from
http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/11574Here we need to focus neither on our magazine nor on Focus (on the Family) but on one person who has shamed the evangelical community: Ralph Reed.
...
We hope that Focus on the Family will join us in insisting that Mr. Reed stop dodging and start explaining why his emails to Jack Abramoff stated that he was negotiating with Focus. Our sense is that Dr. Dobson is telling the truth, and our logical conclusion is that someone else was not.
same publication, different link:
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/022805.html
Here's a long post, but I'd like to lay out some thinking and receive a critique. The question: Why is World delving into the Ralph Reed scandal, in which Reed used millions of dollars of Louisiana gambling money to fight the establishment of casinos elsewhere that could cut into the profits of Jack Abramoff's client? Please skip right to the next post if you're uninterested, but here I'll offer three concerns: morality, transparency, effects.
Moral argument: Evangelicals typically argue that the end does not justify the means, and that if we stop acting on principle we're just one more interest group bowling for dollars. Reed's justification, other than self-interest, could be that he was serving a public good by using gambling money to keep gambling from spreading, and that the total amount of harm that would result from gambling addiction would be less than would otherwise be the case. But that's the game most evangelicals refuse to play on other questions. For example, we won't justify abortion because it might decrease the amount of poverty among single-mothers, and we won't abandon the state of Israel in the hope that Muslim terrorists won't attack the United States. Similarly, I suspect that most evangelicals would oppose helping the Coushatta casino to do more business in the hope that vulnerable folks in, say, Texas won't have a casino just down the street.
Transparency argument: Some evangelicals might disagree with that reasoning and argue that, pragmatically, we should support the lesser of two evils: better that gambling spread in Louisiana than it should spread everywhere. Evangelicals could have a good discussion about that -- but Reed owes it to others, particularly his friends and supporters, to allow that discussion. If he thinks it's fine to use gambling money (hey, it's all green), he should not take it upon himself to decide for others how they should act. He should have informed the pastors he organized and the ministries he lobbied that he was using casino funds, so that they could make an informed choice. Instead, he kept his funding secret and worked to manipulate them.
Effects argument: If Reed had been transparent, he would have faced disagreement but would not now be facing disgrace. He has shamed the evangelical community by providing evidence for the generally-untrue stereotype that evangelicals are easily-manipulated and that evangelical leaders are using moral issues to line their own pockets.
Here's some serious distancing by Dobson, via
http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0039775.cfm
As I said, there is no proof, and I doubt there will ever be any proof that Dobson consciously colluded with Abramoff. I would wager to bet that Dobson was unaware that Ralph Reed was essentially a middleman for Abramoff. At the same time, there is an enormous amount of proof that Ralph Reed manipulated Dobson on behalf of Abramoff.
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