Focus on the Family Cuts Staff...

...at the same time they donated nearly $1.251 milion (or, if you're keeping track, about 7 times the amount of the Mormon Church) to the anti-equal marriage forces in California.

Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family gave $727,250 in cash and services to the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 campaign in California, according to records released by the California secretary of state, including a $100,000 check in late October, just days before the evangelical media empire announced it planned to lay off nearly 20 percent of its employees.

While there has been public scrutiny of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its attempts to influence the campaign to reverse a California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, Focus on the Family and related donors pumped more than six times as much as the Mormon church did into the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, records show.

Altogether, donations supporting Proposition 8 from Focus on the Family, one of its major benefactors and an offshoot lobbying organization totaled more than $1.251 million — just shy of the $1.275 million contributed by ProtectMarriage.com’s largest donor, the Knights of Columbus, the Connecticut-based political arm of the Catholic Church. In addition to $727,250 reported by Focus on the Family, major backer and board member Elsa Prince, the billionaire heiress of Holland, Mich., donated $450,000 to ProtectMarriage.com in two cash chunks and the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, a Christian-right lobbying organization spun off from Focus on the Family and founded in part by Prince’s foundation, chipped in $74,400.

“People are keenly aware of how much money was put in by the hate groups,” said Rick Jacobs, chair and founder of the Courage Campaign, a progressive California organization leading the charge to overturn Proposition 8 in court. “It’s good to get the facts finally out about how much Focus did put in.”

So... this is my impression of the people out there in Colorado Springs:

"We must save marriage by defending it from faggotry!"
"Yes, but where?"
"California, of course."
"Oh." (I'm assuming there's a slow office worker, it is FotF)
"How much will it take though?"
"At least a
bajillion dollars! Those Californias are wacky liberals!"
"Let's make it a
real number... let's say, over a million dollars!"
"But do we have that kind
of money?"
"No, but that's ok, we can lay off about 200 people to make up that money."
"Won't that hurt their families?"
"Who cares! Jesus said
there will be poor always, so long as we protect the world against two loving, consenting individuals, engaging in a private, socially acceptable contract that
acknowledges their relationship."
"God, Jesus is cool."

Jesus is cool. Oh yes, Jesus is one cool motherfucker.

I wonder how many people $1.251 million would feed? I wonder how many sub-Saharan Africans could receive HIV drugs for $1.251 million? I wonder how many inner city schools could buy computers or books for $1.251 million dollars?

Hell -- let's look at the whole silly campaign. I wonder how many other states could have gay marriage rights by now for the $43 million the pro-gay people spent on the campaign; and I wonder how many genuinely Christians things the anti-gay people could do if they used the $40 million otherwise?

But no, so long as we are talking about faggotry, we have your attention.