Alliance Defense Fund

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is an American conservative Christian nonprofit organization with the stated goal of defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation. ADF was founded in 1994 by Bill Bright, Larry Burkett, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy (founder, Coral Ridge Ministries), Marlin Maddoux (president, International Christian Media), and Donald Wildmon, along with the leadership of over thirty other conservative Christian organizations. ADF supports the inclusion of invocations at public meetings and the use of religious displays (such as crosses and other religious monuments) on public lands and in public buildings. The ADF opposes abortion, and believes that healthcare workers have a right to decline participation in the performance of abortions and other practices an individual health worker finds morally objectionable. ADF opposes same-sex marriage and civil unions, as well as adoption by same-sex couples based on their belief that children are best raised by a married mother and father. ADF believe parents should be able to opt their children out of sex education in schools that run counter to a family's religious beliefs. ADF states that it has had various roles of significance in thirty-three wins before the United States Supreme Court, including such cases as Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. ADF is representing a litigant in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.