US evangelicals aim to influence European law

US Christian legal groups like Alliance Defense Fund (co-founded by James Dobson) and American Center for Law & Justice (founded by Pat Robertson) have spread to Europe where they lobby the European Parliament, defend Christians prosecuted for home schooling and preachers who practice gay hate speech, work to defeat bills supporting same-sex unions, and block funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Their goal? To prevent the setting of foreign precedents and international standards that could impact US law.


According to the Christian Science Monitor, these are the groups that are helping spread the Religious Right's repressive agenda throughout Europe:

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) - Scottsdale, Ariz.
Founded: 1994 by influential evangelical Christians, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family. In addition to its 30 full-time staff attorneys, it has 1,000 allied attorneys in the US, each of which commits to 450 hours of pro-bono work over a two-year period.
US work: 31 Supreme Court victories, including one that allowed Boy Scouts to ban gay troop leaders.
Activities abroad: Has provided funding, strategy, and legal counsel for the past three years. Allied with IHRG.
www.alliancedefensefund.org

International Human Rights Group (IHRG) – Rome, Ga.
Founded: 2004 under the name European Defense Fund (EDF) by Joel Thornton, a former American Center for Law and Justice attorney and one-time director of its European operations. EDF, which will remain a "project" of the IHRG, still maintains a website: www.europeandefensefund.org.
Activities abroad: Has had a hand in 40-plus German home-schooling cases; lobbies German officials and the European parliament. Receives ADF funding.
www.ihrg.org

American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) – Washington
Founded: 1990 by Pat Robertson. Has a membership of more than 500,000. Sends mass e-mails regularly to more than 1 million recipients. Estimates listenership to its Jay Sekulow Live radio show at 1.5 million daily. Also has a television show that reaches 90 million homes in the US alone.
US work: Represented Terri Schiavo's parents; two of its Supreme Court victories have become benchmarks in religious-liberties litigation; its chief counsel helped draft key legislation, including 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.
Activities abroad: Has 13 staff attorneys and two affiliates in Europe: the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) in Strasbourg, France, and the Slavic Center for Law and Justice (SCLJ) in Moscow. Has argued cases before the European Court of Human Rights; also lobbies the European Parliament.

(Also hosts a five-week summer session in Strasbourg for law students at Pat Robertson's Regents University that culminates in a summit with international leaders like American Ambassador to the European Union C. Boyden Gray, former US Attorney General John Ashcroft, and EU lawmakers. The goal, says ECLJ attorney Roger Kiska, is "preparing the next generation of Christian lawyers to work on a global level.")
www.aclj.org

Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) - Purcellville, Va.
Founded: 1983 by Michael Farris and current president J. Michael Smith.
US work: Protects rights of home-schooling families through legal action and political lobbying. Played a major role in changing the compulsory education laws that made it difficult for parents in many states to home-school their children.
Activities abroad: Plays a key role in establishing and funding home-schooling advocacy groups abroad, including Schulunterricht zu Hause (Schuzh), the legal muscle behind dozens of German home-schooling cases.
www.hslda.org

Full article at www.csmonitor.com/2007/0417/p01s03-woeu.html?page=1

:sarcasm::eyes::puke:

Warn your European friends in case they actually gain some ground.

Two of their successes cited in the article:

• In Sweden, ADF played a key role in persuading the Supreme Court to dismiss charges against Ake Green, a pastor who was convicted of hate-crime charges after he delivered a sermon in which he called gays a "deep cancerous tumor in the entire society."

• In Aruba and the Czech Republic, ACLJ helped defeat bills that would have legalized same-sex unions.

What more can be said. I knew about the Ake Green case. I simply thought it a matter of free speech. Sad that these monsters have to meddle in systems that work better without them.

keep the crazies at home? They don't need to be bothering the EU with their intemperate and hostle speech.

have hit the jackpot.

those decadent Old Europeans.

Those two have done such excellent work on our soil--why not spread the word to our wayward, heathen allies?

which it is

these people and help to defeat them?

Looks as if these fundagelical nutjobs aren't content with just fucking up our country, they have to do their best to make a mess out of all of yours, too. :(

Tax every last one of them.