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'''Alan E. Sears''' was the Staff Executive Director of the ], which investigated ] in the ] in the 1980s. Currently Sears is the ], ], and general counsel of the ] and a columnist at ]. '''Alan E. Sears''' is the ], ], and general counsel of the ]. Sears was the staff executive director of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, popularly know as the "Meese Commission."


==Career== ==Career==
===Alliance Defending Freedom===
Sears was a federal prosecutor in ]'s Justice Department during the presidency of ]. While employed by the Justice Department he was the Staff Executive Director<ref name=pornwars>{{cite book|title=Exposed: The Porn Wars|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=2hAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA116|accessdate=27 April 2013|date=October 1986|publisher=Orange Coast Magazine|page=116|issn=0279-0483}}</ref> of the ].<ref name="Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny and Rape">{{cite book|title=Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny and Rape|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sl4S-R0J9UYC&pg=PA17|accessdate=27 April 2013|date=13 May 1998|publisher=SAGE Publications|isbn=978-0-7619-0525-7|page=17}}</ref> In the Spring of 1986 Sears became notorious for sending a letter from the Commission over his own signature to thousands of retailers warning them, in an attempt to intimidate them into not selling '']'' and '']'',<ref name="Thurston1987">{{cite book|author=Carol Thurston|title=The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=346BL8WhzJwC&pg=PA161|accessdate=27 April 2013|year=1987|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-01247-1|page=161}}</ref> that they might be publicly identified as pornography dealers.<ref name=pornwars/> As a result of this letter more than 17,000 retailers stopped carrying the magazine. ], daughter of ] and president of Playboy Magazine, joined Penthouse International in suing the Meese Commission over Sears's letter. Judge ] ordered the Meese Commission to retract the letter, and Sears quit the Department of Justice in disgust, moving to the ].<ref name="Jennings2000">{{cite book|author=David Jennings|title=Skinflicks: The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=3VCVm7sc5JsC&pg=PA344|accessdate=27 April 2013|date=1 June 2000|publisher=AuthorHouse|isbn=978-1-58721-184-3|page=344}}</ref>
{{main | Alliance Defending Freedom}}
Alan Sears serves as president, CEO, and general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. He leads the strategy, training, funding, and litigation efforts of ADF that have resulted in various roles in 38 victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and wins in more than three out of four cases litigated to conclusion. Under his leadership, ADF has funded more than 2,200 grants and legal projects for allied lawyers and organizations, and ADF attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in more than 40 cases nationwide.


Since ADF's founding in 1994, Sears has overseen the training of more than 1,500 lawyers through the ADF Legal Academy, which is designed to equip attorneys to effectively defend religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and marriage and the family. These attorneys have reported nearly $136 million in pro-bono legal services. Sears efforts have also resulted in the graduation of more than 1,000 law students, representing more than 140 law schools, from the ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. This in-depth summer internship program helps equip these students to assume leadership positions to shape the future of American law.
⚫ He is also a columnist with ]. <ref>, Accessed December 26, 2007</ref>


Speaking of the ADF's founding, Sears said, "In the early ’90s, a number of people of different faith backgrounds began to talk to each other about grave concerns with the loss of religious liberty in the court system. And they basically discovered that the community of faith — the body of Christ, the Christians, however you want to describe it — was AWOL. And, so, they said, 'Well, what we ought to do is form a response.' The idea was: Let’s get as many people as we can across faith lines to stand together and defend the things we can agree on. In their conversations that came to be three things: our religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and the preservation of marriage and the traditional family. Those were the three things everybody could agree on, and they asked me if I’d be the first leader of the organization."
==Published works==
⚫ * {{cite book |title=The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today |last=Sears |first=Alan |authorlink= |author2=Craig Osten |year=2003 |publisher=B&H Books |location= |isbn=978-0-8054-2698-4 |page= |pages= |url= |accessdate=}}
⚫ * {{cite book |title=The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values |last=Sears |first=Alan |authorlink= |author2=Craig Osten |year=2005 |publisher= |location= |isbn= 978-0805440454|page= |pages= |url= |accessdate=}}


==See also== ===Government===
Sears served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office for western Kentucky. During his time as a federal prosecutor Sears served as staff executive director of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. This commission was established by Attorney General William French Smith at the direction of President Reagan in early 1985. The commission became popularly known as the Meese Commission after Edwin Meese III, Smith's successor, announced the names of its eleven members in May of 1985. Although he was not a voting member, Sears was influential on the commission and vigorously supported strengthening anti-obsecentiy laws.<ref name="E1">{{cite book |last=Vaughn |first=Stephen |date=2006 |title=Freedom and Entertainment: Rating the Movies in an Age of New Media |url=https://books.google.com.hk/books?id=B7MkaxKGTGAC&dq=%22alan+sears%22+pornography&source=gbs_navlinks_s |location=United Kingdom |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=126 |isbn=0521676541 |access-date=13 April 2015}}</ref><ref name="Legatus"/>
* ]

Sears served as associate solicitor under Secretary ] at the ].

===Private practice===
After his work in government, Sears worked for 10 years in Arizona’s largest law firm. By the time ADF’s founders came looking for him, he had experience in all areas of law, including private practice, public policy and media work.<ref name="Legatus"/>

==Writing==
⚫ Sears is a columnist for ].<ref>, Accessed December 26, 2007</ref>

===''The ACLU vs. America''===
Sears wrote the book ''The ACLU vs. America'' with Craig Osten. During an interview for ''Front Page Magazine'', Sears said, "...Bill O’Reilly asked me: 'Mr. Sears, isn’t the ACLU an organization that had noble beginnings, but just went off track over the past ten years or so?' Of course, there was not enough time to answer that question in a 'sound bite,' so I decided right then and there that we would have to write a book to provide an adequate response – that the ACLU had a VERY different vision right from the start for America than our nation’s founders. Craig Osten and I saw how the organization looked 'one way from a distance but yet another way up close' so we decided to tell the real story about the ACLU, its founder ], its ultra-radical roots, its promotion of socialism, and its extreme positions that few Americans know about."<ref name="FPM">{{cite news |last=Glazov |first=Jamie |date=26 September 2005 |title=The ACLU vs. America |url=http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7151 |newspaper=Front Page Magazine |location=United States |access-date=13 April 2015}}</ref>

Sears takes particular exception to the ACLU's position on child pornography. He stated, "The ACLU also asserts that the ], which was NEVER meant by its authors to do so, 'protects' ]. This is material so foul, that after my years as a federal prosecutor and Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, I call it 'crime scene photography' because of the actual abuse required for its production. The ACLU asserts there should be no federal or state governmental restriction on its distribution, reproduction, sale, and use by pedophiles and others. A very small minority of the American public shares this view." Sears further elaborates, "The ACLU has made no secret of their incredible 'First Amendment' defense of the distribution of even the roughest child pornography for those who know where to look for it. Their former national counsel’s testimony supporting this 'right' in Washington, D.C. before the Pornography Commission was delivered after a slide show of such photos depicting in frightening detail the sexual abuse and then murder of a small
boy. The ACLU actually filed a brief before the United States Supreme Court defending the 'rights' of child pornographers in the ''New York v. Ferber'' case."

===''The Homosexual Agenda''===
Sears co-wrote the book ''The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Liberty Today'' with Craig Osten. In this book Sears and Osten analyze success of the gay rights movement. Sears and Osten say the moral decline of the United States is the result of activists who have “taken us toward their goal of unbridled sexual behavior and silencing of the church.”

They call the beginning of a cultural revolution “the community establishment stage.” Activists at this stage start coordinating their work and forms a cohereht set of ideas to advance. In “the community organization stage,” the group “now feels empowered and starts to get organized and develop a game plan for legitimizing their behavior in society.” During “the mobilization stage,” the group develops a common language and strategy. In the case of gay rights this meant, “taking it out of the moral realm” and framing their cause as a human rights issue and labeling opponents as "hateful" or "intolerant" towards people who are merely "different."
Finally, the movement reaches “the legitimization stage.” Sears and Osten wrote, "We are at stage 4 and are at the eleventh hour with regard to homosexual activism and religious freedom. The homosexual activists have the ball on our ten-yard line, and it is first and goal. We can either put up a brave defensive stand, or we can let them cross the goal line unhindered.”

==Media appearances==
Sears' numerous media appearances include television interviews and feature stories on '']'', '']'', CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, ''The O’Reilly Factor'', ''Oprah'', and ''The Lou Dobbs Show''. He has also been a radio guest on various programs, including ''The Laura Ingraham Show'', National Public Radio, and ''The Dennis Prager Radio Show''. Sears has been extensively covered in national print media, including the ''Washington Post'', the Associated Press, the ''Washington Times'', the ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', the ''Arizona Republic'', and the '']''.

==Social and political views==

===Marriage===
Sears is an opponent of gay marriage. Sears strongly objects to the idea that support for traditional marriage is based on animus against gays. In an interview he said, "I hope that more and more people understand that marriage is about joy, goodness, and that wanting the ideal best for everyone is really based on love and care and concern. It’s about being a good neighbor. A specific thing in the United States is that several of the court decisions that have related to marriage and related to underlying matters of marriage have been predicated on an assumption of animus. Animus in its simplest form is hatred. Marriage is not predicated on hatred."

In the same vein, Sears said, "In Western culture, it is becoming absolutely unacceptable to dissent from the church of political correctness, and to disagree with the catechism of that church. And the catechism of that church of political correctness currently is saying that one who upholds this ideal view of marriage as between a man and a woman is somehow limited in their brain, they’re uneducated, they’re a bigot, etc. and that all those that oppose this agenda must be silenced, they must be punished."

===Foreign policy===
Speaking of a Vatican-sponsored conference on marriage, Sears said, "One of the things that one of the speakers at the colloquium specifically talked about was what she called a 'colonialism of the mind.' I have been alarmed with a number of the friends that I have been blessed to get to know in Latin and South America and in the Caribbean, and in Africa, with the impositions of the current United States government administration. The State Department under the last two Secretaries of State and under this President have engaged in unprecedented attempts to pressure these governments to redefine marriage, to look at different social arrangements, to deal with laws that have been in place to protect society, to protect health, to protect children, and then of course these relate to marriage laws and to laws on abortion, things relating to the euphemism “birth control”. We’re at the point now where apparently there’s some hostage-taking, some blackmail — to use strong words — that if governments in some of these regions don’t do specific things the United States wants done to further abortion, to further weaken marriage, they will have financial consequences."

===Freedom of expression===
After being refused service by a photographer who wrote in an email to him, “I oppose the goals and objectives of your organization and have no interest in working on its behalf," Sears said he accepted her decision and supported freedom of expression. He said, “We’re talking about human dignity. It violates someone’s dignity to require them to create images that violate their core beliefs. I think I’m a pretty nice guy, and my family are kind folks, but to require this woman to portray me in a loving, family-centered way that is contrary to her views and her conscience, I think it would be an act of violence against her dignity.” He further elaborated, "To be told that I must take my talent and I must use it to glorify that which I find wrong or do not agree with is most troubling. That’s why I support the right of this woman in California to tell me no. Even for a Christmas card.”

==Education==
Sears earned a law degree from the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. Sears earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Louisville.<ref name="Legatus"/>

==Bibliography==
⚫ *{{cite book |title=The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today |last=Sears |first=Alan |authorlink= |author2=Craig Osten |year=2003 |publisher=B&H Books |location= |isbn=978-0-8054-2698-4 |page= |pages= |url= |accessdate=}}
⚫ *{{cite book |title=The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values |last=Sears |first=Alan |authorlink= |author2=Craig Osten |year=2005 |publisher=B&H Books |location= |isbn=978-0-8054-4045-4 |page= |pages= |url= |accessdate=}}


==References== ==References==

Revision as of 20:50, 13 July 2015

Alan E. Sears is the president, CEO, and general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom. Sears was the staff executive director of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, popularly know as the "Meese Commission."

Career

Alliance Defending Freedom

Main article: Alliance Defending Freedom

Alan Sears serves as president, CEO, and general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. He leads the strategy, training, funding, and litigation efforts of ADF that have resulted in various roles in 38 victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and wins in more than three out of four cases litigated to conclusion. Under his leadership, ADF has funded more than 2,200 grants and legal projects for allied lawyers and organizations, and ADF attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in more than 40 cases nationwide.

Since ADF's founding in 1994, Sears has overseen the training of more than 1,500 lawyers through the ADF Legal Academy, which is designed to equip attorneys to effectively defend religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and marriage and the family. These attorneys have reported nearly $136 million in pro-bono legal services. Sears efforts have also resulted in the graduation of more than 1,000 law students, representing more than 140 law schools, from the ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. This in-depth summer internship program helps equip these students to assume leadership positions to shape the future of American law.

Speaking of the ADF's founding, Sears said, "In the early ’90s, a number of people of different faith backgrounds began to talk to each other about grave concerns with the loss of religious liberty in the court system. And they basically discovered that the community of faith — the body of Christ, the Christians, however you want to describe it — was AWOL. And, so, they said, 'Well, what we ought to do is form a response.' The idea was: Let’s get as many people as we can across faith lines to stand together and defend the things we can agree on. In their conversations that came to be three things: our religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and the preservation of marriage and the traditional family. Those were the three things everybody could agree on, and they asked me if I’d be the first leader of the organization."

Government

Sears served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office for western Kentucky. During his time as a federal prosecutor Sears served as staff executive director of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. This commission was established by Attorney General William French Smith at the direction of President Reagan in early 1985. The commission became popularly known as the Meese Commission after Edwin Meese III, Smith's successor, announced the names of its eleven members in May of 1985. Although he was not a voting member, Sears was influential on the commission and vigorously supported strengthening anti-obsecentiy laws.

Sears served as associate solicitor under Secretary Donald Hodel at the Department of the Interior.

Private practice

After his work in government, Sears worked for 10 years in Arizona’s largest law firm. By the time ADF’s founders came looking for him, he had experience in all areas of law, including private practice, public policy and media work.

Writing

Sears is a columnist for Townhall.com.

The ACLU vs. America

Sears wrote the book The ACLU vs. America with Craig Osten. During an interview for Front Page Magazine, Sears said, "...Bill O’Reilly asked me: 'Mr. Sears, isn’t the ACLU an organization that had noble beginnings, but just went off track over the past ten years or so?' Of course, there was not enough time to answer that question in a 'sound bite,' so I decided right then and there that we would have to write a book to provide an adequate response – that the ACLU had a VERY different vision right from the start for America than our nation’s founders. Craig Osten and I saw how the organization looked 'one way from a distance but yet another way up close' so we decided to tell the real story about the ACLU, its founder Roger Baldwin, its ultra-radical roots, its promotion of socialism, and its extreme positions that few Americans know about."

Sears takes particular exception to the ACLU's position on child pornography. He stated, "The ACLU also asserts that the First Amendment, which was NEVER meant by its authors to do so, 'protects' child pornography. This is material so foul, that after my years as a federal prosecutor and Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, I call it 'crime scene photography' because of the actual abuse required for its production. The ACLU asserts there should be no federal or state governmental restriction on its distribution, reproduction, sale, and use by pedophiles and others. A very small minority of the American public shares this view." Sears further elaborates, "The ACLU has made no secret of their incredible 'First Amendment' defense of the distribution of even the roughest child pornography for those who know where to look for it. Their former national counsel’s testimony supporting this 'right' in Washington, D.C. before the Pornography Commission was delivered after a slide show of such photos depicting in frightening detail the sexual abuse and then murder of a small boy. The ACLU actually filed a brief before the United States Supreme Court defending the 'rights' of child pornographers in the New York v. Ferber case."

The Homosexual Agenda

Sears co-wrote the book The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Liberty Today with Craig Osten. In this book Sears and Osten analyze success of the gay rights movement. Sears and Osten say the moral decline of the United States is the result of activists who have “taken us toward their goal of unbridled sexual behavior and silencing of the church.”

They call the beginning of a cultural revolution “the community establishment stage.” Activists at this stage start coordinating their work and forms a cohereht set of ideas to advance. In “the community organization stage,” the group “now feels empowered and starts to get organized and develop a game plan for legitimizing their behavior in society.” During “the mobilization stage,” the group develops a common language and strategy. In the case of gay rights this meant, “taking it out of the moral realm” and framing their cause as a human rights issue and labeling opponents as "hateful" or "intolerant" towards people who are merely "different." Finally, the movement reaches “the legitimization stage.” Sears and Osten wrote, "We are at stage 4 and are at the eleventh hour with regard to homosexual activism and religious freedom. The homosexual activists have the ball on our ten-yard line, and it is first and goal. We can either put up a brave defensive stand, or we can let them cross the goal line unhindered.”

Media appearances

Sears' numerous media appearances include television interviews and feature stories on The Today Show, Nightline, CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, The O’Reilly Factor, Oprah, and The Lou Dobbs Show. He has also been a radio guest on various programs, including The Laura Ingraham Show, National Public Radio, and The Dennis Prager Radio Show. Sears has been extensively covered in national print media, including the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the Washington Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Arizona Republic, and the National Catholic Register.

Social and political views

Marriage

Sears is an opponent of gay marriage. Sears strongly objects to the idea that support for traditional marriage is based on animus against gays. In an interview he said, "I hope that more and more people understand that marriage is about joy, goodness, and that wanting the ideal best for everyone is really based on love and care and concern. It’s about being a good neighbor. A specific thing in the United States is that several of the court decisions that have related to marriage and related to underlying matters of marriage have been predicated on an assumption of animus. Animus in its simplest form is hatred. Marriage is not predicated on hatred."

In the same vein, Sears said, "In Western culture, it is becoming absolutely unacceptable to dissent from the church of political correctness, and to disagree with the catechism of that church. And the catechism of that church of political correctness currently is saying that one who upholds this ideal view of marriage as between a man and a woman is somehow limited in their brain, they’re uneducated, they’re a bigot, etc. and that all those that oppose this agenda must be silenced, they must be punished."

Foreign policy

Speaking of a Vatican-sponsored conference on marriage, Sears said, "One of the things that one of the speakers at the colloquium specifically talked about was what she called a 'colonialism of the mind.' I have been alarmed with a number of the friends that I have been blessed to get to know in Latin and South America and in the Caribbean, and in Africa, with the impositions of the current United States government administration. The State Department under the last two Secretaries of State and under this President have engaged in unprecedented attempts to pressure these governments to redefine marriage, to look at different social arrangements, to deal with laws that have been in place to protect society, to protect health, to protect children, and then of course these relate to marriage laws and to laws on abortion, things relating to the euphemism “birth control”. We’re at the point now where apparently there’s some hostage-taking, some blackmail — to use strong words — that if governments in some of these regions don’t do specific things the United States wants done to further abortion, to further weaken marriage, they will have financial consequences."

Freedom of expression

After being refused service by a photographer who wrote in an email to him, “I oppose the goals and objectives of your organization and have no interest in working on its behalf," Sears said he accepted her decision and supported freedom of expression. He said, “We’re talking about human dignity. It violates someone’s dignity to require them to create images that violate their core beliefs. I think I’m a pretty nice guy, and my family are kind folks, but to require this woman to portray me in a loving, family-centered way that is contrary to her views and her conscience, I think it would be an act of violence against her dignity.” He further elaborated, "To be told that I must take my talent and I must use it to glorify that which I find wrong or do not agree with is most troubling. That’s why I support the right of this woman in California to tell me no. Even for a Christmas card.”

Education

Sears earned a law degree from the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. Sears earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Louisville.

Bibliography

  • Sears, Alan; Craig Osten (2003). The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. B&H Books. ISBN 978-0-8054-2698-4.
  • Sears, Alan; Craig Osten (2005). The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values. B&H Books. ISBN 978-0-8054-4045-4.

References

  1. Vaughn, Stephen (2006). Freedom and Entertainment: Rating the Movies in an Age of New Media. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 126. ISBN 0521676541. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Legatus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. Townhall.com, Accessed December 26, 2007
  4. Glazov, Jamie (26 September 2005). "The ACLU vs. America". Front Page Magazine. United States. Retrieved 13 April 2015.

External links

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