Most of us are pretty familiar with the concept of a hall of fame.

The idea is to create an institution to recognize people, usually within a particular profession or geographic area, who’ve made positive contributions to society through their work, studies, charitable giving or in some other way.

There are lots of halls of fame, too. There is the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Inventors Hall of Fame—we even have, of course, the City of Chicago-sponsored Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

Before this week it’s doubtful most of us were very familiar, though, with the National Radio Hall of Fame, based right here in Chicago. Well, that’s changed now that the institution has announced plans to induct James Dobson for his “Focus on the Family” radio program.

This year, for the first time, the NRHF used a new voting process that allowed the public to vote on nominees selected by the NRHF’s steering committee. So the NRHF is right in saying that it was the public who chose to honor Dobson.

That doesn’t, however, absolve the NRHF steering committee of responsibility for letting Dobson’s nomination go forward in the first place. While the NRHF won’t discuss details of its deliberations over who gets nominated, it’s hard to believe that at least one of the two dozen or so members—all of them selected from within the radio broadcasting industry—didn’t raise a red flag and urge their fellow members to consider Dobson’s hateful legacy.

In brief, that legacy includes his vile history of using so-called “ex-gay” groups to demean and, in some very sad cases, terrorize young gays whose parents bought into Dobson’s pseudo-psychology. Gay people have committed suicide after being driven into guilt-ridden depression by “ex-gay” groups funded by Dobson.

All the while, Dobson has made a fortune by exploiting people’s fears and biases.

We doubt that this is the type of thing Bruce DuMont, the founder of the NRHF and its affiliated parent institution, the Museum of Broadcast Communications, intended to honor when he created the NRHF. DuMont, after all, has a well-deserved reputation for fairness and sensitivity to GLBT issues.

But somewhere along the line, somehow, DuMont and the NRHF steering committee failed to take into account the full implications of honoring someone such as Dobson. Because of that, they now find themselves in a very tough corner.

Gay activists are very upset about the honors for Dobson—rightly so—and are already making plans to protest the NRHF’s induction ceremony Nov. 8 in Chicago. If nothing changes and Dobson’s induction goes forward, that will likely be a major protest event, with national GLBT leaders already being urged to take part.

If, on the other hand, the NRHF recognizes that Dobson, while certainly infamous and obviously successful, isn’t the type of broadcaster who deserves to be honored, it will be viciously and relentlessly attacked by the fundamentalist right.

Tough place to be, isn’t it?

The one positive our community can take out of this right now is the knowledge that, while the people on the NRHF steering committee may not have been fully aware of how Dobson’s career has been built on demeaning and trashing people, they’re likely getting a fuller understanding of that now.

It’s apparently an education that’s overdue.

Sometimes, when you make a terrible mistake, the best thing to do—and one of the hardest—is to just say you were wrong.

This is one of those times for the National Radio Hall of Fame. We hope they’re listening.