Focus refuses to apologize
U.S. "anti-gay" broadcast ruled too much for Canadian ears
By Kevin Heinrichs • ChristianWeek staff
VANCOUVER–Eighteen months after a Focus on the Family radio program dealt with concerns surrounding the gay lifestyle, a Canadian regulatory board ruled in August that the broadcast breached the Canadian human rights code.
In response, Focus Canada president Darrel Reid says the ruling is simply an attempt to muzzle free speech and he refuses to apologize.
Reid is particularly upset that the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council made no effort to contact Focus to ask for its response or input before it issued its ruling, especially with such a long time between the broadcast and the ruling.
"I have a problem with the decision because they’re saying things about Focus which aren’t true. They are assuming motive," says Reid.
Insidious, conspiratorial
In its seven-page ruling, the CBSC concludes that "the program attributed to the gay movement a false and flimsy intellectual basis and a malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial purpose which, in the view of the Council, constitute abusively discriminatory comment on the basis of sexual orientation…".
While the self-regulating CBSC, made up of 430 member broadcasters, has less weight than the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Council and cannot penalize stations that aired the program, its rulings create peer pressure within the industry.
The CBSC could withdraw the membership of a broadcaster with cause, "which would be a pretty serious shot across their bow," says Reid.
He has demanded that the ruling be withdrawn, but CBSC chair Ron Cohen says there is no mechanism for that.
The controversy stems from a complaint from a Red Deer, Alberta resident who heard the February 9, 1997 broadcast on CKRD AM. In a program entitled "Homosexuality: Fact and Fiction," host James Dobson encouraged a panel of evangelical Christian family specialists to debunk the "homosexual activist movement" and its reliance on what Dobson refers to as "false use of statistics," particularly those pertaining to teenage suicide.
Ironically, in the disputed program, Dobson tells listeners he fears some day it will become "illegal to speak in certain terms about homosexuals, as it is in Canada today."
The show aired on hundreds of radio stations in Canada and more than 2,300 in the U.S.
At the same time as the Focus ruling, the CBSC issued two separate rulings on other complaints, one having to do with a complaint of blasphemy on a Comedy Network show, the other with on-air nudity. CBSC said neither incident breached its guidelines.
Reid says Focus Canada has not decided on its next move, but is consulting its lawyers.
