Press Pass Q's Michael K. Lavers writes:
An ad campaign that appeared in LGBT publications in Chicago helped draw an estimated 500 people to protest against the Museum of Broadcast Communications’ decision to honor Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
The Chicago Free Press, Windy City Times, and Gay Chicago published ads that condemned the MBC’s decision to honor Dobson at a Nov. 8 banquet. Signatories included Equality Illinois, the Gay Liberation Network [GLN], former Human Rights Campaign spokesperson Wayne Besen, and local Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays chapters.
The campaign cost around $2,500. GLN spokesperson Andy Thayer said the ads were designed to organize LGBT Chicagoans against Dobson and the MBC’s decision to honor him. “We thought it was important to mobilize our community,” he said.
Besen, who is the founder and executive director of Truth Wins Out, co-organized the protest alongside GLN. He and other activists have repeatedly blasted Dobson for his distortions of research to support his opposition to homosexuality, marriage for same-sex couples, and other issues.
GLN member Bob Schwartz criticized the MBC’s decision. “It is unconscionable that any public institution would honor someone who has devoted his life to denying a whole section of the community legal equality, and promotes slander against that community,” he said. “Someone who does that is a hater, pure and simple, no matter how much they try to excuse their pro-discrimination rhetoric with so-called ‘Christian’ rationalizations.”
Thayer described the campaign as a success, and the museum’s reputation has suffered significantly. “The MBC’s reputation in the city has been tarnished … among media professionals,” Thayer said. “The stock of the MBC has been much diminished.”
