Shortly after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, James Dobson weighed in to declare that the shooting was evidence that God has "allowed judgment to fall upon us" because the nation has turned its back on him by accepting things like abortion and gay marriage.
Those remarks, not surprisingly, generated some controversy and so, last Friday, Ryan Dobson sought to set the record straight on "Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk" radio broadcast where he asserted that his father's remarks were taken out of context and that he is the victim of an agenda-driven effort to smear him:
Some of our listeners may have seen some of the buzz on-line, especially on our Facebook page, surrounding comments made by my dad right here on the Family Talk broadcast following the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy that took place on Friday, December 14th. But believe it or not, people with their own personal agenda have splattered all over the internet and the blogosphere that my dad, Dr. James Dobson, said that God caused the murder of those children and those adults and let me tell you that is a lie, and I believe that is an intentional distortion of my dad's words and it's taken totally out of context.
There have been a lot of accusations aimed at my dad over the years; he is called hateful and a bigot, all kinds of vile things that I would never repeat on the air and I always ask people [to] just quote him. Show me where ... I mean, if he's that hateful, if he's that mean of a person, he's been on air for thirty-five years, he's written over eighty book, if that's who he is, you should have volumes of evidence to bring forth, but there's nothing there!
I just want to say to our friends and our listeners, if you see something distributed about my dad that is outlandish, please consider the source. A lot of these bloggers and online columnists have an agenda and they are just throwing bricks at a man who is making a stand for righteousness.
Of course, our entire original post was built on directly quoting James Dobson himself saying that Sandy Hook was God's judgment:
Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I'm not talking politically, I'm not talking about the result of the November sixth election; I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.
I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he's irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.
And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that's what's going on.
