What does Invisible Children share in common with the Discovery Institute, the leading organization promoting "Intelligent Design", a pseudo-scientific theory created to insinuate creationist ideas into public schools -- or with The Call, whose leader Lou Engle claims homosexuals are possessed by demons, calls God an "avenger of blood" and a "terrorist", and in May 2010 staged a rally in Kampala, Uganda, at which Engle warned of a gay menace to society and shared a stage with one of the authors of Uganda's notorious Anti Homosexuality Bill ?
990 IRS tax forms and yearly reports from Invisible Children, and 990s from its major donors, tell a story that's jarringly at odds with the secular, airbrushed, feelgood image the nonprofit has cultivated.
Among the tens of millions of people who have watched Invisible Children's KONY 2012 viral video, including Oprah Winfrey - a dedicated supporter of LGBT rights who also has given $2 million dollars to Invisible Children, how many were aware of IC's extensive financial ties to far-right fundamentalism, including major funders of the mounting global war on gay rights ? IC doesn't go out of its way to advertise these things.
But Invisible Children's first yearly report, from 2006, gives "special thanks" to the "Caster Family Foundation" and IC's 2007 report is more specific, thanking Terry and Barbara Caster. In the lead up to the 2008 election, the California-based Caster family was identified as one of the biggest financial backers of the push for California's anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8.
Capping the pro-Prop 8 push was a November 1, 2008 San Diego stadium rally held by The Call, whose leader Lou Engle warned that same sex marriage could unleash a "sexual insanity" that would be "more demonic than Islam" and suggested believers should carry out acts of martyrdom to stop gay marriage and legal abortion, which Engle predicts will lead to a second American civil war.
One of The Call's major donors in 2008 also gave, that same year, over 400,000 dollars to Invisible Children. These links weren't anomalies. They were part of a pattern.
What does Invisible Children share in common with James Dobson's Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council (pegged by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group"), or the Fellowship Foundation --- one of the nonprofit entities of the Washington-based evangelical organization also known as "The Family" (covered in two books by journalist Jeff Sharlet) whose leader Doug Coe has been captured on video celebrating the dedication inspired by Hitler, Lenin, and Mao ?
What does IC have in common with the ministry of California evangelist Ed Silvoso, who works directly with leading Ugandan author and promoter of the Anti Homosexuality Bill (also called the "kill the gays bill") Julius Oyet -- who claims that "even animals are wiser than homosexuals"?
The answer? -- all of these ministries - the Discovery Institute, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, The Fellowship Foundation, The Call, Ed Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism, and Invisible Children - received at least $100,000 in 2008 from what has emerged in the last decade as the biggest funder of the hard, antigay, creationist Christian right: the National Christian Foundation.
2008 grants from National Christian Foundation, and subsidiaries
Focus on The Family: $4,268,000
Family Research Council: $2,387,000
The Fellowship Foundation (AKA "The Family" or the "International Foundation"): $515,000
Lou Engle's The Call: $166,000
Ed Silvoso's Harvest Evangelism: $817,000
The Discovery Institute: $702,000*
Invisible Children: $414,000*
*NCF's 2008 990 lists $139,000 to IC; NCF subsidiary ProVision Foundation's 2008 990 lists a $150,000 grant to IC; NCF subsidiary ProVision Trust's 2008 990 lists a $125,000 grant to IC.
*Answers in Genesis, which directly promotes "Young Earth" creationism,received over $35,000 from the NCF in 2008.
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