Notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ leader of right-wing Christian group Focus on the Family dies aged 89
Dr. James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, gestures while speaking at the Justice Sunday III rally on January 8, 2006 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)
Dr. James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, gestures while speaking at the Justice Sunday III rally on January 8, 2006 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)
James Dobson, the vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ leader of notorious right-wing Christian group Focus on the Family has died at the age of 89, according to Newsweek and the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute website.
His cause of death has not been yet made public.
James Dobson founded Focus on the Family in 1977, and the group’s primary focus over the years has been to lobby against LGBTQ+ rights in the US, calling those rights a “particularly evil lie of Satan.”
The organisation’s current president is Jim Daly, who hosts a daily radio programme with co-host Focus VP John Fuller. Focus on the Family also publishes books, magazines and videos. The group is also vehemently anti-abortion, and one of their goals is to abolish Planned Parenthood.
Focus on the Family also lobbies hard against transgender rights, and works to craft policies opposing the consensus of pro-transgender medical experts. They are also staunchly against any form of same-sex marriage or union, including civil unions, with Dobson stating that civil unions were just same-sex marriage under another name. The Southern Poverty Law Group officially classified Focus on the Family as a hate group in May 2025.
James Dobson also helped to create the Family Research Council, an activist group and think-tank that opposes and lobbies against stem-cell research, abortion, divorce, , same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination laws, same-sex civil unions and LGBTQ+ adoption. The group has been criticised in the past for falsely claiming that the children of same-sex parents suffer from more mental health problems.
In 2016, the then-79 year old Dobson said that the “B” in “LGBTQ” actually stood for “orgies.”
He explained: “It’s a whole lot broader than just the gay agenda. LGBT… people understand when they’re saying people who have this inclination want to fall in love and want this in the form of this.
“LGBT. You know what the B stands for? Bisexual. That’s orgies! That is lots of sex with lots of people!”
