Expert Witness

Culture Wars

LaRue has emerged as a key player in the culture wars. CWA bills itself as the country's largest public-policy women's group. It was founded by Beverly LaHaye in 1979. LaHaye and her husband, Tim, are evangelical powerhouses and best-selling authors. He is the co-author of the wildly successful "Left Behind" novel series.

CWA defines its mission as bringing "Biblical principles into all levels of public policy. . . . Through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society," it aims to reverse "the decline in moral values in our nation."

It opposes abortion, pornography and gay marriage. CWA promotes prayer in school and supports teaching intelligent design. It describes itself as a staunch defender of religious freedom.

It was LaRue's opposition to pornography that first took her into the courts on cultural issues. She has become recognized as a legal expert on pornography law. But porn was just the gateway for LaRue, who, long before she arrived at CWA, decided that one of the frontlines in the cultural wars was the courts.

The Supreme Court, says LaRue, is the key to everything else. Which explains how a little girl from the Midwest who grew up embittered and embattled would find herself in the nation's capital speaking in favor of Chief Justice John Roberts, helping to send Miers limping back to her old job at the White House, and finding every opportunity to defend Alito.

As she said at a news conference last week, "One can hope for the right and just thing, but if the past is prologue and predictions are realized, then there will not be a unanimous vote" for Alito. "Partisan politicians will defer to the unreasonable demands of special-interest groups."

A Troubled Childhood

Few friends or family members can corroborate the tragic experiences in LaRue's youth. Her father and her stepfather are dead. Her mother died in August. But it is her story, her testimonial really, and she tells it in the most matter-of-fact tone.

She began sharing the tale of her early troubled years when she became a Christian, she says. And a few years back, she wrote about it briefly in an anti-pornography book she co-authored in 2002, "Protecting Your Child in an X-Rated World."

Her first years were spent with her parents and grandparents in Aurora, Ill., where she was born. Her father was a mechanic, her mother a homemaker. "Everything was great," she says.

But the marriage didn't last. The divorce, which occurred when LaRue was 7, was a turning point in her life, though even before then she was learning how dangerous the world could be.

In her book, which she wrote with fellow anti-pornography activist Frank York, she recounts being 4 or 5, and going to the movies with her parents. She was sitting next to her mother in the dark and nearly empty theater, she says, when a stranger sat down beside her. Her father was sitting on the other side of LaRue's mother.

The stranger, she says, kept touching her, putting his hands up her legs.