This ever happen to you? At some point in life, you leave your normal routine for a time, say for a long vacation or trip abroad. Later, you hear oblique references to world events that occurred during the time you were gone, and you think, “well, when did that happen?” This is how I feel about James Dobson.

At some point while I was not looking, Dobson went from being a minor evangelical figure to the guiding light on the right end of the political spectrum. When we recently heard that Karl Rove had called Dobson in the days before the announcement of the Harriet Miers nomination, I knew the time had come to Google him.

Let me share with you what I found. In brief, James Dobson is a man who finds gay people incredibly frightening. No wonder, for it is the goal of homosexuals to "implement a master plan that has … as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family." And they will not stop with the obliteration of the family unit, settling for no less than “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, the discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law,” and “overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia.” In their march toward marrying one another, they are “like Adolf Hitler, who overran his European neighbors,” and, if ultimately successful, they will, of course, “destroy the Earth."

All this might be funny if Dobson were not the man whom the White House deputy chief of staff/the President’s chief political advisor begs for approval for a nominee to the United States Supreme Court. In their deference to him, is it even hyperbolic to say that the Republican Party has declared war on gay and lesbian Americans?