He describes the enormity of that realization as "transformative."

In an August 28-September 3 interview with Bay Windows, New England's largest Gay and Lesbian newspaper, the co-founder of Focus on the Family (a right-wing religious organization reportedly with greater financial clout than Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition) revealed how he'd become disillusioned by the organization's frighteningly-cultish James Dobson, a secretive religious figure, a literalist who stridently preaches homosexuality as "deviant, abnormal, sinful, depraved, and as something that leads to the downfall of a culture."

At a mid-August press conference In Colorado Springs, Colorado, Alexander-Moegerle told of experiencing severe remorse for his having been responsible for the creation of James Dobson's now-threatening empire. While Ralph Reed boasted of raising $26 million during his last year as director of the Christian Coalition, says the former Focus on the Family fund raiser, Focus on the Family's James Dobson raised $125 million within that same timeframe.

Alexander-Moegerle said: "I apologize to lesbian and gay Americans who are demeaned and dehumanized on a regular basis by the false, irresponsible and inflamatory rhetoric of James Dobson's anti-gay radio and print materials."

Though the one-time Dobson zealot still regards himself as a conservative Christian, he says, he is not one who attempts to push his own moralism on others, as he says Dobson does. He calls Dobson "very mean spirited and un-Christian". Alexander-Moegerle's new book describes the fundamentalist theocracy that James Dobson's inner circle is building with alarming success through stealth political campaigns.

The book, James Dobson's War on America, details Dobson's plan to quietly seize the major levers of political power. Its publication coincided with the 20^th anniversary of the founding Focus on the Family.

"My attitudes really changed when I realized I was working side by side with a gay man who was dying of AIDS," Alexander-Moegerle told Bay Windows, I felt such sadness that as he was leaving my office, I stood up, walked around my desk and hugged him. I was crying. And I cried on the way home from work as well. This time, I was crying for me. I had become a different person."

Alexander-Moegerle says that behind closed doors James Dobson spins images, exhibits duplicity, gets vindictive, abusive, and is filled with sexist, racist and homophobic hatreds.

"I realize that we do not require perfection of those who would lead us," says the now-remorseful author, "but I'm confident we can do better than James Dobson."