Culture Foam: Bubbling Up

Focus On The Family, Alliance Defending Freedom, NOM Leaders Reportedly Met With Author Of Russian ‘Homosexual Propaganda’ Bill | Right Wing Watch February 26, 2014

Focus On The Family, Alliance Defending Freedom, NOM Leaders Reportedly Met With Author Of Russian ‘Homosexual Propaganda’ Bill

SUBMITTED BY Miranda Blue on Thursday, 10/24/2013 10:04 am

Last week, we reported that National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown had just gotten back from a Moscow planning meeting for the 2014 World Congress of Families gathering in Russia. Brown confirmed his participation to Rachel Maddow, telling her “we are proud to work with our allies in Russia and around the world to protect marriage as the union as one man and one woman.”

We now have a clearer idea of who those allies are. In a press release yesterday, the World Congress listed many of the participants in last week’s planning meeting. They included leaders of several major American religious right groups including Brown, Benjamin Bull of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, Justin Murff of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM).

Also on the list is Fabrice Sorlin, the far-right French activist who led a delegation joined by Brown to testify before the Russian parliament in May in favor of a broad ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by gay couples and single people living in countries that allow same-sex marriage. Sorlin is the one who told members of the Duma that Russia’s efforts to repel advances in gay rights (or “the suicide of our civilization”) was just like its role protecting Europe from the “the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan” in the 13th century.

via Focus On The Family, Alliance Defending Freedom, NOM Leaders Reportedly Met With Author Of Russian ‘Homosexual Propaganda’ Bill | Right Wing Watch.

Alliance Defending Freedom | Right Wing Watch February 26, 2014

Alliance Defending Freedom

Alliance Defending Freedom Posts Archive

via Alliance Defending Freedom | Right Wing Watch.

Alliance Defense Fund | Right Wing Watch February 26, 2014

Alliance Defense Fund

Founded by a group of high-profile Religious Right leaders such as D. James Kennedy and James Dobson, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) sees itself as a counter to the ACLU. As a legal group, it assists and augments the efforts of other right-wing groups to “keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel.” The ADF has been active on issues including pushing “marriage protection,” exposing the “homosexual agenda” and fighting the supposed “war on Christmas.” MORE >

via Alliance Defense Fund | Right Wing Watch.

Inside the Conservative Campaign to Launch “Jim Crow-Style” Bills Against Gay Americans | Mother Jones February 26, 2014

According to the Wichita Eagle, the American Religious Freedom Program (ARFP)—which is part of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative organization founded in 1976—crafted the language for the Kansas bill. Brian Walsh, executive director of the ARFP, which supports religious freedom measures, acknowledges that his group consulted with the legislators on the bill, but he says that lots of other groups did as well: “We gave them suggestions and they took some of them.” Walsh says that ARFP was contacted by legislators who wrote the Tennessee bill and that the group frequently talked to legislators in South Dakota about “religious freedom” but not the state’s specific bill. Julie Lynde, executive director of Cornerstone Family Council in Idaho, one of many state groups that are part of Citizen Link, a branch of Focus on the Family, told Al Jazeera America, “We’ve been involved in working on the language” of the Idaho bill. Another member of Citizen Link, the Arizona Policy Center, has been active in supporting the Arizona bill. And the Oregon ballot initiative was proposed by Friends of Religious Freedom, a conservative Oregon nonprofit.

via Inside the Conservative Campaign to Launch “Jim Crow-Style” Bills Against Gay Americans | Mother Jones.