Soulforce marches
across Colorado to protest Dobson

The Virginia-based gay advocacy group Soulforce on Monday began a 65-mile march from Denver to the headquarters of the antigay Christian group Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs to confront the group's founder, James Dobson. Soulforce members, who mounted a similar protest last year, have accused Dobson of manipulating research data to say gays and lesbians are not good parents.

Soulforce executive director Jeff Lutes said Dobson's statements have brought rejection and ridicule on gay and lesbian parents, and his group wants Dobson to stop. "That misinformation has real tragic results. It makes living for families like ours much more difficult. We are rejected sometimes by loved ones, we are shunned by churches, and we are discriminated against in every state in this country," Lutes said at a rally at the state capitol before the march got under way.

Judith Stacey, a sociologist at New York University, said her work was manipulated in an attempt to show gays and lesbians do not make good parents. "This is a direct misrepresentation of the research," she said at the rally.

Focus on the Family spokesman Glenn Stanton said other research shows that children need a mother and a father, regardless of the parents' sexual orientation. "We haven't said anything about sexual orientation," he said.

On Saturday, July 22, at 6 p.m. actor Chad Allen and Judy Shepard, executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, will lead a final two-mile march from Rampart Park in Colorado Springs to the headquarters of Focus on the Family. The crowd will encircle James Dobson's headquarters, joining hearts and hands in vigil as they peacefully call on him to cease his defamation of gays and lesbians. (The Advocate)