AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
James Dobson touched millions with his advice on parenting, sexuality and relationships. To many, the recently-deceased founder of the global Christian ministry Focus on the Family was a man of enormous compassion. But in Colorado Springs, where Focus is based, many remember him as a divisive figure who campaigned against civil rights for queer people. Colorado Public Radio's Noel Black reports.
NOEL BLACK, BYLINE: Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation, held back tears during a memorial broadcast of the radio show James Dobson founded. She recalled a phone call with Dobson after her son had just come out as gay.
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KAY COLES JAMES: Jim and Shirley stayed on the phone for an hour and a half with us, crying with us, counseling with us, encouraging us to love our son. And I wish that people could know that side of Jim Dobson - Jim Dobson, the friend.
BLACK: But many people in Colorado Springs, where Dobson built his empire, never felt that love and won't remember him as a friend.
PAMELA DRAPER: It's OK with me that he's gone. I guess that's what I'm going to say.
BLACK: Pamela Draper has lived in the Colorado Springs area since 1977, the year James Dobson founded Focus on the Family in California. She remembers clearly when Dobson and Focus moved to town in 1991. She had come out as a lesbian a few years earlier, which hadn't seemed like a big deal at the time.
DRAPER: I felt that we all got along.
BLACK: Even as a Black lesbian woman, she felt like Colorado Springs, though always conservative, had been very live-and-let-live. But after Focus arrived, a dark political cloud seemed to move in over the city.
DRAPER: Then it became clear that there was going to be a focus on gay people.
BLACK: Dobson believed gay people could be cured with the proper faith and counseling. And in 1992, he campaigned for Amendment 2, a state ballot initiative to limit gay rights.
JOHN HARNER: Amendment 2 - they sold it to ensure that the gay population does not get what they call special rights.
BLACK: John Harner, a University of Colorado professor, wrote a book called "Profiting From The Peak" on the history of Colorado Springs. He says there were already a lot of Christian nonprofits in the city when Dobson arrived, and they generally stayed out of local politics. But the ballot initiative changed all that, and Dobson's power drew even more religious nonprofits and evangelical churches to Colorado Springs.
HARNER: So this became a real conservative Christian Mecca for a long time.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK. They're on for tonight.
BLACK: Dobson's campaign for the ballot initiative seemed to change the city's tolerance, says Richard Skorman, who runs Poor Richard's restaurant and bookstore, a downtown haven for Colorado Springs' left-leaning communities since the 1970s.
RICHARD SKORMAN: We got bricks thrown through our window. We had bomb threats. One brick had a note on it saying, it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
BLACK: His restaurant became a place for the gay community and supporters to organize.
SKORMAN: So if you happened to be LGBTQ, you could get fired. You could be kicked out of an apartment. You could be denied, you know, service in a restaurant. And it came from Colorado Springs.
BLACK: The amendment passed, but was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court four years later as unconstitutional. The upside for many of those who lived through that time was that it galvanized the gay and lesbian community and those who supported them. Former mayor Mary Lou Makepeace, a Christian and a Republican, says she didn't know anyone gay before Dobson came to town. But as a woman and a leader, she believed in equal rights for all.
MARY LOU MAKEPEACE: So when Dobson is portrayed as this holier-than-thou guy, I wonder, is he aware of the Ten Commandments and all the other biblical kinds of things?
BLACK: After she served as mayor, Makepeace became director of the Gill Foundation, a gay rights advocacy organization which created the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, to highlight the contributions of the LGBTQ community.
MAKEPEACE: I have to thank Dobson for being so extreme because he made the people that he was denigrating stronger. They had to stand up for themselves. And that was refreshing. It took a while, but it was refreshing.
BLACK: In 2009, James Dobson stepped down as chair of Focus on the Family, and Colorado Springs had begun to shake its reputation as the evangelical Vatican. Recently, Colorado Springs, with its majestic views of Pikes Peak, has been named the No. 2 best place to live by U.S. News and World Report. Young people flocked here during COVID.
Pamela Draper, who saw the city change under James Dobson's influence, says she's glad she, her wife and daughter stayed, fought and outlasted Dobson's attempts to limit civil rights.
DRAPER: I love Colorado Springs, and I tend to focus more on the beauty. And I have friends of every persuasion, including Republicans, evangelicals.
BLACK: Out at Focus on the Family's sprawling 50-acre campus in Northern Colorado Springs, on the day after James Dobson's death, there were no flowers or signs, no cards, candles or ad hoc memorials. But the empire he built and the massive complex of brick buildings that sits like a suburban version of the proverbial castle on a hill looking out over Colorado Springs will no doubt remain for years to come. For NPR News, I'm Noel Black in Colorado Springs. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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