One of the highest-profile campaigners against marriage equality, Lyle Shelton of the Australian Christian Lobby, has endorsed a US hate group that has campaigned for the criminalisation of homosexuality in the United States and internationally.

Last night, in response to questions from Crikey about whether the Australian Christian Lobby would accept help from the Alliance Defending Freedom during its campaign against marriage equality, Shelton declared that the ADF were “good people”.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), founded in 1994 to fund anti-LGBTI litigation, was formally designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre last year for its:

“propagation of known falsehoods about LGBT people over the years (including the conspiracy theory that there is a ‘homosexual agenda’ or ‘homosexual legal agenda’ to undermine “the family” and Christianity), its demonization of LGBT people, its support of criminalization of gay sex in the U.S. and abroad and its continued attempts to create state and local policies and legislation (so-called ‘religious liberty’ laws) that allow Christians to deny goods and services to LGBT people in the public sphere and marginalize LGBT students in schools.”

The ADF has campaigned against efforts to decriminalise homosexuality in the United States and other countries. It filed a brief in Texas in 2003 to oppose a court action,Lawrence v Texas, to decriminalise same-sex sodomy, in which the ADF said:

“The issue under rational-basis review is not whether Texas should be concerned about opposite-sex sodomy, but whether it is reasonable to believe that same-sex sodomy is a distinct public health problem. It clearly is.” Read more via Crikey