Thirty years ago, James Dobson, Bill Bright, D. James Kennedy, Don Wildmon and two dozen other conservative Christian leaders who were frustrated with the direction of the nation’s courts founded a new legal group called Alliance Defense Fund to “protect” Christians and battle the ACLU.
Later renamed Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal powerhouse may have surpassed its founders’ wildest hopes. It now has annual revenue of more than $100 million, a network of thousands of allied attorneys and a string of Supreme Court victories, including one overturning Roe v. Wade and others giving Christian wedding cake makers and website designers the freedom to deny services to gay people.
Today, ADF is a powerful Christian conservative legal group that is using America’s courts to “reshape America into a Christian nation — and will keep doing so, regardless of who wins the presidential election in November,” claims a deeply researched 3,500-word article on Slate.
The report shows how ADF is using the courts to impose a form of Christianity that many Americans don’t want and suggests ADF “may be the country’s most sinister advocacy group that people have never heard of.” ADF International pursues similar goals around the world, including support for laws criminalizing gay sex.
Slate says some of the tactics ADF uses may be legal but aren’t ethical and claims the group is “weaponizing the court system to remake laws despite no actual plaintiffs being harmed.” Exhibit A is a case BNG reported last year: the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lorie Smith, a graphic designer whose claims of injury by potential gay clients were questioned.
Right now, ADF is employing its legal might in dozens of varied cases, including:
- In Massachusetts, ADF is defending a middle school student who was told by his public school to stop wearing a T-shirt reading: “There are only two genders.”
- In Oklahoma, ADF is defending St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which is attempting to become the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious school.
- In California, ADF is suing Sage Publications for deleting journal articles about abortion drugs written by anti-abortion authors.
- In Tennessee, ADF is demanding the University of Memphis reschedule a previously canceled talk by Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a 17-year-old hero to gun rights enthusiasts after killing two men during racial protests in Wisconsin. His talk was organized by Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump conservative group.
It can be challenging to follow the many cases, let alone make sense out of them. Thankfully, reporter Susan Rinkunas has done the heavy lifting of examining numerous cases and studying the briefs to deduce ADF’s agenda, as summarized in the following 10 goals.
(Slate says ADF did not respond to its phone calls, emails or questions about its agenda.)
Ban abortion nationwide. “ADF wrote and defended the Mississippi law that the court used to overturn Roe” and is now seeking federal restrictions on abortion pills and procedures.
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Reclassify birth control as abortion and ban that too. ADF claims it never has advocated for limiting access to contraception, but that’s legalese, says Slate: “Anti-abortion advocates falsely believe that emergency contraceptives and IUDs prevent implantation of fertilized eggs (they don’t), which they claim is abortion (it’s not).”
Overturn marriage equality. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on same-sex marriage nationwide. ADF is working to reverse that decision through cases on wedding cakes and websites cited above. Rinkunas says ADF’s goal is to “seek religious exemptions to antidiscrimination laws via plaintiffs who are ‘creative professionals’ in the wedding industry. ADF claims that laws banning businesses from discriminating against LGBTQ people amount to First Amendment coercion or ‘compelled speech’ because people have to endorse or promote things they oppose on religious grounds.”
Require gender conformity for kids. ADF wrote the model legislation limiting transgender sports and medical care procedures that was turned into law in more than 20 states with the help of Focus on the Family’s public policy partner in the states, the Family Policy Alliance.
Erase transgender adults from public life. ADF’s goal: “Making it financially ruinous to be a trans adult” through cases establishing “that religious freedom allows employers to refuse to hire trans people (and undoing) nondiscrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act so medical providers and insurance companies don’t have to perform, refer for or cover gender-affirming care.”
Redefine how the law views sex. ADF’s goal: Replace protections for sexual privacy with laws favoring sex that’s heterosexual and procreative.
Control family building. ADF wants adoption agencies to deny gay couples and other families that don’t match its model.
Hand judges even more power. ADF seeks to destroy the “deep” or administrative state and it supported the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision giving greater power to judges in interpreting government regulations.
Demolish separation of church and state. Christian prayers at government meetings and public school events? Taxpayer dollars for private Christian schools? “With these cases, ADF is pushing the court to write a new legal test regarding what’s left of the separation of church and state,” Slate says.
End DEI efforts and gut the Civil Rights Act. After 2017’s violent and deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., schools developed anti-racist lessons. ADF is representing a parent who opposes the lessons and “Critical Race Theory.”
Related articles:
Alliance Defending Freedom goes after ‘woke capitalism’ and corporate DEI programs
Two evangelical political action groups merge with hopes to reach 1 million voters
Reporters reveal power players and strategies that overturned Roe
Supreme Court says evangelical web designer doesn’t have to serve same-sex couples