It also lobbies on a range of social policy issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage from an evangelical Protestant perspective, and has been particularly influential with Democratic Unionist Party ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive.
Documenting the influence of the Foundation within Northern Ireland unionist politics, and particularly the DUP, the Belfast Telegraph noted in 2012 that politicians close to it included Northern Ireland health minister Edwin Poots, Minister for Social Development Nelson McCausland, junior minister Jonathan Bell, Diane Dodds MEP, Gregory Campbell MP, David Simpson MP, Paul Givan MLA, Stephen Moutray MLA (and mayor of Craigavon), Jim Allister, leader of Traditional Unionist Voice, and TUV press officer and East Antrim parliamentary candidate Sammy Morrison.
[2] A leading Belfast Telegraph journalist wrote on another occasion that "Caleb plays a role within the DUP analogous to the old Militant tendency within the Labour party".
[9] Also in 2012, the Irish Daily Star noted that Caleb "claims a support base of 200,000 evangelicals" and asked whether it had "overtaken the Orange Order as the most influential pressure group within Unionism".
[citation needed] In 2008, the Foundation's spokesman called for the banning of the Belfast Gay Pride parade, complaining of the "gratuitously offensive and deliberately provocative behaviour emanating from participants".
[12] Also in 2008, the Foundation's website carried a photograph of a shop window display in Enniskillen and asked: "Is one of Northern Ireland's leading clothes chains promoting homosexuality?
[15] In 2010, the British Centre for Science Education published an 11,000-word report which accused the Foundation of promoting Christian fascism and Dominionism, aiming to make Northern Ireland a "fundamentalist Protestant theocracy".
[18] In July 2012 McConaghie welcomed this as "recognition of the view, held by scientists right across the spectrum, that the scientific evidence points to a much younger age of the universe and to the direct involvement of a Divine Creator".
[2] In November 2012, the Caleb Foundation announced that McConaghie had "voluntarily stepped down" from his role as its press officer, after he was arrested and charged with concealing a camera to spy on women in a toilet cubicle for purposes of sexual gratification.