Check out John Oliver’s epic takedown of this right-wing hate group
On April 30, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, a case that addresses whether Oklahoma is required to provide public funding to the Catholic Church for operating a religious charter school.
While the case is expected to be decided next month, John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” focused less on the case itself and more on the dodgy organization behind it: the Alliance Defending Freedom. Known as the ADF, it has been certified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group—and for good reason.
Now led by far-right lawyer Kristen Waggoner, the ADF has flooded the court system with so-called “religious freedom” cases. Oliver began his exposé with a focus on the group’s founder, James Dobson, who many would remember for creating the anti-LGBTQ hate group Focus on the Family. Dobson infamously warned that same-sex marriage would lead to “marriage between a man and his donkey.”
Oliver described Dobson as “A man who looks less like a real person and more like AI’s answer to the question, ‘What did they look like without their hoods?’”
As detestable as it is, the ADF has played a significant role in shaping our country’s current legal landscape. This is the same group behind last summer’s legal attack on the abortion pill mifepristone, and the same group of reactionaries that successfully defended a Christian baker’s discriminatory practices against a same-sex couple he refused to make a cake for in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
The group’s most devastating victory was the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped federal protections for abortion rights for millions.
Oliver summed it up with devastating clarity.
“This is a group that will talk winsomely about personal liberty, all while fearmongering about softball players that don’t exist, shitty studies that don’t apply, and pedophile cakes that no one will ever order,” he said. “And it might be important for everyone to know that at the end of the day, ADF at its core is really a lot like the pews at an imaginary donkey wedding—which is to say, absolutely full of shit.”
So while most people would assume the upcoming charter school case to be a foregone matter of separation between church and state, the ADF’s egregious influence on our judiciary means the outcome is far from certain.