Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon) was an American online organization founded in September 2005 to support the separation of church and state and to oppose what it perceived as the growing influence of the religious right. It was a project of the Tides Center, a non-profit organization that funds progressive groups. However, its funding ran out in November 2007, at which time its blog announced the organization was "taking a break." [1]
DefCon described itself on its website as ...
... an online grassroots movement intending to combat the growing power of the religious right. We will fight for the separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance while respecting people of faith and their right to express their beliefs.[ citation needed ]
The DefCon advisory board included Bruce Alberts, Francisco J. Ayala, Chip Berlet, Max Blumenthal, Erwin Chemerinsky, Frederick Clarkson, Matt Foreman, Steven Gey, Ira Glasser, Michelle Goldberg, Isaac Kramnick, Lawrence M. Krauss, James M. Lawson Jr., Kate Michelman, Harold Varmus, and Mel White. [2]
After Bible publishing company Tyndale House released the video game version of Tim LaHaye's's Left Behind called Left Behind: Eternal Forces , DefCon asked their members to send emails to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to stop selling the game. [3] [4] Wal-Mart stated that it did not intend to comply with the request. [4]
During the stem cell campaign, DefCon ran two full page ads in The New York Times in May and June. [5]
They also released a video on YouTube featuring DefCon advisory board member and former NARAL Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman's personal views on stem cell research. [6]
DefCon ran ads asserting the involvement of conservative political strategist Ralph Reed, evangelist Lou Sheldon, and Focus on the Family's James Dobson in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Dobson has denied any connection to Abramoff, and a DefCon spokesman has conceded that there was no proof of collusion between Dobson and Abramoff. [7] In response to the ads, Dobson characterized DefCon as "a radical leftist organization," and stated:
Despite the viciousness of the DefCon attack, we are not vengeful or vindictive about it. Nor are we discouraged or depressed. It goes with the territory. Everyone who tries to defend righteousness in the culture is treated to something similar. Jesus told His followers to expect persecution, and therefore, it comes as no surprise that we have been subjected to it. [8]
The last blog post on the organization's website, made in November 2007, read:
We wanted to let you all know that this will be our last blog post, at least for now. Our funding has run out, so we will be taking a break. We want to make it clear that this is in no way an admission of defeat, we’ve had some spectacular successes and it is clear that the religious right is on the run! Thanks to all of you, we’ve been able to fight the teaching of creationism in public schools, fight for stem cell research, run national ads showing Jack Abramaoff’s ties to religious right leaders, and in general shed an important light on the hypocrisy of the religious right. We’re going to leave the thread open for a few weeks so that you all can make connections. We really value this community, and hope to reconnect with you all sometime in the future. Thank you for all you’ve done to help in the fight to defend our Constitution. [1]
Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded by Sam Walton in nearby Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law on October 31, 1969. It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses.
Focus on the Family is an American fundamentalist Christian organization founded in 1977 in Southern California by James Dobson, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It promotes social conservative views on public policy. The group is one of a number of evangelical parachurch organizations that rose to prominence in the 1980s. As of the 2017 tax filing year, Focus on the Family declared itself to be a church, "primarily to protect the confidentiality of our donors." Traditionally, entities considered churches have been ones that have regular worship services and congregants.
James Clayton Dobson Jr. (born April 21, 1936) is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder of Focus on the Family (FOTF), which he led from 1977 until 2010. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions in American public life. Although never an ordained minister, he was called "the nation's most influential evangelical leader" by The New York Times while Slate portrayed him as a successor to evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
The Christian right, or the religious right, are Christian political factions that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative and traditionalist policies. Christian conservatives seek to influence politics and public policy with their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity.
The separation of church and state is a philosophic and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state. Although the concept is older, the exact phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from "wall of separation between church and state", a term coined by Thomas Jefferson. The concept was promoted by Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke.
The American Family Association (AFA) is a Protestant fundamentalist 501(c)(3) organization based in the United States. It opposes LGBT rights and expression, pornography, and abortion. It also takes a position on a variety of other public policy goals. It was founded in 1977 by Donald Wildmon as the National Federation for Decency and is headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi.
"Separation of church and state" is paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in expressing an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Ernest James "Ernie" Istook Jr. is a retired American lawyer and politician who served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Oklahoma's 5th congressional district. He held his congressional seat for 14 years, completing seven terms in the House. Currently, Istook is a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and also a talk radio host. In 2010, Istook became a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School leading a study on Propaganda in American Politics.
The American multinational retail chain Walmart has been criticized by many groups and individuals, such as labor unions and small-town advocates, for its policies and business practices, and their effects. Criticisms include charges of racial and gender discrimination, foreign product sourcing, anti-competitive practices, treatment of product suppliers, environmental practices, the use of public subsidies, and its surveillance of its employees. The company has denied any wrongdoing and said that low prices are the result of efficiency.
Daniel Lapin is a South African-born American Orthodox rabbi, author, and public speaker. He was previously the founding rabbi of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, California, and the former head of Toward Tradition, the Commonwealth Loan Company and the Cascadia Business Institute. Lapin currently hosts a daily television program with his wife, Susan, and provides spiritual advice to people through his website.
Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, film producer, writer, and convicted felon. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation led by Earl Devaney that resulted in his conviction and 21 other people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides.
The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a self-described conservative think tank in the United States. Its founding CEO was Amy Ridenour, who was chairwoman. David A. Ridenour, her husband, is president, having served as vice president from 1986-2011.
Barry W. Lynn was the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State from 1992 to November 2017, when he retired. He was ordained as a minister in the United Church of Christ and a prominent leader of the religious left in the United States. Lynn was formerly a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He has been known as a strong advocate of separation of church and state.
Working Families for Walmart is an advocacy group formed by Walmart and the Edelman public relations firm on December 20, 2005. It has been used to praise Walmart in a show of opposition to union-funded groups such as Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch. The group is financially supported by Walmart and is headquartered in Edelman's Washington, D.C. office. It is not organized as a non-profit, and is not required to disclose its sources of funding.
James Matthes Talent is an American politician who was a U.S. Senator from Missouri from 2002 to 2007. He is a Republican and resided in the St. Louis area while serving in elected office.
Missouri Constitutional Amendment 2 was a state constitutional amendment initiative that concerned stem cell research and human cloning. It allows any stem cell research and therapy in the U.S. state of Missouri that is legal under federal law, including somatic cell nuclear transfer to produce human embryos for stem cell production. It prohibits cloning or attempting to clone a human being, which is defined to mean "to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilisation of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being". Commercials supporting and opposing the amendment aired during the 2006 World Series, in which the St. Louis Cardinals participated. The issue became especially intertwined with the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Missouri, with the Republican and Democratic candidates on opposite sides of the issue.
DEFCON is a defense alert state used by the United States Armed Forces.
Why Wal-Mart Works; and Why That Drives Some People C-R-A-Z-Y is a 2005 independent documentary film by Ron and Robert David Galloway. It investigates the reasons behind the financial success of the Walmart Corporation. The documentary suggests that many criticisms of Walmart arise from feelings of jealousy over the company's success.
Kate Michelman is an American political activist. She is best known for her work in the United States abortion rights movement, particularly as a long-time president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.