Traditional Values Coalition

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The Traditional Values Coalition is a Christian Right organization that claims to represent 43,000 conservative Christian churches throughout the United States of America. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., their advocacy focuses on education, anti-GLBT, taxes, pornography, pro-life and "religious freedom". They have condemned such organizations as GLSEN and Planned Parenthood, and they support the teaching of creationism. They have worked against Sen. Arlen Specter's top position on the Judiciary Committee in Bush's 2nd term and protested the release of Kinsey the movie. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has added TVC to its list of watched hate groups.

The organization was founded by Rev. Louis P. Sheldon who is the current chairman. Mrs. Andrea Sheldon Lafferty is the executive director.

In 2002, after a series of anthrax attacks were sent to several Democratic Senators' offices in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., National Public Radio reporter David Kestenbaum telephoned TVC executive director Andrea Sheldon Lafferty to ask if the group had been contacted by the FBI. Kestenbaum reportedly told Lafferty that TVC's criticism of Democratic U.S. Senators for opposing the use of the phrase "so help me God" in oaths sworn before Congress made 'TVC a likely suspect in the anthrax attacks. Lafferty was indignant that disagreement on a policy issues was seen by an NPR reporter as a likely indicator of criminal behavior. TVC issued a press release condemning NPR and Lafferty later testified before the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, calling for Congress to end government funding of NPR.

[edit] Views on homosexuality

The TVC is opposed to homosexuality and the LGBT rights movement. Some of their most notable views on homosexuality:

Homosexual behaviour should be criminalized, because it violates the Christian doctrine.
Homosexuals "recruit" children.
Homosexuality has been linked to pedophilia and sexual predators.
Homosexual sex always results in HIV infection. ^{[citation needed]}
Lou Sheldon once suggested that gays and lesbians be carted off to remote communities, similar to Indian reservations or leper colonies, to live away from the straight population. ^{[citation needed]}

The TVC also opposes hate crime legistation, fearing that it will force Christians to either stop criticizing homosexuals or be arrested.

The TVC has lobbied consistently against LGBT rights. A video on the group's website—Gay Rights, Special Rights—is available. Headlines in materials from the organization are often sensationalized and often portray homosexuals in a negative light. For instance, one headline from the group's site called homosexuals "brownshirts".

In a 2005 posting on the TVC website, Sheldon wrote:

A dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition has formed – and we’d better be willing to fight it with everything in our power. These people are playing for keeps. Their hero, Mao Tse Tung is estimated to have murdered upwards of 60 million people during his reign of terror in China. Do we think we can escape such persecution if we refuse to fight for what is right?^[1]

(It should be noted that, from the referenced link, the quote refers to an advertisement run in the New York Times. The ad was placed by a group called the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Thus the Marxist/Leftist component of the quote. Other signatories included ACT UP (New York City) and Queers for Economic Justice, thus the homosexual reference. And finally, the Islamic Circle of America and Imam Tabib Abdur-Rashid of the Islamic Brotherhood mosque in New York signed it -- thus the Islamic reference. Therefore, from context, one can see the correlation; whether one might call that a "coalition" is questionable but it is useful to see the quote in the context of the original article.)

Those mentioned in the article, including California State Senator Carole Migden and California State Assemblyman Mark Leno, objected to having their efforts to outlaw anti-gay discrimination and legalize same-sex marriage compared to the genocide of millions of human beings.