Alan E. Sears
President, CEO and General Counsel
Alliance Defending Freedom
(15100 N. 90th Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85260-2769)
September 2013
Dear Friend,
No
organization is more determined to shake America from its Judeo-Christian moorings than the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Despite proclaiming itself the nation's
"guardian of liberty," the ACLU has waged an often uncontested
courtroom war against America's core values.
My
name is Alan Sears. I am the president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, a unique legal alliance. For 19
years, thanks be to God, we've been defending faith
and religious freedom from the ACLU's remorseless legal challenges — and
winning!
I'm
writing today to ask for your support. It's urgent that we use this opportunity
to strengthen our foundation of success (I'll tell you more about that later) —
because the ACLU has never been stronger or more committed to its war on our
core values. If we don't stand up to it now, we will lose our religious liberties forever.
Perhaps
you've heard of Alliance Defending Freedom. We were launched in 1994 as the
Alliance Defense Fund by 35 ministry leaders, including Dr. James Dobson, the
late Dr. D. James Kennedy, the late Dr. Bill Bright, and the late Larry
Burkett.
These
respected Christian leaders were horrified at how the ACLU marauded through the
courts in countless cases unopposed. They envisioned something that had never
been tried before or since: a unique alliance-building legal ministry to defend
our religious freedom, values, and way of life from the onslaught of the ACLU
through the combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
Alliance
Defending Freedom has, by God's grace, grown from the prayers of those godly
leaders to become a major force in the legal battle for religious liberty,
prevailing in hundreds of cases in state and federal courts, and playing
various roles and assisting in . . .
40 victories at the Supreme Court of the
United States
— the majority involving the ACLU or its allies.
And
we've only begun! We cannot rest. The ACLU's thirst to purge America's public life of its Christian values is
unquenchable. It has virtually unlimited resources at its disposal. This is why
I ask you to send a contribution today to help Alliance Defending Freedom stop
the ACLU and its dangerous agenda.
With
nearly $400 million in assets and more than 2,000 volunteer and staff
attorneys, the ACLU is radically committed to:
• Pushing
Christian faith and biblical values to the margins of American society.
• Stripping
parents of the rights to raise children according to their beliefs.
• Tearing
down barriers that protect children from pornographers and pedophiles.
• Cheapening
the value of human life — from conception to natural death.
• Forcing the
homosexual legal agenda — including redefining marriage — on America and drastically limiting religious liberty.
An Urgent Wake-Up Call to the Nation and
the Church
To
this day, however, most of America remains unaware of the ACLU's relentless campaign of
intense, anti-Christian litigation. With the mainstream media serving as its
public relations department, it can cloak its bullying in the guise of
"defending liberty."
If
we're to stop the ACLU and preserve the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian
values that have defined and guided America for more than 200 years, then we
must understand our opponent's true, radical agenda — what it really wants —
and its active role in much of our nation's decline.
The ACLU vs. Religious Freedom
The
ACLU has fixed its sights on religious freedom. Under its leadership, its
secular, leftist allies scored countless courtroom victories in its campaign
against religious freedom — many without serious opposition.
Engel v. Vitale
is one notorious ACLU victory. School
District of Abington Township et al. v. Schempp et al
is another.
Those
cases outlawed public prayer and the devotional reading of Scripture in
tax-funded schools in 1962 and 1963. The ACLU has since used those precedents
as a sledgehammer — pounding graduation invocations, voluntary pregame prayers for sports teams, and even "moments of
silence" out of America's public schools.
The
ACLU — the number one religious censor in America — also threatens public officials, cities and towns,
and even entire legislatures with lawsuits for having an official time of
prayer.
In Louisiana, the ACLU demanded
jail time for persons who prayed in a manner that it disapproved of. And
even though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit threw out the
lawsuit — the ACLU challenged the school board's invocation of divine guidance
on different grounds and dragged it back into court again!
And
in South Carolina and Virginia, the ACLU used the threat of a lawsuit against local
government entities to silence prayer "in Jesus' name." The towns
eventually caved in to the ACLU's demand.
Wherever
religious liberty is under attack in America, you will find the ACLU — particularly in the clash
between faith and the demands of the homosexual agenda.
But
by God's grace, Alliance Defending Freedom has established a growing record of
success in defending and reclaiming religious freedom and protecting the
sanctity of life, and marriage and the family.
In
fact, thanks be to God, Alliance
Defending Freedom has won more than 3 out of every 4 cases, including cases
against the ACLU and its allies, when we assisted in developing legal
strategies, training attorneys, funding, or litigating to conclusion, including
in these cases:
• In Good News Club v. Milford Central Schools,
heard because of Alliance Defending Freedom-funded cases, the Supreme Court
affirmed that Christian groups have the same right to meet on campus as any
other group.
• In Van Orden v. Perry, the Supreme Court
supported the constitutionality of some Ten Commandments monuments on public
property.
• In ACSTO v. Winn, the Supreme Court handed
down a huge victory for proponents of parental choice in education, dismissing
an ACLU lawsuit against an Arizona
program that allows state residents to claim a tax credit for donations to
private organizations that provide scholarships to private schools. The Court
ruled that the ACLU's clients — taxpayers who don't like the program — didn't
have any legal standing to sue over someone else's private donations. Alliance
Defending Freedom represented the only party to bring this argument to the
Court. The decision creates a national precedent that will prevent similar
legal attacks in the future.
In
case after case, Alliance Defending Freedom has successfully turned back the
ACLU's assaults. But the ACLU's commitment to using activist judges to shake America from its Judeo-Christian foundation has never been
more dangerous — and it has never had more resources at its command.
The ACLU vs. Marriage
For
decades, the ACLU and its collaborators have pushed our culture in a leftward,
secular direction. They have harassed Christians. They have fought any limits
to abortion. They have worked fiercely
to redefine marriage. Today, the ACLU remains radically committed to:
• Pushing our
Christian faith and biblical values to the margins of American society.
• Stripping
parents like you and me of the rights to raise children according to our
beliefs.
• Forcing the
homosexual legal agenda — including redefining marriage — on America, with the result of drastically limiting our
religious liberty.
The
battle over marriage — which Alliance Defending Freedom is also fighting in
numerous states ultimately is about religious freedom.
Any court that will force same-sex
"marriage" on citizens who have voted against it also can rule that
opposition to those unions — even disagreement that's based on biblical truth —
is unlawful.
The
ACLU wants far more than to redefine marriage; it wants to silence, even
punish, dissent from its radical agenda.
The ACLU Has Met Its Match
Same-sex
"marriage" is not inevitable, not that you'd know it from the stories
reported by the mainstream media. Because they are sympathetic to the ACLU's
causes, they don't want you to know that Alliance Defending Freedom and our
allies have successfully defended marriage nationwide.
We've
helped turn back the ACLU and its allies in cases from Georgia to Washington . . . in Oregon
Louisiana . . . Maryland . . . Kentucky . . . Indiana . . . Alaska. . . Arizona . . . Hawaii . . . New Mexico . . . Nebraska. . . and Tennessee, more than 40 times in all.
However,
the ACLU and its allies have had just three "wins" in state election
battles fabricating same-sex "marriage" — Maine, Maryland,
and Washington. So the battle rages — and in coming months we must
prevail to save marriage in America.
Defeating the ACLU — A National
Imperative
As
the ACLU pursues its radical agenda to end the religious freedoms that our
Founding Fathers secured for us, it will drag us back to court over and over
again to:
• Marginalize
the Constitution and statutes regarding biblical views on sexual behavior.
• Prevent
Christians and ministries from publicly sharing the Gospel.
• Defend the
distribution of child pornography and hard-core obscenity.
• Challenge
laws that protect children from registered sex offenders.
• Use public
schools to promote homosexual behavior.
• Silence all
discussion of alternatives to Darwinism.
Alliance Defending
Freedom — A Blessing from God for
America — A Winning
Record Against the ACLU
If
you understand the grave threat that the ACLU poses to your freedoms, I hope
you will send a generous tax-deductible gift today to support Alliance
Defending Freedom. Your gift will help sustain our legal ministry that has
defeated the ACLU time and again through its unique combination of efforts.
• Litigate cases that defend religious
freedom and traditional values.
• Provide funds to help allied attorneys
do the same.
• Train attorneys in the best strategies
to defeat the ACLU and its allies. Through our one-of-a-kind Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Academy, we have graduated more than 1,600 attorneys from
this exclusive training academy, contributing over $150 million in
pro-bono/dedicated legal services to the Body of Christ.
• Strategize and coordinate through the
alliance. Alliance Defending Freedom has helped coordinate the efforts of 300
ministries and organizations.
With
God's grace and the prayers and support of concerned Americans, Alliance
Defending Freedom and our allies are winning more and more battles. And we will
continue to prevail, but it won't be easy — and it certainly won't be quick. But if Allied Ministry Friends
commit to fighting this battle — by giving and by praying — then we will win.
Alliance
Defending Freedom is totally dependent on the Lord to move the hearts of people
to help our mission. As we continue to defend our shared values from the ACLU's
remorseless attacks, I hope I will hear from you today.
Yours
for religious freedom in America,
Alan
E. Sears
President,
CEO & General Counsel
Alliance Defending Freedom
P.S. Alliance
Defending Freedom is a cash-based ministry. We do not take on a legal battle
unless we have adequate funding. If God's people give us adequate funding,
which He always has ensured, then we move forward. If not, we don't.
P.P.S. The situation is urgent, but there's every reason to
have hope. Every time the ACLU challenges religious freedom it provides us with
another opportunity to stand for our most basic and inalienable human right. As
you prayerfully consider becoming an Allied Ministry Friend, please remember
that your generosity will enable Alliance Defending Freedom to build on our
19-year foundation of success in court. And please use your personalized labels
to stand with us in defense of religious liberty.
Alliance Defending
Freedom is always looking for potential precedent-setting cases and for
attorneys who could help our cause. If you wish to refer an attorney or a
potential case to us, please see the [requested] enclosed reply form. Please
note that success in past cases does not guarantee success in future cases. Copyright ©2013, Alliance Defending Freedom. All rights reserved. Permission to
reprint this and other documents as noted in their entirety is granted to
Alliance Defending Freedom Allied Ministry Friends. But please do us a favor —
if you copy Alliance Defending Freedom, give credit and don't lift items out of
context.
ADF, 15100
N. 90th Street Scottsdale, AZ
85260 • 800-835-5233 • AllianceDefendingFreedom.org