More Soulforce Arrests At Focus HQ

Two more members of the gay civil rights group Soulforce were arrested Friday at Focus on the Family headquarters, marking the third nonviolent direct action against the Colorado Springs-based media empire in as many months.

Amanda Harris, 22, of Conway, Arkansas, and Kourt Osborn, 21, of Kanab, Utah, were arrested after participating in a regular tour of the Focus headquarters, said Christopher Hubble, a Colorado organizer with Soulforce.

Toward the end of the guided tour, Hubble said Osborn reportedly raised his hand. After pointing out that not bearing false witness is one of the 10 Commandments, Osborne asked a question about why Focus on the Family bears false witness when it comes to gays and lesbians. He and Harris subsequently declined to leave and were arrested, charged with trespassing, and released. Last month Hubble, along with Leigh Lyon, were arrested outside the ministry’s massive campus in northern Colorado Springs. The two, joined by a group of about 20 supporters, first met off-premises and read aloud passages from a 32-page pamphlet Soulforce-published pamphlet, A False Focus on My Family, which challenges what Soulforce calls “false and spiritually violent” claims that Focus, and its founder James Dobson, have made about homosexuality.

Among Dobson and his ministry’s past claims about gays, challenged by Soulforce and others, including the American Psychiatric Association:

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