Posted on 07/27/2016 5:14:26 PM PDT by Fedora
Leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee show efforts to arrange a meeting with a key NGO working to end religious liberty protections.
The emails were among thousands that surfaced on the website WikiLeaks July 22. The leak included emails to and from several DNC lead staffers during the period from January 2015 to May 25, 2016.
Two May 16 emails from DNC lead staffers, titled “Who do you want at the religious exemption research meeting?”, discuss a presentation from the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBT advocacy group which has challenged religious freedom protections as harmful.
The emails follow up on an April 11 email from Mike Gehrke, vice president of the Benenson Strategy Group consulting firm, to DNC communications director Luis Miranda and Mark Paustenbach, the DNC’s deputy communications director and national press secretary.
Gehrke said his colleague Amy Levin has been working with the Movement Advancement Project “over the past couple years” to develop “messaging and creative executions around religious exemptions laws” such as Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.
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Miranda responded April 11: “Hi Mike, that sounds interesting and helpful.” He copied DNC press assistant Rachel Palermo “to help coordinate and include others from our political and community engagement teams.”
The Movement Advancement Project plays a role in a multi-million dollar effort to counter religious freedom protections. The project has close links with Tim Gill, a wealthy Colorado-based businessman who for decades has organized and funded a politically savvy LGBT activism campaign through his Gill Foundation.
CNA research into foundation grant listing and tax forms has found a massive effort using at least $5 million in strategic spending to target religious freedom protections. The funding comes from several influential foundations including the Gill Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Arcus Foundation.
The Movement Advancement Project has received specific grants targeting religious exemptions. In 2014, the Arcus Foundation gave $100,000 to the Gill Foundation to support the project’s “research and messaging on religious exemptions.” The Evelyn & Walter Hass Haas Jr. Fund made $100,000 grant to the Gill Foundation in 2014 to support the project’s work, including “research to develop messaging around gay rights and ‘religious liberty’ issues.”
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The Movement Advancement Project has published several editions of its messaging guidance, which lists as partners both Benenson Strategy Group and the Center for American Progress. The guide’s 2016 edition aims to build “effective conversations” about “harmful” religious exemptions that it says undermine public safety, legal protections for people who identify as LGBT, and women’s “reproductive freedom.”
Other leaked e-mails from the DNC mention Tim Gill and Jon Stryker, the Arcus Foundation founder and wealthy heir. Their names are mentioned in the context of invitations to the White House, donor outreach, and using LGBT advocacy to engage millennial voters.
The Movement Advancement Project has organized strategy to advance LGBT advocacy within U.S. religious denominations, seminaries, clergy coalitions and media “to counter religious opposition,” the Gill Foundation’s 2006 annual report said.
The Gill Foundation and the Arcus Foundation are also backers of groups like Catholics United. The Arcus Foundation has funded Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholic dissenting groups including Call to Action, Dignity USA, and New Ways Ministry. Some funding aimed to shift the narrative on LGBT issues at the Catholic Church’s Synod on the Family.
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Annie Laurie Gaylor and her, ‘Freedom From Religion’ ‘charitable fund’ is really slipping!
I expected HER e-mails to be part of this, the God-hating, Socialist Hag!
*SPIT*
btt
Nice catch, amigo.
But Islam is OK, amirite?
Wikileaks just released DNC Voicemails..LOL this is gonna be FUN
Then there’s that other jerk who is trying to get ANYTHIING Christian out of the armed forces. Mikey Wienstein, I think it is.
He and I have gone at it online.
Voicemails? :) Nice—those can be converted into YouTube videos easily. . .
Geez filed under things I could never have foreseen.../s
Seems the DemoRats have gone full on Satan...
Hell, and I use that term advisedly, they probably meet with Lucifer every day, too. Where’s the surprise in this one?
>>But Islam is OK, amirite?
Only as long as its useful...
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