Right Hand of God

During the mid-1980s Free Market Committee would score a number of successes: Ford and his members got homeschooled children excluded from a bill that called for fining parents $100 a day for every day their kid wasn't in a classroom. After Carol Everett, a fired Dallas abortion-clinic worker who became an anti-abortion spokeswoman, approached Ford about the allegedly horrible conditions in her clinic, he persuaded Democratic Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock to call for licensing of clinics in 1985. And Ford and Free Market Committee were among those who persuaded Bullock to rescind his call for a state income tax in 1991; the group took out three full-page ads in Texas newspapers, calling for an amendment that would allow voters to decide on a state tax, knowing Texans would never do any such thing.

"The most memorable conversation I had with [Bullock] went as follows," Ford says. "I mentioned to him, 'It seems like you have a real interest in spiritual things,' and he said yes. I asked, 'If you were to die tonight and God should ask you why he should let you into heaven, how would you answer him?' In his trademark candor, he answered, 'I have no idea.' I explained that the Bible says God is holy and just and the criteria to get into heaven is perfection. And I asked him, 'Have you lived a perfect life?' His answer was 'Are you kidding me?' I continued that the Bible also says God is perfect love, and he wants us to join him in heaven so badly that he had his son, Jesus, who lived a perfect life, pay the penalty for our mistakes. All we have to do is believe that Jesus paid our debts and accept the gift of his payment. Bullock got tears in his eyes and said, 'That's what I was taught when I was a child. That's what I believe.' We prayed together, and he gave me a big hug."

Bullock died in 1999.

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Ford met Kelly Shackelford in the late 1980s during one of several attempts by gay-rights groups to overturn Texas' anti-sodomy laws. They were introduced by a colleague and friend who believed, as Shackelford and Ford do, that homosexuality is a crime. Shackelford wound up filing a brief supporting the statute, which eventually would be ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, and a friendship was formed.

At the time, Shackelford was in his late 20s but already a rising star among the legal right: In 1988 the Nashville native graduated from Baylor Law School with the highest GPA in his class, clerked that year for U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater, then worked as a regional coordinator for the Virginia-based Rutherford Institute, once described by The New York Times as "a kind of evangelical Christian civil liberties union." Shackelford could have had his pick of high-paying jobs in the business world, yet he chose instead to work for Rutherford.

"I went to law school because I felt like I had gifts, but I wanted to use them somehow in ministry," he says now, sitting in the modest Plano offices that house both Free Market Foundation and Liberty Legal Institute. "So, I literally remember sitting in my office thinking, I don't want to work for the big law firm and make a lot of money, so what do I want to do? I'm clearly supposed to use my legal skills and gifts, because the Lord showed me in law school that those were gifts and I need to not hide them somewhere; I need to use them. But I want to use them somehow in ministry. I want to be able to help churches and pastors. That was my real heart. I laughed, because there was no such job that existed anywhere in the country. Then about a month later, I was offered that very job."

Rutherford was founded in 1982 by attorney John Whitehead, who believed that the judicial system had but one true judge--God himself. Whitehead is among the most vocal abortion opponents around, calling for nonstop picketing of abortion clinics and the "harassment" of doctors who perform the procedures. The year he formed Rutherford he also published The Second American Revolution, considered one of the key events in the foundation of the New Christian Right. "Getting involved in local politics will eventually mean Christians running for office," he said at the time. "This will include attending and eventually taking control of party conventions where grassroots decisions are made." Whitehead was, clearly, a man ahead of his time.

And Shackelford was thrilled to be involved with his institution. Shackelford's task was to recruit other attorneys across the country who would aid in cases involving "religious freedom and family," as he describes it--meaning cases involving the display of religious artifacts and literature on government property, defending teachers or children who want to pray in public schools and, in one instance, defending a man who distributed anti-abortion literature.

They're all cases, Shackelford insists, in which "the government is trying to tell someone what they could or could not do regarding their faith, or trying to tell a parent how to raise their child or what school to put their child in or anything where the government was interfering with the God-given rights of parents over their children or God-given rights of any citizen to worship God in any way they see fit."