^{The following article was derived from a BlueSky post by Fergus Murray (linktree), which aggregated discussion forum links from the RTiE activist group. Any errors are my own.}

The Christian right, based in the USA, is a global threat. They systematically use their immense wealth to push propaganda internationally, with significant focus on the United Kingdom. They are attacking the rights of women, gay and bisexual people, and trans people.

They use any chinks in the defence of one group to further their attacks on all the others. There are clear relationships between misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Christian nationalism is a power-hungry political vision with a strict racial and gender hierarchy.

Since religion is not as prominent in British society, conservative Christians operate far less visibly in the UK than they do in the US. Networks do, however, spread widely, and they work to influence media outlets, policy makers and public discourse in a wide variety of ways. People often don’t realise they’re repeating their talking points, because their messages get promoted by groups that are ostensibly secular.

… this network of anti-LGBTQ+ actors have built a political and PR machine that twists data and opinion from a very small minority of the medical community and positions it as mainstream.” — R.G. Cravens, SPLC Intelligence Project.

“The largest spenders are UK branches of US organisations (£34 million), ultra-conservative Christian policy/advocacy groups (£31.5 million), and anti-abortion organisations (£28.5 million)” – Amnesty International UK

A powerful anti-rights movement is growing in the UK, threatening to roll back our hard-won freedoms and rewrite the rules on whose rights, bodies and lives deserve protection.

Our analysis maps the nature and finances of 65 anti-rights groups operating across the UK, including anti-abortion organisations, groups promoting so-called “conversion therapy,” UK branches of powerful US-based organisations, and ultra-conservative Christian groups, with many groups emerging since 2015. Three quarters are registered either as a charity or a company.

American Christian conservative groups like the so called Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) have dramatically ramped up their spending in the UK in recent years. They focus on attacks by legal means, and leverage their funds by training their own legal and para-legal teams. They are a vehemently anti-feminist organisation, who obsessively target abortion rights and LGBTQ+ communities. They were major contributors to Project 2025, a far-right blueprint to move the US towards being a conservative theocratic state.

Coleman and ADF International target same-sex marriage, abortion rights, free speech (potentially meaning the freedom to say hate speech), and LGBT rights. They have been involved in various court cases in the UK, including Lee v Asher’s Bakery – often known as the gay cake case.

The origins of the US religious right, and how it became so incredibly wealthy and influential, are fascinating. It should not be a huge surprise that racism is also a huge part of that history.

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered ‘charitable’ institutions.

In many cases, the origins of the money being spent to promote opposition to abortion, trans rights, gay rights and so on have been carefully concealed. Fortunately, journalists like Adam Ramsay and Peter Geoghegan are on it…

In a blog on its website this week, CARE described Forbes as “an evangelical Christian who would have voted against same-sex marriage, believes only married couples should have children, is pro-life, and believes biological sex is immutable”.

It would be easy to miss just how much influence propagandists and legal activists funded by the Christian right have had on politics outside of the USA in recent years. It has mostly been done quietly, behind the scenes.

Among those who have received funding from American anti-abortionists is Tory peer Toby Young’s Free Speech Union (FSU), which took $97,930 from a charity run by US anti-abortion lawyer Zachary Kester.

These networks are very active across Europe, pumping astonishing levels of money into groups opposing ‘gender ideology’ – which, to them, covers not just trans rights, but many aspects of women’s liberation. Again, this is mostly behind the scenes.

A new report reveals how groups critical of so-called gender ideology across Europe raised $1.18 billion to target abortion, sex education and LGBTQ+ rights.

While much of the money comes from groups based in the USA, similar (and often connected) groups in the UK and EU have also been funding anti-human rights campaigns elsewhere in the world.

These countries are often economically less developed than those of their western funders, and so the money can fund far more activity than could be afforded in the west. Even just one of the UK’s contributions to a Ugandan anti-LGBTQ group, at $166,000, could cover the cost of hiring over 20 educated Ugandan activists for a full year.

Uganda recently re-criminalised homosexuality, with provision for the death penalty for those prosecuted. This is the reality of Christian fundamentalism.

Many people repeating anti-trans talking points don’t realise they’ve been seeded by far right Christian conservatives, who identified trans rights as a wedge issue about a decade ago, and have been relentlessly promoting the anti-trans moral panic ever since.

Rather than obviously opposing transgender rights using moral or religious terms, the key strategy of the religious right’s opposition to transgender rights has been to couch anti-LGBT rhetoric in scientific or medical terms — a strategy long used by anti-LGBT groups.

Anti-trans groups have been exploiting fear-mongering tactics—for instance, implying trans women’s use of women’s restrooms could facilitate assault—despite evidence showing no increase in sexual assaults after trans-inclusive policies were implemented.