Bradlee Dean uses "suicide prevention" to raise money for anti-gay ministry
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| Bradlee Dean, the man behind the ministry. |
She didn't really think about it again until last week, when Bradlee Dean, the head of the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International ministry, made headlines with a universally condemned prayer before the state legislature.
"They told me they were collecting money to help people on drugs," he says.
That sounded like a good cause to Marous, so he allowed the Ministry to set up a fund-raising table at his station. They've been there two or three times a month ever since, he says.
Yet the group's most current 990 tax filings confess to an altogether different mission:
"To reshape America by redirecting our youth morally and spiritually through education. (Hosea 4:6) The ministry's street teams spoke to over 250,000 people last year concerning their spiritual destiny and our nation's religious history."
The function of the street teams, the filing reports, is to share the gospel and distribute CDs and literature.
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| Sally Jo Sorensen |
| One of Dean's street teams in action at Walmart this week. |
"The presentation covers current issues which may include drugs, alcoholism, suicide, sex, media, our country, our Veterans, the Constitution."
Those topics don't seem to actually have been the focus of the school assemblies, though. In fact, the ministry has developed a well-documented reputation for showing up at schools promising to talk about drugs, then laying a heavy dose of anti-abortion propaganda on unsuspecting students.
When City Pages spoke with Dean by telephone yesterday, he said there's nothing deceptive about presenting his ministry to potential donors as a suicide prevention or drug-abuse prevention organization.
"We do address the topic," Dean said. "We do tell the kids that, you know what? Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. So it is a part of our ministry."
His claims aren't persuasive to Julia Miller, who regrets giving $5 to You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International -- not least because her friend who committed suicide was gay.
"When I realized that was the group I had given money to, I felt sick to my stomach," Miller says. "Other people need to be made aware of this, so they don't make the same mistake I did."
Here are the 2009 tax filings for Dean's ministry:
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