 |
The Religious Freedom Coalition |
 |
 Who are the enemies of Religious Freedom and Free Expression in the U.S.?
Dick Army, House of RepresentativesBob Barr, U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia Gary L.
Bauer Gary Bauer, Candidate for President, and past director of the Office of Policy Development in the Reagan White House, also heads the Washington-based lobbying arm of James Dobson's Focus on the Family (see below). When in 1992 the overtly political activities of the Family Research Council (FRC) threatened the nonprofit status of Dobson's operation, the two organizations became legally separate. Though often treated as a mainstream social research organization by the media, the FRC, by Bauer's own admission, conducts no research. Strenuously "pro-life" and homophobic, the FRC opposes both public television and government subsidy of the arts. Bauer claims the National Endowment for the Arts is run by "a small cadre of cultural revolutionaries, militant homosexuals, and anti-religious bigots who are intent on attacking the average American's most deeply held beliefs while sending them the bill." The FRC says it exists to reaffirm and promote nationally, and particularly in Washington, DC, the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system upon which it is built." Anti-Occult, Anti-Earth Religion. Dangerous individual looking for political power. Wants to make U.S. a Christian Country in which only Christians live. See the Gary Bauer page Ty and Jeannette Beeson Ty Beeson, pastor of the Pentecostal Springs of Life Ministry, joined his wife Jeannette in establishing The Report as a production center and clearinghouse for propaganda intended to stop gay rights legislation in California. Their most famous product, a 17-minute hate video called The Gay Agenda, has been compared to Nazi anti-Semitic films like The Eternal Jew. The video was originally created for use by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, the Oregon chapter of the Christian Coalition, which had obtained a grant from its parent organization to develop educational materials. The educational content of The Gay Agenda consists mainly of militant homophobe Paul Cameron's bizarre, discredited statistics on the sexual habits of gay men, as portentously interpreted by John Birch Society/Christian Coalition activist Stanley Monteith. Other segments offer atrocity footage from Gay Pride marches, as well as testimony from "ex-gays" who claim to have been cured by a Pentecostal program called Love in Action. The video was an instant success, selling tens of thousands of copies at $13.95. It has also received widespread free distribution in states and cities facing anti-gay ballot initiatives. Scores of copies were sent to Pentagon officials and members of Congress during the 1993 debate over lesbian and gay military personnel. The Beesons' other videos include The Gay Agenda in Public Education, Inside the March on Washington, and Sexual Orientation or Sexual Deviation, You Decide. They also market jeremiads about AIDS by such "experts" as Stanley Monteith. Recently they have paid special attention to keeping homosexual materials out of schools, fighting sex education, and stamping out AIDS awareness programs. During 1993, the Beesons permitted Peter LaBarbera, former editor of Concerned Women for America's Family Voice, to publish his anti-gay monthly, The Lambda Report, under their aegis. They have since parted company with LaBarbera and offer their own homophobic monthly journal, The Beeson Report, for $30 a year. These people associate Witches with evil and are anti-Earth Religion. Dangerous. Use made up statistics and lies to cast a negative aura around anything they don't like. They are alleged to be following the forces of evil. Rev.
Flip Benham Operation Rescue (OR), the notorious anti-abortion group begun in 1988 by evangelical ex-used car salesman Rev. Randall Terry, specializes in blocking access to targeted clinics and subjecting patients, physicians and staff to intimidation and harassment. A queasy mixture of far-right fundamentalist Protestants and reactionary Catholics, the membership includes many who would criminalize all forms of contraception and suppress all family planning information other than exhortations to abstinence. During the 1992 election, Randall Terry warned his followers that "to vote for Bill Clinton is to sin against God." With Clinton in office, Operation Rescue has shifted its focus to include opposition to civil rights for gays and lesbians. OR has also been known to launch attacks on the arts. In 1990 Boston-area members tried to block access to Serrano's "Piss Christ" at the Klein Gallery, and threatened to blockade Boston University's Photographic Resource Center. In February 1994, Rev. Flip Benham of the Free Methodist Church took over the directorship of the organization from Keith Tucci, who left to found a separate ministry, the Life Coalition, in Melbourne, Florida. Call or write for a copy of OR's National Rescue Update .Rev Benham, by his words and deeds, is allegedly following the forces of darkness and evil. . William
Bennett From its mission statement: "Empower America is a unique combination of public policy institute and grassroots political organization whose mission is to promote progressive conservative public policies at both the state and national level based on the principles of economic growth, international leadership, and cultural empowerment." While Empower America bills itself as a "nonpartisan, nonprofit organization," its board of directors is a blue-ribbon panel of right-wing pro-corporate Republicans, and the organization itself is a kind of stepchild of the Heritage Foundation. Amazingly for a nonprofit entity, Empower America proudly declares political candidates to be among its "products." Its popular training sessions for reactionary candidates have enhanced the success of the pro-business theocratic right in recent years. Its four co-directors are former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, Reagan's UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, and -- most visibly and actively -- Heritage Foundation Fellow William Bennett, former Secretary of Education and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Reagan, drug czar under Bush, senior editor at the National Review, professional pompous bluenose, and prolific author of such Pecksniffian titles as The Book of Virtues. In recent years Bennett has achieved considerable notoriety as a self-appointed, self-congratulatory guardian of "traditional values," zestfully demonizing art forms, individuals, and real or imagined trends in American culture. Some of his efforts have placed him in unlikely partnerships with such purported liberals as C. Delores Tucker of the National Political Caucus of Black Women, with whom he conducted a joint campaign against rap music in 1995. Write or call for Empower America's terms of membership. Members receive a quarterly publication called Highlights Because of his actions, Bennet has been classified as a christian conservative fanatic who wishes to control what citizens think. Alledgedly following forces of darkness. Former Congressman Peter Blute (R.-Mass.). If Newt
Gingrich can claim credentials as an historian, it seems only fitting that the dimmest
knuckle-dragger in the Massachusetts Congressional delegation can dictate to the rest of
us what is history and what is not. When the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, planning to
display the fuselage of the Enola Gay on the 50th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of
Hiroshima, had the temerity to include questions about the wisdom of using atomic weapons
and information about the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Blute swung into action.
Demanding in a letter to Smithsonian Secretary Robert McC. Adams that the Smithsonian
scrap the exhibit in favor of Brent Bozell, a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree, is the nephew of columnist William F. Buckley and the son of L. Brent Bozell, Jr., who assisted Barry Goldwater with the writing of Conscience of a Conservative. A close associate of the late Terry Dolan, the closeted gay founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Bozell served for several years as the Dolan organization's finance chairman and president. In 1991, he helped orchestrate a smear campaign directed at the opposition to Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court; in 1992, he was the chief fund-raiser behind Pat Buchanan's unsuccessful bid for the Republican Presidential nomination. The Media Research Center provides Bozell with a platform from which to bash the arts and popular culture. Recently Bozell has been part of the drive to eradicate PBS. TV, etc., "the Media Research Center's review of the politics of the entertainment industry," is a monthly newsletter that is oddly enamored of celebrity for a publication whose relentless theme is the abject rottenness of Hollywood. (Some celebrities, like Robert Redford, are ridiculed for their liberalism; others, like Tom Selleck, are congratulated for their conservatism or, as in the case of Mel Gibson, their homophobia.) The garish inaccuracies of TV, etc., like the claim that the film version of Last Temptation of Christ shows Jesus "engaging in sex acts and committing adultery," are sometimes entertaining, but the accretion of drivel it contains can be wearing. A subscription can be yours for $35 a year. Alledgedly following forces of darkness. Pat
Buchanan Presidential Candidate, Pat Buchanan, right-wing columnist and television commentator, scourge of the 1992 Republican convention, announced the formation of American Cause in the spring of 1994. The organization evolved out of the 1992 Buchanan for President apparatus and is clearly meant to be a support system for the next Buchanan for President campaign. The kickoff event for American Cause, held in Washington in April 1994, was a two-day conference called "Winning the Culture War," which Buchanan proclaimed "the Boston Tea party of the cultural revolution." Whatever else it may have been, the event was a bigoted revel designed to enhance Buchanan's stature in the eyes of his fans and allies. Speakers included professional homophobes Lon Mabon of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and Will Perkins of Colorado for Family Values; "traditional values" advocate Michael Medved; Dan Quayle's vice presidential chief of staff William Kristol; home schooling proponent Mary Kay Clark, who described the National Education Association as "the training camp of the enemy of the family;" and Ezola Foster, representing Black Americans for Family Values, who referred to public schools as "socialist training camps." The emphasis was on curbing freedom of expression in the name of "taking back the culture" for the reactionary right. As the 2000 Presidential campaign heats up, American Cause will become more visible. More than any other man in the 90s has allegedly caused evil to quadruple.
Paul Cameron and the Family Research Institute Paul Cameron is both the best known, and the least credible, of the various psychologists, medical doctors, and associated professionals which actively collaborate with the Religious Right, and attempt to lend a veneer of scientific respectability to the Religious Right's anti-gay propaganda.
Christian Reconstructionism
Cult Christian Reconstructionism was founded by R. J. Rushdoony and others. It is an extreme form of post-millenial, Calvinistic Protestantism which holds that the Law of the Pentateuch (Old Testament) continues as a standard of righteousness even today for Christians, and that Christians must exercise dominion through the power of God's Law over all the Earth before Christ shall come again. As part of their theology, some but not all reconstructionists hold that, under the coming "kingdom of God", which they are actively engaged in bringing about, that the Biblical penalty for heretics (non-believers), witchcraft, blasphemy, adultry, homosexuality (death) will be enforced, though they will always demur that they do not advocate that the penalty be applied today. It is possibly the most dangerous movement against freedom of religion in this country and possibly the world. An example of extreme Reconstructionism can be shown by the Cobb County, Georgia ordinance stating that homosexuality is against community standards. Several of the county commissioners of Cobb County are known adherents of the forms of Reconstructionism advocated by Gary North and Gary DeMar. (We live in Cobb County and it's scary!!) If you really want to discover what the Christian Reconstructionist Cult is all about, go to the links below. Go to to: What is Christian Reconstructionism? or the Forerunner Christian Reconstructionist page. Next go then click on: Christian Reconstruction, then to: Can there be a Theocracy in America's Future? Perhaps modeling their behavior on that of America Online, the keepers of the flame of L. Ron Hubbard have forged cancellations of Internet messages they don't like, tried to remove an entire Usenet discussion group devoted to critical examination of Scientology, threatened operators of anonymous remailing services in order to discourage anonymous criticism of Scientology, instigated a raid on an anonymous remailing service in Finland, and sought to intimidate Scientology critic Dennis Ehrlich, his Internet access provider, and Netcom by suing them on extremely dubious grounds of copyright violation. Visit the Church of Scientology Here. or Visit a site critical of Scientology Here. Finally we have prepared a brief explanation of The Church of Scientology and their behavior Here. Freedom of Religion One of the most dangerous men in America and in our opinion, one of the most Evil men. Dr. James C. Dobson FLASH!!!! COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- October 17, 2000 -- A top
official and radio announcer for Focus on the Family said he has resigned from the
conservative Christian group because he had an extramarital affair. Trout, who has been married for 31 years, declined to
discuss details of the extramarital relationship, but said that the woman was not a Focus
on the Family employee and that the relationship was over. Uh Huh. Seems as though most conservative Christians end up admitting extra marital afairs but comdemning others for the same fault. Focus on the Family (FOF) is called "perhaps the largest and most dangerous censorship group today" in Dave Marsh's book 50 Ways to Fight Censorship. Dobson is a Christian fundamentalist family counselor who promotes "traditional values." In his best-known book, Dare to Discipline, Dobson advocates beating children with switches, beginning at the age of 18 months. In 1985-86 he served on the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (the Meese Commission). He claims to have extracted a confession from mass murderer Ted Bundy saying that porn made him do it. Dobson actively opposes blasphemy, the teaching of evolution, and the "homosexual agenda." In 1991, FOF relocated its 700-employee national headquarters from Pomona, California to Colorado Springs, in time to promote and help pass Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2. The organization is active throughout the country, operating through such loose affiliates as the Massachusetts Family Institute, and disseminating propaganda through its syndicated radio shows and more than a dozen periodicals. Ask for a complimentary copy of the slick monthly Focus on the Family magazine. See what he really wants to do with this country. William A. Donohue, Executive
Director A right-wing authoritarian movement that overlaps with Operation Rescue and militant charismatic factions, denounced by many mainstream Catholics, the militantly homophobic, anti-choice, pro-censorship Catholic League has links to organizations ranging from the Heritage Foundation to Operation Rescue. The Catholic League has enjoyed increasing success in misrepresenting itself as a mainstream Catholic organization. In 1985, the League spearheaded efforts to ban Jean-Luc Godard's film Hail Mary nationwide. Three years later, they joined Donald Wildmon and others in attacking Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. In 1990, the Massachusetts chapter (then led by Heritage Foundation alumnus and former Pilot editor Philip Lawler) tried to have the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and other artists banned in Boston. In 1995, it got even more mileage out a patently offensive disinformation campaign against the movie Priest, accompanied by a boycott of Walt Disney Enterprises, whose subsidiary Miramax released the film. In other recent exploits, the Catholic League has been active in the fight against condom distribution and safer sex information, and mobilized against Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art for supporting World AIDS Day posters and shrines depicting the Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess ("Immaculate Protection"), a project by Provincetown artist Jay Critchley and Boston artist/activists Lydia Eccles and Wendy Hamer. William A. Donohue, an NYU-educated sociologist formerly attached to the Heritage foundation, succeeded John Puthenveetil as head of the organization in 1992. Membership is $25 and includes a subscription to the national newsletter, produced in Milwaukee. Exodus International and Other Ex-gay "Ministries" Now that Jesse Helms devotes his wit, charm, and intellect to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he now chairs, his role as the Senate's self-appointed guardian of public morals has been assumed by this 74-year-old Nebraska Democrat. A longtime supporter of Jesse's attacks on the arts, Exon broke new ground by leading the charge to clean up electronic communications. Outraged by the news that some people talk about sex via computer networks, he sponsored the Communications Decency Act (originally S.314), which imposes fines up to $100,000 and prison sentences up to two years for electronic "indecency." Attached to the Senate's omnibus telecommunications package, Exon's bill passed the Senate 84-16, and may well become law. The fact that sexually explicit material is only available to those who actively seek it out matters not to Exon who, like all censors, enjoys minding other people's business. Railing against "porn-users' advocates" like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Exon basks in the support of the theocratic right. Rev. Jerry Falwell Allegedly helps fund political parties and candidates. "I just can't stay on the sidelines any longer!" Falwell, host of the "Old Time Gospel Hour" and founder of Liberty University, emerged from temporary retirement in 1991, announcing that he might reactivate the Moral Majority, the now-defunct organization that first brought him fame outside the Bible Belt. While this threat has failed to materialize, he has put together a relatively small-scale operation called Liberty Alliance. Falwell remains a visible presence, continuing to crank out inspirational books, anti-gay hate videos, and other fundraising paraphernalia. His greatest recent hit is the video Clinton Chronicles, which accuses President Clinton of skullduggery of preternatural proportions. At $44.95, which includes membership in Liberty Alliance, the Clinton video is no bargain. Ask to be placed on the Liberty Alliance mailing list. As with all other right wing extremist, is after wealth in the name of Religion. Anti Witchcraft, Anti Occult. According to National Review editor William A. Rusher, "If any conservative organization deserves pride of place, surely it is the Heritage Foundation. Launched in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, Joseph Coors, and Edwin Feulner, it set out to provide the conservative movement with an aggressive and competent think tank that would provide the sort of policy guidance... that such organizations as the Brookings Institution had long furnished for liberals." The thinking that occurs at the Heritage Foundation involves finding a saleable rationale for preconceived right-wing positions. Its resources helped engineer the success of Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. The Heritage Foundation issues "backgrounder" reports that give a stamp of credibility to misinformation and errors of fact; Backgrounder No. 803, its January 1991 report on the NEA, was especially influential. Send $18 for a subscription to Policy Review, the Heritage Foundation quarterly, or ask to be placed on the mailing list. Newt Gingrich, Committee for New American Leadership! See More of Newt, CLICK HERE Disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has
sent out a letter to his former supporters apologizing for his affair with young
congressional aide Callista Bisek (the one he claimed he had never had more than a
platonic relationship with) … and begged for cash donations to his new
"non-profit" venture: the Committee for New American Leadership! "I hope
you can find it in your heart to forgive me, a human being with shortcomings who has made,
and will continue to make, his share of mistakes" whines Gingrich before launching
into an extended plea for greenbacks. Ever the sore loser, Gingrich even manages to throw
in a dig at the President in his little money-grubbing missive. Gingrich - who was one of
those stupid idiots who attempted to destroy the Clinton Presidency - whines: "The
President is very good at demolishing his opponents." And if anybody knows how true
that is, it's Newt "it's okay when I do it"
Gingrich. The race to be crowned Most Repellent
Politician of Our Time is too close to call, but this Machiavellian sociopath may have an
edge. Beneficiary of a wealthy propaganda-spewing ethically dysfunctional personal
empire, chief perpetrator of the Contract with America, while he was a representative,
Gingrich supported efforts to abridge the First Amendment through constitutional additions
on flag desecration and school prayer, applied an almost preternatural insensitivity to
efforts to stifle minority voices, advocated zero-funding of the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, and while he was a U.S. Representative, gave aid and comfort to every
Congressional effort to kill all government support for art and scholarship.
William Butler Yeats said that the millenium would usher in the Age of the Rough Beast; it
might well be a Newt. Karen Jo Gounaud Though Family Friendly Libraries (FFL) publicly portrays its mission as broadly altruistic and concerned with all aspects of children's education and development, its motivating force and unifying obsession is the fear that public libraries are a vehicle for homosexual indoctrination. Now in its infancy as a national organization, FFL grew out of battles in Fairfax County, Virginia over free distribution of the Washington Blade, a D.C. gay weekly, and the presence of "pro-homosexual" literature in local libraries. During this struggle, which began in about 1992, Karen Jo Gounaud rose quickly to prominence as a fierce and tenacious opponent of the so-called gay agenda. The wife of a retired Air Force officer and mother of two grown children, Gounaud is an evangelical Christian who holds a degree in education from the University of Nebraska. It was she who mobilized Christian parents of Fairfax county in an effort to end the availability of the Blade in the lobbies of branch libraries; led a drive to drop or sequester books she considers harmful to children; and pressured the Fairfax library system into spending a chunk of its budget on obscure and in some cases self-published books with titles like Steps Out of Homosexuality and You Don't Have to Be Gay. Her influence, long felt throughout northern Virginia, is beginning to have national impact. Her statements on the evils of spending taxpayers' money on "the type of books people don't want" bear depressing similarities to pronouncements that have badly eroded public support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her campaign to demonize the American Library Association is beginning to see results, with some local library systems rewriting the Library Bill of Rights to eliminate all provisions that condemn censorship and uphold freedom of expression. While much of Gounaud's dogma can be traced to Focus on the Family and the rabidly homophobic Family Research Council, she has received major tactical and (we think) financial support from the Christian Coalition. The event that launched Family Friendly Libraries as a national entity was a conference held in Cincinnati on October 21, 1995 at the invitation of Phil Burress, founder of the militantly anti-gay, pro-censorship Citizens for Community Values (CCV), the Christian Coalition's Cincinnati affiliate. A newsletter is promised; write for literature. Dr. Robert Grant The American Freedom Coalition began in 1987 with a merger of Robert Grant's fundamentalist organization Christian Voice and the American Constitution Committee of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, with the Moon conglomerate providing the initial funding. Its first activity, orchestrated by direct-mail expert Richard Viguerie, was a massive fundraising effort for the Nicaraguan contras and Oliver North. The AFC has set up field offices around the country and regularly comments on US foreign and domestic policy. During the Gulf War, the AFC organized patriotic pro-war rallies nationwide. Local cells of the AFC have become increasingly shrill in their campaigns against abortion, gay rights, and "weird art." A minimal donation of $15 provides a 6-month membership, including a subscription to the American Freedom Journal. Dr. Jay H. Grimstead Jay Grimstead, a Christian counselor educated at Fuller Theological Seminary, founded the Coalition on Revival (COR) in 1984 as a non-profit front for fundamentalist political activism. The stated mission of COR is "To affect with the Biblical message of reality, and justice, and truth, law, government, economics, education, obedience, science, the arts, and general culture." COR Steering Committee members must take an oath promising to work toward a Christian America and to live by Biblical precepts until death. The COR magazine, Crosswinds, is published twice a year; a subscription costs $25. The significance of this organization is that it brings the more mainstream elements of the Christian right in contact with the lunatic fringe. However, the influence of Christian Reconstructionist extremists is prevalent enough to have caused such former Steering Committee members as Donald Wildmon and Tim and Beverly LaHaye to disassociate themselves from COR. The Institute for First Amendment studies notes that "Gary DeMar, a leading Christian Reconstructionist author and lecturer, is a member of COR's Steering Committee and the executive committee of Crosswinds magazine. Reconstructionists advocate, among other things, the death penalty for abortionists and practicing homosexuals. While they believe and teach this, they often try to obscure this when speaking to general audiences. When questioned about this, Gary DeMar said, `The Bible doesn't say that homosexuals should be executed. What it says is this: If two men lie together like a man and woman lie together, they are to be put to death.'" David Horowitz David Horowitz, a lapsed leftist and former speechwriter for Senator Bob Dole (R.-Kansas), and his Cochair Peter Collier head two interrelated liberal-bashing organizations, the Committee on Media Integrity (COMINT), and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. COMINT spearheaded recent attacks against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; CSPC focuses on "political correctness" and publishes a newsletter, Heterodoxy, full of mean-spirited rant about blacks, feminists, and homosexuals. Subscriptions to Heterodoxy or COMINT's Journal cost $25. Dee Jepson, President "Enough is Enough! is a project which serves women and men from diverse backgrounds and perspectives who want to rid our social environment of abusive child pornography and hardcore/illegal pornography. Enough is Enough! provides information and action initiatives and offers materials which can be used in the following ways: individually, together with friends, neighbors, and associates; in existing coalitions and/or organizations; in developing new local task forces." This pro-censorship lobby, which has input from both Women Against Pornography and the Christian right (but mostly the Christian right), was founded by Sarah Blanken in 1992. The organization tries to give the impression that its agenda spans the political spectrum, even citing Hillary Rodham Clinton as a supporter, but its propaganda is shot through with the rhetoric of theocratic conservatives. Dee Jepson, its president, also serves as Chairman of the Board of Regents of Pat Robertson's Regent University, and as Cochair of Washington for Jesus. In addition, she is a former member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition on Revival. Basic membership in Enough is Enough! costs $25 and includes a subscription to a monthly newsletter filled with disinformation. Beverly LaHaye, President "Protecting the rights of the family through prayer and action." Beverly LaHaye is the wife of Rev. Tim LaHaye of San Diego's Scott Memorial Baptist Church, former head of the Moral Majority and founder of the American Coalition for Traditional Values. Both are alumni of Bob Jones University. Together they have written such Christian bestsellers as The Act of Marriage and, most recently, A Nation without a Conscience. Concerned Women for America, headed by LaHaye, is a leading religious right organization. The group has long opposed abortion and women's rights, being originally formed to fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, and has recently become much more vocally opposed to equal rights for lesbians and gay people, and to the National Education Association, for it's support for a Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual History Month. Concerned Women for America has also recently taken a decidedly nativist turn in their pronouncements, opposing much United Nations involvement by the United States, and several United Nations conferences on the rights of women and children. CWA dispenses "Action Kits to Help You Fight the Gay Lobby," and promotes such sentiments as "[Since] the ranks of the homosexual lobby have been decimated by AIDS... now is the optimum time to resist, and even roll back, Gay-Rights' laws." A $15.00 membership fee includes a subscription to the CWA newsletter, Family Voice. Men and organizations may join. Rev. Bob Larson Larson, who hosts a popular nationally syndicated radio talk show, " Talk Back," is one of the key promoters of the belief that rock music, especially heavy metal, is satanic. He constantly encourages the idea that the country is overrun by devil-worshippers who ritually abuse children. His subsidiary targets range from homosexuality to Freemasonry, and while he presents himself as a "caring" Christian therapist, the tone of his program is one of relentless sensationalism punctuated with fervent, often tearful pleas for money. Bob Livingston, Republican Representative Bob Livingston had been representing the
1st District of Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1977. During his
tenure he labored resolutely for his party's causes. He was reputed to be affable, but
with a hot temper. In 1995, Livingston accused an aide of Representative Pat Roberts
(R-Kansas) of being "some sonofabitch," and had to be physically separated from
the man. Livingston's closest brush with national renown came as the author of the federal
"three strikes" law, which puts three-time convicted felons in prison for life
without the possibility of parole. As 1998 neared an end, Livingston had secured a lock on
outgoing Speaker Newt Gingrich's vacated position. Then the Speaker-to-be blundered into
the Larry Flynt spotlight. Trent Lott Redneck Senator Trent Lott (R.-Mississippi) and Liberal Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein (D.-California), both avid supporters of the Senate's Counter Terrorism bill (S.735) and its roving wiretap provisions, teamed up to make that dubious piece of legislation even more repressive with an amendment banning distribution of information about explosive materials and devices by any means. (Goodbye Anarchist Cookbook.) The comedy team of Feinstein and Lott has also collaborated on efforts to combat smut on cable tv, and are among the sponsors of the Flag Desecration Amendment - which, if ratified, will mean that the United States neither has nor believes in freedom of speech. Catharine MacKinnon Since 1983 MacKinnon has worked with radical feminist Andrea Dworkin drafting and defending anti-pornography legislation in the US, Canada, and abroad. In the US so far her efforts have been defeated by vetoes, legislative and voter rejection, and legal rulings on First Amendment grounds. In 1986 the Indianapolis version of her "Victims of Pornography" act was held unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. However, her definition of pornography as the "sexually explicit subordination of women" was recently accepted by the Supreme Court of Canada and continues to gain ground in the US (Among the many gay, lesbian, and feminist works seized by Canadian customs officials applying this expanded definition of porn were two books by Andrea Dworkin.} Confident that the current right-wing US Supreme Court will rule in her favor, she has supported efforts to reactivate her bill. Although MacKinnon works closely with the right, she is especially dangerous because of her ability to sell her agenda to the left as well. An avowed Marxist, Mackinnon is the author of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. In her lurid hundred-page Dworkinesque polemic Only Words, which perpetuates myths about "snuff" films and rape pornography, she equates speech with action and makes statements like: "Pornography does not simply express or interpret experience; it substitutes for it. Beyond bringing a message from reality, it stands in for reality; it is existentially being there." MacKinnon's efforts to eradicate material she dislikes belong to reality in their entirety, and have included such escapades as her 1992 involvement in the shutdown of an installation by artist Carol Jacobsen at the University of Michigan. Ed Markey (D. - Mass) Doggedly persisting in his efforts to censor television,
Markey is the chief architect of the Parental Choice in Television Act, H.R.2030. The
bill, which may well become law, would force purchasers of television sets to pay for a
violence- censoring device (the so-called V-chip), whether they want one or not. More
problematic is a provision that calls for an official federal Television Rating Code,
should the broadcast industry fail to adopt a satisfactory rating system
"voluntarily." (Such a rating system, which would not distinguish Eisenstein's
Potemkin from Miami Vice, would be at least as much a censorship tool as the MPAA's film
rating system; the chill is already being felt.) It is worth noting that the left-leaning
Mr. Markey's Congressional district is a hotbed of right-wing activity, and that he has
been steadily pressured by Morality in Media to help wage its holy war against the secular
humanist airwaves. Martin Mawyer, President Martin Mawyer, a longtime associate of Jerry Falwell, first rose to prominence on the Christian right as editor of the Moral Majority Report. After the Moral Majority disbanded, Mawyer founded the Christian Action Network (CAN) to fight "radical feminists and militant homosexual groups," to foil the alleged plot to "put homosexual textbooks into every school by the year 1999," to fend off "atheist and amoral secular forces," to promote censorship, and to seek the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA became Mawyer's special cause, and by 1993, when other religious-right organizations had at least temporarily shifted their attention away from the arts, the Christian Action Network had almost made art-bashing a full-time career. Among Mawyer's exploits was a guerilla exhibit, set up in and quickly ordered out of a cloakroom in the U.S. Capitol, intended to document allegedly obscene and blasphemous art created with NEA funds. It was Mawyer who sounded the alarm about the "Abject Art" show at New York's Whitney Museum, and who made performance artist Ron Athey's 1994 Minneapolis appearance (indirectly supported with about $150 from a grant to the Walker Art Center) a cause celebre. Mawyer's 70,000-piece mailing of a "Declaration of War" against the NEA over the Athey incident helped move Congress to slash the agency's budget, and paved the way for the anti-art rhetorical frenzies of the 104th Congress. While Mawyer's overtly political activities have threatened CAN's non-profit status and have precipitated an investigation by the Federal Election Commission, Mawyer is now on a roll, and has the satisfaction of knowing he has seriously damaged, if not doomed, the NEA. To receive examples of Mawyer's hilariously strident but effective propaganda, ask to be placed on his mailing list. A newsletter, Family Alert, is available for a donation.
Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church (The Moonies) Oliver L. North, President Freedom Alliance, which emerged in 1990 from fundraising efforts by and for Iran/Contra figure Oliver North, is a nonprofit "educational" foundation designed to promote extreme conservative views. One of its more noteworthy efforts, undertaken with the aid of Florida attorney Jack Thompson , has been to urge police associations across the nation to take legal action against Time Warner, Ice-T, NWA, and rap music in general. Freedom Alliance produces its own radio show, Freedom Report. Its newsletter, Free American, states: "Nothing in Free American is to be construed as... an attempt to influence elections or the passage of legislation before Congress." Freedom Alliance nakedly paved the way, however, for North's strong though unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1994. In his new career as radio talk-show host, North continues to expand his influence and promote his patriotic fundraising schemes. Membership in Freedom Alliance costs $25. Robert Peters, President From The Pilot, weekly publication of the Archdiocese of Boston: "Morality in Media, founded in 1962 by Jesuit Father Morton Hill, works to stop illegal trafficking in pornography by urging enforcement of obscenity laws." Morality in Media's idea of "pornography" includes Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs, MTV, and a wide range of books, films, videos, songs and works of art. MIM's annual visibility action, the "White Ribbons Against Pornography" campaign held each fall, has enjoyed increasing success. Typical of this organization's leadership is M. Rita Burke, head of the Massachusetts chapter, who in a 1992 talk-show appearance exclaimed repeatedly, "We are a Christian nation!" Randy T. Phillips, President "Promise Keepers (PK) is a Christ-centered ministry dedicated to uniting men through vital relationships to become godly influences in their world.... Promise Keepers believe God wants us to be a spark in His hand to ignite a nationwide movement calling men to reconciliation, discipleship, and godliness." The organization develops material to be learned and discussed in small Bible-study groups, then brings those groups together in national gatherings, regional convocations, and "leadership conferences." One of the most rapidly growing movements on the religious right, Promise Keepers was founded in 1990 by Bill McCartney, head football coach at the University of Colorado, after he came under fire for homophobic diatribes. The 1990 inaugural gathering, held in Boulder, attracted 72 men. Last year's PK rallies drew over 230,000. In 2000, this overwhelmingly white organization hopes to bring a million men together in Washington, DC. PK tapes and literature, such as Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper by Tony Evans, condemn homosexuality, stress male primacy in the home, blame most of the ills of society on "the feminization of men," and offer strategies for silencing the opposition. Gatherings attract a broad range of reactionary Christian fundamentalists, including some extremists. Information booths at PK events are smorgasbords of Christian-right propaganda, and tend to include hate literature from defrocked "psychologist" Paul Cameron and radical Christian Reconstructionist sources. Ask to be placed on the PK mailing list.
Senator Larry Pressler. Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee, this South Dakota Republican's McCarthyite assaults on the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting reveal the moral vacuity of a politician who never
stops campaigning - and addressing his campaign pitch to the lowest common denominator.
Pressler's most offensive stunt in recent months was to demand that all affiliates
of National Public Radio fill out a 16-page questionnaire, prepared with input from the
far-right Family Research Council, about the sex, ethnicity, religious backgrounds,
political affiliations, and employment histories of all employees. Special attention was
paid to whether any NPR employees had worked for Pacifica Radio, which has challenged
broadcast content restrictions. "[The questionnaire is] aimed at only one thing, and
that's intimidation," the late Arthur Kropp of People for the American Way told the
New York Times. "It's politics at its nastiest... a witch hunt." The
questionnaire was finally withdrawn, but not before Pressler's ideological fact-finding
mission had cost taxpayers $92,000. As Pressler's South Dakota Democratic counterpart once
said, "A Senate seat is a terrible thing to waste." Thomas Radecki According to 50 Ways to Fight Censorship, NCTV "represents the height of censorship pseudoscience...[its] real agenda is to define a spurious category-`violence'-which is always and inevitably a bad thing... to which free speech doesn't apply." A psychologist and a self-proclaimed "devout non-believer," Radecki works with his born-again wife and has served on the board of Tipper Gore's PMRC. The Radeckis support all grass-roots efforts to suppress NC-17 films, which he labels "extremely harmful to adults." Believing the MPAA too lax, they have been campaigning to establish local movie-rating boards across the country, even creating a second purported organization, the National Association of Ratings Boards, for that purpose. Since Radecki was stripped of his license to practice psychology following allegations of misconduct with a patient, the future of NCTV is in doubt. This organization may now, in fact, be defunct. Ralph Reed Martin Rimm. Recipient of our first annual Pro-Censorship Self Promoting Charlatan award. As an undergraduate at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, Rimm conducted a "research" project on sexually explicit material on computer networks. With the aid of anti-porn activist Deen Kaplan, Rimm sold the study to the student editors of the Georgetown Law Review, with the stipulation that potential critics would not see pre- publication copies. Rimm then panicked the Carnegie Mellon administration into censoring electronic access on campus, talked Time into doing a lurid cover story, and wangled an appearance on Nightline. On publication, the study immediately revealed itself as methodologically worthless. Information soon came to light suggesting that Rimm had (1) pried information from operators of adult bulletin boards by claiming they could use his study to increase their profits; (2) simultaneously tried to sell his software to the Department of Justice to help them prosecute those same people; (3) used unethical means to obtain computer usage data on Carnegie Mellon students, faculty and staff; (4) misrepresented his position at Carnegie Mellon; (5) plagiarized parts of his report from a Canadian study whose conclusions were almost diametrically opposed to his. These charges, now under investigation, have resulted in Rimm being disinvited to testify at anti-porn hearings. But the damage has been done. Rimm's results, which distort and grossly exaggerate both the availability and the nature of sexual material on the Internet, will be repeated by pro-censorship zealots in and out of Congress until they become "facts." Pat Robertson, Executive
Director The Christian Coalition (click here for the TRUTH about Pat Robertson and The Christian Coalition) is a project of Rev. Pat Robertson, Yale-educated lawyer, sometime presidential candidate, founder of the fundamentalist Regent University, host of TV's "700 Club," and media czar. Offshoots of this obsessively homophobic organization have been leading anti-gay, pro-censorship initiatives in Oregon, Colorado and elsewhere across the country, and lend support and encouragement nationwide to anti-abortion fanatics. Pat Robertson is quite plausibly the best known of the Religious Right, through his abortive 1988 challenge to George Bush for the Republican Presidential nomination, and through his daily appearances on his television program - The 700 Club. Robertson survived his own political demise, and the demise of the original religious right, centered around Falwell's "Moral Majority". He retrenched, brought in Ralph Reed to head the Christian Coalition, which he founded in 1989, pioneered the stealth campaign, and now wields more raw political power than any other leader of the new religious right. Pat Robertson has often been the victim of his own intemperate statements, perhaps nowhere so evident as his 1991 book The New World Order, in which he espouses a highly conspiracist point of view, one that would be quite at home in many of the extremist fringes of the far right. By contrast, Ralph Reed, no longer head of the Christian Coalition, appeared considerably more moderate, reaching out to Catholics and mainstream Jews in his efforts to build a broad base of political power. Reed masterminded the grassroots campaigning tactics, as well as the art of advocating extremism with moderate language, which gained the Christian Coalition their present power base. Then Ralph resigned and Pat took over. Pat and Ralph have said that: "The Christian Coalition continues to build a grass-roots organization that may one day be the strongest political force in America." At the rate this organization is growing, such claims may not be hyperbolic. The Christian Coalition has taken on a king-making role in Republican politics, and controls the Republican Party in at least 18 states. It grooms and supports "stealth candidates" for public offices ranging from local school boards to the U.S. Senate, and was a key player in the conservative Republican anschluss of 1994. Pat has kept the public relations strategy of repackaging the Coalition's "Contract With the American Family." It uses the reasonable and benevolent-sounding goal of "strengthening the American family" to mask legislative proposals that would threaten fundamental freedoms such as the separation of church and state and women's rights to reproductive planning. Pat has been attempting to make the most of the Christian Coalition's growing publicity, a powerful lobbying presence, millions of dollars in funding, and the deference of elected officials and presidential hopefuls. The Coalition has been quietly trying to amass the power to see its agenda realized. "Their agenda is rooted in elitism, restricted only by what polls say voters are willing to accept. It is masked in rhetoric that appeals to people's desire for a better society, but also uses their fears to cast blame. It is an agenda we are working to unmask, to educate the public about and to see brought to a halt before more real families are hurt," says NOW Action Vice President Rosemary Dempsey. The "common sense values" that the Christian Coalition wants to "restore" include measures that would:
A token donation may secure you a lifetime of bigoted fundraising solicitations, as well as a subscription to Christian American.
Boston's exploration of Robertson and Reed, particularly his
analysis of the two men's seemingly contradictory statements about church-state separation
an eye-opener." Religion News Service "Not all readers will agree that
Robertson and his Christian Coalition pose a fatal threat to American freedom, but this
detailed study reveals some of the organization's more glaring imperfections and
contradictions." Publishers Weekly Religion Bookline "This book is a good primer
on the rise of this truly weird man, whose beliefs come dangerously close to going past
the line that separates lucidity and insanity." The Columbus Free Press
"We would do well to learn more about the religious right and its political agenda.
This is a good place to begin." World ". . . well-organized, well-written,
well-documented. . ." The Human Quest ". . . an excellent resource if you've
been looking for both famous and little-known quotes from the person who seems hardest at
work to sabotage American religious and intellectual freedom." The Humanist
"Boston's book needs to be read by every thoughtful American, and especially by
minority groups. [He] has performed a great and courageous service by writing this
excellent book." Jewish Spectator Every school system needs this book in its
curriculum library so Prometheus Books
Christopher Ruddy,
Editor-in-Chief The work of predominantly Catholic pro-life zealots who helped oust Mario Cuomo, this monthly newspaper has been in existence since June 1991. Since then it has gained notoriety through attacks on the NEA that have exceeded those of Jesse Helms in vehemence and inaccuracy. Complimentary copies are sent to the White House, every member of Congress, every member of the New York Legislature, and every major talk show host across the country. Increasingly, this publication is cited as a source. Much of what is reported here seems to have been invented out of whole cloth; some information is obtained fraudulently by reporters who misidentify themselves; much is reprinted from other publications and robbed of context. A subscription may be obtained by mailing $20 to the New Hyde Park address. Phyllis Schlafly, President Phyllis Schlafly first broke onto the conservative political landscape with the publication of her book A Choice, Not An Echo in 1964, which was an endorsement of Barry Goldwater's campaign for the Presidency and is one of the seminal texts of contemporary American conservative politics. She emerged as a leader of the Religious Right's opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the seventies. The Eagle Forum, which she founded in 1972, has continued her fight against gender equality and feminism, and has expanded their reach to also focus on homosexuality (one of the original bases for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment), education, abortion and the United Nations. Schafly's son, John was outed by the now defunct magazine Queer World in 1992. "Leading the pro-family movement to victories since 1972." Basic membership includes a subscription to The Phyllis Schlafly Report and costs $15.00. Mrs. Schlafly, whose husband Fred used to head the World Anti-Communist League, is the person considered most responsible for the defeat of the ERA. Rev. Louis Sheldon. Chairman From People for the American Way: "The Coalition opposes gay rights, reproductive freedom, the teaching of evolution... and sex education that does not stress abstinence to the exclusion of information on birth control and disease prevention. It was recently active in battles over constitutional amendments outlawing civil rights protections for gays and lesbians... [and] is now organizing anti-gay ballot initiatives in California and elsewhere." Testifying in 1991 against the National Endowment for the Arts, founder Lou Sheldon said, "The elitist avant-garde arts community uses the NEA to advertise and disseminate their political beliefs. The NEA then uses our scarce tax dollars to fund works which are intended to shock Americans into an acceptance of dysfunctional behavioral lifestyles and to destroy the family." In 1993, the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) produced Gay Rights, Special Rights, one of the more influential anti-gay hate videos. After the Republican electoral victories of 1994, TVC established a Washington office. Late in 1995, Congressional hearings held at Sheldon's behest propagandized against alleged gay influences in public schools. Send for additional information. Dr. Robert L. Simonds,
President People for the American Way has accurately described Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE) as "easily the most destructive censorship organization active in the schools today." CEE is the activist arm of a second Robert Simonds organization, the National Association of Christian Educators. Simonds founded CEE in 1983 to implement "our Lord's plans to bring public education back under the control of the Christian community" and to stamp out "the atheist dominated ideology of secular humanism." In 1985, Simonds wrote: "There are 15,700 school districts in America. When we get an active Christian parents committee (CEE) in operation in all districts, we can take complete control of all local school boards." In 1992, CEE claimed to have 120,000 members organized in 925 chapters in all 50 states. CEE has supposedly helped elect 1,965 candidates to school boards nationwide since 1989. It gives wide distribution to political action kits, visual aids, and books such as How to Elect Christians to Public Office ("America is now groaning! Atheistic secular humanist's [sic] should be removed from office and Christians should be elected. We can all then rejoice continually as our children and our nation will be more safe."). CEE has also been particularly zealous in efforts to purge schools and libraries of curricula and books it finds offensive-characterizing most traditional fairy tales, for example, as "occult" and "demonic." CEE's portrayal of the popular "Impressions" reading series ("a massive occultic program with over 822 stories on violence, death, witchcraft, magic, animism, mutilation, child abuse, fear and horror") has won surprisingly widespread support. To receive CEE's Education Newsline and strident subliterate pleas for more money, send a minimal contribution. Bruce Taylor, President and
Chief Counsel The National Law Center for Children and Families (NLC) describes itself as "a law enforcement assistance and public education center with a staff of attorneys who provide legal advice, assistance, and reference materials to state and federal prosecutors, police investigators, and legislators," as well as "a specialized resource to those who enforce state and federal obscenity and child exploitation laws" and a "training and information clearinghouse on the specialized issues involved in pornography and First Amendment related cases." Bruce Taylor, the guiding light of this insidious organization, is a former Ohio prosecutor whose obscenity cases have numbered in the hundreds. He has served as Senior Trial Attorney for the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (set up in the wake of the notorious Meese Commission), and for a decade acted as General Counsel to Citizens for Decency Through Law (CDL), the Cincinnati-based group of smut vigilantes founded by Charles H. Keating, who is now serving a prison sentence for various felonies committed in the course of his involvement in the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. (CDL, which was partly responsible for the 1990 indictment of Dennis Barrie, director of Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center, on Mapplethorpe-related obscenity charges, has been known by various names at various times, beginning its career in 1957 as Citizens for Decent Literature and evolving into the National Coalition Against Pornography before assuming its present designation as the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families.) Taylor maintains close ties to both the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, whose Vice President Rick Schatz serves on the NLC's Board of Directors, and to the Justice Department. Until recently the NLC shared a suite of offices in Fairfax, Virginia with the erstwhile Keating organization and Dee Jepson's Enough Is Enough. All three groups are now tightly focused on cyberspace indecency. Taylor proudly claims to have been one of the principal architects of Senator James Exon's egregious Communications Decency Act, and to have drafted "significant portions" of its text. He is also believed to hav assembled Exon's notorious "Blue Book" of porn samples used to frighten members of Congress into supporting draconian measures to censor online communications. The NLC, a small 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit "educational" organization that strives to maintain an august, quasi-governmental image, is a wellspring of sometimes loony, frequently destructive misinformation about international pedophile networks, vast porn conspiracies, the nature and purpose of pornography, and the social cost of smut. Taylor's impeccable connections among law enforcement officials, the theocratic right, and the anti-porn left, coupled with his almost Messianic sense of mission, make the NLC one of the most dangerous pro-censorship groups in operation today. Jack Thompson A Christian fundamentalist attorney retained by Oliver North's Freedom Alliance, Thompson began his operation as a one-person crusade. His chief targets are homosexuality, African American culture, and rap music. He is best known for having precipitated the prosecution of 2 Live Crew in Broward County, Florida, and for waging an international campaign against the rap group NWA. In the summer and fall of 1992, he led the charge against Time Warner and Ice-T. When the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression defended the Boston-based rap group Almighty RSO against attacks by pro-censorship forces abetted by Freedom Alliance, Thompson fired off faxes describing the BCFE as a group of "left-wing extremists." C. DeLores Tucker National Political Caucus of Black Women Tucker and William Bennett, the disastrous Education Secretary under Reagan, bumbling drug czar under Bush, presently co-director of Empower America, a reactionary right public policy lobby, and the "John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy" at the egregious Heritage Foundation. Even stranger bedfellows than Diane Feinstein and Trent Lott, this odd couple has recently found common ground in the will to censor popular culture. Joining forces in press conferences, public appearances, and a series of public service announcements decrying rap music and Time Warner, Tucker and Bennett deny promoting censorship while avidly supporting censorious ratings systems, broader definitions of pornography, and narrower definitions of permissible speech. Using rhetoric that combines the sanctimoniousness of Jerry Falwell with the sophistry of Catharine MacKinnon, Tucker has testified before Congress that "Because this pornographic smut is in the hands of our children, it coerces, influences, encourages and motivates our youth to commit violent behavior." She believes that much rap music is not entitled to constitutional protection and should be sold in adult bookstores if at all. Bennett, smug, self-righteous editor of the Book of Virtues, has recently demanded abolition of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which he once chaired, because of its failure to live up to his right-wing standards of political correctness. Paul Weyrich, President In 1974, a year after Paul Weyrich had founded the Heritage Foundation with seed money from Colorado brewer Joseph Coors, he launched the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC) with additional backing from the Coors fortune. (The friendship between Coors and Weyrich had begun when Weyrich was an aide to conservative Senator Gordon Allot of Colorado.) The purpose of the CSFC was to influence the electoral process through fundraising schemes, circulation of propaganda, recruitment of conservative candidates, and grassroots organizing. Out of the CSFC grew the Free Congress Foundation, which has branched out into lobbying for conservative judicial appointments, communications schemes like "National Empowerment Television," and efforts to defeat gay rights initiatives. Weyrich, a member of the extreme Catholic right and a professed admirer of the pro-Nazi demagogue Father Coughlin, has founded or cofounded numerous right-wing organizations, including the Moral Majority. The Weyrich juggernaut played a decisive role in the ascendancy of Newt Gingrich and the right-wing Republicans of the 104th Congress. Among its top ten "Censored News Stories of 1994," Project Censored cites the press's lack of coverage of the political machinations of Weyrich's Council for National Policy, a secretive high-level strategy-formulating organization whose membership is a Who's Who of the far right. The CNP played a decisive role in creating the conservative Republican anschluss of November 1994. An admirer of Father Coughlin, the Thirties pro-fascist radio demagogue, the ardently authoritarian Weyrich has operated at the heart of reactionary politics for over two decades. With the help of handouts from beer magnate Joseph Coors, he has founded or cofounded an impressive list of right-wing organizations, including the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC). His agenda has been to influence the electoral process through fundraising campaigns, grassroots mobilization, propaganda blitzes, and promotion of conservative candidates. Out of the CSFC grew the Free Congress Foundation, which has branched out into lobbying for conservative judicial appointments, communications schemes like "National Empowerment Television," and efforts to defeat gay rights initiatives. Admitting that he and his colleagues are not conservatives in the traditional sense, he has described the New Right as "radicals who want to change the existing power structure." Weyrich was one of the earliest commentators to advance the idea that the United States is engulfed in a cultural civil war. "It may not be with bullets, and it may not be with rockets and missiles, but it is a war, nonetheless. It is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war." It is becoming increasingly clear that to dismiss this statement is to be fatally deluded. See Free Congress Page. Write for information, or visit Town Hall, the almost encyclopedic system of World Wide Web pages the Heritage Foundation unveiled in 1995. John Whitehead, Esq., President A resource center formed in 1982 to provide legal aid to right-wing causes, the Rutherford Institute has ties to the radical fringes of Christian fundamentalism. R.J. Rushdoony of Chalcedon, a West Coast Christian think tank in which the Christian Reconstructionist Movement was born thirty years ago, co-founded the organization and has helped steer it toward a key role in the growing attack on public schools. The Rutherford Institute has been especially active and often successful in trying to stop condom distribution in public schools, as well as sex education, AIDS prevention programs, and programs that teach tolerance. Supported Lawyers for Jones in lawsuit against Bill Clinton. Send $25 for a subscription to the monthly Rutherford Journal. Dr. Donald Wildmon, President "A Christian organization promoting the Biblical ethic of decency in American society with primary emphasis on TV and other media." The organization, which grew out of Donald Wildmon's National Federation for Decency and Christian Leaders for Responsible Television (CLEAR-TV), adopted the name American Family Association in 1987, as it sought to broaden its agenda. Wildmon, more than any other individual, precipitated the current culture war; first with his campaign against the film Last Temptation of Christ, then with his million-piece mailing on Andres Serrano's photograph "Piss Christ." The American Family Association, serves as the "media watchdog" of the radical religious right. Their primary activities have been the organization of boycotts and letter writing campaigns targetted at businesses and media entities which promulgate soft porn (ex. Playboy), or portray lesbians and gay men in a positive light. Secondarily, the American Family Association targets violence on television. The American Family Association publishes a monthly newsletter (the most recent edition of which is available on their web site) listing those television shows, businesses, and advertisers who they are currently targeting, as well as opinion pieces. Membership in the AFA, including a subscription to the AFA Journal, costs $15.00. The AFA Journal, which claims a circulation of over 425,000, can always be counted on to provide such gems as the suggestion that "Rocky and Bullwinkle" teaches children that bestiality is acceptable. Currently Wildmon is one of the cochairs of Pat Buchanan's Presidential campaign. Barbara Wyatt, Executive Director Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was founded by Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Albert Gore and author of the astonishingly dimwitted Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. She became an activist in 1984, after listening to Prince's Purple Rain soundtrack album, which she had bought for her 11-year-old daughter. Mrs. Gore has officially resigned from PMRC but continues to support its agenda. Until recently the core of the PMRC, which remains heavily influenced by the Christian evangelical attempt to demonize rock music, comprised about 15 Washington wives, most notably cofounder Susan Baker, wife of the former Secretary of State. Mrs. Baker also sits on the board of James Dobson's Focus on the Family. PMRC's most significant achievement has been to help create "Parental Advisory" labels which, though unsystematic, unreliable, and purely voluntary, have been used as a guide to censorship by state and local governments. Barbara Wyatt, the former Reagan Administration official who has headed the organization since December 1994, has tried to give PMRC a hipper and more diversified image. One of Wyatt's projects has been a telephone service (1-900-288-PMRC) for parents who want to keep abreast of lascivious and Satanic song lyrics by paying $1.75 per minute to hear them read in a monotone by office volunteer David Chamberlin. (He just reads the good parts.) Wyatt, who advocates more and tougher labeling, takes credit for bringing William Bennett, whose wife is on PMRC's board, together with C. Delores Tucker in order to stamp out evil rap. Sources:American Library Association People for the American Way Political Research Associates Institute for First Amendment Studies Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism Chip Berlet, ed., Eyes Right!: Challenging the Right Wing Backlash Joan DelFattore, What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America Donna Demac, Liberty Denied: The Current Rise of Censorship in America Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right William A. Rusher, The Rise of the Right Richard A. Viguerie, The New Right: We're Ready to Lead ...and material provided by the listed organizations. A great deal of the above material was written and compiled by James D'Entremont and others. Religious Liberty On-Line LinksOverview of U.S. Supreme Court
decisions impacting religion. FindLaw's excellent annotations on all aspects
of the First Amendment Federal court decisions
impacting religious liberty of Native Americans. American Indian Religious Freedom Act,
1978. American Indian Religious
Freedom Act Amendments of 1994. Baptist Faith on Religious
Liberty. World Union of Deists. B'nai B'rith on Religious Liberty. Catholic Church on Religious
Liberty (Vatican II). President Clinton's memorandum
on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace, 1997. President Clinton's Guidelines
on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace, issued April
1997. President Clinton's executive order on Native American Sacred Sites, 1996. President Clinton's memorandum on
Religious Expression in Public Schools, 1995. The
Constitution of the United States of America. Danbury Baptist Association's
letter to Thomas Jefferson and his reply. J.M. Dawson Institute of
Church-State Studies at Baylor University. Gene Garman's essays on Separation of
Church and State. Thomas Jefferson on religious liberty: A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
in Virginia, 1785 and his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association on Separation of
Church and State. The International
Coalition for Religious Freedom John Locke's statement on religious toleration: A Letter Concerning Toleration (tolerati),
1689. James Madison's statement on religious freedom: Memorial and Remonstrance,
1785. A Parent's Guide to Religion
in the Public Schools. Political Science Papers Dealing with the Relationship of Church and State, and
Religious Liberty Religious Freedom Restoration
Act of 1993. Ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, June 1997 Religious Liberty: Frequently Asked
Questions. Philip Schaff on "The
American Idea of Religious Freedom" from Church and State in the United States,
1888. Spiritual Freedom Pledge
sponsored by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance Roger Williams on freedom of conscience: From The Bloody Tenet of
Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, in a Conference between Truth and Peace, 1644. |
This page was last modified 04/24/08 09:08 PM
There
have been visitors to this page
since January 1, 1998
 |
This site created by Dancing Spirit Web Creations. Content copyright 1998 The Religious Freedom Coalition design copyright 1998 Melinda Reese, Dancing Spirit Web Creations. |
