Liberty Legal Institute

Liberty University's Four Day Anti-Choice Rally

Submitted by Kyle on November 12, 2009 - 11:03am

Earlier this year, Liberty University announced that it would not recognize its campus Democratic club because the national party's platform went against the school's moral principles and trotted out the head of the school's Student Government Association to explain the decision:

Matt Mihelic, President of the school's Student Government Association, spoke on behalf of the school and says the club's views were counter-intuitive to the mission of the school.

"The administration felt that the college democrats and who they supported did not coincide with the purposes of the university," said Mihelic.

Do you know what does "coincide with the purposes of the university"? Apparently, officially-sanctioned anti-choice rallies:

To represent those lives that have been lost to abortion since its legalization, a fourth of the Liberty student body wore black shirts to convocation, while the rest wore white.

The Liberty University Student Government Association (SGA) is speaking up for the unspoken this week by hosting the largest fully student-initiated Pro-Life conference to be held on a college campus.

In response to the 50 million lives that were ended before taking a first breath, students at Liberty felt called to take action and educate others on the significance of the tragedy in hopes that their generation will be the force to put an end to abortion in America.

“This is the first pro-life conference that Liberty has ever held and we are calling it R.O.S.E. (Reclaiming Other’s Sacred Existence) and we’ve got speakers from all over the country that are here to inspire us and tell us information that has been suppressed for the last 36 years,” said Liberty University Student Government president, Matt Mihelic.

The conference kicked off with Wednesday’s convocation dedicated to the pro-life cause featuring special guest Norma McCorvey, who was the plaintiff “Jane Roe” in the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court case of 1973 ... A short video clip of McCorvey’s testimony was shown followed by a standing ovation from the students for her transformed life and dedication to fight for the truth.

McCorvey was followed by an address delivered by Mathew D. Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law.

Staver, whose mother chose to give him life against her doctor’s recommendations to carry out an abortion, is very passionate about the issue. During his speech, he used a series of photographs of infants in the womb at different stages of a pregnancy to give evidence of human traits even as early as three weeks.

“The debate as to when life begins has been settled a long time ago within the medical and scientific world,” Staver said. “The debate today is no longer when life begins, but what value do we put on life.”

Mihelic declared that they have one simple goal: "we want to see the full-scale repeal of Roe v. Wade and the conclusion of the era of legal abortion in the United States, and we want to see this in our generation." And that mission was echoed throughout yesterday's event:

McCorvey was praised by university leaders, including Mat Staver, dean of LU’s law school, and SGA President Matthew Mihelic, the student who conceived the event.

“The student body of Liberty University stands with you and we have your back,” Mihelic said.

Last spring, Mihelic ran for student body president on the platform of unifying the student voice on abortion. Record numbers of students came out to vote, he said, and the conference is the culmination of his vision.

“We know we are the largest evangelical university in the world and we intend on using every ounce of that grassroots influence to stop this blight on American history,” Mihelic said in a news release. “Under our watch, our generation will fight with all our might to make abortion history.”

Staver, the keynote speaker, drew on personal experiences, Christian values and legal arguments to make the case for why abortion should be categorically illegal. He charted his transformation from a young, pro-choice preacher in the 1970s to the staunch anti-abortion advocate he is today.

“I was a pastor and I didn’t know anything about abortion,” Staver said. “I thought it was just a blob of cells … I would have said I’m pro-choice because I didn’t think it was a life.”

At the end of the talk, Staver rallied the students to be leaders in “restoring the culture of life” in America.

“If we don’t stand together for those most vulnerable and innocent children in our very midst, if we drive by an abortion clinic and never even realize the holocaust that’s taking place, then God help us, because all the other liberties we enjoy are illusory.”

The conference continues through the end of the week, featuring other speakers including Rep. Trent Franks and Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org.

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Liberty University Imports and Exports Creationism

Submitted by Kyle on February 17, 2009 - 4:11pm

The Christian Post reports that Thomas Road Baptist Church, the church founded by Jerry Falwell and currently run by his son Jonathan, is hosting a three-day "Answers for Darwin" conference being put on by the creationists from Answers in Genesis:

Ken Ham, founder and president of Answers in Genesis, which hosted the three-day "Answers for Darwin" conference, told the crowd in the opening session that America is becoming less of a Christian nation everyday and that it is due in part to the influence of Darwinism.

He cited statistics by research firm The Barna Group, showing that at least 60 percent of students raised in church-going homes who attend public schools will walk away from church.

Referring to the culture war, Ham said there are increasing pervasive attacks in America, including abortion and the removal of the Bible, prayer and creation from public schools.

"What is wrong?" he asked the audience at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. "I suggest to you the foundation is being taken out of this nation that was once here and we see the structure collapsing."

Among the speakers is Liberty University professor Dr. David DeWitt, which makes sense because, as The News and Advance recently explained, the teaching of creationism is a key part of Liberty’s core mission to create “good Christians” who will go out and impact law, politics, society, and the culture:

DeWitt’s personal views are critical of evolution, he said.

“If a frog turns into a prince with a kiss then it’s a fairy tale. If a frog turns into a prince over millions of years, it’s science,” he said, referencing the theory of evolution. “It’s almost ridiculous.”

“I’m a scientist, and I’m not denigrating science. I’m critiquing the idea that millions of years is the magic wand that makes it possible.”

…

[Law School Dean Mathew] Staver said that the theory of evolution “has impacted everything,” including his area of expertise — law.

An evolutionary model for arguing cases, for example, now impacts the creation of law, he said.

Instead of the previously accepted practice of basing arguments on the original source, the U.S. Constitution, Staver said, now lawyers instead use case studies that build upon each other and “evolve” over time.

Law students at Liberty “have to understand both sides” in order to critically analyze cases, he said.

They also must learn the details of evolution versus creation “so they are comfortable and confident in advocating their position,” he said.

“You clearly see it in some of the more social areas such as marriage and abortion. But it really permeates all the areas of law.”

[Campus Pastor Johnnie] Moore said Liberty students, no matter which program they’re in, should understand arguments that support the creationist perspective so they can defend their beliefs.

“What we’re doing is, we’re training Christian young people to go into culture in various occupations; to be good Christians in their area of influence,” Moore said. “We want them to be as prepared to represent Christ and the Bible and Christian values in culture as they are prepared to excel in their careers.

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$200,000 Later, Liberty Legal Gets Back to Basics

Submitted by Kyle on February 9, 2009 - 12:48pm

Back in September, we wrote a couple of posts noting that the Liberty Legal Institute, a right-wing Texas law firm, was trying to shut down the "Troopergate" probe involving Sarah Palin in order to protect John McCain's presidential campaign.

Now, the Anchorage Daily News reports that LLI spent nearly $200,000 on the effort:

New state gift disclosures show it cost Liberty Legal Institute and the two law firms working with it $185,000 to represent six Alaska legislators in an unsuccessful lawsuit to halt their colleagues' "troopergate" investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin acted improperly in firing the state's public safety director.

The legislators listed a $25,000 gift of services from the Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute. Liberty is the legal arm of the Free Market Foundation, which is associated with evangelical leader James Dobson's Focus on the Family, and lists its guiding principles as limited government and promotion of Judeo-Christian values.

The lawmakers also disclosed a $120,000 gift of services from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, a national firm that appeared at hearings on behalf of Liberty Legal.

Anchorage attorney Kevin Clarkson represented the six legislators in the case as well, and turned to Liberty Legal for its constitutional expertise. The lawmakers reported a $40,000 gift of services from Clarkson's firm.

That brings the total bill for their lawsuit to $185,000.

The attorneys had hoped to recoup legal fees in a victory. But the suit was dismissed last fall.

The six legislators who filed the suit are Wes Keller, Mike Kelly, Fred Dyson, Tom Wagoner, Carl Gatto and Bob Lynn. All are Republicans.

And speaking of Liberty Legal, Kelly Shackelford, who heads the organization, was just featured on Focus on the Family's CitizenLink website warning its readers that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are going to destroy their religious freedom by passing the Freedom of Choice Act, repealing DOMA, the Fairness Doctrine, hate crimes legislation and, most ominously, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act:

It essentially forces a national homosexual-rights law into businesses across the country. The original bill included "transgendered" individuals — in other words, a man who dresses like a woman, who feels like he’s a woman that day. This would affect everything. It would mean your teacher in your child’s school, if they were a male and felt like a female, they could go into the women’s bathroom.

It’s very extreme, but it is very likely to pass, and it has huge implications on religious liberty. There are a lot of Christian businesses that try to follow their beliefs and morality, and it would be the federal government forcing their view of morality on everybody and it would trump religious freedom.

It’s not just Christian businesses; it would even do it to nonprofit organizations. It would even affect, depending upon the exemption, church schools. So you can see how invidious this could be because it really is a direct attack on religious freedom.

While we understand Shackelford's fear-mongering on these issues - it is LLI's core mission, after all - we have yet to see a convincing explanation of how this mission was furthered by having this right-wing Texas organization drop a couple of hundred thousand dollars defending Republican legislators in Alaska in order to protect Sarah Palin.

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Liberty Legal and "Troopergate"

Submitted by Kyle on September 18, 2008 - 8:47am

As we noted earlier this week, right-wing Alaskan attorney Kevin Clarkson had waded into the "Troopergate" saga in Sarah Plain's defense and was working in conjunction with the Liberty Legal Institute, a right-wing legal organization based in Texas.

Why a right-wing organization out of Texas that, by its own admissions, focuses mostly on cases dealing with religious freedoms, student's rights, parental rights, and the definition of family was taking the lead in a case involving an investigation into the dealings of the Alaska Governor was hard to understand. But now Kelly Shackelford, head of Liberty Legal, is explaining just what they are doing there ... assuring impartiality:

Liberty Legal Institute says it has filed the suit on behalf of Alaska legislators and citizens who want to halt the investigation because those running it have lost the impartiality required under the Alaska constitution. The investigation stems from Palin's July 2008 firing of former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety Walt Monegan for insubordination.

Kelly Shackelford -- chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute -- says the investigation is being led by the Alaska Legislative Council and three Democratic state senators who are outspoken supporters of Barack Obama. "Those people have [made] contributions to Obama. They have public statements pro-Obama and anti-Palin. They have public statements prejudging the case before there's any evidence in," warns Shackelford.

"They have conflicts of interest with those in charge because of past and current relationships. So this is clearly an unconstitutional...political witch hunt which violates the very terms of their constitution."

That would be the same Kelly Shackelford who was recently on James Dobson's radio program crowing about how Palin was the answer to the right-wing movements prayers and explaining his efforts as part of the GOP's platform committee in drafting “the strongest pro-life platform ever in the history of the [Republican] party."

No concerns about impartiality or "conflicts of interest" there.

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Right-Wing Legal Group Comes to Palin’s Defense

Submitted by Kyle on September 16, 2008 - 2:55pm

The AP reports that “five Republican state lawmakers filed suit Tuesday to end the bipartisan investigation into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's” role in the “Troopergate” scandal and buried near the bottom of the article is this little tidbit of information:

"There is no nonpartisan reason to complete this investigation until after the election," said Anchorage attorney Kevin G. Clarkson. "We just want to take the politics out of it and bring fairness back into it."

Clarkson said he and a nonprofit legal firm in Texas, Liberty Legal Institute, were donating their work on the suit.

If the name of Clarkson sounds familiar, it’s because he showed up in a post from a few weeks ago explaining how, back in 2006, he personally assured Focus on the Family that Palin shared their views – and he’d know since he was providing legal counsel to her on the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling regarding benefits for partners of state employees:

Clarkson explained that it was a convoluted process that led to the veto. Acting as legal counsel, Clarkson advised Palin to veto the bill that he said, because of confusing legislative machinations and existing court challenges, would've had the opposite effect and locked in benefits for all couples.

Clarkson said he had to explain the whole decision to Focus on the Family to put minds at ease.

Clarkson appears to be something of a free-lance right-wing lawyer, as in the earlier article he was listed as affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund and is now listed as working with the Liberty Legal Institute, which just so happens to be run by Kelly Shackelford who was an early backer of Mike Huckabee and was recently hobnobbing with Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and James Dobson on Dobson’s radio program where they cooed over Palin and Shackelford detailed his role in drafting “the strongest pro-life platform ever in the history of the [Republican] party."

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Texas Bible Class Push Returns; 'Anti-Faith Fringe' Remains Skeptical

Submitted by Ezra on July 25, 2008 - 3:43pm

It was only last year that People For the American Way Foundation helped represent parents in Odessa, Texas against a school board determined to use public schools to promote a particular religious doctrine. “HA! Take that you dang heathens!” the school district’s curriculum director wrote triumphantly after the board voted to use the Religious Right-backed National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools program. The board settled the lawsuit by dropping NCBCPS.

So it’s natural that advocates of church-state separation would be skeptical of the Texas State Board of Education’s decision last week to approve Bible courses statewide, without providing specific educational or constitutional guidelines.

Mark Chancey, associate professor in religious studies at Southern Methodist University, has studied Bible classes already offered in about 25 districts for the Texas Freedom Network.

The study found most of the courses were explicitly devotional with almost exclusively Christian, usually Protestant, perspectives.

It also found that most were taught by teachers with no academic training in biblical, religious or theological studies and who were not familiar with the issues of separation of church and state.

"Some classes promote creation science. Some classes denigrate Judaism. Some classes explicitly encourage students to convert to Christianity or to adopt Christian devotional practices," Chancey said. "This is all well documented, and the board knows it."

On the other hand, the Religious Right is gung-ho about the move. Decrying “[e]nemies of the First Amendment,” Rod Parsley’s Center for Moral Clarity (a supporter of the unconstitutional NCBCPS curriculum) wrote, “We’re glad legislative and educational leaders in Texas have ignored the shrill arguments of the anti-faith fringe, and we hope other states follow suit.”

Jonathan Saenz of the Liberty Legal Institute and the Free Market Foundation similar predicted that “Texas is going to be seen as a leader on this issue,” and also characterized skeptics as fanatical opponents of religious freedom:

"There are enemies of religious freedom all across our state of Texas and across the country, and they'll do anything and stop at nothing to restrict academic freedom and restrict the religious rights of students," Saenz contends. "They simply do not want kids, even on their own choice, to be able to look at the Bible." The State Board of Education is discussing this week how to develop the proposed new courses.

And Gordon Robertson, Pat Robertson’s normally soft-spoken son, compared efforts to prevent the government from proselytizing in the classroom to outlawing Christmas and Thanksgiving:

Given the Religious Right’s steady efforts over the years to push campaigns like NCBCPS, Robertson shouldn’t be surprised that advocates of church-state separation insist on a distinction between teaching about the Bible objectively and promoting a particular brand of faith.