With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures.
But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say.
Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, all in the name of Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center has termed it an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” that has extended its tentacles into nearly every area of the culture wars.
In the process, it has won the ear of some of the most influential people in the US, and become “a danger to every American who values their freedoms”, according to Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
Through “model legislation” and lawsuits filed across the country, ADF aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the US.
Under the Trump administration, the group found its way into the highest echelons of power, advising Jeff Sessions, the then attorney general, before he announced sweeping guidance to protect “religious liberty” which chipped away at LGBTQ+ protections.
The organization counts among its sometime associates Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court justice who the Washington Post reported spoke five times at an ADF training program established to push a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law”.
ADF is engaged in “a very strong campaign to put a certain type of religious view at the center of American life”, said Rabia Muqaddam, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“[The ADF campaign] extends to abortion, it extends to LGBTQ folks, to immigration, to what kind of religion we think is America, what kind of people we think are American,” Muqaddam said.
“It’s as dramatic as that. I think we are in a fight to preserve democracy and preserve America as a place where we do tolerate and encourage and empower everyone.”
ADF was founded in 1994 by a group of “leaders in the Christian community”, according to its website. Among those leaders was James Dobson, the founder of the anti-LGBTQ+ Focus on the Family organization who has said the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a “judgment” from God because of declining church numbers.
Its leaders remain involved in niche interpretations of Christianity. Kristen Waggoner, the ADF chief executive, also serves as legal counsel to Assemblies of God, a church which encourages worshippers to speak in tongues and believes in “divine healing” – the power of prayer – as a medical tool.
Over the past two decades, ADF has been a main driver in dozens of pieces of rightwing legislation and lawsuits.
The organization is currently behind the lawsuit 303 Creative, Inc v Elenis, which the supreme court is expected to decide this month, and which could chip away at LGBTQ+ rights. It’s a case that is classic ADF – a seemingly manufactured issue which the group has managed to chase all the way through the American legal system.
The plaintiff, 303 Creative, is a website design company. 303 Creative has never made wedding websites, but its owner, Lorie Smith, claims her first amendment rights are being impinged because, if she were to start making wedding websites, she would not want to make them for same-sex couples – which would violate Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.
Another ADF obsession is abortion. It was involved, Muqaddam said, in crafting a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi – which prompted a legal case that found its way to the supreme court – eventually resulting in Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion, being overturned in 2022.
“Alliance Defending Freedom has been instrumental in the dismantling of Roe and the ongoing efforts to eliminate abortion nationwide,” Muqaddam said.
“They enacted a law that they knew was unconstitutional, they enacted it for the purpose of generating case after case after case to push it out to the supreme court until they found a court that was sympathetic to their argument,” Muqaddam said.
She added: “I think that’s exactly what is happening in the LGBTQ context as well. Their goal is to limit individual rights as much as possible.”
The ADF website shows the breadth of its involvement in rightwing culture wars. The organization touts its work opposing abortion, on opposing same-sex marriage and opposing trans rights.
“We advocate for laws and precedents that promote human flourishing by recognizing the important differences between men and women and honoring God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman,” ADF’s website reads.
But Emerson Hodges, a research analyst at the SPLC, said what ADF is really doing is attempting to “undo LGBTQ social and legislative progress”.
“They go under the guise of religious liberty, and religious freedom. What that means, though, is this religious liberty to discriminate and the religious freedom to invalidate LGBTQ individuals,” Hodges said.
Worryingly, there are signs that ADF, and other groups like it, are growing in influence. As Republican politicians and rightwing media fan the flames of an extremist culture war, NBC reported that donations to ADF, which is a registered non-profit, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021.
As it has grown in influence, ADF’s “model legislation” has found its way into state legislatures across the country, as the group attempts to strip away LGBTQ+ rights, and the rights of trans people in particular.
“Just about every anti-LGBT legislation that you’ve seen probably in the past decade was probably copied or paraphrased off of a model legislation built by Alliance Defending Freedom,” Hodges said.
“They provide legal advocacy support, litigation and policy models for government officials.”
An article on ADF’s website states that it is a “biblical truth” that “men and women are physically different”, and the organization has duly worked to prevent trans people taking part in women’s sports.
The group sued a school district in Minnesota in 2016, and in 2021 a judge in Connecticut dismissed an ADF lawsuit which sought to prevent transgender athletes competing in high school sports. The same year, ADF backed a lawsuit brought by a teacher in Virginia who had said he would not use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns because that would amount to “sinning against our God”.
In April, ADF, which did not respond to a Guardian request for comment, filed in Oregon on behalf of a Christian woman who wanted to foster children, but said she would not agree to “respect, accept, and support … the sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression” of a child placed with her, the Statesman Journal reported.
“[ADF’s] obsession with targeting LGBTQ people is unhinged and drastically out of touch with supermajorities of Americans who support LGBTQ people and laws to protect us from discrimination,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of Glaad.
“Everyone should understand the truth: the ADF is simply an anti-LGBTQ group trying to abuse levers of government to push discrimination and keep their warped sense of control.
“They’ve also worked to ban the right to choose, and are in cahoots with other extremist groups to oppress marginalized people. ADF is a danger to every American who values their freedoms – to be ourselves, live freely, and be welcome to contribute and to succeed in every area of society.”
