Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly Alliance Defense Fund) is an American conservative Christian nonprofit organization with the stated goal of "defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation." ADF was founded in 1994 by Bill Bright (founder, Campus Crusade for Christ), Larry Burkett (founder, Crown Financial Ministries), James Dobson (founder, Focus on the Family), D. James Kennedy (founder, Coral Ridge Ministries), Marlin Maddoux (president, International Christian Media), and Donald Wildmon (founder, American Family Association), along with the leadership of over thirty other conservative Christian organizations.
ADF supports the inclusion of invocations at public meetings and the use of religious displays (such as crosses and other religious monuments) on public lands and in public buildings. The ADF opposes abortion, and believes that healthcare workers have a right to decline participation in the performance of abortions and other practices an individual health worker finds morally objectionable. ADF opposes same-sex marriage and civil unions, as well as adoption by same-sex couples based on their belief that children are best raised by a married mother and father. ADF believe parents should be able to opt their children out of sex education in schools that run counter to a family's religious beliefs.
ADF states that it has "had various roles of significance" in thirty-three wins before the United States Supreme Court, including such cases as Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. ADF is representing a litigant in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
On July 9, 2012, the Alliance Defense Fund changed its name to Alliance Defending Freedom. The name change was a strategic initiative designed to reflect the organization's shift in focus from funding allied attorneys to litigating cases.
Read more about Alliance Defending Freedom: Organization, Programs and Initiatives, Notable Cases
Famous quotes containing the words alliance, defending and/or freedom:
“Racism as a form of skin worship, and as a sickness and a pathological anxiety for America, is so great, until the poor whites—rather than fighting for jobs or education—fight to remain pink and fight to remain white. And therefore they cannot see an alliance with people that they feel to be inherently inferior.”
—Jesse Jackson (b. 1941)
“When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)