Bias Watch

Hate group’s sign vandalized in wake of anti-LGBTQ mass shooting in their town

The graffiti at FOTF
The graffiti at FOTF Photo: Screenshot

Focus on the Family (FOTF) – one of the longest-running anti-LGBTQ organizations in the country – found its sign in Colorado Springs, Colorado vandalized in the wake of the Club Q mass shooting that left five dead and 18 injured.

“Their blood is on your hands. Five lives taken,” vandals spray painted on the group’s sign in black.

Last week, a shooter entered Club Q, an LGBTQ bar in Colorado Springs, and opened fire with an AR-15-style weapon. The shooter was later found to have regularly used anti-LGBTQ slurs and his father has already spouted anti-LGBTQ rhetoric to the press.

While there is no sign of direct involvement from FOTF, the organization’s presence in the same city has been brought up in connection to the attack.

The Gazette reported that the vandalism occurred early on Thursday morning and that FOTF tried to hide the graffiti with a tarp, although it fell off later in the day.

Police are still investigating the graffiti.

FOTF was founded in 1977 by James Dobson. It is possibly the largest theocratic-right organization in the United States.

The group — which recently registered with the IRS as a church to hide its donors — has a four-building, 47-acre complex in north Colorado. It has raised over $515 million in past years, much of which goes towards anti-LGBTQ public campaigns and anti-LGBT candidates championed by FOF’s related organization, CitizenLink. FOF has over 800 employees, 14 international offices, and partnerships in 60 countries.

FOTF opposes same-sex marriage and sex education in schools (except “abstinence-only”), supports so-called conversion therapy, and generally opposes anything that promotes the so-called “homosexual agenda” — even concepts of tolerance and diversity which, according to Dobson, are “buzzwords for homosexual advocacy.” The group has called the LGBTQ rights movement a “particularly evil lie of Satan.”

Dobson also compared proponents of same-sex marriage to Nazis who want “the utter destruction of the family.”

According to the group, the goals of the “homosexual movement” include “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, the discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, indoctrination of children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.”

In a statement, FOTF’s president Jim Daly said that it is “positioned to help and support the needs of struggling individuals and families” while denouncing the graffiti.

“We recognize the community is hurting in the aftermath of the reckless and violent actions of a very disturbed individual,” the statement said. “This is a time for prayer, grieving, and healing, not vandalism and the spreading of hate.”

“We urge everyone to pray for peace and we also pray for the individual or group responsible for this mischievous and unwarranted defacing of our ministry’s property.”

FOTF’s website still says that same-sex couples are “confused” and “they need God’s help to follow Him” and claims that pro-transgender laws “allow dangerous individuals open admission to public accommodations.”

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