The World Congress of Families, a notorious anti-LGBTQ group

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These prominent Americans are speaking at far-right Russia conference linked to sanctioned oligarchs

Clarence Thomas's former clerk and a megachurch pastor leading Bible study groups in Washington decide to join the World Congress of Families.
CASEY MICHEL
MAR 4, 2019, 8:00 AM


John Eastman, Jim Garlow, and Sean O'Hare are among the Americans slated to speak at next month's World Congress of Families conference in Verona, Italy. PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY, ILLUSTRATION BY DIANA OFOSU

The World Congress of Families (WCF), a notorious anti-LGBTQ group that’s reportedly received funding from sanctioned Russian oligarchs, is hosting its annual conference in Verona, Italy next month. And a number of Americans have decided to join them.

Among the Americans slated to speak at the WCF conference are John Eastman, former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and now a professor at Chapman University, and megachurch pastor Jim Garlow. According to the WCF’s roster, they will also be joined by Mike Donnelly, a higher-up at the right-wing Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), and Sean O’Hare, the chairman of one of the most prominent anti-abortion groups aimed at American youth.

Donnelly confirmed to ThinkProgress that he would be speaking at the WCF conference next month. O’Hare, Garlow, Eastman, and Chapman University did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment.


Moldovan President Igor Dodon celebrated the end of the World Congress of Families by posing with two dozen young girls. CREDIT: CASEY MICHEL

Christian fundamentalists gathering in Moldova want you to know they’re not extremists

There’s nothing illegal about these Americans attending the upcoming conference, which will be hosted at the end of March. But WCF is currently the most prominent group linking the American religious right and sanctioned Russian oligarchs, and just a few months ago, the group hosted a Russian official sanctioned by both the Trump and Obama administrations.



The WCF — which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group — is a joint Russian-American project dating to the mid-1990s. It has reportedly received funding from sanctioned Russian oligarchs like Konstantin Malofeev and Vladimir Yakunin, the latter of whom is a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Multiple media outlets, and even WCF’s own promotional material, have all linked Yakunin to the group, but a representative for Yakunin denied to ThinkProgress that Yakunin has funded the group.)


Some of the speakers listed at the upcoming World Congress of Families conference.

Just last year, the WCF, which did not respond to ThinkProgress’s questions, also hosted Yelena Mizulina as a speaker at its annual conference in Moldova. Mizulina is a member of the Russian Duma and has been sanctioned by both the Obama and Trump administrations. She also spoke at a homeschooling conference in Russia last year — an event hosted by Donnelly’s homeschooling organization in partnership with Malofeev’s foundation.

The WCF’s official Russian representative, Alexey Komov, has a history of praising fascists and anti-Semites, according to emails made public by the Russian hacking outfit Shaltai Boltai. In the emails, Komov referred to one Italian neo-fascist as a “friend” and the anti-Semitic “Russia Insider” outlet, run by an American named Charles Bausman, as a “good site.” (Komov has commented on those emails to say that the “information in the attachments does not properly reflect reality.”) Just last month, Bausman returned Komov’s praise, referring to him as a “good friend.” Komov also works directly for Malofeev, an oligarch sanctioned by the U.S. for his role in helping Russia try to break up Ukraine in 2014. WCF President Brian Brown recently said on Twitter that he “love[s]” Komov.

For good measure, the upcoming conference will also feature CitizenGO — an anti-LGBTQ Spanish group that includes Komov as part of its board.


A number of bigoted organizations are joining the World Congress of Families in sponsoring next month's conference.

And just last week, a bombshell investigation from Italy’s L’Espresso found that Komov was reportedly a key player in a financial scheme to funnel Russian money to Italian nationalists. Komov has yet to comment on the report.

Americans abroad
Next month’s WCF conference will feature speakers from a number of countries outside the U.S. and Russia, including representatives from as far as Malawi and Nigeria. A handful of politicians are expected to speak, including Moldovan President Igor Dodon and Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.


However, given the history of the Kremlin’s election meddling in the U.S., the ongoing standoff between Moscow and Washington, and the fact that the U.S. has sanctioned the oligarchs reportedly involved with the WCF, the Americans’ presence is perhaps the most notable.

Eastman, Justice Thomas’ former clerk, has worked closely with WCF head Brian Brown in the past, including at the vociferously anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage, where Eastman works as the chairman.


John Eastman has worked closely with WCF head Brian Brown on anti-LGBTQ initiatives in the past, including the National Organization for Marriage.

Garlow, the megachurch pastor scheduled to speak at the WCF conference, is also well-known in religious right circles, especially for his role in promoting California’s anti-LGBTQ Proposition 8 measure a decade ago. He recently stepped down from working at California’s Skyline Church, but apparently hasn’t fully retired from public life. Rather, as Garlow told the Christian Post reported in September, he “recently launched a Bible study within a federal agency” in Washington. Garlow did not reveal which federal agency it was, but said that he was hoping to expand his teaching to at least three federal agencies in total.

Garlow also recently held Bible study sessions at the United Nations, with former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) providing help, according to the Christian Post. He even attended a White House dinner in August, joining some 100 other evangelical figures.

“It’s not surprising to see someone like Garlow, who is not a household name like Franklin Graham but is only one tier or so down in terms of being a serious evangelical influencer,” said Chris Stroop, who received a doctorate from Stanford in Russian history and has studied links between the Kremlin and America’s religious right. “He’s exactly the kind of person that WCF would want to hear from and promote. Garlow may be able to share anything that he’s learned about lobbying for the Christian Right’s agenda, and he may pick up some strategies from other people at this year’s WCF [conference] as well.”

O’Hare is among the WCF’s youngest speaker. He’s the current chair of Students for Life, and describes himself on his website as a “young, dynamic and influential speaker” with “business interests including manufacturing, restaurants and cyber security.”

Hacked emails list a vice president at the right-wing Bradley Foundation as partying with Russian fascists and oligarchs, some of whom are now sanctioned by the U.S. ILLUSTRATION BY DIANA OFOSU
Hacked emails list right-wing fundraiser partying with Russian fascists and oligarchs
There are no sanctioned Russian speakers currently slated to attend, despite the WCF’s previous history with Malofeev, Yakunin, and Mizulina. The most notable Russian national appears to be Archpriest Dmitri Smirnov, who once compared LGBTQ people to murderers and bank robbers.


At last year’s WCF conference in Moldova, which ThinkProgress attended, Brown pledged that the WCF would continue to act as a bridge between Washington and the Kremlin.

“In the United States right now we have an investigation into the president over connections with Russia — and some want to use this to try and divide us,” Brown said. “Well, I wanted to tell everyone here that we know [that] what we’re doing leads to peace. We know that what we’re doing — in creating friendships of trust — is in the best interest of the family. And we know what we’re doing — there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. The attempts to muddy the water are simply attempts to stop us from creating a more powerful, more global, unity around the family…

“The depths of our friendships will make it through.”
https://thinkprogress.org/here-are-the- ... 564932db2/

[seemslikeadream]

American-led ‘pro-family’ summit in Ghana condemned for ‘shocking’ white supremacist, Islamophobic links
The World Congress of Families, hosting an Accra ‘family and development’ event, has European allies who have called African migrants “slaves” and “poison”.
OpenDemocracy Investigations
31 October 2019

Brian Brown, WCF president at its summit in Hungary, 2017, where prime minister Orbán gave an anti-immigrant opening speech. | Picture: Elekes Andor/Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0.


SUBMIT
The US-led network behind an “African family and sustainable development” summit opening in Accra today has numerous links to Islamophobic, far-right and white supremacist movements, openDemocracy can reveal.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is hosting a two-day “Africa regional gathering” in the Ghanaian capital from Thursday, seeking to meet with parliamentarians and religious leaders from the country.

While the WCF is best-known for publicly opposing LGBT rights and abortion, and its president has emphasised that it “condemns racism”, openDemocracy’s research has uncovered numerous connections between key WCF figures and other controversial movements internationally, including:

WCF leaders praising far-right politicians in Italy and Hungary who have called African migrants in Europe “slaves” and “poison”
Key WCF allies blaming Africans for the spread of AIDS, saying “blacks like to copulate”, and warning of “the evil clearly written into Islamic tenets”
Links with white nationalists, including via a central WCF figure who has also suggested the FBI “stake out every mosque in the country”.
Responding to an email from openDemocracy, WCF president Brian Brown, who is set to speak at the event in Ghana, did not comment on specific examples cited in this article but sent a short response accusing openDemocracy of “lies” and “false claims”, adding: “We condemn racism, hatred, and violence. We always have”.

However in Accra, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, director of communications at the global feminist group AWID, described openDemocracy’s findings as “shocking”.

The WCF publicly “positions itself as ‘pro-family’, but is part of an extremist movement that actually divides and destroys families by disparaging diversity and promoting hate”, said Neela Ghoshal, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

A spokesperson for the Coalition for African Family Values of Love, Unity and Tolerance, a Ghanaian civil society group, condemned the WCF’s links to “movements that mistreat our black family in the diaspora”. She contrasted this with Ghana’s international reputation “as a peaceful and tolerant nation”.

Anti-migrant friends in Europe

In the US, WCF President Brian Brown runs the National Organization for Marriage lobby group, whose funders have reportedly included a foundation that also gave millions of dollars to organisations accused of promoting “anti-Muslim hate”.

Brown is also a founder of ActRight, a fundraising site for right-wing US politicians, whose recent Facebook posts have criticised Pope Francis for being a “homosexual supporter” and suggested the Pope is “perhaps a homosexual himself”.

In Europe, he appears to have cultivated close ties to far-right European politicians, who advocate for hardline anti-immigrant policies. In email newsletters, Brown has repeatedly emphasised his relationships with Matteo Salvini, until recently Italy’s interior minister, and Hungary’s prime minister Victor Orbán.

At least 50,000 Ghanaians live in Italy, where Salvini’s far-right Lega party has implemented a range of punitive anti-immigrant policies, including criminalising citizens who offer migrants food or shelter.

Last year, the African Union called for Salvini to retract comments describing African migrants as “slaves”, while dozens of black European politicians criticised Lega officials for comparing a former Italian minister, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to an “orangutan”.


Salvini’s decree to reduce the number of migrants granted humanitarian protection sparked large protests, including in Rome, December 2018. | Photo: Andrea Ronchini/NurPhoto/PA Images.
This summer, Brian Brown celebrated – and claimed partial credit for – “a huge victory in the recent European Parliament elections” for Salvini’s Lega party.

He said in a newsletter that he “worked directly” with Salvini’s party on a WCF summit in Italy, in March, suggesting that this raised the party’s profile ahead of the elections and “helped establish a climate” where such “leaders [can] be elected”.

Brown also praised the “leadership” of Orbán in Hungary, who opened a 2017 WCF summit with a speech denouncing the “connection between immigration and terrorism”. Orbán has elsewhere referred to migrants as a “poison”.

Seeking to ‘meet and influence the political elite’

The WCF network has held previous African regional meetings in Kenya in 2018 and 2016, and in Malawi (2017), although Africans have made up just 3% (24) of about 800 speakers listed on the last ten programmes for WCF international summits, according to our analysis of these documents.

The Accra meeting is advertised online as an event for “advocates and believers”, government officials, NGOs and religious groups. Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah at AWID has described how WCF partners have sought to meet and “influence the political elite” ahead of the summit, focusing publicly on issues like LGBT rights.

Last month, a press conference in Accra to announce the WCF summit was reportedly attended by deputy health minister Alex Kodwo Kom Abban.

The WCF’s Ghanaian partners, members of the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family, also reportedly paid “courtesy calls” at the residences of former president and 2020 election candidate John Kufuor, and Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharubutu, to personally invite them to the summit.

Concerns about Islamophobia and white nationalism

However, other Ghanaian civil society activists raised concerns about the WCF’s links to people accused of promoting Islamophobia or white nationalist views.

The WCF’s long-time communications director, Don Feder, once called for “Islam control”, and also criticised a campaign to put African-American abolitionist Harriet Tubman on a $20 bill, saying “it was white males who ended slavery”.

A previous openDemocracy investigation meanwhile revealed close coordination between the WCF’s partner CitizenGo, listed as a sponsor of the Accra event, and the new far-right Vox party that’s been accused of promoting Islamophobia in Spain.

CitizenGo did not respond to emailed requests for comment for this article.

“If you don’t think Muslims are vetted enough because they blow things up, that’s not racist”.

Feder, a long-term WCF collaborator, is also on the board of a group co-founded by anti-immigrant activist John Taunton, who corresponded with white nationalists including close associates of Klu Klux Klan members.

Meanwhile, speakers at the WCF’s event in Italy this March included a German princess who once blamed Africans for high rates of AIDS, saying “blacks like to copulate”, and an American activist who previously claimed: “If you don’t think Muslims are vetted enough because they blow things up, that’s not racist”.

Other past WCF summit speakers include a controversial US university president who reportedly warned of a coming “war against Christians”.

“Our African traditions encourage us to live peacefully together as family”.

In Ghana, the Coalition for African Family Values of Love, Unity and Tolerance spokesperson said it was “deeply concerned” about the WCF’s network and event in Accra amidst the Year of Return and the government’s outreach to the diaspora.

She also criticised the WCF’s better-known, public opposition to LGBT rights.

“Our African traditions encourage us to live peacefully together as family. Issues of sexuality are accorded privacy within our culture”, she said, condemning “efforts by individuals outside Ghana to come into our country and teach Ghanaians to discriminate against their own family because of their perceived sexuality”.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/a ... bic-links/