TheGathering: A $1-Billion-a-Year Right-Wing Conspiracy

I've written about the Christofascist organization, The Gathering, which works to deny civil rights to many Americans and which ultimately would gut, if not over throw the United States Constitution if it could have its way.  Sadly, the media too often fails to cover the extremist, if not seditious, actions of Christofascists organizations and most politicians - especially self-prostituting Republicans - fear condemn such actions lest they be charged with being "anti-Christian."  Thankfully, a piece in The Daily Beast lays into The Gathering and its participants and hopefully will help more Americans to realize the threat Christofascist pose to constitutional government and rights and freedoms of other Americans.  As I have said many times, they are a clear and present danger and need to be treated accordingly.  Other than the level of violence utilized, their theocratic goals are not so far removed from those of ISIS and Islamic extremist organizations save the fictional work that the swear allegiance to.   Here are article highlights:

Have you heard of the $1,750-per-person “Gathering,” which starts Thursday in Orlando, Florida?
Probably not. But if you’re female, gay, non-Christian, or otherwise interested in the separation of church and state, your life has been affected by it.

The Gathering is a conference of hard-right Christian organizations and, perhaps more important, funders. Most of them are not household names, at least if your household isn’t evangelical. But that’s the point: The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest.

Featured speakers have included many of the usual suspects: Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Alan Sears (2013), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly (2011), and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins (2006).

The Gathering is as close to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” as you’re likely to find. So with this year’s conference about to get under way, Wilson gave The Daily Beast an exclusive interview over email—heavily redacted here—about this shadowy, powerful network of hard-right funders.

The Gathering promotes “family values” agenda: opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, for example, and also a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all competing belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity. Last year, for example, The Gathering 2013 brought together key funders, litigants, and plaintiffs of the Hobby Lobby case, including three generations of the Green family.

The evangelical right financial dynasties and foundations that meet each year at The Gathering dispense upwards of $1 billion a year in grants. But even that is overshadowed by the bigger sums that The Family and The Gathering have managed to route from the federal and state government to fund their movement via the Faith-Based Initiative program, USAID, PEPFAR and other multibillion-dollar programs.

The NCF was created, back in 1982 or so, to maximize hard right-wing evangelical Christian philanthropic giving. It was so novel and complex, the architects got a special ruling from the IRS, to make sure it was legal. The NCF has multiple overlapping legal entities and holding companies, but at the core is a huge donor-advised fund. The NCF is now the 12th biggest charitable foundation in America that raises money from private sources.

One reason the NCF, a donor-advised fund, has been so successful is that it ensures anonymity for its philanthropists. Many of these individuals may fear a backlash, given the controversial causes that they support.

But we do know about the NCF’s leadership. Two of the NCF co-founders were tied to Campus Crusade for Christ, and the late Larry Burkett, a NCF co-founder, was also one of the co-founders of the Alliance Defense Fund/Alliance Defending Freedom, now the religious right’s preeminent umbrella legal defense fund. NCF’s other co-founder, Atlanta tax lawyer Terrence Parker, sits on the board of directors of the Family Research Council, and also The Gathering Foundation, which puts on The Gathering.

The Green family—who were at The Gathering in 2008 and 2013—have said they intend to leave much of their fortune to it. And in 2009, Hobby Lobby-related contributions were the No. 1 source of NCF funding (about $54 million), which we know because Eli Clifton, funded by The Nation Institute, somehow got hold of an NCF 2009 990 Schedule B form, which shows NCF’s top funders that year (Hobby Lobby was No. 1, Maclellan Foundation No. 2).

Over the last decade, he NCF has pumped over $140 million into groups that oppose action to curb climate change and portray concern over global warming as part of a satanic conspiracy to impose a tyrannical “One World Order” or “New World Order.”

[T]he story of the politicized religious right is one of the biggest untold stories of our time. It’s the story of how a covert political movement, driven by a well-organized, -funded, and committed minority, has perturbed the political arc of the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation on Earth—and how it has subverted the national dialogue.

I'm annoyed at the basic dishonesty of religio/political phenomena such as The Gathering that lay claim to the Christian tradition but ignore its underlying mandate of truth-telling.

The donors to The Gathering and its principals need to be identified and, if they are business owners, their businesses and their products need to be shunned by decent people who believe in constitutional liberties.  As for the NCF, it needs to lose its tax-exempt status in light of all of the political involvement it and its affiliates have.  I'd even argue that ALL religious based charities need to lose their exempt status unless they cease ALL political activity. 

NYT’s David Brooks, WaPo’s Michael Gerson to Speak at Top Antigay Gathering

It's not just the GOP that prostitutes itself to far right Christofascists.  Top columnists for the New York Times and the Washington Post seemingly suffer from a similar affliction.  As TwoCare.org is reporting,  David Brooks of the New York Times (also a National Public Radio commentator) and Michael Gerson of the Washington Post will be attending and speaking at the four-day annual conference known as The Gathering that starts tomorrow at  the luxury Ritz Carlton hotel in Orlando, Florida.  As noted in a recent post, The Gathering and its main participants are the largest exporters of anti-gay hate and animus across the globe.  One has to wonder how much Brooks and Gerson are being paid to participate in this gathering of hate merchants and extremists.  Here are article highlights:

Recently, government-encouraged outbreaks of mob violence against LGBT persons in countries from Uganda to Russia, and draconian new anti-gay legislation in those countries too, have gained growing media notice – some of which has focused on the role American evangelicals have played in inciting such hatred.

But the American culprits are not being funded from the margins. Tens of millions (possibly evens hundreds of millions) of dollars for that project is coming from the foundations whose representatives assemble yearly at an event known as The Gathering, where multimillionaire and billionaire evangelical funders of the culture wars from the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Maclellan, Friess, Ahmanson, and others, and heads of the mammoth National Christian Foundation – gather, dine, and strategize.

This Thursday September 25th, at the luxury Ritz Carlton hotel in Orlando, Florida, an evening series of briefings will kick off the premier funding event of the evangelical right in America, a four-day annual conference known as The Gathering. Scheduled to speak at the conference are David Brooks of the New York Times (also a National Public Radio commentator) and Michael Gerson of the Washington Post.

It’s an invite-only event, reserved for speakers and heads of evangelical foundations that dole out over $200,000 a year. Foundations associated with The Gathering now dole out upwards of $1 billion dollars annually.

Giving a presentation at the Thursday evening kickoff will be Terry Parker, a board member of the nonprofit that hosts The Gathering and also a co-founder of the National Christian Foundation, which is now the 12th biggest charity in America by one ranking and whose anti-LGBT funding pattern is so extensive that I’ve written a small encyclopedia to profile some of the more egregious anti-gay groups NCF bankrolls.

Could leading New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio columnists and commentators really be planning to speak at an annual event that, in financial and legal terms, is probably the epicenter of anti-gay rights evangelical activism from the U.S. to Uganda to Russia ? The answer is yes.

Are they aware of what they’re participating in (and implicitly supporting by lending their names to the event) or have they been conned ? We may never know the truth but we can safely assume the answers will lie on the “ignorance” side of the dilemma.

But such high profile mainstream media patronization of The Gathering raises the question: if such esteemed NYT, All Things Considered and Washington Post columnists and commentators – who have been granted their big and influential media platforms because of their supposed penetrating level of insight, can’t parse mainstream evangelicalism from what’s going on at The Gathering, why should we – or Washington and New York elites – pay attention to their opinions on religion and politics ?

What little respect that I had for Brooks and Gerson is now totally gone.  One has to wonder if the Times and Post realize the sleazy, theocratic thugs their columnists are whoring themselves out to. 

The Secret Antigay U.S. Money Behind The Global Evangelical War on LGBT Rights

I and - others - increasingly believe that supposedly religious "charities" that blatantly violate the ban on political activities under the Internal Revenue Code need to lose their tax exempt status.  Many of the organizations under close analysis do little or no charitable work and instead funnel huge amounts of money into anti-gay (and sometimes anti-minority) political activities.  American taxpayers should not be forced to indirectly underwrite the activities of what are little more than hate groups.   The piece in TwoCare.org looks at the money flowing from supposed "Christian" charities to fund a global war against LGBT rights and which, in the process whip up hate and homophobia that often leans to anti-gay violence.  Pieces kike this one underscore why conservative "Christians" need to become social pariahs in America. They are anything but nice and decent people.  Their mindset is separated from ISIS only by the degree of violence they use on those who refuse to conform to the ugly version of religious belief.  Here are article highlights:

Note to readers: this is the first installment in a Twocare.org/Center Against Religious Extremism series that will examine extensive ties - both financial, organizational, and ideological - between the community of philanthropists, evangelical leaders, and Christian organizations that revolve around the event known as The Gathering and evangelical promotion of anti-gay hatred and anti-LGBT rights activism on a global scale, from Uganda to Russia.

"The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today" (B&H Publishing Group, 2003), which states "[homosexual] activists have followed a strategy akin to what Hitler used back in the 1920s and 1930s to take over Germany” and is currently distributed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the top American organizations participating in WCF events. The ADF is linked to anti-LGBT rights activism in nations spanning three continents, from the United States and Belize to Russia. In 2012, ADF received over 25% of its funding from the National Christian Foundation; . . . . .

A Twocare.org analysis shows that out of the 101-odd American speakers featured at major World Congress of Families congresses from WCF I, held in Prague in 1997, to WCF VI, held in Madrid in 2012, 48 of those speakers, almost half, were attached to organizations that have been funded by the National Christian Foundation, the biggest foundation at the yearly event known as The Gathering (featured in the April 2014 Twocare.org special report The Gathering: The Religious Right’s Cash Cow) – an event at which leaders of top Christian right anti-LGBT groups such as the Family Research Council, Focus on The Family, and the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) frequently mingle with billionaire financiers of the religious right, representatives from the right-wing DeVos, Coors, Friess, Ahmanson, Prince, DeMoss, and MacLellan families and the rapidly growing National Christian Foundation – now America’s 12th biggest charity according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy and which funds multiple “ex-gay” ministries.

By its own description, the event known as The Gathering – whose attending nonprofit foundations give out, according to a Twocare.org analysis, over $1 billion dollars a year in grants – was launched in 1985 from a meeting at the Arlington, Virginia headquarters of The Fellowship, which hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast.  

Speakers scheduled this year for The Gathering 2014 include NYT columnist David Brooks,  . . . . . Among those Joining Brooks at The Gathering 2014 will be Terry Parker, co-founder and board member of the National Christian Foundation, which since 2005 has given over $1.5 million dollars to the His Servants ministry of Don Schmierer, producer and vendor of a Fieldstead & Company-commissioned line of “ex-gay” books and curricula translated into dozens of languages . . . 

In 2006 Family Research Council head Tony Perkins told The Gathering that the “second greatest threat:” to America, besides “radical Islamists” was “radical homosexuals”. 

Despite ongoing critical media coverage of the World Congress of Families, that over the past decade has come to the fore as a leading U.S.-based initiative which has helped export the culture war agenda of the American religious right – including anti-LGBT hatred and hostility to reproductive freedoms – to Russia and Eastern Europe, one transcendent question has largely been neglected: who funds the American nonprofits that have comprised the dominant presence at WCF events ? And, are the efforts of these nonprofits uncoordinated or are there traceable strategic and leadership connections between these groups ?

The answer to both questions points directly to the elite annual event known as The Gathering and to its biggest nonprofit foundation, the National Christian Foundation, exposed in an ongoing Twocare.org investigation of NCF 990 tax forms from 2001-2012 as probably the biggest – and without a doubt the most prolific – anti-LGBT rights funder in America.

$10,065,726: that’s the amount of funding that the Alliance Defending Freedom – whose leaders have spoken at and helped organize four major World Congress of Families events, and is “easily the most active antigay legal group” according to Human Rights Campaign Vice President Frederick Sainz – received in 2012 from the National Christian Foundation . . . . 

Consider the following quotes, from the Alliance Defending Freedom’s top leaders: . . . . “[Homosexual] activists have followed a strategy akin to what Hitler used back in the 1920s and 1930s to take over Germany… The very future of our nation is at risk if the homosexual agenda continues to advance unchecked.” — from pages 27-28 of The Homosexual Agenda, a 2003 book by ADF President Alan Sears and Craig Osten currently offered for free by the ADF to contributors who donate over $10

[A]s detailed in the Twocare.org special report The Gathering: The Religious Right’s Cash Cow, from 2001-2012 the National Christian Foundation provided $163,384,988 in funding to the ADF, FoF, FRC, and five other major anti-LGBT rights activist groups: the Alliance For Marriage, the American Center For Law and Justice, the American Family Association, Campus Crusade For Christ, and the National Organization For Marriage.  

In a column in the Summer 2012 The Gathering newsletter, President of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit The Gathering Fred Smith discussed the results of a survey done by a private consultant hired to ask Gathering participants “what makes them reluctant to recommend people they meet to The Gathering.” More than a few participants, it seems based on Smith’s column, considered The Gathering to be a “secret society”. 

But judging by a survey of audio recordings from The Gathering, it is not hard to understand why participants might hold such a view; Gathering speakers often describe the need to “infiltrate” secular society: the use of stealth and deceit to further the dominionist “Seven Mountains” mandate, the goal of bringing the seven major spheres of society – government, business, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, and the family – under the influence of control of “the kingdom” and its ranks of “believers”.

Such an anti-democratic and anti-pluralist, religious supremacist ethic – which has influenced disturbingly wide swaths of the global evangelical missions movement – is interwoven through the culture of The Gathering. 

There is more and readers should read the entire piece.  These organizations not only further a global war against LGBT individuals but ultimately, would overthrow the U.S. Constitution.  In my view, that is tantamount to treason and should be dealt with accordingly.  These are not decent organizations.  They and their agenda are frightening.