You may have just heard Alan Sears on the Focus on the Family radio broadcast. As he explained on the program, religious freedom in America is under attack by advocates of the homosexual agenda. The goal of these radical activists is to silence and punish Christians so that they can force their agenda on our families, schools, churches, and even our military.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed an opening brief Friday with the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of school choice in Arizona. The brief asks that the suit be dismissed because the opponents have not proven that they have suffered any legal injury that would give them standing to sue over the state’s tuition tax credit program. Arizona’s program, like many others across the country, merely allows state residents to claim a tax credit for donations to private organizations that provide scholarships to private schools.

The Alliance Defense Fund has officially been granted special consultative status at the United Nations. This status will allow ADF attorneys to attend and intervene at treaty and convention drafting meetings and help craft language that affirms religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

The Alliance Defense Fund is urging government bodies in South Carolina and Florida to continue their constitutionally protected practice of praying before public meetings, despite recent threats from atheist organizations. Within the past week alone, ADF, in cooperation with area lawyers who are part of the nearly 1,800 attorneys in the ADF alliance, sent letters to four local governments offering to defend valid invocation policies free of charge.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Alliance Defense Fund honored eight allied attorneys this month for providing thousands of hours of dedicated, pro-bono service in defense of religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.  The value of those hours amounts to millions of dollars in free legal services that they have provided to clients in need.

Arizona’s Mohave Community College agreed Tuesday--after receiving a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund--not to eliminate the opening and closing prayers from its nursing program’s pinning ceremony this year. School officials originally removed the traditional invocation and benediction--which had been permitted since 1972--from its protocol for ceremonies this year, but reinstated it after a graduating speaker contacted ADF.

With President Barack Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court, attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund reiterated their position on all judicial appointments: that liberty is only safe when judges rule according to the law and the Constitution and do not legislate from the bench.

An Arizona court Tuesday overturned the conviction of a Phoenix pastor, represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys, who was sentenced to jail for ringing church bells. The court reversed the conviction of Bishop Rick Painter of Christ the King Liturgical Charismatic Church in the wake of a federal court’s determination last month that the city noise ordinance under which he was convicted is unconstitutional when enforced against sounds generated in the course of religious expression, such as church bells. The ordinance offered an exemption for ice cream trucks, but not for churches.

The Alliance Defense Fund sent follow-up letters to mayors across America Friday, informing them that a federal judge’s decision striking down the National Day of Prayer statute as unconstitutional in no way impedes their observance of this year’s 59th annual observance. The Obama administration appealed the judge’s decision Thursday.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys secured a favorable decision Monday on behalf of Phoenix churches, with the court ruling that the city of Phoenix cannot enforce its noise ordinance to prohibit “sound generated in the course of religious expression.” A federal judge held that the ordinance against religious bell sounds--which offered an exemption for ice cream trucks, but not for church bells--violated the Constitution.