Posts on Alan Sears

Prepare yourself, because the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Values, and the Alliance Defense Fund announced that they will be hosting a follow-up to last year’s “Values Voters Summit.”

Apparently not only are they committed to mobilizing their activists for 2008, they are also hoping to influence the primaries as well, which would explain why they’ve scheduled the event a full year in advance of the actual election:

FRC Action President Tony Perkins and cosponsors Dr. James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Alan Sears will once again be joined by a distinguished line-up of speakers addressing grassroots leaders from across the country.

"This event is a call to action for voter participation, education and training and a rallying event for people who want to transform the political landscape on issues such as the sanctity of life and marriage, religious freedom, health care, radical Islam, judicial activism, immigration reform, geopolitics, the media and much more," said FRC Action President Tony Perkins.

But more importantly, the organizers state that “this year, all 2008 presidential hopefuls and a number of noteworthy conservative leaders will be invited to speak.” 

Does that include Democratic candidates?  That remains to be seen.  

Rest assured, we’ll be keeping an eye on developments to see just which “presidential hopefuls” agree to join the likes of James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer at this year’s summit.  

In February, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unveiled what he called the First Freedom Project, to expand on the Justice Department’s “extensive record of achievement” in the area of “religious freedom laws.” Gonzales described the department’s work on religion as “a legacy of protection unequaled since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Even more remarkable than that startling comparison, however, was Gonzales’s choice of venue: a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. According to the Baptist Press, Gonzales requested to speak at the meeting “because he knew he would be speaking to a receptive audience.” Indeed, the famously right-wing SBC has been a strong supporter of the Bush administration, including its judicial nominees.

The Religious Right saw the Justice Department’s new focus as a validation of its world-view of Christians being persecuted in the U.S.: “The fact that the Justice Department finds it necessary to launch such a project further confirms what we’ve been aware of for years: our nation’s First Liberty--religious freedom--is in serious danger because of decades of sustained attacks by the ACLU and its allies,” said Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund.

Now the New York Times is reporting that the department’s emphasis on religious liberty is part of its controversial reorganization under the Bush Administration that has led to a diminished role for traditional civil rights enforcement based on racial discrimination and voter suppression, and a more ideological and politicized staff, such as Monica Goodling, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s law school.

The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.” …

Some critics say that many of the Justice Department’s religious-oriented initiatives are outside its mandate from Congress. While statutes prohibit religious discrimination in areas like employment and housing, no laws address some of the issues in which the department has become involved. … The department has … challenged so-called Blaine amendments, which are state constitutional provisions enforcing separation of church and state more rigidly than does the United States Constitution. The federal government sued because the amendments could impede Mr. Bush’s religion-based initiative, which provides money to religious groups for social programs.

Guest Post from Pam Chamberlain of the Public Eye

The Values Voters Summit is in its second day here at the Omni Shoreham, the grande dame of D.C. convention hotels, freshly painted and efficiently handling the 1000+ attendees. National press has tended to represent the event as the sound bite opportunity that such events have become. Planners claimed to have drawn 100 members of the media, and especially on Friday, they took up most of the back of the Diplomat Ballroom, spilling into the corridors and exhibit hall.

It’s more than just a media event, though. It is a pep rally, designed to mobilize committed conservative activists to work hard in the coming electoral campaigns, despite their possible hesitation about the Republican Party. Sitting in the audience, I alternately feel as though I’m in church or watching TV. Many of the speakers are pastors or elected officials, and they know how to hold the interest of a crowd. The audience is knowledgeable about scripture and can quote chapter and verse along with the person at the podium. Repeatedly, individuals testify to their faith from all corners of the hall. Nobody seems to be taking notes, and my busy scribbling makes me self-conscious. The “congregation” is, in fact, an important part of this ritual, feeding on the energy of the speakers and building consensus around a litany of topics, summarized by the event’s sponsors as Family, Faith and Freedom.

The stage itself is a TV set, decorated in red white and blue drapes, with elaborate lighting effects and logo backdrops, two huge video monitors, and a central stage with two imposing Ionic columns and twin American flags. Speakers enter from behind a curtain and walk across to the podium (Dobson referred to it as a “pulpit”) accompanied by musical introductions chosen to match their messages. The production quality is impressively high. One of the most popular events was a 20 minute “talk show,” with the FRC’s Tony Perkins, James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, and Alan Sears, President of the Alliance Defense Fund comfortably perched on stools, amicably chatting. Perkins was the host, and in the course of the “program” I felt Dobson was publicly passing the torch of leadership over to Perkins, signaling a new era for the American Christian Right. (When talk-show host Sean Hannity referred to Dobson as the man who vetted his bachelor jokes, William Bennett corrected him by reminding us that Perkins was running the show.)

Testifying to how up-to-date this movement has become, the exhibits are media-savvy, with some form of CD, DVD or web-related handout in every booth. Rev. Donald Wildmon, whose ministry consists of boycotts of corporations his American Family Association perceives as being gay friendly -- like Ford – says he can mobilize 380,000 emails, representing ten percent of his database, in a matter of days. The organizers may have thought they were introducing Wildmon to their audience, since he was given the podium at a special luncheon to describe his 150 person outfit in Tupelo, MS. But when he asked how many were already on his email alert list, a good 40% raised their hands. His hard-edged brand of non-aplogetic gay-bashing apparently has already been accepted by supporters of the FRC who were simultaneously being asked by other speakers to show their compassionate sides.

The Shoreham is not the only institution here with a face lift. This wing of the Christian Right is positioning itself to influence elections and win both the war on terrorism and the war on liberal culture.

On the first day of the Values Voter Summit, speakers discussed embryonic stem-cell research (Sen. Brownback: "If you research and you kill a human at that stage [embryo], that human doesn't have a rest of a life"), abortion (Bishop Wellington Boone: African Americans are an "endangered species" because of "black genocide" through abortion), and the war on terror (James Dobson, ever conscious of upcoming elections: "I really see that as a family issue"). But by far the greatest emphasis was placed on the supposed dangers of the "homosexual agenda."

While some speakers, such as Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. George Allen (R-Virginia), asserted that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples is a "foundational value" upon which America is built, and others proclaimed the unfitness of gays to be parents (Jennifer Giroux of Citizens for Community Values: "The ultimate child abuse is placing a child in a gay home"), many speakers pushed the notion of a "homosexual agenda" to the limit. Dobson asserted that the goal of advocates of same-sex marriage is to simply "bring down marriage." (Family Research Council President Tony Perkins claimed that the divorce of the Goodridges, named in the Massachusetts case that established marriage equality in the state, proves that point. "That tells you the commitment to the institution of marriage," he said.) Princeton Professor Robert George, architect of the "Princeton Principles" against gay marriage, warned that the "forces arrayed against the conjugal conception of marriage are very powerful ... And they will strike hard."

And, beginning with Romney, speakers warned that equality for gays will lead to "repression" of Christians. "The homosexual agenda and [freedom of] religion are on a collision course," said Alan Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund, as Perkins added that "They know they must silence the church." Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colorado), sponsor of the federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, said that "If we have gay marriage, our religious liberties are gone!" And Maggie Gallagher, noting the analogy between the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement, said that "They're going to have to start enforcing" some kind of "repression," just as there is "a broad array of ways in which the law penalizes, marginalizes, and punishes racial bigots."

This morning at the Values Voter Summit, an informal panel featured three heavyweights of the Religious Right: host Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Alan Sears, head of the Alliance Defense Fund; and James Dobson, founder of both FRC and ADF and head of Focus on the Family. As they came up to the stage, the loudspeakers played "Gonna Fly Now," the theme from "Rocky."

Dobson recently returned from a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- a state where right-wing icon Sen. Rick Santorum (who is speaking at the Values Voter Summit tomorrow morning) is facing a tough re-election battle. As in Pittsburgh, Dobson explained that he was hesitant to become involved in backing Republicans during the election cycle:

In 2004, we really did break our necks to turn out the vote. ... I was criss-crossing the country trying to get people to turn out ... And frankly ... I have been disappointed by the Republicans.

Despite "so much talk about values voters," said Dobson, "... they just didn't have time for our agenda." (Until this summer, Perkins noted later in the discussion, when Republican leaders met with the Right and embraced the "values agenda.") Dobson said he was so disillusioned, he came to Washington to meet with leading Republicans. He came away with his commitment to electoral action in 2006 secure: "There is no choice because the alternative is terrible!"

And Dobson had a message for the "left-leaning quote unquote Evangelicals" who are, he said, "denouncing" the Values Voter Summit, and apparently as well for Evangelicals revealed in a recent poll to show little support for the Religious Right agenda: The people he's talking to are the "Bible-believing Christians."