Back in the 1990s, organizations fighting against progressive priorities like sex education, gay rights and reproductive choice had to depend on private contributions and foundations for support. But the times, they are a-changin'. With the Bush administration at the helm, federal money for such groups is abundant—and there's ample chance to influence policy through the open and eager ears in powerful positions.
Jeff Krehely is deputy director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
In December 2004, David and Goliath met in a debate contest at England’s Oxford University. Two students from Virginia’s Patrick Henry College—a barely 5-year-old institution whose student body primarily consists of home-schooled Christians—played David. Goliath was represented by Oxford’s world-renowned moot court debating team, who the two home-schoolers from Virginia defeated, even though the contest was held in England, followed British legal rules, and was judged by the British equivalent of a United States Supreme Court justice.
The outcome of this contest shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who has followed the rapid rise of Patrick Henry College (PHC). Located just an hour west of Washington, D.C., PHC’s students intern at the White House (recently holding seven out of 100 possible positions), as well as conservative think tanks around town. Considering that the school is a spin-off of the Home School Legal Defense Association—a darling organization of the right—its student body’s political connections aren’t very surprising.
PHC is governed by a board of trustees that includes current or former executives of Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of America, NationsBank and General Electric. Attorney Janet Ashcroft, wife of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, is also on the board, as is Barbara Hodel. Hodel’s husband served in a variety of positions under President Reagan, including secretary of energy. He is currently the CEO of Focus on the Family—that paragon of Christian values in Colorado Springs—after briefly serving as the president of the Christian Coalition, which makes Focus on the Family look like a gay tea dance. PHC clearly has the money, power and connections—as well as the right values system—to thrive in George W. Bush’s world.
PHC also has the support of the conservative foundation community, raking in nearly $5.2 million in grants from foundations during its first few years in existence, according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s recent report on evangelical grantmaking, Funding the Culture Wars: Philanthropy, Church and State. This report examined the grantmaking activity of 37 foundations, uncovering nearly $170 million in grants given to hundreds of evangelical organizations from 1999-2002.
Most of the grant recipients have a “Statement of Faith” prominently displayed on their websites or other promotional materials. Others declare themselves “faith-based” or “Christ-centered.” Nearly all of them incorporate three distinct elements into their mission, social services and public policy advocacy: personal salvation, biblical infallibility and a commitment to religious proselytizing.
Something else that most of them have in common: a close relationship with the Bush administration, either as recipients of government grants, or as champions of the administration’s most divisive policies, including its opposition to reproductive choice, gay marriage and—to be frank—any kind of human sexuality that does not involve one man, one woman and a procreative intent.
The groups that receive government largesse—and don’t care what those zealots within the libertarian wing of the Republican Party say about it—include Samaritan’s Purse, which received $6.6 million from the foundations analyzed in the NCRP study. Samaritan’s Purse is led by Franklin Graham, who provided the sermon at George W. Bush’s first inauguration and more recently was in the headlines for denouncing Islam as an “evil” religion.
In 2004, the United States Agency for International Development awarded Samaritan’s Purse $5.6 million to work on abstinence programs whose goal is to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. Never mind that a few years, ago Samaritan’s Purse was censured for proselytizing while carrying out services—paid for with another U.S. AID grant—in earthquake-ravaged El Salvador. Or that Graham believes the Christian Church is the key to stopping or slowing the AIDS epidemic—not condoms or medicine.
Another supporter of Samaritan’s Purse is Senate Majority Leader (and medical doctor) Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Frist established a charity, World of Hope, several months before the Republican National Convention in New York City last summer. He held a fundraiser for World of Hope, pledging that he’d re-give the donated money to one of five charities, including Samaritan’s Purse. Conveniently, donors to the fundraiser bought invaluable face time with Republican lawmakers and, because the contributions went to a nonprofit, circumvented federal lobbying regulations and public disclosure requirements.
Frist spoke at Samaritan’s Purse’s “Prescription for Hope” conference in 2002, which launched Graham’s crusade against condoms—I mean, against HIV. Referring to the use of condoms to stop the spread of the disease, Frist stated, “I as a physician do believe that if you’re going to go this route [and] put morality aside…you may well end up having HIV/AIDS.” Equating using condoms (i.e., having sex) with contracting HIV/AIDS is one stunning example of the right’s unusual definition of ‘compassion’ (as in ‘compassionate conservatism’).
The sample in NCRP’s study also included many of the organizations that have been vociferously fighting against gay marriage rights, including Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Exodus International . These groups received approximately 10 percent of the total grant dollars in the report. Many of these organizations did their part to help mobilize voters to restrict gay marriage rights in a handful of states, as well as keep Bush in office. When amending the U.S. Constitution to prohibit gay marriage was not mentioned as one of the president’s priorities for his second term, these organizations were apoplectic. Their very public anger got Bush to pledge during the State of the Union Address last week his support for a constitutional amendment “to protect the institution of marriage.”
During the 1990s, groups like those in the NCRP study usually could only rely on foundations and private individuals for financial support. Their ability to catch the ear of the White House or Congress was weak, at best. But in George W. Bush’s America, these organizations are tapping public coffers and influencing policy decisions like never before.
As insidious as demonizing gay people is—as well as most of the other items on the evangelical agenda—the real victims in this game are the nation’s poorest citizens, who are increasingly facing a no-win situation. One brand of Republican slashes taxes for the wealthiest Americans, forcing massive cuts in social services that low-income Americans need to survive. Then the faith-based crowd steps in, forcing down a little bit of Jesus with every sip of soup at the local homeless shelter.
If these agendas continue unchecked, the Republican Party will have the honor of permanently making religiosity and morality mutually exclusive principles.
