Who is Funding the Schiavo Court Battle?
Sunday March 20, 2005
Millions of dollars have been spent by conservative political organizations that are using the Terri Schiavo case as a means to further their political agenda. This list of players comes from
The American Journal of Bioethics :
-
According to the AJB article, the Schiavo lawyer, Pat Anderson
"was paid directly" by the anti-abortion Life Legal Defense Foundation, which "has already spent over $300,000 on this case,' according to the foundation's Web site."
In fiscal 2002, organization expenditures exceeded receipts.
-
Life Legal Defense Foundation is a beneficiary of the
Alliance Defense Fund, (ADF) a fundamentalist Christian group launched in 1993.
An 8 February 2005 article in the Palm Beach Post, headlined "State investigating Schiavo foundation," notes that ADF has spent "in the six figures" on the Schiavo case. In its IRS papers, it gives its purpose as "funding litigation that is going on to confront and challenge the radical legal agenda advocating homosexual behavior, defending parental rights, and to restore the Constitution's guarantee of free exercise of religion." It collected $15.7 million in 2003.
-
From the AJB article:
The Family Research Council, which uses its annual $10 million budget to lobby for prayer in public schools and against gay marriage, filed an amicus curiae brief in Bush v. Schiavo supporting Gov. Bush, at the same time its former president, attorney Kenneth Connor, was representing the governor in that litigation. Between 1992 and 2000, the council received $215,000 from the Bradley Foundation.
This fundamentalist Christian group "originated at the 1980 White House Conference on Families..." and "... by the mid-1990s the organization had grown into a $10 million operation," according to its website. Its president is Tony Perkins, "the leading conservative voice in the Louisiana Legislature" and the author of "the nation's first Covenant Marriage law."
According to Media Transparency, "FRC was a division of James Dobson's Focus on the Family from 1988 until October 1992, when IRS concerns about the group's lobbying led to an amicable administrative separation."
Dobson was "chosen as Layman of the Year by the National Association of Evangelicals in 1982," according to the FoF website. From its origins in 1977, the organization has become an international organization with "74 different ministries requiring nearly 1,300 employees. On Main Street, the now-daily broadcast [is] heard on over 6,000 facilities worldwide..."
The message? Dobson "attempts to 'turn hearts toward home' by reasonable, biblical and empirical insights so people will be able to discover the founder of homes and the creator of families: Jesus Christ."
-
According to the AJB article, many of the players received money from the Philanthropy Roundtable,
... a collection of foundations that have funded conservative causes ranging from abolition of Social Security to anti-tax crusades and United Nations conspiracy theories. The Roundtable members' founders include scions of America's wealthiest families, including Richard Mellon Scaife (heir to the Mellon industrial, oil and banking fortune), Harry Bradley (electronics), Joseph Coors (beer), and the Smith Richardson family (pharmaceutical products).
Comments
No comments yet. Leave a Comment