While there's been much outrage about how much the Mormon church contributed to Prop 8 (almost $190K), it turns out that James Dobson's Focus on the Family group and its supporters contributed over seven times more money to Prop 8 than the Mormons. (And, ironically, it seems that FOTF was more focused on spending the dough to break up our families than in helping their own workers to take care of theirs. The group announced that it would let go 20% of their staff shortly after Prop 8 passed). Colorado Independent has done the number-crunching on the Prop 8 donations:
Altogether, donations supporting Proposition 8 from Focus on the Family, one of its major benefactors and an offshoot lobbying organization totaled more than $1.251 million — just shy of the $1.275 million contributed by ProtectMarriage.com’s largest donor, the Knights of Columbus, the Connecticut-based political arm of the Catholic Church. In addition to $727,250 reported by Focus on the Family, major backer and board member Elsa Prince, the billionaire heiress of Holland, Mich., donated $450,000 to ProtectMarriage.com in two cash chunks and the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, a Christian-right lobbying organization spun off from Focus on the Family and founded in part by Prince’s foundation, chipped in $74,400. ...Focus on the Family donated more to the Proposition 8 campaign than has been reported, The Colorado Independent has found. A widely reported sum of “$657,000 in money and services” donated toward the ballot measure by Focus falls short of the total, failing to account for contributions made by the organization as long ago as November 2007 when Focus on the Family helped seed ProtectMarriage.com with a $50,000 cash contribution. The evangelical group spent another $35,650 in December 2007 supporting the anti-gay marriage group with Web ads, e-mail blasts, radio broadcasts, printing and postage, according to a disclosure form filed with the California secretary of state. Total 2008 contributions from Focus on the Family to the Proposition 8 campaign were $641,600, according to disclosure forms filed in January and made available to the public a week ago. A Focus on the Family spokesman didn’t return a call seeking comment. In addition — though apart from the $727,250 spent directly to pass Proposition 8 — Focus on the Family donated $14,915 in 2007 to the Save Our Kids referendum to overturn a California law that says “no teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias because of” homosexuality, transsexuality, bisexuality, or transgender status. That campaign didn’t make it to the ballot, but was a precursor to the Proposition 8 campaign. “After much prayer, consideration and consultation,” Save Our Kids organizers wrote on their Web site, the group decided to “suspend the Save Our Kids campaign to allow our staff and supporters to dedicate themselves to the Marriage amendment (Proposition 8).”
In a few weeks (March 5), the California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in lawsuits contesting the constitutionality of Prop 8. We're sure the anti-LGBT haters will be hysterical - as usual - in their opposition. They obviously don't care that their obsession with our families is robbing their ability to focus on saving their own families - even in this tough economic climate. After all, with heterosexual divorce rates being as dismal as they are, they're doing a fine job of preserving the foundation of the "traditional family" all by themselves, aren't they?
