Focus on the Family [censored] Warning About the 6/8 IGREA Hearing

[1p0kerboy]

I am a Christian and am truely ashamed of this organization's lies and attempts to manipulate those who are less informed. This is really sad.

[1p0kerboy]

Do you think we could get an article published somewhere exposing each lie in the article they have written?

[MasterLJ]

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His bill, if passed, will undo nearly a decade of Congressional efforts to protect children and families from gambling predators on the Internet. It also threatens white-handed gibbons natural mating grounds in Rangoon

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Edited for similar rationality.

[TheEngineer]

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It is engineer, I even wrote to Focus on Family telling them how disappointed I was in them supporting the UIGEA since it contained LEGALIZED gaming

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I'm glad you told them, but they are very happy to work on things incrementally. Here's an article on their incremental approach to banning abortion in America. The article is revealing in that Dobson has evangelical opponents who feel Dobson should be going for an all-or-nothing approach on abortion.

[whangarei]

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But its nice that they credited us "handful of poker players" for making this "dangerous" legislation possible [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] .

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Yeah, FOF doesn't stand for Focus on Facts. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] More like 100,000+ handfuls of poker players.

[BluffTHIS!]

I want to give a different view of FOF than that contained in all the snarky and somewhat anti-Christian comments above. As posters here who also have read the SMP forum over time know, I am a Catholic Christian, and a conservative one. I however, unlike fundamentalists, do not in general have a problem with gambling (and my views on same can be found in the archived theread here ).

Instead of just opposing FOF's efforts here because of the general anti-religious mindset some of you have, why not instead rebut their points on facts and logic? The correct way to do that is to differentiate poker from other forms of gambling, note that we support efforts to limit and help with gambling addictions, and to make it clear that we view this as a matter of the right of individuals to spend their money as they please. Same as with all the women who have 500 pairs of shoes and guys that have 1000 ties. And point out that to maintain otherwise, that they should be spending equal efforts to limit compulsive shopping and limiting the predatory practices of banks in regards to credit cards.

A lot of this fundamentalist anti-gambling rhetoric rests on wrong facts and illogical arguments (like "first comes gambling then prostitution and drugs and more crime, etc., etc."), and we as 2+2'ers who supposedly think better than the average american, should be pointing out those factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies. Because once we do that, then all they are left with is "we believe gambling is a sin and that we should impose that belief on others".

So the more productive approach is to do just that, i.e. stip all the BS away from their arguments and leave them with just the one that personal morality should be imposed by law even when same doesn't harm others.

And note that this manner of interacting with and discussing FOF is all the more necessary because of their political clout, and because Dr. Dobson isn't just one of those hustlers in clerical garb who only is out for a buck. He is a sincere Christian who hasn't had personal scandals that make it easy to attack him personally. So engage him and his followers in the political arena with better thinking and I guarantee that many Christians won't be as insistant as some are on imposing their beliefs when the other arguments that are piled on top of same are shown to be faulty. And making it clear that plenty of religious believers don't agree with them on this issue takes a lot of wind from their sails.

[whangarei]

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I want to give a different view of FOF than that contained in all the snarky and somewhat anti-Christian comments above. ... Instead of just opposing FOF's efforts here because of the general anti-religious mindset some of you have ...

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While I agree with the rest of your post, this is uncalled for. I am neither anti-religious nor anti-Christian, but I am strongly opposed to most of what groups like FOF represent.

[BluffTHIS!]

whang,

Noted. But there is no reason to even mention "the rest of the stuff", because it will only be taken as anti-religious opposition instead of reasoned opposition. Don't make it easy on them.

[RainFall]

These guys are just as bad as the terrorists really. They're two sides of the same coin. Both fundamentalists trying to destroy America.

[TheEngineer]

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I want to give a different view of FOF than that contained in all the snarky and somewhat anti-Christian comments above.

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Which comments did you find anti-Christian? I just read all of them and couldn't find any. There are some comments against Focus, but that's not the same as being against Christianity (as much as Dobson likes to think it is).

As gambling is not a sin and is not referenced negatively in the Bible, I'd suggest that Dobson's use of Jesus and Christianity to attack gambling is anti-Christian.

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Instead of just opposing FOF's efforts here because of the general anti-religious mindset some of you have, why not instead rebut their points on facts and logic?

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That's one reason I posted the thread. Other reasons were to raise everyone's awareness of their efforts and to share FOFs embrace of fighting for incremental gain.

Sun Tzu wrote "know your enemy" in Art of War. I think we've had some substantive discussions on our opponents, and we need to continue to do so.