Turns Out Coachella Co-Owner Has Donated Even More Money to Anti-LGBT Groups

Coachella co-owner Philip Anschutz is back under scrutiny for his donations to anti-LGBT groups. News about his donations first broke earlier in January, and now music news site Pitchfork has obtained the latest tax filings of the Anschutz Foundation. The filing details the dispersal of $63.7 million in grants, some of which went to known anti-LGBT groups. Pitchfork reported that the foundation did, however, stop giving to the groups that were at the center of the first controversy Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and National Christian Foundation.

Pitchfork found that the foundation gave $40,000 to the Navigators in November 2016. According to a 2013 document on their website lists being LGBTQ along with incest and sexual abuse as behaviors leading to “sexual brokenness.”

In the same month, $50,00 went to Dare 2 Share Ministries founder Greg Stier, who wrote in a 2008 blog post that “homosexuality is a Satanic perversion of God’s gift of sex.”

The group gave $185,000 twice in 2016 to Young Life, a Christian youth ministry who restricted anyone who is “sexually active outside of a heterosexual marriage relationship” from working or volunteering for them. They gave $25,000 to the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, whose founder Star Parker equated the LGBTQ pride flag with the Confederate flag. Parker has also said same-sex marriage and legal abortion show that the US is “sick.” The foundation also gave $25,000 to the Movieguide Awards, which reviews movies based on their “homosexual worldview.”

In a statement to Pitchfork, Anschutz’s lawyers reaffirmed “the commitment we made at that time that The Anschutz Foundation would not knowingly fund any organization that would support anti-LGBTQ initiatives.”

The statement said the foundation is in an ongoing review of the organizations it supports. “The Foundation receives requests for donations from thousands of organizations every year and donates to approximately 800 entities annually. If our systems have failed to identify some activities that we do not support, we will stop funding those organizations as we learn more,” the statement reads.