The Freedom From Religion Foundation has put up a billboard in the heart of downtown Denver warning “Keep freedom alive — Stop Project 2025.”
The billboard, one of several FFRF has placed with this timely message, recently went up at 1950 Lincoln Street and will be on display through Nov. 3. It is part of the national state/church watchdog’s campaign against a threatening Christian nationalist-authoritarian scheme to upend democracy.
The brainchild of Heritage Foundation plus 100 affiliated groups, the 922-page Project 2025 playbook broadly would gut federal checks and balances and consolidate all power in the White House, ending the independence of the Justice Department. It calls for enforcing the zombie 1873 law known as The Comstock Act, which could criminalize abortion and contraception nationwide and launch other attacks on medication abortion.
Regarding the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, Project 2025 would:
• Infuse “the pursuit of Blessedness” into every level of government. (Page 13)
• Dismantle nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ-plus Americans. (Page 333, 375 and 548)
• Mandate a “biblically based” definition of marriage and family. (Pages 477–482)
• Dismantle civil rights protections in the name of “religious liberty,” providing a license to discriminate. (Page 494)
• Allow religious employers to discriminate against employees based on beliefs. (Page 586)
• Turn the Department of Health and Human Services into the “Department of Life.” (Page 489)
• Gut overtime laws, while establishing Sunday as “the Sabbath” and forcing employers to pay overtime on Sunday. because “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest.” (Page 589)
Its attacks on science and climate change mitigation include weakening or defunding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and other climate change conventions and ending the Environmental Protection Agency’s focus on climate change in favor of drilling and privatizing public lands, gutting the Endangered Species Act, weakening the Clean Air Act and much more.
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman of California has been spearheading the congressional Stop Project 2025 Task Force, which has sought fruitlessly to get the Heritage Foundation to hand over the secret adjunct to Project 2025, known as the “fourth pillar.” This lays out the schemes to enact Project 2025 in the first 180 days.
“What we do know about Project 2025 is far scarier than any Halloween ghoul,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
FFRF has a voter awareness page calling attention to the growing threat of Christian nationalism at ffrf.org/vote.
FFRF has endorsed Amendment 79 to enshrine abortion rights in the Colorado state Constitution. Its related advocacy arm, FFRF Action Fund, has donated $5,000 to Project the Right to Abortion in Colorado and to the nine other groups around the country that have successfully placed abortion rights initiatives on the ballot.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the largest national association of freethinkers, representing atheists, agnostics, and others who form their opinions about religion based on reason, rather than faith, tradition or authority. It has 40,000 members across every state and the District of Columbia and several chapters nationwide, including more than 1,300 active members in Colorado, with chapters in Denver and Colorado Springs.
