It states to operate politically independent, non-partisan and not commercially oriented, and to cooperate with all persons and organisations irrespective of their religious and non-religious preconceptions, provided they pursue rationally justified, evidence-based, neutral and fair legal norms.
The variety of topics covered by the institute include the constitutional roots of the secular state, freedom of belief and non-belief, medically assisted suicide, sexual self-determination, abortion, genital mutilation, criminal prosecution in religious organisations and networks (e. g. in the Catholic Church's sex abuse and cover-up system in Germany), the collection of church taxes by the state based on baptisms of infants and minors, the collection of special church fees from atheists and Muslims by the state, church labour law and religious exceptions from EU and German Anti-discrimination law, 'blasphemy paragraph' of the German Criminal Code, the use of religious symbols (e. g. crucifixes, Islamic veils) in state schools, the justice system or further public institutions, among others.
In 2020, by way of depicting the German Chancellor, the Minister of Justice and the Chair of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany it issued 'seven constitutional reminder cards'.
[7][8] Furthermore, it supports the right to freedom of expression against blocking, bans and cancel culture on social media platforms (e. g. Flensburg court case of ex-Muslim activist Amed Sherwan vs. Facebook Ireland Ltd.).
[9][10] Notable activities that received broader media coverage include the pushing of criminal charges against sexual offenders and officials of the Catholic Church by the state attorneys at the seats of all 27 dioceses in Germany (2018),[11][12][13] the case of a non-denominational French[14] and a non-denominational ex-GDR citizen[15] that were requested to pay church tax (2019),[16][17][18] criminal charges of defamation and incitement of hatred in the case of the fundamental Christian anti-abortionist 'babykaust'-platform operator (2021),[19][20] and the appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court to declare paragraph 219a of Germany's criminal code ('advertisement of medical abortion services') unconstitutional and void (2021).