Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of "Focus on the Family," joined Joe Scarborough on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" last night to discuss the media firestorm that has erupted over Dobson's recent comments regarding a video from the "We Are Family Foundation." The video, featuring popular cartoon characters all singing the music of Nile Rodgers' famous "We Are Family" is being sent to 61,000 elementary schools, along with a teachers' guide, as a tool for teaching tolerance.
Dobson says he has been "misquoted and maligned" over his remarks about the video. Following is a transcript of the conversation between Dobson and Scarborough:
JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST 'SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY': Now, speaking of Hollywood, obviously, you were involved in a dust-up recently with a video that was sent out to a lot of elementary schools. You were misquoted as saying that you thought that SpongeBob SquarePants was a gay character, but when, in fact, you were talking about a so-called tolerance message.
And let's show our audience exactly what you were talking about. It's the We Are Family Foundation, who was set to release 61,000 videos to American schools. That's a group that has a tolerance pledge for a differing sexual identity on their Web site.
Now, do you believe that this group and other groups -- like, we talked about PBS last week -- have an agenda that are trying to indoctrinate our children to a certain lifestyle, like the gay lifestyle?
DR. JAMES DOBSON, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF 'FOCUS ON THE FAMILY': Joe, I have never, ever in 35 years in public life and in professional life been more misquoted or more maligned than over this silly little thing that you're talking about here.
I didn't talk about SpongeBob, except to say that he was included in a video that's done by the We Are Family Foundation. There were 100 cartoon characters, from the "Muppets" to "Sesame Street" to "Jimmy Neutron," to all of those characters that kids love, and that the video was for the purpose of supporting or promoting the diversity and tolerance.
And it's been sent to that 61,000 elementary schools. And from that can come all kinds of mischief that we were concerned about. That's what I was talking about.
SCARBOROUGH: What kind of mischief?
DOBSON: Well, if you look at the We Are Family Foundation or at least if you did, before last week, when they pulled it off their Web site, you see the linkage to homosexual advocacy. You see linkages to the gay and lesbian organizations, five of them. You see a tolerance pledge to get supposedly kids and others to sign this pledge, pledging to think differently about sexual identity and so on.
There's a teacher's guide that was there that gets kids talking about what would it be like if you changed your identity or if you were homosexual. And it's a guide for how to talk kids through this, to think differently about homosexuality.
At the very least, Joe, at the very least, if you're going to do that, parents ought to know about it. And that's what I was talking about, not SpongeBob.
SCARBOROUGH: Well... I'm sorry. Go ahead, Doctor.
DOBSON: Well, I was just going to say, virtually every newspaper in the country has said that I called SpongeBob gay.
For your viewers, let me just tell you, I did not do that. That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. I didn't say that and don't know much about SpongeBob. My kids are grown. And I wasn't in a position to even talk about SpongeBob. I was talking about kids and schools.
'Scarborough Country' airs weeknights, 10 p.m. ET