Alliance Defense Fund's HIDDEN Agenda, The

Church & State, Jun 2004 by Boston, Rob

How A TV Preachers' Front Group Is Bankrolling The Legal Crusade To Block Same-Sex Marriage - And Wed Church And State - In America

In December of 1993, right-wing radio talk show host Marlin Maddoux announced the formation of a new legal organization that would attack church-state separation and oppose groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union.

'Our intent is to out-swamp them so bad they'll wonder why they ever went into this business," bragged Maddoux, a Dallas radio minister, since deceased, who at that time hosted a program called "Point of View."

The following year, Maddoux and five Religious Right colleagues made good on the promise, launching the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). Now marking its 10-year anniversary, the organization hasn't quite "out-swamped" AU and the ACLU - but it has raised millions of dollars for Religious Right legal cases and been active in federal and state lawsuits that seek to blast holes in the wall of separation between church and state.

Lately, the ADF has been in the news in a big way. When battles over same-sex marriage erupted in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Mexico and New York earlier this year, the ADF spearheaded the opposition. In many ways, it was a natural move for the group. For years, the ADF had been opposing "domestic partner" laws in various cities, fighting ordi- nances protecting gays from discrimination and even working to deny gay parents custody of their own children. The ADF would regularly mail lurid fund-raising letters warning of the latest plot by "militant homosexuals" to undermine the American family.

Still, the ADF remained under the radar for most Americans. Although the group became well known in Religious Right circles, it was far from a household name elsewhere. With the battle over same-sex marriage heating up in several states, that may be changing.

Newspapers usually describe the ADF, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., as a "conservative" group but give little additional information. USA Today even called the ADF "a legal alliance that promotes religious freedom...."

Critics say a description such as that doesn't even begin to tell the story. Far from supporting religious liberty, the ADF champions the exact opposite: It was formed by a band of television preachers and radio broadcasters to advance the Religious Right's perspective in the courts.

The ADF, watchdogs at Americans United say, champions a radical agenda to destroy the wall of separation between church and state. It even has close ties to the most extreme faction of the Religious Right - a movement that wants to create a harsh fundamentalist Christian theocracy in America. (See "The ADF's Reconstructionist Ties," page 9.)

Since its founding, the ADF has played a role in nearly every church-state case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court and many lower federal courts. Since 1994, the ADF has directly or partially funded cases dealing with government aid to religion, religion in public schools, abortion, gay rights and religiously based censorship. Throughout, the organization's goal has been the same: merge religion and government.

The idea behind the Alliance Defense Fund was simple: Prominent Religious Right leaders would lend their names to the organization and help it solicit funds. The ADF was originally conceived as a type of giant Religious Right ATM. The group would collect millions from ultra-conservative, politically active fundamentalist Christians and then parcel the money out to Religious Right legal groups working in the courts to lower the wall of separation between church and state. Although footing the bill, the ADF would remain behind the scenes.

A good example occurred in 1995 when the Supreme Court heard a case from Virginia called Rosenberger v. Rector and Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, in which a conservative Christian student successfully sought money from the UVA student subsidies for his evangelical newspaper. On the surface, the case was litigated by attorneys with a Washington, D.C., group called the Center for Individual Rights. But it was really the ADF that provided the funding that made the case possible.

That model was the original plan, and the ADF stuck with it for many years. Today, the group still provides that type of funding to outside legal groups. But two years ago, perhaps eager to get a taste of the courtroom action itself, the ADF expanded its efforts and hired staff attorneys to begin directly litigating cases on its own.

From the beginning, the ADF was clear about what it wanted to achieve. Its founders announced the group's formation in 1994 with a huge direct-mail campaign aimed at fundamentalist Christians. Maddoux and five other high-profile Religious Right leaders endorsed the effort: James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family; Bill Bright, president of Campus Crusade for Christ; D. James Kennedy, a television evangelist and head of Coral Ridge Ministries; the Rev. Donald Wildmon, president of the American Family Association; and Larry Burkett, president of Christian Financial Concepts (now Crown Financial Ministries), a fundamentalist-oriented financial services company. (Bright and Burkett both passed away in July of 2003.)