Last week, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and a longtime social conservative leader, died at 89. He devoted himself to many causes in his life. Perhaps chief among them was the importance of marriage and the family. There was a granular, practical element to this: He spent a great deal of time dispensing marriage and parenting advice. An additional element of his work, however, was in defending these essential institutions from redefinition and decay.
Appearing on Larry King Live in 2002, for example, Dobson warned of the social ills that would follow a redefinition of marriage. In 2004, he wrote:
To put it succinctly, the institution of marriage represents the very foundation of human social order. Everything of value sits on that base. When it is weakened or undermined, the entire superstructure begins to wobble.
He wrote this while he spearheaded attempts to enshrine marriage amendments in the constitutions of several states and pushed for a federal marriage amendment. President George W. Bush endorsed the effort, and many states did statutorily adopt the traditional definition of marriage. But this success was undone in 2015, when a bare 5–4 majority on the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in the landmark Obergefell decision, effectively negating whatever laws states had passed.
Throughout his advocacy on this issue (and others), Dobson was widely vilified. Dan Savage, a progressive columnist, once said his vision of hell was “a world run by haters like James Dobson.” The People for the American Way, Human Rights Campaign, the ACLU, and many other progressive groups bitterly opposed him. In the wake of his death, progressives sneered and celebrated.
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Daniel Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary and the author of several books, including In Defense of Christian Patriotism, forthcoming from Broadside Books.
