Opposition to LGBTQ equality has long been both a fundamental value and useful political tool for many U.S. conservative organizations, especially those associated with the Christian Right. Even as visibility and mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ people grows, the Christian Right continues their ongoing “pro-family” campaign, which enforces heterosexuality, champions gender essentialism or “complementarity,” and prioritizes procreation.

While substantial progress has been made in terms of legal rights, political representation, and cultural approval, these advances have not uniformly served all members of the LGBTQ community. Though hailed as a great victory by some, federal marriage equality in the U.S. has done little to alter the day to day lived realities of LGBTQ people affected by economic exploitation, geopolitical turmoil, and other effects of Western imperialism. Additionally, anti-trans rhetoric and campaigning is on the rise, fueled by right-wing fear mongering and pseudoscience and backed by an extensive Christian Right legal and political infrastructure. 

How Russia Revives and Reverses U.S. Cold War Rhetoric

In her commentary, Irina Smolevskaya scrutinizes Putin’s appeal to “traditional family values” as a reversal of U.S. Cold War containment rhetoric appealing to domestic and transnational conservatives alike.

Lessons from Bay Area Radical Abortion Defense

Abortion defenders and activists showed Angela Hume the inherent contradiction in the anti-abortion movement: it purports to protect women while actively harming them. Hume coins the term “violent care” to explain this contradiction and points to…

Host Koki Mendis talks to Heron Greenesmith about the anti-trans organizing and what to expect from the anti-trans movement in the year to come.

Host Koki Mendis and guest Dr. Chrissy Stroop, peel back the layers of Christian dominionism, and explain how this ideology is deeply woven into the fabric of Christian homeschooling. Here, Dr. Stroop recounts her experiences in Christian schools…

Featuring civil rights and gun safety advocate Brandon Wolf, Communications Manager of the Transgender Education Network of Texas Gin Pham, PRA Senior Research Analyst Heron Greenesmith, and organizer Kwyn Townsend Riley. In this briefing, we…

Anti-LGBTQ Organizing 201

Strategy and Implementation It can be difficult to think of responses to common anti-transgender disinformation in the moment. Responding directly to anti-trans talking points may also provide attention and validation to the disinformation,…

From the candidates in 2022 races carrying the mantle of the Far Right to the treatment of anti-LGBTQ persecution as “phobia,” join PRA Research Analysts Ben Lorber, Habiba Farh, and Heron Greenesmith as they name and explore the language and…

The webinar asked the question: “What’s next for the anti-abortion movement in this post-Roe moment?” with a focus on the ongoing anti-comprehensive sex ed movement, its overlap with the antiabortion and anti-trans/anti-lgbtq movements, and,…

Author Q&A with Suzanne Pharr

In Arkansas in 1981, inspired by The Combahee River Collective Statement released in the 1970s, activist Suzanne Pharr founded The Women’s Project, an organization that worked across rural and urban communities to bring about social change.…

Who These are the sectors of the Right setting the cultural context and organizing against LGBTQ people, rights, and equality. Christian Right Christian Right advocacy organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage…

Last Weekend's Vicious Episode in Dallas Wasn't Isolated — It was Part of a Coordinated Far-Right Assault

On Saturday morning in the Dallas “gayborhood” of Cedar Springs, an LGBTQ bar called Mr. Misster hosted a family-friendly “drag queen brunch” advertised with the tongue-in-cheek slogan, “Drag Your Kids to Pride.” The event was …

As Australia’s first Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, perhaps could not help but notice, the events of his first years in office had biblical connotations. “Floods. Fires. Drought. Pandemic. Mouse plague,” Morrison recently quipped to his…

How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

If someone from 1965 were to arrive in a time machine, there’s likely much about our current state of affairs that would shock them. But I cannot imagine anything that would be more confusing than the love affair between the U.S. Right and Russia—…

A January 6th Roundtable Discussion

In a January 6 PRA briefing, panelists convened to situate January 6th in a longer trajectory of ongoing insurrection and answer the questions that are foremost on our minds. What do we do if we keep losing? What are some of the most significant…

Watch Now: A briefing from PRA

Even as we reel from one of the most deadly and destructive years in recent memory for anti-LGBT advocacy, we must start preparing for the next. On December 9, PRA hosted an invaluable conversation about the past year and what we expect to see in…

The Christian Right and anti-trans activists have united behind a single-minded agenda to prevent children from accessing life-saving trans-affirming healthcare and living full, authentic lives. On May 13th, PRA hosted a roundtable discussion with…

An Ohio state legislator may have leaked a new set of anti-trans “principles” endorsed by three major anti-LGBT organizations.

Amid a spate of legislation in early 2021 targeting trans-affirming health care for youth and trans and gender nonconforming athletes, Ohio…

Anti-trans activists and the ramifications of the Bell v. Tavistock decision for transgender youth

A high profile case holding that trans youth cannot obtain care in the United Kingdom will have rippling negative effects around the world. The Court’s

Unmasked: Impacts of Pandemic Policing By Pascal Emmer, Woods Ervin, Tiffany Wang, Derecka Purnell, and Andrea J. Ritchie As of this report’s release in October 2020, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was approaching a quarter-of-a-…

What does the new administration mean for the LGBT community?

Despite running with strong LGBT support, President-elect Biden’s centrist-Right platform is not likely to bring about the needed structural changes that queer movements have been demanding since, well, since the Stonewall Riots. Queer people in the…

Author Q&A with Sarah Posner

For years, Sarah Posner has been one of the most perceptive journalists covering the political activism of U.S. evangelicals and the broader Religious Right. In 2016, she became one of the first reporters to track the rise of the Alt Right, and its…

While the State of Connecticut inches past 40,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the anti-transgender Evangelical right-wing litigation machine presses onward. In mid-May, the anti-LGBT group …

The fight against so-called “gender ideology” has well and truly arrived here in the United States, not only in venues like the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women—a common marketplace for anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion ideology—but in…

The Christian and business Right has been steadily building political, policy and legislative capacity in the states since the 1980s. Since 2016, a Christian Right state legislative campaign called Project Blitz has become part of this …

When Gary Campbell enrolled in Baptist Bible College (now Clarks Summit University) in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, in 2001, he knew he was gay. He was among those students who, in an effort to repress their sexual orientation, choose the…

It’s notable that anti-trans feminists are employing similar racist dog-whistles that have been used by the Right for centuries to create out-sized fear and outrage among their constituents and followers to justify the out-sized time and energy…

A Roundtable Discussion

In the 1980s, the Moral Majority helped usher in an era of politicized Christianity in the United States. The breadth of Christian Right activity since then, from the evangelical Right, to fundamentalist homeschooling, to cross-denominational…

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), founded in 2002 in opposition to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) support for adoption by LGBTQ couples, was cited in one of several articles published by right-wing news outlets in late…

On November 6, Massachusetts voters will decide several ballot measures, including Question 3, which asks voters to overturn public accommodations protections in the Bay State based on gender identity.

On October 21, The New York Times reported receiving information from the White House that details how the Trump Administration proposes to impose a multi-agency re-interpretation of “sex” under several civil rights laws to mean “[t]he sex listed on…

How Christian Persecution Became White Supremacy’s Newest Disguise

On Election Day, White evangelicals turned out in force for Trump, with over 80 percent voting for the Republican ticket. Their game-changing status became undeniably clear, but so did an unsavory truth about their “values voter” identity. For all…

How the “War on Trafficking” Was Made to Unite the Left and Right

The prevailing narrative about “human trafficking” was shaped by a relatively small group of political influencers on the Right who had dreams of organizing Christian activists around winnable social issues.

The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank that claims to be “the most influential conservative group in America.” Its mission is to “formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited…

Last March, on a cold, early spring afternoon in New York City, a bright orange tour bus wended its way from Trump Tower, down Second Avenue, eventually parking in front of the United Nations’ glass-walled Secretariat Building. Wrapped around the…

How the Vatican's Position on Gender Threatens Human Rights

In September 2016, Sharon Slater of the U.S.-based Christian Right group Family Watch International issued a special appeal to a crowd of African conservatives, including Kenya’s Catholic Conference of Bishops, which was sponsoring the gathering.…

Steven Anderson is a virulently anti-LGBTQ preacher from the United States, who has compared gay people to ax murderers and Adolf Hitler, believes that all gay people should be executed, and admitted he would reject his children if they were …

Arthur Goldberg founded JONAH, a Jewish gay conversion therapy organization.

DSM is an ex-gay ministry that promotes homophobia under the guise of offering counseling, support, and healing for “men and women seeking Jesus in light of unwanted same-sex attractions.”

Human Life International (HLI) is a Catholic organization with a long history of vicious and hyperbolic attacks on LGBTQ and reproductive rights. It opposes contraception, in-vitro fertilization, comprehensive sex education, and abortion in all…

The Center for Family and Human Rights, known as C-Fam, is a fierce and active opponent to LGBTQ rights and has considerable international influence, particularly in the United Nations.

MassResistance is a Massachusetts-based anti-LGBTI group with an expanding global presence. The group supports activists around the world in combatting LGBTI equality “without compromise.”

CitizenGO describes itself as a “community of active citizens who work together, using online petitions and action alerts as a resource, to defend and promote life, family, and liberty.” The right-…

CitizenGO Africa recently announced that Nairobi, Kenya would be the first city on the continent to host the so-called #FreeSpeechBus. The bus, infamous for its explicitly anti-transgender messages, will likely roll through Nairobi in conjunction…

The depth and breadth of White evangelical support for Donald Trump before and since his election has perplexed most observers. But a team of sociologists, freshly-analyzed data in hand, may have the answer that has eluded journalists, scholars, and…

The ascent of Donald Trump to the presidency has dramatically worsened an already grave set of challenges confronting justice-minded people, and has presented the women’s movement in the United States with an historic opportunity to create a…

Religious freedom is a central issue of our time. It has figured prominently in recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a major theme of the presidential election of 2016. And it has been a major theme of the Christian Right in both…

Paul Rosenberg recently published an essay at Salon that challenged the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation. The occasion was the then-forthcoming annual celebration of Religious Freedom Day, which commemorates the…

Originally published in 2011, the Culture Impact Team Resource Manual—which includes, among other things, sample voter guides and instructions for church-based voter registration drives—has served as the primer for church-based, Christian Right…

Twenty-five years ago, the Roman Catholic Church offered a rare acknowledgment of error. It admitted that it was wrong to have condemned one of the great fathers of modern science, Galileo Galilei. In 1632, Galileo was summoned to Rome and forced to…

Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore –– arguably the most openly theocratic candidate to run for a major office in the U.S. in modern times –– almost won. This, despite credible allegations of child sex abuse, a reputation as a serial…

On Friday, December 15, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration has prohibited the Center for Disease Control (CDC) from using the terms “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and…

Throughout history, people have used religion to justify a myriad of injustices. In the United States, for example, some Christians used their faith to defend slavery and segregation, citing scriptural references as moral justification for the…

As Donald Trump exited the stage after addressing the 2016 Values Voter Summit (VVS) in Washington, DC a year ago, the Rolling Stone’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” blasted from the speakers. The audience gathered together for the Family…

The hundreds of Southern Baptist and conservative Reformed leaders who initially signed the recent Nashville Statement, have always opposed all forms of sexuality and gender expressions outside of heterosexual marriage. But in the face of broad…

The U.S. Christian Right's Endorsement of Authoritarian Leaders

On Friday, August 4, Paul Kagame celebrated a landslide victory in Rwanda’s presidential election, securing his third seven-year term as the small, East African country’s leader with nearly 99% of the vote. It was an unsurprising result, given that…

On July 24, 2017, the Family Research Council (FRC), a right-wing political advocacy group based in Washington, DC, issued an Action Alert to its members, enlisting their support in denying healthcare to military personnel who are transgender. FRC…

As was outlined in part one of this series, evidence shows that American corporate entities are taking advantage of the U.S. Christian Right’s pre-existing relationships with political, religious, and business leaders in Africa in order to advance…

As with anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion culture wars, the exportation of American economic ideologies to the Global South (and the strategies and tactics employed to impose them on others) has a long history of violence and destruction. From Nestle’s…

Historic Case Exposes Right-Wing Activist’s Campaign of Persecution in Uganda.

PRA first reported on the World Congress of Families (WCF) in 2000, noting its role within the coalition of Christian Right groups that was beginning to emerge as a well-organized and influential force at the United Nations. Writing for The Public…

The Right-Wing International, a Crisis of Democracy, and the Future of the European Union

One of the more striking features of the 2016 U.S. election was the convergence of the rhetoric and talking points of President Donald Trump and his supporters with those of the Kremlin. And in the tangled and ongoing investigation of Russian…

In early April, reports of atrocities being committed against LGBTQ people began to emerge out of Chechnya, a small, independent republic of the Russian Federation that is predominantly Muslim. Novaya Gazeta — an independent Russian newspaper —…

Dr. Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University (and former director of the school’s Department of Psychiatry as well as the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital), has positioned himself as a go-to source for…

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is an international legal organization serving at the frontlines of the Christian Right’s effort to redefine religious freedom and insert its anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice agenda into every element of government and…

Opposition to LGBTQ equality has long been both a fundamental value and useful political tool for many American conservative organizations, especially those associated with the Christian Right. Even as visibility and mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ…

During the presidential campaign and since assuming office, Donald Trump has repeatedly promised the Christian Right that he would make religious freedom a priority. In an apparent bid for their support, Trump made clear that he would advance the…

In a press release issued after last year’s Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, where a Muslim-American gunman killed 49 people at a gay dance club, Donald Trump said, “Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as…

Many are called but few are chosen during any presidential transition. That’s why it’s illuminating to consider who Donald Trump has chosen from the parade of possibilities for his transition team and senior administration appointments so far— and…

To read press coverage about it, one might think that religious freedom is a concern only for religious and political conservatives, and not one of the most liberatory ideas in history. One would also think religious freedom and civil rights are at…

The Religious Right at the UN

In a single two-day period this summer, the United Nations Human Rights Council gave advocates for LGBTQ equality their most significant victory yet at the UN and simultaneously gave antiLGBTQ “traditional” family proponents a major win in their…

Oral argument on motions for summary judgment in Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Lively, a federal lawsuit in which Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), is suing Scott Lively, a U.S.-based anti-…

Last week, about a hundred people gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, for the African Regional Conference of Families, a regional conference for the World Congress of Families (WCF). The WCF, a U.S.-based international coalition of Religious Right groups…

The Growing Anti-Trans Offensive

In June 2014, TIME magazine declared that the U.S. had reached the “transgender tipping point” and was venturing toward trans inclusion as its next “civil rights frontier.” That month’s cover featured Laverne Cox, a Black transgender actress famous…

Next week, the World Congress of Families (WCF) will host a regional conference in Nairobi, Kenya. For several years, PRA has tracked and reported on the WCF’s role in the U.S. Religious Right’s global export of homophobia and sexism, and the…

In this current political moment of heightened anti-trans targeting, when school boards and legislatures across the country are debating whether or not transgender people should be allowed access to public facilities, one wedge of particular note…

LGBTQ people have long been under siege in Georgia, where intolerance against a range of progressive social issues runs deep. And recently, conservative activists from outside the country are starting to take note.

Both in the U.S. and in countries all over the world, Warren has garnered tremendous amounts of political power and uses it to leverage influence at every level.

In July 2016, the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s highly reputable and peer-reviewed academic Journal of Theology in Southern Africa (JTSA) published its…

North Carolina Isn’t Alone

A slate of anti-LGBTQ laws and policies is sweeping across the country with transgender and gender-nonconforming people squarely in the crosshairs. While violence and oppression continue to wreak havoc on the lives and livelihoods of trans people,…

Russian Social Conservatism, the U.S.-based WCF, & the Global Culture Wars in Historical Context

Social conservatives have been focusing on the family for a long time, and Russians have frequently been at the forefront of the fight for “traditional” values. In more recent times, Russian conservatives were central to the founding and operations…

This week, Franklin Graham—son of famed evangelical Billy Graham and current president of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and Samaritan’s Purse—begins a 50-state tour of the United States. The “Decision America Tour” will…

The Religious Freedom Strategy of the Christian Right

The 2014 case of General Synod of the United Church of Christ v. Cooper was a landmark event because, although the case was ostensibly about opposition to marriage equality, the decision upheld foundational notions of religious equality and equal…

Conned by the World Congress of Families

From Russia to Nigeria to Australia, a seemingly innocuous definition of the “natural family” is quietly being used as the basis of new laws to justify the criminalization of abortion and LGBTQ people. Pushing this definition is the World Congress…

An Interview with Dr. E.L. Kornegay Jr.

Kornegay was drawn to study the work of the writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) through a comment made by the founder of Black liberation theology, James H. Cone, who once said that Baldwin taught him how to write. Kornegay was intrigued: “That took me…

Creating a Path to LGBTQ Youth Liberation

In Small Town Cross Roads, Southerners On New Ground (SONG) explores the realities and dreams of queer people who live in small Southern towns like West Monroe. Echoing SONG’s findings, FIERCE also lifts up challenges faced by LGBTQ youth in rural…

Every Friday, PRA brings you a monthly update on a different social justice issue. This week, we are recapping the last month in LGBTQ Justice. Ecuador’s “Gay Addiction” Clinics Continue Torturous Practices On November 7th, the Union…

Transgender Day of Remembrance (officially observed on Nov. 20) was established in 1999 to memorialize Rita Hester, a Black trans woman who was brutally murdered. Sadly, this year is no different. As the official website reports, hundreds of…

A Web Exclusive Interview with Roger Ross Williams

Roger Ross Williams is a television and film writer, director, and producer whose most recent project, the documentary God Loves Uganda, focuses on the work of American evangelical Christian missionaries in Africa. Williams decided to focus on…

A well-funded network of conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals is using a “religious liberty” framework to attack same-sex marriage, antidiscrimination laws, access to contraception, and abortion rights—not on moral grounds, but because they…

The New Apostolic Reformation Goes to War

The New Apostolic Reformation, an aggressively political movement within Christianity, blames literal demonic beings for the world’s ills and stresses the power of “spiritual warfare” to deliver people and nations from their power. It is rapidly…

Therapy and Ministry in the Exodus Network

When the Executive Director of Exodus International, Alan Chambers, dramatically announced in January 2012 that he no longer believed there was a “cure” to homosexuality, he allegedly ended his organization’s 35-year-long effort to “convert … LGBTQ…

For over a decade and a half, same-sex marriage advocates experienced a long and almost unbroken series of defeats at the ballot box, including the passage of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, Maine’s Question 1 a year later, and an anti-gay…

U.S. Evangelicals Fund Homophobia in Uganda

Yesterday, the New York Times’ released an eight-minute “Op-Doc” titled “Gospel of Intolerance,” from Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, exposing “how money donated by American evangelicals helps to finance a violent antigay movement in…

Iden Campbell McCollum is the founder of The Campbell Center, a peer-run resource center for people living with mental health challenges. The center serves the primarily low-income and African American community in Southeast Washington, D.C.…

Talking Tolerance, Marketing Inequality

“Mom, guess what I learned in school today! I learned how a prince married a prince, and I can marry a princess!” Kids say the darndest things, don’t they? Over the past decade, the Right has drummed up fears that marriage equality will…

Political Research Associates condemns the criminalization of sexual minorities and calls on American and international religious and political leaders to denounce the reintroduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which reportedly passed…

Gay Marriage in the 2012 Election

The political world was abuzz this spring when the National Organization for Marriage’s confidential battle plan to block LGBTQ marriage rights became public in a Maine lawsuit and the Human Rights Campaign posted it for the world to see.

How the U.S. Christian Right Is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa

While U.S. Christian Right leaders made headlines when international pressure forced them to retract support for Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, a new report by Political Research Associates shows that U.S. Christian Right groups…