Date: June 26, 2005 2:29:18 AM PDT
Subject: [ctrl] Evangelical Law Firm
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Evangelical Law Firm at Front of Culture War
Posted Tuesday, June 21, 2005 :: infoZine Staff
By Kavan Peterson and Mark K. Matthews - In a modern brick building just off the
highway here, a small team of evangelical lawyers is trying to elevate conservative
Christian values in U.S. society.
Scottsdale, Ariz. Stateline.org - infoZine - This up-and-coming advocacy group,
known formally as the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), is increasingly challenging
progressive groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union on issues such as
school prayer, gay rights and abortion.
Republicans in the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Statehouse recently asked the ADF to
intervene on behalf of the Legislature to oppose a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in April
on behalf of six lesbian state employees who want the state to provide employee
benefits for their partners.
The Wisconsin case is one sign of the growing political influence of the U.S.
Christian conservative movement. No longer politically passive, groups such as ADF
are well-funded and well-equipped to push their agenda.
"The Alliance Defense Fund has been very effective at finding local conflicts that
symbolize a bigger fight and using those local conflicts as an opportunity to make a
larger statement," said Charles C. Haynes, a senior scholar for the First Amendment
Center, a nonpartisan education group with offices at Vanderbilt University in
Tennessee and in Arlington, Va. They have become the "go-to organization" for
religious conservative activists, Haynes said.
In the Wisconsin case, the state -- not the Legislature -- is the defendant in the
lawsuit, and the state attorney general is responsible for defending state policies in
court.
But Republican Assembly Speaker John Gard said the political leanings of state
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat, would conflict with the state's
interests because she had voiced support for the ACLU and for same-sex couples to
form civil unions.
"The attorney general and governor have made it clear where their position is on this
issue. But more than anything else, the Legislature is charged with forming public
policy, and that's why we should be involved in this case," said Gard's spokesperson,
Bob Delaporte.
Earlier this year, the Legislature rejected Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's proposal to
set aside $1 million to provide health benefits to same-sex couples at the University
of Wisconsin, the only college in the Big 10 Conference that does not provide such
benefits.
Lautenschlager declined comment on ADF involvement in the Wisconsin case, but
she has filed for dismissal of the lesbian state workers' lawsuit. In a legal brief filed
June 8, Lautenschlager said there is no guarantee of equal rights to same-sex
couples in the Wisconsin Constitution. She based her argument on a 1992 appeals
court ruling that rejected a similar suit.
ADF's participation in the case is not assured; Dane County Circuit Judge David
Flanagan, who is trying the case, must decide whether ADF can intervene on behalf
of the Legislature. If allowed to intervene, ADF also will argue that the 1992 ruling
nixes state employee benefits for domestic partners, Glen Lavy, ADF's lead attorney
in the case, said in an interview.
ADF was invited into the case on a 6-3 party-line vote in a legislative committee last
month. The move raised the ire of state Rep. Marc Pocan, an openly gay Democrat
representing Madison. "It's a sad day in Wisconsin when a fringe, extremist
organization from outside the state purports to represent the people's duly-elected
body of government," Pocan said.
Fighting gay rights is a high priority for ADF; its lawyers helped defeat legal
challenges to constitutional same-sex marriage bans in Louisiana and Kentucky, and
successfully sued to invalidate marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in San
Francisco and Portland, Ore. It supported the Boy Scouts of America in a U.S.
Supreme Court case in 2000 that upheld the right of the youth organization to
exclude openly gay leaders.
To ADF officials, the Wisconsin case simply affirms their belief that the group speaks
for the majority of Americans when it goes to court. "The views we are representing
are the mainstream," Lavy said. "We are not representing an extremist position that a
few people support."
Key legal victories for religious conservative groups
United States v. American Library Association (2003): The U.S. Supreme Court ruled
6-3 that Congress has the authority to require libraries to censor Internet content in
order to receive federal funding, as required by the Children's Internet Protection Act
of 2000.
Scheidler v. National Organization for Women (2003): The U.S. Supreme Court, in
an 8-1 ruling, held that anti-abortion protesters were not in violation of federal
extortion or racketeering laws.
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002): The U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4, held that
Ohio's school voucher program, which allowed parents to send their children to
private or religious schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers, did not violate the First
Amendment's requirement of separation of church and state.
Good News Club v. Milford Central School District (2001): The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled 6-3 that barring private religious organizations from using public school facilities
for after-school meetings violates free-speech rights.
Dale v. Boy Scouts of Americas (2000): The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the
Boy Scouts of America is a private organization and had the right to exclude a
homosexual scout leader from leadership positions.
Mitchell et al. v. Helms et al. (2000): The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that religious
groups can receive taxpayer-funded education resources, as long as they further a
legitimate secular purpose and are granted equally to non-religious groups.
Agostini v. Felton (1997): The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, held that public
school teachers can tutor students in private religious schools.
Hurley v. Irish-American Gay Group of Boston (1995): The U.S. Supreme Court ruled
unanimously that a private citizens group that organizes Boston's St. Patrick's Day
Parade could not be forced to include a gay, lesbian and bisexual group in the
parade.
Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995): The U.S.
Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that public universities must provide direct funding of
religious student newspapers if non-religious school programs receive funding.
Based in this upper-middle-class suburb of Phoenix, ADF was founded in 1993 by
James Dobson's Focus on the Family and about 30 other conservative evangelical
ministries. With an annual budget exceeding $17 million, the group describes itself
as a defender of "religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, marriage, and the
traditional family."
It is one of the foremost pro-religion, anti-gay rights litigators to emerge from the
"religious liberty" movement of the 1990s, said attorney Mathew Staver, president
and general counsel of the conservative Florida-based law firm Liberty Counsel,
which shares ADF's ties to evangelical Christian groups.
In an attempt to counter the progressive influence of groups such as the ACLU,
which was founded in 1920 and handles nearly 6,000 civil rights-related lawsuits per
year, conservative Christian groups began creating pro-religion law firms in the
1990s. These groups also include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded
by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson; The Rutherford Institute; the Thomas More
Law Center; The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the American Family
Association Center for Law and Policy.
ADF is one of the largest of these organizations; its annual fund-raising rose from
$4.7 million in 1997 to nearly $18 million in 2003, according to tax documents.
In addition to its legal team of 23 full-time attorneys, ADF says it has about 750
lawyers nationwide committed to doing 450 hours of pro bono work annually in
exchange for legal training, primarily in constitutional law. ADF claims to have funded
or litigated more than 1,300 cases since its founding.
ADF and other conservative Christian law firms now wield enormous legal clout, said
Frank Ravitch, constitutional law professor at Michigan State University College of
Law.
"One of the huge mistakes that the (political) left has made in dealing with these
groups over the years is ... to think these are a bunch of fanatics and to stereotype
and characterize them that way. They may be zealots, but they're very smart, well-
organized and well-funded," said Ravitch, author of the book, "School Prayer and
Discrimination: The Civil Rights of Religious Minorities and Dissenters."
Separately, ADF and other Christian law firms are a fraction of the size of the ACLU,
which has chapters in every state and is reported to have a $100 million annual
budget. But combined, they are an increasingly powerful rival, Staver of Liberty
Counsel asserted.
"For decades, there was this moving train, pushed primarily by the ACLU, to curb
religious freedoms, and nobody was trying to slow it down or resist it. ... But
collectively, we've been able to make a huge difference in a short time frame," he
said.
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