Foundations pouring millions into campaign to eradicate religious exemptions on gay ‘marriage’
July 31, 2015 -- Revelations that
a half dozen well-heeled liberal foundations are pouring millions of dollars
into a concerted campaign to force religious organizations to accept same sex
“marriage” have defenders of religious rights warning of a new “wave” of
litigation.
“Attacking religious exemptions is the next big wave,” Bill
Donohue, head of the Catholic League, said “Gay rights are only
the pretext. These groups won’t be satisfied till every trace of religion is
erased from public life in America.”
After investigating their financial and annual reports, The
Catholic News Agency has
released the names of six foundations that have recently donated millions to
groups and campaigns to eliminate any religious exemption under the First
Amendment from federal, state or municipal human rights regulations, requiring
couples in same-sex “marriages” be treated the same as heterosexual married
couples.
The Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the Gill Foundation, the
Proteus Fund, the David Bohnett Foundation, the Arcus Foundation, and the Ford
Foundation have contributed $4.8 million to the cause of suppressing
religious rights.
According to Scott Walter, executive director of the Capital
Research Center, Tim Gill, the homosexual multi-millionaire behind the Gill
Foundation, was instrumental in turning Colorado from “a reliably red state to
a blue state,” in the course of a decade, first using his money to win both
state chambers for the Democrats, then the governor’s mansion, and finally both
federal Senate seats.
“It’s called the ‘Colorado Miracle,” said Walter. “If Gill is
turning his sights onto religious exemptions from same-sex marriage rights,
defenders of religious liberty need to be very, very nervous. Gill has
declared that homosexual rights is his number one interest. He has the money
and he is incredibly effective.”
In Colorado Gill put together an alliance of like-minded donors
and foundations, who funded or created public advocacy law firms, liberal
financial watchdog groups, and paid for investigations and lawsuits, all
without admitting their goal was getting Democrats into office.
The Catholic News Agency article quotes homosexual advocate Tim
Sweeney, “a onetime program director of the Haas Fund,” as having told a
conference of like-minded lobbyists early this year, “We are at a crossroads
where the choices we make will mean we will fight religious exemptions for two
to three years or have a protracted twenty year struggle on our hands.”
Sweeney warned the Out & Equal Executive Forum that victory
was not complete with the Supreme Court decision overthrowing state laws
defending traditional, heterosexual marriage. The homosexual and trans communities
“face a new set of threats around religious exemptions to laws that protect us
and our families,” he said.
Sweeney reportedly told his audience that state and federal
religious freedom laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and
judicial decisions like the 2014 Hobby Lobby case (allowing the Christian
owners of the Hobby Lobby company an exemption from insuring employees for
contraception) are “all about using religious liberty as an excuse to
discriminate against LGBT people and others.”
But Bill Donohue of the Catholic League makes the counterclaim
that organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union are fighting
against religious exemptions “to use the gay issue as a lever to eliminate
religion from every nook and cranny.”
Lawyer James Bopp of the James Madison Center for Free Speech
agrees that what is at stake is religious liberty. “We are facing a group that
will insist on conformity on anybody in the public square. Churches are
especially vulnerable,” he said, “because they can be threatened through their
tax-exempt status.”
If the foundations and the advocacy groups they fund get their
way, Donohue warned, Christian colleges would be forced to allow same-sex
couples to use their married student housing. Schools would be forced to hire
or prevented from firing homosexual couples that have undergone “marriage”
ceremonies.
Jeremy Tedesco, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending
Freedom, added, “The First Amendment protects more than just the freedom of
religion, it protects the freedom of people to live and act according to their
religious beliefs. These groups are wrongly attempting to relegate religious
freedom to something that exists only in people’s churches and homes. That’s
not religious freedom, it’s religious hostility.”
Peter Breen of the Chicago-based Thomas More Law Center told
LifeSiteNews that states which have not pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage
are particularly vulnerable to legal action restricting religious exemptions.
Ironically, wherever states passed same- sex marriage laws, they included
protection for religious freedom.
But states which never legalized same-sex marriage also never
provided exemptions from anti-discrimination laws for Christians—whether
bakers, or universities or churches with Scout troops. So States with old
laws on the books intending to protect heterosexual married couples from
discrimination will now cover same-sex marriages too.
“We need to alert state legislators that they are not providing
the protection for religious groups their citizens want. And we need to help
them draft very well-written religious protection laws.” Breen said the six
foundations exposed by the Catholic News Agency “will try to stop those laws
being made.”
