Controversial Conservatives

Some of you may be aware of some of the controversy stirred up by this Superbowl ad:



In it, the mother of Tim Tebow, a Heisman trophy-winning football player, talks about how she has "almost lost" her son Timmy a number of different times. Then he tackles her (for no apparent reason).

Watching the ad, it's hard to figure out exactly why there might be controversy surrounding it. Unless you notice that the ad was sponsored by a group called Focus on the Family and also happen to know that FOTF is a conservative Christian group that is staunchly pro-life (among other things).

The controversy is likewise more understandable if you watch the full-length interview with the Tebows that Focus on the Family has on its website, where Mrs. Tebow explains that she conceived Timmy while living in the Philippines and because she was high-risk at age 37, coupled with a dangerous health condition, the doctors there suggested she have an abortion. A confluence of factors, however, prevented her from taking that course. First was the fact that her and her husband's (and presumably her children's) religious beliefs prevented it. Moreover, Mr. Tebow is a pastor and he had decided even before Timmy was conceived to pray to God to send him Timmy so that Mr. Tebow could make him a pastor. The family had prayed for Timmy to be conceived, and now that he was a-cookin' in the womb, they weren't going to disturb him, whatever the cost to the baby or the mother's lives. In the end, Timmy arrived mostly healthy and went on to win the Heisman trophy and star in commercials for FOTF.

My problems with this whole scenario are as follows:

1. How creepy is it to pray for a child by name that hasn't even been conceived yet? Not to mention assign him a profession. Quote from the interview: "And I prayed, and I said, 'God, if you want another preacher in this world, you give me Timmy'--and this was before he was conceived--'and I'll raise him to be a preacher.' And so I went home and the next morning at breakfast shared with my family my prayer that I had begun and everybody joined in, and we started praying, by name, for God to give us Timmy."

2. How much must it suck to be one of the non-Timmy children? Seriously. I mean, this interview clearly shows that the parents didn't believe that any of the four children they already had would be good enough for this magical vocation that Pastor Tebow had picked out. As my friend Aubrey put it: "Listen, we know none of you have what it takes to spread the word of God so we're asking for another."

3. Of course, that's nothing compared to what it must be like to be Timmy himself. Can you imagine the pressure you must feel every second of your life when you're constantly told that "God has a special plan" for you and you are "a miracle baby" and all that. And don't forget--Mom almost died having you, Miracle Baby, so don't mess it up.

3a. Interestingly, for all the Tebows talk of praying for Miracle Timmy, is he fulfilling his destiny by becoming a preacher? No. He plays sports. That's a little disingenuous, Tebows.

4. Naturally all of these points are secondary to the fact that a) this was all happening in a country wherein thousands of women die because they don't have the right to choose or access to good medical care and b) these people are basically telling women that they need to choose the life of their fetus over their own health or they are bad Godless people.

Perhaps the worst part of this, as Aubrey pointed out, is that the above ad seems innocuous (it doesn't even mention abortion!) and presents Focus on the Family as a reasonable, approachable organization (even though they believe transgenderism violates God's intentional design for sex and sexuality and construe stem cell research as evil). In the end, I prefer this response ad instead: