googlymoogly

Next thing you know, it will be OK for the men in the office to have extra-marital affairs with the women. What? That’s already OK? See!!!
«bønez_brigade»

@HP,
I 2nd the request for a description of “river thongs”.
Jude

Like Mormon missionaries, they were seriously out of step with Colorado dress “codes” which stress informal attire for most employees most of the time. I saw the Focus on the Family sign when I passed through Colorado Springs a few years ago, so I drove up to the headquarters of the evil empire itself. It felt quite strange.
Robert Madewell

The spandex comment cracked me up for some reason.
bigjohn756

Naked Tuesdays–I can hardly wait to see Church Lady naked!
Rafaella

God, what is so wrong with wearing thongs? You might want to check out this article by journalist Mary Spicuzza (“Panty Ranting”) that explains how activist girls at a high school are making thong wearing safe for all of us:

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.14.00/dresscode-0050.html