Faith & Justice: Wise Counsel

Volume VIII, Issue 1

WISE COUNSEL How the Supreme Court freed this woman to share her message of mercy and hope

Volume VIII, Issue 1

CONTENTS

Maria Perdomo Jonathan Lopez (l.), founda nurse few supporters with Pregnancy when heHelp, challenged a pro-life resource center anBoston, in abusivetalks professor with Eleanor on his college McCullen campus. about their work with pregnant women.

Cover

4 WHEN THE GOVERNMENT SUBPOENAS A PASTOR

Story:

“It certainly ought to be a crime when the mayor and city attorney steal the voting rights of the fourth-largest city in the country.”

6 WISE COUNSEL “For years, pro-lifers were portrayed as mean-spirited, ugly people who just wanted to yell at women. Eleanor’s the opposite of that.”

12 HOW SUPREME COURT WINS AFFECT OTHER ADF CASES “When the Supreme Court speaks, that one case becomes binding precedent and resets the legal stage for the whole nation.”

@AllianceDefends

“Everyone still insisted we were breaking this imaginary law.”

16 ALLIANCE PROFILE: AMOS DODGE “When you raise your voice against moral issues [and] make biblical stands … there’s a pushback.”

— Michael DePrimo —

Alliance Defending Freedom

14 YOU CAN FIGHT CITY HALL

www.AllianceDefendingFreedom.org

Editor

Chuck Bolte

Alliance Defending Freedom

Senior Writer

[Phone] 800-835-5233

Alliance Defending Freedom would enjoy hearing your comments on the stories and issues discussed in Faith & Justice. Please direct comments/questions to www.AllianceDefendingFreedom.org, call 800-835-5233, or write: Editor, Faith & Justice, Alliance Defending Freedom, 15100 N. 90th Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85260.

[Fax] 480-444-0025

©2015, Alliance Defending Freedom. All rights reserved.

Alan Sears, Kevin Theriot

15100 N. 90th Street Scottsdale, AZ 85260

Chris Potts

Art Director/Photography Bruce Ellefson

Contributors Goran Hunjak, Chris Potts,

Minutes With Alan

Saturday In The Park

by Alan Sears, President, CEO and General Counsel

I

was 19, the first time I visited the White House. My memories from that day are of a place rich in history and purpose, and so, every time I go to Washington, D.C., I make it a point to visit the Executive Mansion.

Even if it’s only for five minutes, looking through the fence, I enjoy seeing again this particular symbol of our nation and pausing to pray for those who live in it.

One Saturday last summer, I was back in the capital, on Pennsylvania Avenue. I took in the great white facade with its columns and porticoes, then turned and walked to the little park across the street. At the foot of an old statue, I listened as some tourists vented their confusion and disdain.

“Who’s ‘Major General Baron Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben?’’ they asked, apparently irked that such premium real estate, so close to the White House, should be given over to some unknown soldier. They moved off, and I looked up at the general. Then, I made my way to the other three statues, placed at each corner of the little square, all foreign generals who fought with us during the American Revolution: Major General Comte Jean de Rochambeau, General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and General Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette, for whom the park is named.

In an age when many Americans can barely identify George Washington, it’s not surprising that these men and their service are largely forgotten. But without them, our nation might never have been born.

During the Revolution, the Prussian von Steuben turned the horrific winter at Valley Forge into an unsurpassed training ground for the Continental Army – much of his drill manual is still used by the U.S. Army today. The Polish Kosciuszko designed the defenses of West Point and embattled Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress was meeting. Rochambeau and Lafayette led French forces who came to the aid of the beleaguered colonies, and played a critical role in the final victory at Yorktown.

These brilliant soldiers – most with other, more enriching opportunities – fully grasped how long the odds were against our Revolution’s success. Yet, they came.

They fought beside us. They invested everything they had and helped bring victory to a people who too quickly forgot them. But they understood it was worth it … to secure freedom for so many others.

This is what we mean, when we speak of “the value of alliance.” And it’s why we at ADF treasure the faithful ones who stand with us, amid the storm, in defense of religious freedom. We know you have counted the cost, and elected to invest yourselves in the great, enduring work of preserving freedom. Most of those who come after us will not know our names. But because of your sacrifice … many of them will know our Lord and our God. John 15:5–Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.

Watch a special message from Alan. Visit AllianceDefendingFreedom.org and click on “Faith & Justice.”

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

3

On The Square

Q&A with

Dr. Steve Riggle

When The Government Subpoenas A Pastor Visit AllianceDefendingFreedom.org to learn more of what ADF is doing to protect the religious freedom of America’s churches. For a preview of “Between the Gates,” an upcoming movie based on a harrowing incident in Pastor Riggle’s life, go to BetweenTheGates.com.

4

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

Dr. Steve Riggle is founding pastor of Grace Community Church in Houston, Texas. An influential church with three campuses and thousands of members, Grace has been exceedingly generous to the people of Houston —providing a major homeless shelter, hurricane relief, support for inner-city churches— and has drawn awards and acclaim from local officials across many years. That history didn’t shield them last summer when Riggle joined other prominent pastors in speaking out against a new citywide ordinance opening all public restrooms to people of both genders.

City leaders blamed the pastors’ comments for igniting overwhelming pushback against the law, including enough citizens’ petitions to put the issue to a public vote and later, a citizens’ lawsuit, when the city ignored those petitions. Though the pastors weren’t party to the lawsuit, officials filed an invasive subpoena against five of them—including Riggle—demanding that they turn over all communication related to the issue, including sermons and private emails with church members. Amid the ensuing media furor, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represented the pastors, and their efforts soon forced the city to rescind the subpoenas.

If it’s going to be a criminal offense when you don’t want men to go into women’s restrooms in Houston, it certainly ought to be a crime when the mayor and city attorney steal the voting rights of the fourth-largest city in the country.

Church leaders tried to meet with the mayor to talk about this bathroom law before it was passed, correct?

We requested to meet with her, which she was not inclined to do. We were the only group, as far as we know, that the mayor did not meet with. All we asked was, “Mayor, let the people vote on it.” But she said [in public statements], “What we’re talking about here is my life. I’m not going to let the citizens of Houston vote on my equal rights.” She knows it would not pass muster at all.

So city leaders refused to put this on a ballot. They ignored a number of verified citizens’ petitions asking that the issue be put to a vote. A group of citizens filed a lawsuit over that. Then the mayor hit you and your fellow pastors with these subpoenas. Were you surprised?

I thought, “You’ve got to be crazy to do this.”

All this fuss, this national outrage … she could get our sermons off the Internet if she wanted to. Or if she had just called and said, “Hey, could I have all your sermons?” We’d have said, “Absolutely.” But when the state demands it, and they’re going to force it—that’s [when] we said, “No.” We weren’t going to be pushed.

What did you tell your congregation, when you talked about the subpoenas?

I said this is a First Amendment issue. It’s about religious liberty, and fundamentally, this is a smoke screen by the mayor. She thinks that this will distract from the real issue, which is that she and the city attorney took away the voting rights of the fourthlargest city in the country. Because we had the signatures on those petitions. The city secretary verified the signatures.

Basically, the people’s right to vote was stolen. So, we have to stand up. We have to stand up for First Amendment rights on those subpoenas, because it’s not just about beating it here. It’s about setting precedent. If [city officials] get by with that here in Houston, don’t think that’s not going to be used all over

the country. If they can steal the election in Houston, other officials around the country who have their own personal agenda will do that, too.

None of us chose this. We didn’t attack the mayor.

We only stood up for our rights. And we did it respectfully. [But] you never know what the spark is that ignites the forest fire.

What do you say to Christians who would say, “This is why pastors shouldn’t talk politics”?

If I don’t stand for these things and teach the congregation and speak to them about the issues of the culture, then who is going to be the prophetic voice to the people of Grace [Community Church]? The news media? The talk show hosts? Because they’re the only ones talking!

It’s not just about a pastor standing behind that podium, it’s his leadership. He’s influencing people.

Pastors don’t realize the power of their voice. They don’t have to have a megachurch. If they have 20 people, or 100, [or] if it were all the pastors’ voices together, that is a megaphone.

If pastors will stand up and lead their churches, the people will stand up, because they’re looking for leadership. And if that happens, we just may turn this tide of moral depravity that we find ourselves neckdeep in right now.

What has it meant for you and your fellow pastors to be successfully represented by ADF? We could not have fought this battle without these attorneys and their support. It’s one thing for us to stand up and say, “No way” … another to have attorneys who know the law behind us.

That enables you to stand without being afraid of the government. Because the reality is, we’re standing all by ourselves, and now the whole power of the state has come against us. We don’t have the resources or the ability to fight back. And to have … these attorneys come in to partner with pastors who will stand— it’s just incredible. To me, it says it just may be possible to win some victories now.

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

5

Wise Counsel

How the Supreme Court freed this woman to share her message of mercy and hope — by Chris Potts —

6

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

The young married couple slide quickly out of

their car and onto the busy sidewalk, eyes fixed on the dark glass doors of the huge Planned Parenthood abortion center. Half a block long and three stories high, its imposing facade looms over the busy stream of students milling up and down the mile-long stretch of Commonwealth Avenue near Boston University.

Suddenly, a small figure nudges into the couple’s tunneled vision, moving to engage them.

“Good morning,” she says, arms wide and inviting, in the cheerful tones of someone who actually believes that it is. “I’m Eleanor. How can I help you this morning?’

They quickly brush past her and into the building. Minutes later, the husband comes back out to put money in the meter. The small woman is still there, still beaming. “Can I help you?”

“You can’t help me,” he says, pulling change from his pocket. To her fine-tuned ear, he sounds as though he’s trying to convince himself, more than her.

“Well, okay. But I just want to ask you—do you know when the baby’s heart starts beating?”

He sighs, but he answers. “Three months.”

“No … not three months. Twenty-one days.

Do you know when the brain waves begin to form?”

Fishing for another quarter, he flashes her an expression that mingles surprise, annoyance, and Alliance Defending Freedom

|

7

curiosity in about equal measure. “Six months,” he guesses.

“Ten weeks,” she tells him. Their eyes meet.

“Really?”

“Yes.” He turns back toward the building—then, almost in spite of himself, asks her a question … something about

a cell phone? Call her. Tell her there’s help out here and to stop this.”

Incredibly, Planned Parenthood staff members have brought the woman into the procedure room with her cell phone. She answers his call. “You have to come out!” he cries, pleading.

“And she did,” Eleanor says, with a smile that could light up the whole

“I’m consumed with admiration for the work that she does.

So many children would not be here without her involvement.”

– JOE MCCULLEN –

the baby’s DNA. In a moment, they’re deep in conversation. Too deep, to the woman’s mind. She is counting precious minutes, even as her genuine smile and tone warm and envelop the stranger. She fixes him with a clear, sober expression.

“You have to go in there and get her.”

He looks at her for a moment. “All right,” he says at last. “I will.” He runs for the door. Ten minutes later, he’s back, tears in his eyes.

“She’s already in the back. I can’t get to her. They won’t let me speak to her.” He’s visibly upset. “I can’t believe I brought her here.”

A thought seizes her: “Do you have

8

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

Boston skyline. “I have their little boy’s picture. It’s on my refrigerator.”

There are a lot of pictures on Eleanor McCullen’s refrigerator. All of them children who owe their lives, in large measure, to this 78-year-old woman’s willingness to stand on a Boston curbside five hours a day, two days a week—rain, shine, snow, or sleet—for the last 14 years.

Between them, the little group that joins Eleanor on that sidewalk is able to persuade dozens of mothers a year not to abort their babies. “Eleanor is 90 percent of those,” says Mary O’Donnell, 82, who’s been working alongside her

for more than 10 years. “The rest of us do our part, but nothing to compare to her. She’s just like Mother Teresa.

When she goes like this ...” and Mary spreads her arms wide, and smiles. “Eleanor makes a difference.”

“She’s the model,” says Bill Cotter, of Operation Rescue, who’s directed her efforts since the first day she stepped onto this sidewalk. “The mother factor comes into play. Eleanor’s very engaging, disarming … she exudes real caring for the woman—and the man, as well. They intuit that, and respond to it. She’s the ideal sidewalk counselor.”

At least one man takes it a step further than that. “She’s a saint,” says Joe McCullen, who’s been married to her for more than 56 years, and so might be expected to be harder to impress. A successful businessman, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and senior advisor to several U.S. presidents, he’s the one who hears the phone ringing all day and into the night as the expectant mothers call with their questions. He’s the one who comes home to a rowdy living room filled with the children of many of the women who changed their minds after meeting Eleanor.

“I’m consumed with admiration for the work that she does,” he says. “So many children would not be here without her involvement. To see these little kids, jumping around … I get tears in my eyes.” He finds himself at a lot of baptisms, he says, of both the children and their parents. Some of the children are named after her, or him. “It makes me very, very happy.”

“Eleanor has a real gift,” says Mary Gerard, who, as director of Pregnancy Help, a pro-life resource center sponsored by the Archdiocese of Boston, is the woman Eleanor keeps bringing so many other women to meet. “Many, many women,” Mary says. “She is just this sort of oasis in their crazy lives … offering them another way. Not just, you know, ‘Don’t get the abortion,’ but she always talks about the Lord in a very practical, sort of nonthreatening way. She’s also very humble. A lot of these women come from really poor backgrounds, [but] there’s nothing in Eleanor that makes them feel

like she feels better than them.”

The young woman,

“She is just this, sort of, oasis in their crazy lives … offering them another way.”

like countless others, dodges Eleanor’s smile and warm greeting and pushes on into the Planned Parenthood building.

There is no surgeon on hand this particular day, so the staff just give her a pill, which she looks at for a moment, then swallows. They give her another to take later, and she walks out, clutching it in a brown bag. She walks hesitantly over to Eleanor.

“I don’t want to take it,” she says.

“Well, come on,” says Eleanor, and hurries her into her car and speeds down the road to Pregnancy Help. But it’s too late. The baby is dead, and the woman sobs and stammers her guilt.

“You changed your mind,” Eleanor reminds her. “The Lord knows that.”

“I never condemn,” she says quietly, remembering the young woman’s face. “Who am I?”

“It’s

almost like a conversion experience,” says Mary Gerard, describing what happens to the women Eleanor brings to her clinic. “It’s like everything that was awful in their lives, that was leading them to terminate this pregnancy, is like this funnel that they go through, and they come to this moment where they decide, ‘No, I’m not doing this.’ And then they come to the other side. They can start to see their whole life changing … it’s a real transformation.”

Eleanor knows about transformation. One summer evening 14 years ago, she sat alone in Mass, waiting impatiently for the priest to finish his sermon so she could get home to watch

– MARY GERARD – PREGNANCY HELP

Regis Philbin. The sermon ran on. She finally opted to just leave … and found she couldn’t move.

“I think I was knocked off my horse,” she laughs. Up until then, life had seemed rich and full enough, but “I was getting a little restless. Everything was fine, but when I look back, I wasn’t really fine. If you don’t know Jesus as your Savior, everything isn’t quite fine.

St. Augustine said, ‘I’m restless until I rest in Thee.’” Suddenly, that evening, “I was so convicted … like arrows of love were being shot at me. The Lord just pinned me to the wall. He got me!”

Her heart overflowing, Eleanor soon approached her priest for an idea of something she could do for Jesus.

He suggested that she go downtown, stand in front of Planned Parenthood, and pray for the women she found there. It wasn’t what Eleanor had in mind. “I’m too old,” she told him.

“He said, ‘Are you 103?’ she recalls, laughing. “‘No,’ I said. ‘Then you’re not too old,’ he said.”

She had no intention of doing anything but praying. But one day, a counselor called in sick, and Cotter asked Eleanor to step in. “It was a snowy day,” she remembers, “and I was scared to death.” She tentatively approached

a man standing outside the building, smoking a cigarette. “Can I help you?” she asked, and within minutes — to her amazement — he had gone into the building and returned with his wife.

“I had no idea what to do with them!”

Motherly instinct kicked in.

“Come with me,” she said. “I have some chocolate chip cookies.” She took them home, served the cookies, and began thumbing through the phone book.

She found something that sounded like a pregnancy counseling service, and called the number. A pastor answered.

“I’ve got a couple here in my living room,” she said. The pastor urged her to bring them in right away. Half an hour later, she had the couple talking with counselors. “It was like I’d been doing it all my life.” She’s been out on the sidewalk ever since.

And now she knows what to do with those she meets there. For Eleanor, “counseling” means a lot more than handing women a card or brochure, or even driving them to a clinic. She invites them into her home. She still passes out cookies. She throws them baby showers, providing baby clothes and bassinettes, food baskets and toys.

If need be, she helps them find an apartment and money to cover the rent.

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

9

She invites their disapproving parents over to the house to talk things through.

She has the young families over for a spaghetti dinner now and then, and hosts Christmas parties for their children. She even helps pay for some of the children’s schooling.

She enlists reliable, dedicated friends who knit the baby caps and blankets, fill the food baskets. When supplies run low, she goes on the radio, urging people to help—and they do, flooding her spare rooms with diapers, formula, baby clothes, toys. “I represent all the people that you never will see,” she says. “I give it out, but they’re giving it to me.”

not convince her a Mack Truck was going to knock her over.”

“Keeping somebody at least 35 feet away requires sidewalk counselors to shout to try to get the attention of the patient, which is absolutely contrary to what the sidewalk counselor’s trying to do,” says Alliance Defending Freedom Allied Attorney Michael DePrimo.

“They don’t want to shout. They want to speak to them in a normal conversational voice. A smile is important. Eye contact is important. A normal conversational voice is critical in order to establish trust.”

The Massachusetts decision intrigued DePrimo, though he practices

“For years, pro-lifers were portrayed as mean-spirited, ugly people who just wanted to yell at women. Eleanor’s the opposite of that.”

– MICHAEL DEPRIMO – ADF ALLIED ATTORNEY

ver the last six years, Eleanor and her friends’ ability to do what they do has been encumbered, though not compromised, by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 2008, the legislature created a fixed “buffer zone” around abortion centers, designed to keep pro-life counselors at least 35 feet away from building entrances, exits, or driveways. The ruling left Eleanor literally out in the street.

“I used to always think she was going to get killed,” says Mary O’Donnell.

“Those trucks came so close. You could

O

10

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

in nearby Hamden, Connecticut. Having successfully challenged a similar buffer zone ordinance in Florida years before, he began looking around for someone who might make a good plaintiff in a lawsuit against Bay State officials.

Someone recommended Eleanor. He knew at once she was perfect.

“For years, pro-lifers were portrayed as mean-spirited, ugly people who just wanted to yell at women seeking an abortion,” he says. “Eleanor’s the opposite of that. Her smile, the brightness of her eyes, the obvious love she has for the people she’s counseling.

Eleanor’s not a protestor. She’s a coun-

selor, helping women make a decision with respect to their unborn children.”

With her as his primary client, DePrimo believed it more than possible they could win.

“The U.S. Supreme Court had never approved of any type of a law even remotely similar to the Massachusetts statute,” he says, “The court has, for many, many years, said that speech on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open.” Nevertheless, “the courts have been chipping away at the rights of pro-lifers, making it much more difficult for them to express their messages, even on public sidewalks. The more government is able to come in and inhibit people from [expressing] their point of view on the public ways, the more difficult it becomes to actually get our particular view before the people.”

Eleanor herself was at first inclined just to try to work around the exclusion zone, but, on reflection, decided that was the kind of compromise that was making it too easy for those in power to rob her of her constitutional rights.

“Our rights are taken away left and right,” she says. “We start compromising our values. All of a sudden, we wonder, ‘Are we in America?’ So, instead of saying, ‘Oh, let it go,’ I said, ‘No, let’s see how far we can go with it.’”

It turned out to be an uphill climb —even with Alliance Defending Freedom’s full support.

“The litigation in this case went on for eight years, against the Massachusetts attorney general’s office,” DePrimo says. “They had an unlimited budget, and an unlimited number of attorneys, investigators, and paralegal staff at their disposal. And there’s no way somebody like myself, who’s a sole practitioner, could have spent the 1,645 hours that I spent on this case without having some financial support.

“ADF gave me several grants to be able to keep the case alive,” he says.

“And they stayed with the case, even though we lost four times before actually getting review at the Supreme Court. Without the help of ADF, without

To see an inspiring video of Eleanor McCullen’s story, visit AllianceDefendingFreedom.org and click on “Faith & Justice.”

You can also learn more about her work at the Flame of Love Foundation.

One room of Eleanor’s home overflows with donations and handcrafted gifts for expectant mothers: clothes, blankets, toys, bassinets.

the support of the ministry partners, there’s simply no way that we could have effectively put together the case that we did.”

DePrimo worked with two other ADF allied attorneys, Mark Rienzi and Philip Moran, to hone Eleanor’s case and prepare their appeal to the Supreme Court. In early 2014, the court heard the case. Eleanor, reeling from a severe inner ear infection, was told by her doctor not to make the trip—or, if she did, to take a wheelchair.

“I will not,” Eleanor told him. “I don’t want the people of the Supreme Court to think only old, crippled people care about the unborn.” She used a cane, leaned on Joe, and faced the cameras.

“Eleanor is Eleanor,” DePrimo says.

“She handled herself marvelously. She was her very happy, exuberant self.” A New York Times reporter called her “the new face of the pro-life movement.”

A few months later, nine justices who rarely agree on anything ruled unanimously in her favor.

“Even the most liberal Supreme Court justices ruled that the Massa-

chusetts buffer statute violated the First Amendment,” DePrimo says.

Groups like Planned Parenthood were “shocked,” he says, at the defeat of a law designed “to protect the safety of women.” In fact, “this had nothing to do with the safety of women. This was all about suppressing pro-life speech.”

In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, other cities across the country began repealing their own buffer zones.

“A great decision,” says Cotter. “A small step in the cause of justice.”

“My joy,” says Mary O’Donnell, “is No. 1, I don’t worry about Eleanor in the street anymore. And No. 2, I can walk on the sidewalk, and they know I’m not a terrorist.”

“It’s all glory to God,” Eleanor says, “and thank you to our lawyers for persevering. ADF is an amazing organization. What they do to help people carry out their dreams is amazing.”

The seasons fade in and out. Blistering summer days become bone-chilling winter mornings. Eleanor, Mary, Bill,

and several others are dependable as mailmen, striding the sidewalks in front of the Planned Parenthood building, praying, smiling at passersby, handing out brochures, watching for the young women headed toward those dark glass doors.

So many—hundreds, thousands— ´go through with the killing. They push past Eleanor, ignoring her, mocking her, screaming obscenities in her face. Discouragement can find a toehold.

And yet, “She never seems to get off track,” says Mary Gerard. “She’s really focused on the mission and on the women, and there’s this joy. ‘Mary,’ she says, ‘there’s always the next one.’”

“I’m compelled to go,” Eleanor says, “every Tuesday and Wednesday.

It sounds strange, but it’s a Holy Spirit drawing, like I have to go. And to be a witness. That’s what we’re all supposed to do. Preach the Gospel the best way we can, try to help, and just … let it go.

And not get discouraged.

“It’s called love. And love …” She smiles, and her arms spread wide. “You cannot argue with that.”

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

11

Special Feature

A

IMPACT:

How Supreme Court Wins Affect Other ADF Cases 12

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

s rewarding as it is for Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys and their allies to win a major case at the U.S. Supreme Court, it’s even more rewarding to see the direct (and often, near-immediate) impact of those decisions on other, similar cases across the country.

No sooner had the High Court handed down a favorable decision for the ministry’s client in Town of Greece v. Galloway last May—securing the right of elected officials in Greece, New York to open their public meetings with prayer—than legal logjams began to break in a number of related cases coast to coast.

In Forsyth County, North Carolina, for instance, a federal district court had already ruled against county officials, issuing an injunction that forbade them from opening their meetings with voluntary invocations offered by local citizens unless those prayers were purged of any distinctly Christian references. But soon after the Greece decision, the court responded to a petition from ADF attorneys by lifting that injunction.

“When the Supreme Court speaks, that one case becomes binding precedent and resets the legal stage for the whole nation,” says ADF Senior Counsel Brett Harvey, who helped represent the town of Greece.

When the Supreme Court speaks, that one case becomes binding precedent and resets the legal stage for the whole nation.

— Brett Harvey “Every court in the country views the legal challenges related to that case through a new lens.

That is why it is so important to have a voice at the Supreme Court.”

State by state, he says, the lens on public prayers is shifting, as other courts now rethink their positions on cases similar to Greece. What’s more, Harvey says, ADF attorneys “are hearing almost every day from local officials all over the nation, asking for advice in shaping their own public prayer policies, or wondering if their existing policy is consistent with federal law.”

A

DF attorneys focused on preserving the sanctity of life are seeing a similar impact from last June’s Supreme Court decision in McCullen v.

Coakley, in which the court struck down as unconstitutional a censorship zone created by Massachusetts officials to keep pro-life advocates from approaching women outside abortion facilities and offering them help. (See story, p. 8.)

“The government cannot muzzle speech just because it doesn’t reflect the views of those who promote abortion,” says ADF Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman, adding that the McCullen decision (successfully argued by ADF Allied Attorneys) provided a legal precedent that has enabled the ministry to move several similar pro-life speech cases into the “win” column.

In Madison, Wisconsin, for instance, city officials waited less than two months after the McCullen decision before voting to rescind a law that had created hundreds of censorship zones throughout that city. These so-called “bubbles,” 200 feet in diameter, were enforced around the entrances of every building that offered medical services, and blocked anyone from approaching within eight feet of another person—on public sidewalks—to offer leaflets, display a sign, or offer a word of information, protest, or even Visit AllianceDefendingFreedom.org friendly counsel. and click on “Faith & Justice” to learn The removal of more about cases ADF is presenting the law ended an

this term at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Eleanor McCullen shows photos of the many lives saved through her work as a sidewalk counselor.

ADF lawsuit against the city on behalf of pro-life advocates, who were now freed to resume their constitutionally protected efforts on behalf of babies in the womb.

ADF was also able to secure—within weeks of McCullen— a court order blocking enforcement of a New Hampshire law about to be used to create 25-foot zones in which speech would be censored on public ways and sidewalks outside of that state’s abortion facilities. Ministry attorneys have also presented oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging similar speech zones in Pittsburgh.

B

ut a Supreme Court victory can affect more than just the legal results of other cases, Bowman says. It can also impact the attitude of the wider legal culture toward defendants and issues.

“When we can assist good attorneys to litigate on behalf of good clients, like we did in McCullen,” he says, “it not only gives us a win that applies to all federal cases nationally; it can also influence how others view our clients. The Supreme Court, for instance, talked about Eleanor McCullen as a caring advocate who genuinely wants to help mothers and their children, and who offers women alternatives to abortion and help pursuing those options.”

“The impact of a Supreme Court victory is so big, it sets into motion waves in the legal waters that ripple for years to come,” Harvey says. “ADF has been involved in cases at the Supreme Court that have yielded legal principles that, in turn, have impacted literally thousands of cases.”

In the case of Greece, he says, “the legal principles established in securing the freedom of people to openly pray as they feel led—even in public—pushed back on more than 40 years of bad precedent, and may fundamentally change the way those freedoms are viewed for generations.”

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

13

My View

YOU CAN FIGHT CITY HALL

by Goran Hunjak

Visit AllianceDefendingFreedom.org and click on “Faith & Justice” to learn more about this ministry’s efforts nationwide to preserve the religious freedom of students in our nation’s public schools.

14

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

For two decades, Goran Hunjak was one of the most outstanding professional soccer players in the world.

Between 1983 and 2005, representing teams all over America, he was named Most Valuable Player of the Year four times and Offensive Player of the Year five times. A seven-time all star, he played on the 1996 U.S. World Cup team, is one of only 16 players to score more than 500 professional goals, and one of only 10 U.S. players to score more than 1,000 points.

At the height of that success, Hunjak realized it wasn’t enough. Seven years after his wife led him to saving faith in Christ, he opened a Gideon Bible in a quiet hotel room, and determined to make Christ his Lord as well as his Savior. Not long after, he began looking for a way to use his soccer skills to share Him with others. The result was Victory Soccer Camp, a summer program for children that combines top-notch coaching in the basics of the game with a clear presentation of the Gospel. More than 10,000 children have participated in the camp over the last decade —and at least one-fourth of those youngsters have found Christ through the program.

For all the success God has given us with our soccer camp, it’s still necessary to put out the word each spring … letting people know who we are and what we offer. Which is why, one April day three years ago, my wife, Gina, and my sons, Trae and Tanner, were standing inside the Overland Park Soccer Complex in our hometown of Kansas City, Kansas, handing out flyers to people moving through the facilities.

The complex is used mostly for children’s league soccer games and practices, so it naturally draws a lot of families who might be interested in our camp. It’s surrounded by public sidewalks that actually flow right into and through the complex itself, and there’s a lot of foot traffic. We had never tried handing out flyers at the complex before, but people were very receptive. Gina and Tanner handed out quite a few before the agitated man approached them.

He introduced himself as a representative of one of the local organizations renting the facility—a children’s soccer league that offers its own summer soccer programs. Apparently, they had decided not to see us as friendly competition.

“You have no right to be in here,” he said, telling my wife that his organization owned the complex. She pointed out that, in fact, the complex is owned by the city, and that she was on public property. Seeing the man’s frustration, though, she offered to move our distribution onto the public sidewalk out in front of the complex … which was where I joined them, a little later.

After a few minutes, the man came back. He didn’t want us on the sidewalk, either. “You can’t be here,” he said again. We decided to humor him. We left, and the following week, I paid a visit to City Hall, to determine for myself if the public sidewalk was as public as we thought it was.

I spent most of a day at City Hall, bouncing around from one official

to another, looking for someone, anyone, who could show me a civil ordinance forbidding me to hand out flyers on the public walkways of the soccer complex. No one—not the clerks, not the city attorneys, not the police, not even the “manager of leisure services”—could find anything in the rule books that made it unlawful for my family and me to do what we’d been doing. Yet everyone still insisted we were breaking this imaginary law.

We decided to ignore the bureaucrats and go back to doing what we were clearly within our legal rights to do.

The next week, we were again at the complex, handing out flyers, when an official for the facility came out and ordered us to stop. I explained to him, again, the meaning of “public sidewalk.” He wouldn’t have it—said if we didn’t leave he’d have to call the police. I told him he was welcome to do so.

I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t be on our side in this.

As it turned out, they weren’t on our side. “I’ll do whatever the owners tell me to do,” the officer told me, as if he were their own private security guard. “If you don’t leave, I’ll have to arrest you.”

I was born in Croatia. I grew up under Communist dictators. I know what happens when the authorities decide to crack down. We took our flyers and left. Soon after, the City Council came up with a law making the whole soccer complex a “nonpublic forum,” closed to free speech.

It wasn’t just knowing that the city attorneys would be putting our lives under a microscope, searching for anything that might impugn our character. This was all about our freedom to invite people to a sports camp where we’d be telling their children about Jesus. That meant there would be spiritual warfare, too. Before I put my family through that, I had to be sure this was God’s will … and not just my desire to win out over some stubborn public officials.

So, we prayed about it—a lot.

And our ADF attorneys prayed with us. They assured us that there really

Everyone still insisted we were breaking this imaginary law.

As it happens, I knew a man at our church who was an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom. I told him what had happened, and he told me we had a case. ADF could file suit against the city for us. As much as I wanted to make our point, I hesitated.

was a great injustice being done here, and that, given the city’s actions, we had an excellent chance of winning our case in court. So we went ahead and filed the lawsuit. And won.

The Bible says, “The heart of the king is in the Lord’s hands; He turns it wherever He wishes (Proverbs 21:1).”

In our case, He turned the heart of the judges to look favorably on our petition. As far as we were concerned, our decision came from Him. We felt so grateful, and at peace.

That peace was greatly magnified along the way by the godly counsel of our ADF attorneys, whose wisdom, discernment, and kind support were such a blessing to our whole family. It helped us to see that they, too, have a passion for their ministry as great as the one we feel for ours—and to see firsthand the impact that work is having in preserving our freedom to live out our faith.

Best of all is knowing how many children will have a chance to hear the Gospel, by responding to the tracts we’re handing out at the soccer complex. As a soccer man, I get a kick out of that.

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

15

Alliance Profile When Pastor Amos Dodge and his Capital Church congregation led their first annual sunrise Easter service on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1979, about 120 people showed up. These days, on Resurrection Sundays, old Abe looks out on six to seven thousand people worshiping the greatest Emancipator, their songs and prayers broadcast all over the world by CNN and other networks. Dodge is delighted— but wonders how long it can last without opposition.

“We’re not politically correct,” he says. “It’s an Easter service. We make no apologies for it, and we’ve enjoyed incredible favor and success.” But one of these days, he predicts, “somebody is going to rise up and say, ‘Why are they letting this church do this on the steps of the Lincoln

Memorial?’ We can expect some opposition. We’re not going to ask for it, but we can expect it.”

That thought first came to him, he says, during a pastors’ conference at the Alliance Defending Freedom Academy two summers ago, as he heard ADF attorneys, allies, and clients talk about the increasing legal attacks on Christians across America. Dodge freely admits he’d been a little oblivious to much of what’s been happening—and says learning the truth hit him hard.

“I see that the pastorate in America has changed pretty remarkably in my lifetime,” he says. Years ago, local pastors were highly regarded and esteemed.

Now, he says, “it’s almost like you are resented, or rebuffed. They don’t mind if you’re just a good pastor and do nice little things, but when you raise your voice against moral issues, make biblical stands … there’s a pushback.”

“There’s a carefulness, a guardedness that comes to a pastor, almost automatically,” he says. “Because who wants people demonstrating? Who wants bad press? You’re there to impress the community in a good way. But I have to declare the Word of God, and do it with a boldness—not arrogance— but a boldness that says, ‘This is what the Bible says.’ That’s our authority, and that’s what we’re called to do.”

To have ADF “to work alongside us, and be there when the church needs help legally … that’s huge.” It’s also a gentle nudge, he says. “What [ADF] does is to say to us, ‘Be a shepherd, but be a prophet, too.’ The hope of the world is not Congress [or] the Supreme Court. The hope of the world is going to be the Church.”

Visit AllianceDefendingFreedom.org and click on “Faith & Justice” to see a conversation with Pastor Dodge, and to learn how ADF can help preserve your church’s religious freedom.

16

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

Updates

In The News

PREVIOUS ARRANGEMENTS

The

case against Barronelle Stutzman—the florist from Richland, Washington, who is being sued for declining, because of her Christian beliefs, to design creative floral arrangements for, and take part in, a same-sex marriage ceremony—is proceed-

(Volume VII, Issue 1)

ing in federal and state courts.

Although Barronelle has both employed and served homosexuals (including the defendants) through her business across many years, state officials have singled her out for legal persecution, seeking not only to shut down her business, but to take her personal assets as well.

In December, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a motion asking the state court to dismiss claims against Barronelle in her personal capacity, while the state and the ACLU asked the court to find her liable without a trial or jury determination.

BRINGING MY HUSBAND’S KILLERS TO JUSTICE

Vol. V, Iss. 2

On

August 26, 2008, in the eastern India state of Orissa, a mob of radical Hindus armed with deadly weapons attacked and brutally murdered Pastor Akbar Digal, an attack witnessed by his wife, Ludhiya Digal. His body was subsequently burned by the members of the mob. The murder was part of a massive wave of anti-Christian violence throughout the region that year, in which more than 5,000 Christian homes and institutions were burned, some 50,000 believers were displaced, and over a hundred people were martyred by being burned or hacked to death.

In response to this violence, ADF-India established a team of attorneys and support staff, working with otherwise reluc-

tant public prosecutors and victims to bring the mob perpetrators to justice. To date, in Orissa, ADF-India has brought 143 criminal cases resulting in 304 persons convicted for engaging in this violence— including the leaders of the mob that murdered Pastor Digal, all of whom were sentenced to life imprisonment.

ASKING FOR A SIGN On

January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments from Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman in the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert.

Clyde Reed is pastor of Good News Community Church in Gilbert, Arizona, a small congregation that rents temporary space in various locations for its weekly services. The church uses small, temporary signs to invite and direct the community to its services.

While the town’s sign code imposes some restrictions on political, ideological, and homeowners’ association signs, its regulations are far stricter on the size, location, number, and duration of the church’s signs.

Violating those restrictions could mean serious fines or even jail for Pastor Reed.

Gilbert’s sign code does at least two things the First Amendment forbids: 1) it regulates signs differently based on what they say; and 2) it grants favorable treatment to signs it deems “more valuable” than other signs. In this case, the town deemed Pastor Reed’s church signs valueless and heavily restricted them. The Ninth Circuit excused Gilbert’s religious speech discrimination because the town claimed it did not mean to discriminate. But requiring proof of discriminatory intent in free speech cases would make it much easier for the government to get away with violating free speech rights. ADF is asking the High Court to reverse the lower court’s decision.

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

17

Opinion

Kevin Theriot

Could ‘Common Core’ Lead To Common Morality?

Perhaps the hottest debate in education this past year has been over the federally sponsored educational standards being pushed through the Common Core State Standards Initiative. “Common Core” is urging states to codify what K-12 students have to know in English and mathematics to graduate from each grade level and, ultimately, to be accepted into college.

Common Core will likely have only an indirect effect on religious liberty—at least initially. But advocates for religious liberty and the family still have genuine cause for concern.

Common Core creates another tool for big government (judges, legislators, and education policymakers) to control the beliefs and actions of parents and their students.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have the right to direct the education—religious and otherwise—of their children.

In 1923, the Court ruled in Meyer v. Nebraska that parents have the right to teach their children a foreign language at a young age. Two years later, the Court bolstered parental rights in the Pierce case, in which it held parents could educate their children in parochial instead of state-mandated public schools.

But lower courts have seriously undermined parental rights in recent years. A federal appeals court denied the right of parents to opt their public school children out of explicit sex education in Massachusetts, while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in another sex-education case) infamously said “Once

18

|

Alliance Defending Freedom

parents make the choice as to which school their children will attend, their fundamental right to control the education of their children is … substantially diminished.”

The harmful trend is that parents cannot opt their children out of classes that conflict with their religious convictions. That restriction is likely to creep into parochial schools and even homeschooling through national education standards specifying what all students must be taught in order to move on to higher education.

Voluntary alignment with Common Core standards is increasing among parochial and private schools.

College entrance exams and the GED exam are aligning with Common Core, so homeschooling parents may also feel pressure to comply with Common Core standards. The net effect is further restriction on parental freedom.

Parents have much more direct control of the education process when decisions about curriculum are made locally. Allowing the federal government to make decisions historically left to local school boards necessarily weakens any one parent’s ability to influence those decisions.

That prospect is particularly alarming given the federal government’s recent track record of disregarding the religious convictions of people of faith. Though the Supreme Court ruled against it, the Obama Administration took the legal position that its interest in providing national health care trumps a faith-based business’s right to refuse to cover

medical care that violates its beliefs.

Even after that loss, the government is continuing its legal efforts to force religious ministries that are not churches to allow their employee benefit programs to be used as a conduit for morally objectionable medical care like abortifacients.

The government’s rationale for forcing even Christian schools like Geneva College to allow their employee health plans to be used to provide abortion-causing drugs is simple: it thinks its secular moral interests are more important than any religious morality opposed to these drugs. At bottom, the government is attempting to coerce business owners and ministries to adopt a type of national secular orthodoxy in place of their own religious teachings.

There is absolutely no reason to believe the federal government will not use Common Core national education standards the same way. Once the current benign standards are widely adopted, they can be changed to bolster a secular orthodoxy. For example, national standards for health curricula could require explicit teaching about reproduction, sexuality, and contraception, even at the elementary school level. All who are concerned about religious liberty should be on guard against the misuse of Common Core to create a common morality.

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot is vice president of the ADF Religious Liberty Team and director of the Education Project.

Alliance Defending Freedom

|

19

TODAY’S PLAN TOMORROW’S PROMISE

Alliance Defending Freedom is a Christ-centered organization, the light burning on the hill protecting our Christian values, now and into the future through prayer, witnessing, and deeds that honor God and country!

— Roger & Ramona R.

Pass on a legacy of freedom. Please contact Lisa Reschetnikow at 800-835-5233 or LisaR@AllianceDefendingFreedom.org to discuss your legacy giving.