‘Viewpoint diversity’ advocacy promotes white nationalist talking points
Far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is pushing to entrench racist and exclusionary corporate policies under the guise of a socially conscious-sounding phrase: “viewpoint diversity.”
In 2023 and 2024, ADF used its definition of “viewpoint diversity” in a lobbying and litigation campaign to push anti-pluralist policies in corporate boardrooms and statehouses across the country.
Like most efforts from the anti-LGBTQ+ legal group, its public messaging and legal strategy links Christianity with opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and LGBTQ+ rights.
Rather than promoting religious pluralism, ADF’s public relations and legal crusades are intertwined with Christian supremacist and white supremacist ideologies. Characterizing diversity as a threat to white Christian men, ADF is working to dismantle DEI protections and weaponizing government regulations to enforce sectarian Christian doctrines in publicly traded companies.
‘Pawn in God’s plan’
Since 2022, ADF has publicly tracked and reported on what it describes as corporate censorship of religious conservatives with a scorecard called the viewpoint diversity index. “Viewpoint diversity,” according to ADF, amounts to “protection against religious or ideological discrimination.” However, federal nondiscrimination law already prohibits religious discrimination in the workplace. ADF has instead historically advocated for policies that erode the separation of church and state and subvert the rights of other Christians who disagree with them.
Rather than defending a robust pluralism – the idea that the free exchange of ideas should be open to all groups – the “viewpoint diversity” index and ADF’s related lobbying suggest the group’s goal is to limit that free exchange to align with its own sectarian beliefs. By leveraging the power of government, it can restrict publicly traded corporations’ ability to make their own policy choices to support anti-racist and LGBTQ+-inclusive initiatives, which are widely popular with the general public.
Comments from both within and outside ADF confirm this strategy. According to reporting by Steve Rabey from Baptist News Global, reversing corporate progress toward inclusivity and environmental sustainability appears to be ADF’s goal. And a June 6 ADF fundraising email states that ADF’s years-long strategy is a “pawn in God’s plan” to bring down “corporate cancel culture.” Instead of protecting diverse religious expression, ADF is being “move[d] around” like “pieces on [God’s] chessboard” representing “conservative shareholders,” the fundraising email claims.
Spearheaded by ADF’s senior vice president for corporate engagement, Jeremy Tedesco, ADF’s Viewpoint Diversity Score advisory council includes such far-right figures as Robert P. George, the activist lawyer who drafted the Manhattan Declaration calling on ultra-conservative Christians to resist and disobey laws for abortion access and LGBTQ+ equality; the Heritage Foundation’s vice president for outreach, Andy Olivastro; a former Morgan Stanley managing director named David Bahnsen; and leaders of other Christian investment firms Crossmark Global Investments, Inspire Investing, OneAscent Capital and Sovereign’s Capital, according to the Viewpoint Diversity Score and Manhattan Declaration websites.
These advisers and the interests of their multibillion-dollar investment firms are also, at times, represented by ADF in litigation.
Before leading the Viewpoint Diversity Score program, Tedesco was a key ADF litigator challenging inclusive civil rights laws in American public schools under the legal theory that LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections violate the religious freedom of conservative Christian students and parents.
ADF’s Viewpoint Diversity Score operates on a similar foundation. On the project’s website, ADF reports survey results and model corporate governance policies that it claims measure compliance with its far-right principles. These include committing to “avoid supporting controversial social or political issues” that “pose risks to free speech and religious freedom”; model language to prevent bans on “the promotion of hate” and “intolerance” from terms of service agreements; prohibiting the use of such “divisive concepts” as “unconscious or implicit bias and privilege”; and prohibiting policies that “denigrate” concepts like the “nuclear family,” a term anti-LGBTQ+ groups often use to delegitimize LGBTQ+ families.
Laws barring “divisive concepts” have become a far-right policy priority in recent years and have been cited to terminate teachers who use LGBTQ+-inclusive or anti-racist lessons in public schools. ADF views inclusive education policies, such as inclusive nondiscrimination laws, as violations of conservative Christians’ “religious freedom.”
In the 2024 Viewpoint Diversity Score report, ADF ties these themes together in reporting on such companies as Apple Inc. In 2024, Apple’s score dropped three points from the previous year – in part because the company is “known to teach or advocate one or more divisive concepts in its workplace,” according to ADF.
The 2024 report also criticizes Apple’s App Store for its bans on “offensive” content with no exceptions for “viewpoint diversity.” In an example of how ADF’s “viewpoint diversity” program is designed to suppress pluralism rather than protect it, the report deducts points from Apple’s viewpoint diversity score because the company is “known to require vendors, suppliers, contractors, or other equivalent third parties to adopt specific DE&I [sic] programming, policies, statements, or affirmations.” Apple did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
As part of the “viewpoint diversity” project, ADF on the project’s website in March 2023 showed results of its own public opinion polling conducted by Ipsos, which surveyed employees of at least some of the companies ADF scores. Wide margins of respondents seemingly disagreed with ADF and opposed employers’ hypothetical efforts to distance themselves from “divisive social and political issues.” ADF drew the opposite conclusion, however, claiming the findings show corporations “risk alienating employees and customers” when they adopt corporate anti-racism policies and incorporate LGBTQ+ inclusion into their business plans.
‘The law is an essential tool’
In the June fundraising email, Tedesco says he has “seen the hand of God” in ADF’s lobbying and litigation on behalf of the National Rifle Association and against such companies as Apple, Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab, whose boards are reluctant to vote on anti-diversity policies.
At a June 2023 National Religious Broadcasters event, Tedesco said: “We thought businesses would never cede to the demands of political activists on the left. We were wrong. So now it’s very entrenched, but there is a path forward.”
The following year, in a June 7 interview with far-right commentator Tim Pool, Tedesco characterized the path forward as “redemptive work,” suggesting the group would use government regulations shaded by its religious convictions to redeem wayward private institutions.
That redemption, according to Pool and Tedesco, involves using laws and administrative institutions including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to compel private sector businesses to follow strict Christian legal principles when crafting policies and marketing strategies.
“The law is an essential tool in the toolkit,” Tedesco said, “one that we use all the time to change the behavior of governments and even companies that get crosswise with the law.” Legal advocacy, Tedesco suggests, is most effective when it happens in concert with pressure campaigns that play up moral panics. He referenced a 2023 lawsuit filed by Stephen Miller’s America First Legal against Target for selling LGBTQ+-inclusive products. The legal action came after a summer campaign of bomb threats against Target stores across the country driven by online anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Tedesco said, “I think, you know, in the end, a lot of these things come together to kind of push things back.”
Tedesco’s June email claims the group’s successful corporate litigation record stands at 5-0 “on defending proposals from religious or conservative shareholders,” most of whom want to force companies to reevaluate their DEI policies. ADF also works to pass laws based on its legal theories, and its latest campaign is gaining traction.
In 2023, Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., introduced the “Fair Access to Banking Act” – an ADF-inspired law that would force financial institutions including banks and insurance companies to end DEI policies and even require them to do business with groups that violate their corporate policies or beliefs. Banks, Barr claimed, should not make decisions based on “the standards of woke corporate cancel culture.”
“Many [companies] have prohibitions on ‘hate’ speech and ‘intolerance,’” Tedesco testified at a March 2024 congressional hearing advocating passage of the bill. These prohibitions – which ADF also attempts to shape through its Viewpoint Diversity Score project’s model corporate policies – set internal corporate standards for diversity, respect and even environmental responsibility that gun manufacturers, fossil fuel industry groups and anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups like ADF oppose.
ADF has also invented a conspiratorial narrative it calls “de-banking” that suggests corporate responsibility policies that respect LGBTQ+ employees, for example, are the result of collusion between former President Obama’s administration and private businesses to silence white Christian men. ADF’s public statements often characterize these claims as conservative “viewpoint discrimination,” as Tedesco testified to the committee.
Tedesco also told the committee about ADF’s financial stake in opposing corporate DEI policies, especially among banks and other financial institutions. “ADF has become a prime target,” Tedesco said, claiming that donations to the group from donor-advised funds with DEI policies have faltered since 2019.
In March, ADF registered its first federal lobbyist, according to Politico. And in spring 2024, ADF successfully lobbied for a first-of-its-kind law in Tennessee based on the federal Fair Access to Banking Act. The state’s banking trade group has called it a “forced access to banking” bill. The bill could potentially override some banks’ DEI policies, forcing them to do business with such hate groups as the Ku Klux Klan under newly expanded “religious freedom” protections.
‘We have to win the culture war’
ADF’s claims about threats from DEI and teaching “divisive concepts” also appear to resonate with white supremacist rhetoric that characterizes DEI policies as a form of “anti-white racism” and a threat to white people brought about by “woke” ideology. “A huge component of this [‘wokeness’] has been an attack on white people,” far-right podcaster Tim Pool said in the June 7 episode of his podcast titled “Anti-White Racism on the Rise in the West,” featuring Tedesco.
“I do also feel that it’s not just about white people, but also, it’s like if you’re a white Christian, it’s fair game. If you’re a white Christian man, good luck,” Pool said after introducing Tedesco to the program.
In an exchange that highlights the contradictions of ADF’s campaign claiming to protect “viewpoint diversity,” Pool, Claremont Institute’s Jeremy Carl, and Tedesco showcased how such claims are a smokescreen for far-right attempts to compel businesses to comply with Christian supremacist ideology.
After discussing ADF’s legal campaign defending a Colorado baker who refused to serve a gay client, Pool said, “I would like to see 10,000 people request of their bakeries, ‘It’s OK to be white’ cakes, and some Leviticus cakes,” referring to the biblical passage that is interpreted by some conservative Christians to advocate the death penalty for homosexuality. If the hypothetical bakeries refuse, Pool suggests, “then there’s 10,000 lawsuits for religious discrimination.” “Add an atheist cake baker,” Tedesco said, and “tell him to put [sic] a cake that says, ‘God is real.’”
According to Tedesco, this aspect of ADF’s legal strategy is a long game the group has previously described as creating “generational wins” – legal precedents with lasting impact that encode far-right principles into law and, by nature of limiting diversity and pluralism, also limit the vision of American society to see the value in those founding ideas.
“Our nation’s Founders understood that the primary function of government is to protect God-given, pre-political rights,” Jay Hobbs, ADF’s director of strategic campaigns and initiatives, wrote in a March blog post. “That means threats to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness don’t need to come from the government to cause real harm.”
For businesses who support anti-racist and LGBTQ+-inclusive principles, Tedesco suggests, “In the end, legally, there are going to be consequences.” However, he says, ADF’s work is not just about achieving legal consequences. “I think the real thing we have to win is the battle of ideas. We have to win people’s hearts and minds. We have to reconvince them,” Tedesco says.
“We have to win the culture war,” Pool interjected.
“Yeah,” Tedesco replied.
Image at top: Under the guise of “viewpoint diversity,” Alliance Defending Freedom, whose logo is on the megaphone pictured above, is working to reverse corporate progress toward inclusivity and environmental sustainability.
