Gary L. Bauer
President
Family Research Council
700 13th Street NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005
202/393-2100
Gary Bauer, director of the Office of Policy Development in the Reagan White House, now heads this Washington-based lobbying arm of James Dobson's Focus on the Family (see below). When in 1992 the overtly political activities of the Family Research Council (FRC) threatened the nonprofit status of Dobson's operation, the two organizations became legally separate. Though often treated as a mainstream social research organization by the media, the FRC, by Bauer's own admission, conducts no research. Strenuously "pro-life" and homophobic, the FRC opposes both public television and government subsidy of the arts. Bauer claims the National Endowment for the Arts is run by "a small cadre of cultural revolutionaries, militant homosexuals, and anti-religious bigots who are intent on attacking the average American's most deeply held beliefs while sending them the bill." Ask for a complimentary copy of the FRC's monthly newsletter, Washington Watch.
Ty and Jeannette Beeson
Executive Producers
The Report
42640 Tenth Street West
Lancaster, CA 93534
800/462-4700
Ty Beeson, pastor of the Pentecostal Springs of Life Ministry, joined his wife Jeannette in establishing The Report as a production center and clearinghouse for propaganda intended to stop gay rights legislation in California. Their most famous product, a 17-minute hate video called The Gay Agenda, has been compared to Nazi anti-Semitic films like The Eternal Jew. The video was originally created for use by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, the Oregon chapter of the Christian Coalition, which had obtained a grant from its parent organization to develop educational materials. The educational content of The Gay Agenda consists mainly of militant homophobe Paul Cameron's bizarre, discredited statistics on the sexual habits of gay men, as portentously interpreted by John Birch Society/Christian Coalition activist Stanley Monteith. Other segments offer atrocity footage from Gay Pride marches, as well as testimony from "ex-gays" who claim to have been cured by a Pentecostal program called Love in Action. The video was an instant success, selling tens of thousands of copies at $13.95. It has also received widespread free distribution in states and cities facing anti-gay ballot initiatives. Scores of copies were sent to Pentagon officials and members of Congress during the 1993 debate over lesbian and gay military personnel. The Beesons' other videos include The Gay Agenda in Public Education, Inside the March on Washington, and Sexual Orientation or Sexual Deviation, You Decide. They also market jeremiads about AIDS by such "experts" as Stanley Monteith. Recently they have paid special attention to keeping homosexual materials out of schools, fighting sex education, and stamping out AIDS awareness programs. During 1993, the Beesons permitted Peter LaBarbera, former editor of Concerned Women for America's Family Voice, to publish his anti-gay monthly, The Lambda Report, under their aegis. They have since parted company with LaBarbera and offer their own homophobic monthly journal, The Beeson Report, for $30 a year.
Rev. Flip Benham
National Director
Operation Rescue
P.O. Box 740066
Dallas, TX 75374
214/907-2280
Operation Rescue (OR), the notorious anti-abortion group begun in 1988 by evangelical ex-used car salesman Rev. Randall Terry, specializes in blocking access to targeted clinics and subjecting patients, physicians and staff to intimidation and harassment. A queasy mixture of far-right fundamentalist Protestants and reactionary Catholics, the membership includes many who would criminalize all forms of contraception and suppress all family planning information other than exhortations to abstinence. During the 1992 election, Randall Terry warned his followers that "to vote for Bill Clinton is to sin against God." With Clinton in office, Operation Rescue has shifted its focus to include opposition to civil rights for gays and lesbians. OR has also been known to launch attacks on the arts. In 1990 Boston-area members tried to block access to Serrano's "Piss Christ" at the Klein Gallery, and threatened to blockade Boston University's Photographic Resource Center. In February 1994, Rev. Flip Benham of the Free Methodist Church took over the directorship of the organization from Keith Tucci, who left to found a separate ministry, the Life Coalition, in Melbourne, Florida. Call or write for a copy of OR's National Rescue Update.
William Bennett
Co-Director
Empower America
1776 I Street
Suite 890
Washington, DC 20006
202/452-8200
FAX 202/833-0388
From its mission statement: "Empower America is a unique combination of public policy institute and grassroots political organization whose mission is to promote progressive conservative public policies at both the state and national level based on the principles of economic growth, international leadership, and cultural empowerment." While Empower America bills itself as a "nonpartisan, nonprofit organization," its board of directors is a blue-ribbon panel of right-wing pro-corporate Republicans, and the organization itself is a kind of stepchild of the Heritage Foundation. Amazingly for a nonprofit entity, Empower America proudly declares political candidates to be among its "products." Its popular training sessions for reactionary candidates have enhanced the success of the pro-business theocratic right in recent years. Its four co-directors are former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, Reagan's UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, and -- most visibly and actively -- Heritage Foundation Fellow William Bennett, former Secretary of Education and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Reagan, drug czar under Bush, senior editor at the National Review, professional pompous bluenose, and prolific author of such Pecksniffian titles as The Book of Virtues. In recent years Bennett has achieved considerable notoriety as a self-appointed, self-congratulatory guardian of "traditional values," zestfully demonizing art forms, individuals, and real or imagined trends in American culture. Some of his efforts have placed him in unlikely partnerships with such purported liberals as C. Delores Tucker of the National Political Caucus of Black Women, with whom he conducted a joint campaign against rap music in 1995. Write or call for Empower America's terms of membership. Members receive a quarterly publication called Highlights.
L. Brent Bozell 3d
Chairman
Media Research Center
113 South West Street
Second Floor
Alexandria, VA 22314
703/683-9733
Brent Bozell, a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree, is the nephew of columnist William F. Buckley and the son of L. Brent Bozell, Jr., who assisted Barry Goldwater with the writing of Conscience of a Conservative. A close associate of the late Terry Dolan, the closeted gay founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Bozell served for several years as the Dolan organization's finance chairman and president. In 1991, he helped orchestrate a smear campaign directed at the opposition to Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court; in 1992, he was the chief fund-raiser behind Pat Buchanan's unsuccessful bid for the Republican Presidential nomination. The Media Research Center provides Bozell with a platform from which to bash the arts and popular culture. Recently Bozell has been part of the drive to eradicate PBS. TV, etc., "the Media Research Center's review of the politics of the entertainment industry," is a monthly newsletter that is oddly enamored of celebrity for a publication whose relentless theme is the abject rottenness of Hollywood. (Some celebrities, like Robert Redford, are ridiculed for their liberalism; others, like Tom Selleck, are congratulated for their conservatism or, as in the case of Mel Gibson, their homophobia.) The garish inaccuracies of TV, etc., like the claim that the film version of Last Temptation of Christ shows Jesus "engaging in sex acts and committing adultery," are sometimes entertaining, but the accretion of drivel it contains can be wearing. A subscription can be yours for $35 a year.
Pat Buchanan
American Cause
6862 Elm Street
McLean, VA 22101
703/827-9200
The indomitable Pat Buchanan, right-wing columnist and television commentator, scourge of the 1992 Republican convention, announced the formation of American Cause in the spring of 1994. The organization evolved out of the 1992 Buchanan for President apparatus and is clearly meant to be a support system for the next Buchanan for President campaign. The kickoff event for American Cause, held in Washington in April 1994, was a two-day conference called "Winning the Culture War," which Buchanan proclaimed "the Boston Tea party of the cultural revolution." Whatever else it may have been, the event was a bigoted revel designed to enhance Buchanan's stature in the eyes of his fans and allies. Speakers included professional homophobes Lon Mabon of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and Will Perkins of Colorado for Family Values; "traditional values" advocate Michael Medved; Dan Quayle's vice presidential chief of staff William Kristol; home schooling proponent Mary Kay Clark, who described the National Education Association as "the training camp of the enemy of the family;" and Ezola Foster, representing Black Americans for Family Values, who referred to public schools as "socialist training camps." The emphasis was on curbing freedom of expression in the name of "taking back the culture" for the reactionary right. As the 1996 Presidential campaign heats up, American Cause will become more visible. Write for information.
Dr. James C. Dobson
President
Focus on the Family
P.O. Box 35500
Colorado Springs, CO 80935
719/531-3400
Focus on the Family (FOF) is called "perhaps the largest and most dangerous censorship group today" in Dave Marsh's book 50 Ways to Fight Censorship. Dobson is a Christian fundamentalist family counselor who promotes "traditional values." In his best-known book, Dare to Discipline, Dobson advocates beating children with switches, beginning at the age of 18 months. In 1985-86 he served on the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (the Meese Commission). He claims to have extracted a confession from mass murderer Ted Bundy saying that porn made him do it. Dobson actively opposes blasphemy, the teaching of evolution, and the "homosexual agenda." In 1991, FOF relocated its 700-employee national headquarters from Pomona, California to Colorado Springs, in time to promote and help pass Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2. The organization is active throughout the country, operating through such loose affiliates as the Massachusetts Family Institute, and disseminating propaganda through its syndicated radio shows and more than a dozen periodicals. Ask for a complimentary copy of the slick monthly Focus on the Family magazine.
William A. Donohue
Executive Director
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
1011 First Avenue
New York, NY 10022
212/371-3191
A right-wing group denounced by many mainstream Catholics, the militantly homophobic, anti-choice, pro-censorship Catholic League has links to organizations ranging from the Heritage Foundation to Operation Rescue. In 1985, the League spearheaded efforts to ban Jean-Luc Godard's film Hail Mary nationwide. Three years later, they joined Donald Wildmon and others in attacking Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. In 1990, the Massachusetts chapter (then led by Heritage Foundation alumnus and former Pilot editor Philip Lawler) tried to have the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and other artists banned in Boston. In 1995, the League began waging a campaign against the Disney organization after Miramax, a Disney subsidiary, acquired distribution rights to the acclaimed British film Priest. William A. Donohue, an NYU-educated sociologist formerly attached to the Heritage foundation, succeeded John Puthenveetil as head of the organization in 1992. Membership is $25 and includes a subscription to the national newsletter, produced in Milwaukee.
Rev. Jerry Falwell
Liberty Alliance
P.O. Box 190
Forest, VA 24551
804/534-8502
"I just can't stay on the sidelines any longer!" Falwell, host of the "Old Time Gospel Hour" and founder of Liberty University, emerged from temporary retirement in 1991, announcing that he might reactivate the Moral Majority, the now-defunct organization that first brought him fame outside the Bible Belt. While this threat has failed to materialize, he has put together a relatively small-scale operation called Liberty Alliance. Falwell remains a visible presence, continuing to crank out inspirational books, anti-gay hate videos, and other fundraising paraphernalia. His greatest recent hit is the video Clinton Chronicles, which accuses President Clinton of skullduggery of preternatural proportions. At $44.95, which includes membership in Liberty Alliance, the Clinton video is no bargain. Ask to be placed on the Liberty Alliance mailing list.
Edwin Feulner
President
The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Avenue NE
Washington DC 20002-4999
202/546-4400
According to National Review editor William A. Rusher, "If any conservative organization deserves pride of place, surely it is the Heritage Foundation. Launched in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, Joseph Coors, and Edwin Feulner, it set out to provide the conservative movement with an aggressive and competent think tank that would provide the sort of policy guidance... that such organizations as the Brookings Institution had long furnished for liberals." The thinking that occurs at the Heritage Foundation involves finding a saleable rationale for preconceived right-wing positions. Its resources helped engineer the success of Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. The Heritage Foundation issues "backgrounder" reports that give a stamp of credibility to misinformation and errors of fact; Backgrounder No. 803, its January 1991 report on the NEA, was especially influential. Send $18 for a subscription to Policy Review, the Heritage Foundation quarterly, or ask to be placed on the mailing list.
Karen Jo Gounaud
Family Friendly Libraries
7597 Whisperwood Court
Springfield, VA 22153
Phone and FAX 703/440-9419
Church FAX: 703/425-0205
Though Family Friendly Libraries (FFL) publicly portrays its mission as broadly altruistic and concerned with all aspects of children's education and development, its motivating force and unifying obsession is the fear that public libraries are a vehicle for homosexual indoctrination. Now in its infancy as a national organization, FFL grew out of battles in Fairfax County, Virginia over free distribution of the Washington Blade, a D.C. gay weekly, and the presence of "pro-homosexual" literature in local libraries. During this struggle, which began in about 1992, Karen Jo Gounaud rose quickly to prominence as a fierce and tenacious opponent of the so-called gay agenda. The wife of a retired Air Force officer and mother of two grown children, Gounaud is an evangelical Christian who holds a degree in education from the University of Nebraska. It was she who mobilized Christian parents of Fairfax county in an effort to end the availability of the Blade in the lobbies of branch libraries; led a drive to drop or sequester books she considers harmful to children; and pressured the Fairfax library system into spending a chunk of its budget on obscure and in some cases self-published books with titles like Steps Out of Homosexuality and You Don't Have to Be Gay. Her influence, long felt throughout northern Virginia, is beginning to have national impact. Her statements on the evils of spending taxpayers' money on "the type of books people don't want" bear depressing similarities to pronouncements that have badly eroded public support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her campaign to demonize the American Library Association is beginning to see results, with some local library systems rewriting the Library Bill of Rights to eliminate all provisions that condemn censorship and uphold freedom of expression. While much of Gounaud's dogma can be traced to Focus on the Family and the rabidly homophobic Family Research Council, she has received major tactical and (we think) financial support from the Christian Coalition. The event that launched Family Friendly Libraries as a national entity was a conference held in Cincinnati on October 21, 1995 at the invitation of Phil Burress, founder of the militantly anti-gay, pro-censorship Citizens for Community Values (CCV), the Christian Coalition's Cincinnati affiliate. A newsletter is promised; write for literature.
Dr. Robert Grant
American Freedom Coalition
800 K Street NW
Suite 830
Washington DC 20001
202/371-0303
The American Freedom Coalition began in 1987 with a merger of Robert Grant's fundamentalist organization Christian Voice and the American Constitution Committee of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, with the Moon conglomerate providing the initial funding. Its first activity, orchestrated by direct-mail expert Richard Viguerie, was a massive fundraising effort for the Nicaraguan contras and Oliver North. The AFC has set up field offices around the country and regularly comments on US foreign and domestic policy. During the Gulf War, the AFC organized patriotic pro-war rallies nationwide. Local cells of the AFC have become increasingly shrill in their campaigns against abortion, gay rights, and "weird art." A minimal donation of $15 provides a 6-month membership, including a subscription to the American Freedom Journal.
Dr. Jay H. Grimstead
President
Coalition on Revival
P.O. Box A
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
408/253-8852
FAX 408/253-8825
Jay Grimstead, a Christian counselor educated at Fuller Theological Seminary, founded the Coalition on Revival (COR) in 1984 as a non-profit front for fundamentalist political activism. The stated mission of COR is "To affect with the Biblical message of reality, and justice, and truth, law, government, economics, education, obedience, science, the arts, and general culture." COR Steering Committee members must take an oath promising to work toward a Christian America and to live by Biblical precepts until death. The COR magazine, Crosswinds, is published twice a year; a subscription costs $25. The significance of this organization is that it brings the more mainstream elements of the Christian right in contact with the lunatic fringe. However, the influence of Christian Reconstructionist extremists is prevalent enough to have caused such former Steering Committee members as Donald Wildmon and Tim and Beverly LaHaye to disassociate themselves from COR. The Institute for First Amendment studies notes that "Gary DeMar, a leading Christian Reconstructionist author and lecturer, is a member of COR's Steering Committee and the executive committee of Crosswinds magazine. Reconstructionists advocate, among other things, the death penalty for abortionists and practicing homosexuals. While they believe and teach this, they often try to obscure this when speaking to general audiences. When questioned about this, Gary DeMar said, `The Bible doesn't say that homosexuals should be executed. What it says is this: If two men lie together like a man and woman lie together, they are to be put to death.'"
David Horowitz
Center for the Study of Popular Culture
12400 Ventura Boulevard
Suite 304
Studio City, CA 91604
916/265-9306
David Horowitz, a lapsed leftist and former speechwriter for Senator Bob Dole (R.-Kansas), and his Cochair Peter Collier head two interrelated liberal-bashing organizations, the Committee on Media Integrity (COMINT), and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. COMINT spearheaded recent attacks against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; CSPC focuses on "political correctness" and publishes a newsletter, Heterodoxy, full of mean-spirited rant about blacks, feminists, and homosexuals. Subscriptions to Heterodoxy or COMINT's Journal cost $25.
Dee Jepson
President
Enough is Enough!
P.O. Box 888
Fairfax, VA 22030
-or-
P.O. Box 30117
Santa Ana, CA 92705
(VA) 703/278-8343
(CA) 714/435-9056
"Enough is Enough! is a project which serves women and men from diverse backgrounds and perspectives who want to rid our social environment of abusive child pornography and hardcore/illegal pornography. Enough is Enough! provides information and action initiatives and offers materials which can be used in the following ways: individually, together with friends, neighbors, and associates; in existing coalitions and/or organizations; in developing new local task forces." This pro-censorship lobby, which has input from both Women Against Pornography and the Christian right (but mostly the Christian right), was founded by Sarah Blanken in 1992. The organization tries to give the impression that its agenda spans the political spectrum, even citing Hillary Rodham Clinton as a supporter, but its propaganda is shot through with the rhetoric of theocratic conservatives. Dee Jepson, its president, also serves as Chairman of the Board of Regents of Pat Robertson's Regent University, and as Cochair of Washington for Jesus. In addition, she is a former member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition on Revival. Basic membership in Enough is Enough! costs $25 and includes a subscription to a monthly newsletter filled with disinformation.
Beverly LaHaye
President
Concerned Women for America
370 L'Enfant Promenade
Suite 800
Washington DC 20024
202/488-7000
"Protecting the rights of the family through prayer and action." Beverly LaHaye is the wife of Rev. Tim LaHaye of San Diego's Scott Memorial Baptist Church, former head of the Moral Majority and founder of the American Coalition for Traditional Values. Both are alumni of Bob Jones University. Together they have written such Christian bestsellers as The Act of Marriage and, most recently, A Nation without a Conscience. CWA dispenses "Action Kits to Help You Fight the Gay Lobby," and promotes such sentiments as "[Since] the ranks of the homosexual lobby have been decimated by AIDS... now is the optimum time to resist, and even roll back, `Gay-Rights' laws." A $15.00 membership fee includes a subscription to the CWA newsletter, Family Voice. Men and organizations may join.
Catharine MacKinnon
University of Michigan School of Law
625 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
313/747-3595
Since 1983 MacKinnon has worked with radical feminist Andrea Dworkin drafting and defending anti-pornography legislation in the US, Canada, and abroad. In the US so far her efforts have been defeated by vetoes, legislative and voter rejection, and legal rulings on First Amendment grounds. In 1986 the Indianapolis version of her "Victims of Pornography" act was held unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. However, her definition of pornography as the "sexually explicit subordination of women" was recently accepted by the Supreme Court of Canada and continues to gain ground in the US (Among the many gay, lesbian, and feminist works seized by Canadian customs officials applying this expanded definition of porn were two books by Andrea Dworkin.} Confident that the current right-wing US Supreme Court will rule in her favor, she has supported efforts to reactivate her bill. Although MacKinnon works closely with the right, she is especially dangerous because of her ability to sell her agenda to the left as well. An avowed Marxist, Mackinnon is the author of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. In her lurid hundred-page Dworkinesque polemic Only Words, which perpetuates myths about "snuff" films and rape pornography, she equates speech with action and makes statements like: "Pornography does not simply express or interpret experience; it substitutes for it. Beyond bringing a message from reality, it stands in for reality; it is existentially being there." MacKinnon's efforts to eradicate material she dislikes belong to reality in their entirety, and have included such escapades as her 1992 involvement in the shutdown of an installation by artist Carol Jacobsen at the University of Michigan.
Martin Mawyer
President
Christian Action Network
POB 606
Forest, VA 24551
804/385-5156
Martin Mawyer, a longtime associate of Jerry Falwell, first rose to prominence on the Christian right as editor of the Moral Majority Report. After the Moral Majority disbanded, Mawyer founded the Christian Action Network (CAN) to fight "radical feminists and militant homosexual groups," to foil the alleged plot to "put homosexual textbooks into every school by the year 1999," to fend off "atheist and amoral secular forces," to promote censorship, and to seek the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA became Mawyer's special cause, and by 1993, when other religious-right organizations had at least temporarily shifted their attention away from the arts, the Christian Action Network had almost made art-bashing a full-time career. Among Mawyer's exploits was a guerilla exhibit, set up in and quickly ordered out of a cloakroom in the U.S. Capitol, intended to document allegedly obscene and blasphemous art created with NEA funds. It was Mawyer who sounded the alarm about the "Abject Art" show at New York's Whitney Museum, and who made performance artist Ron Athey's 1994 Minneapolis appearance (indirectly supported with about $150 from a grant to the Walker Art Center) a cause celebre. Mawyer's 70,000-piece mailing of a "Declaration of War" against the NEA over the Athey incident helped move Congress to slash the agency's budget, and paved the way for the anti-art rhetorical frenzies of the 104th Congress. While Mawyer's overtly political activities have threatened CAN's non-profit status and have precipitated an investigation by the Federal Election Commission, Mawyer is now on a roll, and has the satisfaction of knowing he has seriously damaged, if not doomed, the NEA. To receive examples of Mawyer's hilariously strident but effective propaganda, ask to be placed on his mailing list. A newsletter, Family Alert, is available for a donation.
Oliver L. North
President
Freedom Alliance
POB 96700
Washington, DC 20090
202/833-2254
Freedom Alliance, which emerged in 1990 from fundraising efforts by and for Iran/Contra figure Oliver North, is a nonprofit "educational" foundation designed to promote extreme conservative views. One of its more noteworthy efforts, undertaken with the aid of Florida attorney Jack Thompson , has been to urge police associations across the nation to take legal action against Time Warner, Ice-T, NWA, and rap music in general. Freedom Alliance produces its own radio show, Freedom Report. Its newsletter, Free American, states: "Nothing in Free American is to be construed as... an attempt to influence elections or the passage of legislation before Congress." Freedom Alliance nakedly paved the way, however, for North's strong though unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1994. In his new career as radio talk-show host, North continues to expand his influence and promote his patriotic fundraising schemes. Membership in Freedom Alliance costs $25.
Robert Peters
President
Morality in Media
475 Riverside Drive
New York NY 10025
212/870-3222
From The Pilot, weekly publication of the Archdiocese of Boston: "Morality in Media, founded in 1962 by Jesuit Father Morton Hill, works to stop illegal trafficking in pornography by urging enforcement of obscenity laws." Morality in Media's idea of "pornography" includes Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs, MTV, and a wide range of books, films, videos, songs and works of art. MIM's annual visibility action, the "White Ribbons Against Pornography" campaign held each fall, has enjoyed increasing success. Typical of this organization's leadership is M. Rita Burke, head of the Massachusetts chapter, who in a 1992 talk-show appearance exclaimed repeatedly, "We are a Christian nation!"
Randy T. Phillips
President
Promise Keepers
P.O. Box 18376
Boulder, CO 80308
303/421-2800
FAX 303/421-2918
"Promise Keepers (PK) is a Christ-centered ministry dedicated to uniting men through vital relationships to become godly influences in their world.... Promise Keepers believe God wants us to be a spark in His hand to ignite a nationwide movement calling men to reconciliation, discipleship, and godliness." The organization develops material to be learned and discussed in small Bible-study groups, then brings those groups together in national gatherings, regional convocations, and "leadership conferences." One of the most rapidly growing movements on the religious right, Promise Keepers was founded in 1990 by Bill McCartney, head football coach at the University of Colorado, after he came under fire for homophobic diatribes. The 1990 inaugural gathering, held in Boulder, attracted 72 men. Last year's PK rallies drew over 230,000. In 1996, this overwhelmingly white organization hopes to bring a million men together in Washington, DC. PK tapes and literature, such as Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper by Tony Evans, condemn homosexuality, stress male primacy in the home, blame most of the ills of society on "the feminization of men," and offer strategies for silencing the opposition. Gatherings attract a broad range of reactionary Christian fundamentalists, including some extremists. Information booths at PK events are smorgasbords of Christian-right propaganda, and tend to include hate literature from defrocked "psychologist" Paul Cameron and radical Christian Reconstructionist sources. From April through October 1995, a series of two-day Promise Keeper "Wake Up Calls" filled sports arenas across the country. Ask to be placed on the PK mailing list.
Thomas Radecki
National Coalition on Television Violence
POB 2157
Champaign, IL 61825
217/384-1920 (disconnected)
According to 50 Ways to Fight Censorship, NCTV "represents the height of censorship pseudoscience...[its] real agenda is to define a spurious category-`violence'-which is always and inevitably a bad thing... to which free speech doesn't apply." A psychologist and a self-proclaimed "devout non-believer," Radecki works with his born-again wife and has served on the board of Tipper Gore's PMRC. The Radeckis support all grass-roots efforts to suppress NC-17 films, which he labels "extremely harmful to adults." Believing the MPAA too lax, they have been campaigning to establish local movie-rating boards across the country, even creating a second purported organization, the National Association of Ratings Boards, for that purpose. Since Radecki was stripped of his license to practice psychology following allegations of misconduct with a patient, the future of NCTV is in doubt. This organization may now, in fact, be defunct.
Ralph Reed
Executive Director
Christian Coalition
829 Greenbrier Circle
Suite 202
Chesapeake, VA 23320
804/424-2630
804/424-7777 ("700 Club")
804/420-0700 (Prayer Line)
"It's happening! Christian Coalition is building a grass-roots organization that will be the strongest political force in America by the end of this decade!" At the rate this organization is growing, such claims may not be hyperbolic. The Christian Coalition has taken on a king-making role in Republican politics, and controls the Republican Party in at least 18 states. It grooms and supports "stealth candidates" for public offices ranging from local school boards to the U.S. Senate, and was a key player in the conservative Republican anschluss of 1994. This group is a project of Rev. Pat Robertson, Yale-educated lawyer, sometime presidential candidate, founder of the fundamentalist Regent University, host of TV's "700 Club," and media czar. Offshoots of this obsessively homophobic organization have been leading anti-gay, pro-censorship initiatives in Oregon, Colorado and elsewhere across the country, and lend support and encouragement nationwide to anti-abortion fanatics. A token donation may secure you a lifetime of bigoted fundraising solicitations, as well as a subscription to Christian American.
Christopher Ruddy
Editor-in-Chief
The New York Guardian
316 Great Neck Road
Great Neck NY 10021
-or-
POB 175
New Hyde Park, NY 11040
718/229-8209
FAX: 718/229-8134
The work of predominantly Catholic pro-life zealots who helped oust Mario Cuomo, this monthly newspaper has been in existence since June 1991. Since then it has gained notoriety through attacks on the NEA that have exceeded those of Jesse Helms in vehemence and inaccuracy. Complimentary copies are sent to the White House, every member of Congress, every member of the New York Legislature, and every major talk show host across the country. Increasingly, this publication is cited as a source. Much of what is reported here seems to have been invented out of whole cloth; some information is obtained fraudulently by reporters who misidentify themselves; much is reprinted from other publications and robbed of context. A subscription may be obtained by mailing $20 to the New Hyde Park address.
Phyllis Schlafly
President
Eagle Forum
Box 618
Alton, IL 62002
618/462-5415
"Leading the pro-family movement to victories since 1972." Basic membership includes a subscription to The Phyllis Schlafly Report and costs $15.00. Mrs. Schlafly, whose husband Fred used to head the World Anti-Communist League, is the person considered most responsible for the defeat of the ERA. Her book A Choice Not an Echo, published in 1964 to support the presidential aspirations of Barry Goldwater, is one of the seminal texts of contemporary American conservative politics.
Rev. Louis Sheldon
Chairman
Traditional Values Coalition
100 South Anaheim Boulevard
Suite 320
Anaheim, CA 92805
714/520-0300
From People for the American Way: "The Coalition opposes gay rights, reproductive freedom, the teaching of evolution... and sex education that does not stress abstinence to the exclusion of information on birth control and disease prevention. It was recently active in battles over constitutional amendments outlawing civil rights protections for gays and lesbians... [and] is now organizing anti-gay ballot initiatives in California and elsewhere." Testifying in 1991 against the National Endowment for the Arts, founder Lou Sheldon said, "The elitist avant-garde arts community uses the NEA to advertise and disseminate their political beliefs. The NEA then uses our scarce tax dollars to fund works which are intended to shock Americans into an acceptance of dysfunctional behavioral lifestyles and to destroy the family." In 1993, the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) produced Gay Rights, Special Rights, one of the more influential anti-gay hate videos. After the Republican electoral victories of 1994, TVC established a Washington office. Late in 1995, Congressional hearings held at Sheldon's behest propagandized against alleged gay influences in public schools. Send for additional information.
Dr. Robert L. Simonds
President
Citizens for Excellence in Education
P.O. Box 3200
Costa Mesa, CA 92628
714/546-5931
People for the American Way has accurately described Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE) as "easily the most destructive censorship organization active in the schools today." CEE is the activist arm of a second Robert Simonds organization, the National Association of Christian Educators. Simonds founded CEE in 1983 to implement "our Lord's plans to bring public education back under the control of the Christian community" and to stamp out "the atheist dominated ideology of secular humanism." In 1985, Simonds wrote: "There are 15,700 school districts in America. When we get an active Christian parents committee (CEE) in operation in all districts, we can take complete control of all local school boards." In 1992, CEE claimed to have 120,000 members organized in 925 chapters in all 50 states. CEE has supposedly helped elect 1,965 candidates to school boards nationwide since 1989. It gives wide distribution to political action kits, visual aids, and books such as How to Elect Christians to Public Office ("America is now groaning! Atheistic secular humanist's [sic] should be removed from office and Christians should be elected. We can all then rejoice continually as our children and our nation will be more safe."). CEE has also been particularly zealous in efforts to purge schools and libraries of curricula and books it finds offensive-characterizing most traditional fairy tales, for example, as "occult" and "demonic." CEE's portrayal of the popular "Impressions" reading series ("a massive occultic program with over 822 stories on violence, death, witchcraft, magic, animism, mutilation, child abuse, fear and horror") has won surprisingly widespread support. To receive CEE's Education Newsline and strident subliterate pleas for more money, send a minimal contribution.
Bruce Taylor
President and Chief Counsel
National Law Center for Children and Families
4103 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 410
Fairfax, VA 22030-4105
703/691-4626
FAX 703/691-4669
West Coast Office:
Janet M. LaRue
Senior Attorney
National Law Cnter for Children and Families
1221 East Dyer Road, Suite 225
Santa Ana, CA 92705
714/435-9090
FAX 714/435-0523
The National Law Center for Children and Families (NLC) describes itself as "a law enforcement assistance and public education center with a staff of attorneys who provide legal advice, assistance, and reference materials to state and federal prosecutors, police investigators, and legislators," as well as "a specialized resource to those who enforce state and federal obscenity and child exploitation laws" and a "training and information clearinghouse on the specialized issues involved in pornography and First Amendment related cases." Bruce Taylor, the guiding light of this insidious organization, is a former Ohio prosecutor whose obscenity cases have numbered in the hundreds. He has served as Senior Trial Attorney for the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (set up in the wake of the notorious Meese Commission), and for a decade acted as General Counsel to Citizens for Decency Through Law (CDL), the Cincinnati-based group of smut vigilantes founded by Charles H. Keating, who is now serving a prison sentence for various felonies committed in the course of his involvement in the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. (CDL, which was partly responsible for the 1990 indictment of Dennis Barrie, director of Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center, on Mapplethorpe-related obscenity charges, has been known by various names at various times, beginning its career in 1957 as Citizens for Decent Literature and evolving into the National Coalition Against Pornography before assuming its present designation as the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families.) Taylor maintains close ties to both the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, whose Vice President Rick Schatz serves on the NLC's Board of Directors, and to the Justice Department. Until recently the NLC shared a suite of offices in Fairfax, Virginia with the erstwhile Keating organization and Dee Jepson's Enough Is Enough. All three groups are now tightly focused on cyberspace indecency. Taylor proudly claims to have been one of the principal architects of Senator James Exon's egregious Communications Decency Act, and to have drafted "significant portions" of its text. He is also believed to have assembled Exon's notorious "Blue Book" of porn samples used to frighten members of Congress into supporting draconian measures to censor online communications. The NLC, a small 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit "educational" organization that strives to maintain an august, quasi-governmental image, is a wellspring of sometimes loony, frequently destructive misinformation about international pedophile networks, vast porn conspiracies, the nature and purpose of pornography, and the social cost of smut. Taylor's impeccable connections among law enforcement officials, the theocratic right, and the anti-porn left, coupled with his almost Messianic sense of mission, make the NLC one of the most dangerous pro-censorship groups in operation today.
Jack Thompson
POB 73
Coral Gables, FL 33114
305/666-4366
A Christian fundamentalist attorney retained by Oliver North's Freedom Alliance, Thompson began his operation as a one-person crusade. His chief targets are homosexuality, African American culture, and rap music. He is best known for having precipitated the prosecution of 2 Live Crew in Broward County, Florida, and for waging an international campaign against the rap group NWA. In the summer and fall of 1992, he led the charge against Time Warner and Ice-T. When the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression defended the Boston-based rap group Almighty RSO against attacks by pro-censorship forces abetted by Freedom Alliance, Thompson fired off faxes describing the BCFE as a group of "left-wing extremists."
Paul Weyrich
President
Free Congress Foundation
717 Second Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
202/546-3000
In 1974, a year after Paul Weyrich had founded the Heritage Foundation with seed money from Colorado brewer Joseph Coors, he launched the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC) with additional backing from the Coors fortune. (The friendship between Coors and Weyrich had begun when Weyrich was an aide to conservative Senator Gordon Allot of Colorado.) The purpose of the CSFC was to influence the electoral process through fundraising schemes, circulation of propaganda, recruitment of conservative candidates, and grassroots organizing. Out of the CSFC grew the Free Congress Foundation, which has branched out into lobbying for conservative judicial appointments, communications schemes like "National Empowerment Television," and efforts to defeat gay rights initiatives. Weyrich, a member of the extreme Catholic right and a professed admirer of the pro-Nazi demagogue Father Coughlin, has founded or cofounded numerous right-wing organizations, including the Moral Majority. The Weyrich juggernaut played a decisive role in the ascendancy of Newt Gingrich and the right-wing Republicans of the 104th Congress. Among its top ten "Censored News Stories of 1994," Project Censored cites the press's lack of coverage of the political machinations of Weyrich's Council for National Policy, a secretive high-level strategy-formulating organization whose membership is a Who's Who of the far right. Admitting that he and his colleagues are not conservatives in the traditional sense, he has described the New Right as "radicals who want to change the existing power structure." Weyrich was one of the earliest commentators to advance the idea that the United States is engulfed in a cultural civil war. "It may not be with bullets, and it may not be with rockets and missiles, but it is a war, nonetheless. It is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war." Write for information, or visit Town Hall, the almost encyclopedic system of World Wide Web pages the Heritage Foundation unveiled in 1995.
John Whitehead, Esq.
President
Rutherford Institute
P.O. Box 7482
Charlottesville, VA 22906
804/978-3888
A resource center formed in 1982 to provide legal aid to right-wing causes, the Rutherford Institute has ties to the radical fringes of Christian fundamentalism. R.J. Rushdoony of Chalcedon, a West Coast Christian think tank in which the Christian Reconstructionist Movement was born thirty years ago, cofounded the organization and has helped steer it toward a key role in the growing attack on public schools. The Rutherford Institute has been especially active and often successful in trying to stop condom distribution in public schools, as well as sex education, AIDS prevention programs, and programs that teach tolerance. Send $25 for a subscription to the monthly Rutherford Journal.
Dr. Donald Wildmon
President
American Family Association
P.O. Drawer 2440
Tupelo, MS 38803
601/844-5036
"A Christian organization promoting the Biblical ethic of decency in American society with primary emphasis on TV and other media." The organization, which grew out of Donald Wildmon's National Federation for Decency and Christian Leaders for Responsible Television (CLEAR-TV), adopted the name American Family Association in 1987, as it sought to broaden its agenda. Wildmon, more than any other individual, precipitated the current culture war-first with his campaign against the film Last Temptation of Christ, then with his million-piece mailing on Andres Serrano's photograph "Piss Christ." Membership in the AFA, including a subscription to the AFA Journal, costs $15.00. The AFA Journal, which claims a circulation of over 425,000, can always be counted on to provide such gems as the suggestion that "Rocky and Bullwinkle" teaches children that bestiality is acceptable. Currently Wildmon is one of the cochairs of Pat Buchanan's Presidential campaign.
Barbara Wyatt
Executive Director
Parents Music Resource Center
1500 Arlington Boulevard
Arlington VA 22209
703/527-9466
Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was founded by Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Albert Gore and author of the astonishingly dimwitted Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. She became an activist in 1984, after listening to Prince's Purple Rain soundtrack album, which she had bought for her 11-year-old daughter. Mrs. Gore has officially resigned from PMRC but continues to support its agenda. Until recently the core of the PMRC, which remains heavily influenced by the Christian evangelical attempt to demonize rock music, comprised about 15 Washington wives, most notably cofounder Susan Baker, wife of the former Secretary of State. Mrs. Baker also sits on the board of James Dobson's Focus on the Family. PMRC's most significant achievement has been to help create "Parental Advisory" labels which, though unsystematic, unreliable, and purely voluntary, have been used as a guide to censorship by state and local governments. Barbara Wyatt, the former Reagan Administration official who has headed the organization since December 1994, has tried to give PMRC a hipper and more diversified image. One of Wyatt's projects has been a telephone service (1-900-288-PMRC) for parents who want to keep abreast of lascivious and Satanic song lyrics by paying $1.75 per minute to hear them read in a monotone by office volunteer David Chamberlin. (He just reads the good parts.) Wyatt, who advocates more and tougher labeling, takes credit for bringing William Bennett, whose wife is on PMRC's board, together with C. Delores Tucker in order to stamp out evil rap.
Written and compiled by James D'Entremont. Revised version issued March 1, 1996. As this document continues to evolve, we welcome your questions, comments, and corrections. For more information send email to kip@world.std.com