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“”…[the ADF's] ultimate goal is to see the law and U.S. government enshrined with conservative Christian principles.
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—Profiles of the ADF at Right Wing Watch,[1] SourceWatch,[2] and the Southern Poverty Law Center[3] |
“”Alliance Defending Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.
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—Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which is run by the ADF[4][5][6] |
Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund until 2012) is a right wing religious legal group with a revenue of $104 million in 2022.[7][8] On the basis of its extremist evangelical viewpoints towards gay and transgender people, it is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[3]
The ADF is dedicated to:
The group was conceived as a conservative counter to the ACLU. They have, on occasion, done some good — if self-serving — work for Christian groups that are unfairly prevented from using school property by officials who don't understand the Establishment Clause. But, then again, so has the ACLU.[20]
On the other hand, they have helped defend the right of the Boy Scouts of America to discriminate against gays. The very nature of their mission runs counter to both the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States.
Starting in 2008, they have cajoled right-wing pastors into observing Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an intentional violation of the tax-exempt status of those pastors' churches.[21]
Incidentally, Bill O'Reilly likes them.[22]
Michael Farris, CEO of ADF, wrote and circulated a draft lawsuit that was used largely as the basis for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's lawsuit against the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, claiming that the states unconstitutionally expanded use of absentee ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic.[23] The lawsuit was dismissed as moot because Texas (whom Paxton represented as AG) lacked standing regarding another state's election laws.[24]
Major donors include James Leininger, Erik Prince, Bill and Bradley Foundation, Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Berniece Grewcock Foundation, and the Bolthouse Foundation, which insists that "man was created by a direct act of God in His image, not from previously existing creatures".[25][1] According to The Guardian, "the ADF saw a huge increase in its funding between 2020 and 2021. The group funneled some of that money into a slew of smaller anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion groups across the US."[26]
The Christian Legal Centre is a British organization suspected of receiving funding from the ADF. The CLC and ADF jointly set up the UK based Wilberforce Academy, which tries to train Christians as public leaders. Overall, the Christian Legal Centre is less successful than the ADF claims it to be. The Christian Legal Centre has lost a high proportion of the cases taken on,[27] while the ADF claims a high success rate.[28]
Polling evidence suggests that the percentage of Christians in the United States falls by about 1% yearly. As the proportion of Christians continues to decline, the culture in the United States is likely to more closely resemble that of Britain, making it harder for the ADF to win cases.
In April 2013, ADF attorney Lisa Biron (1969–) was convicted of six counts of sexual exploitation of children, and one count of possession of child pornography when she filmed her own 14-year-old daughter having sex with two men on multiple occasions, and the ADF moved swiftly to whitewash their connection to Biron by removing mention of her on the ADF web site and Facebook page.[29] Biron got 40 years in prison.[30]