The Family Research Council (FRC) is an American evangelical 501(c)(3) non-profit activist group and think-tank with an affiliated lobbying organization. FRC promotes what it considers to be family values. It opposes and lobbies against access to pornography, embryonic stem-cell research, abortion, divorce, and LGBT rights—such as anti-discrimination laws, same-sex marriage, same-sex civil unions, and LGBT adoption. The FRC has been criticized by media sources and professional organizations such as the American Sociological Association for using "anti-gay pseudoscience" to falsely conflate homosexuality and pedophilia, and to falsely claim that the children of same-sex parents suffer from more mental health problems.
FRC was formed in the United States in 1981 by James Dobson and incorporated in 1983. In the late 1980s, FRC officially became a division of Dobson's main organization, Focus on the Family; however, after an administrative separation, FRC became an independent entity in 1992. Tony Perkins is its current president. FRC is affiliated with a lobbying PAC known as FRC Action, of which Josh Duggar was the executive director from 2013 until 2015.Josh Duggar Is Convicted of Downloading Child Sexual Abuse Imagery, The New York Times, December 9, 2021
The FRC is active outside of the United States; in 2010, FRC paid $25,000 to congressional lobbyists for what they described as "Res.1064 Ugandan Resolution Pro-homosexual promotion" in a lobbying disclosure report. Uganda would go on to pass the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, a bill which would have imposed either the death penalty or life imprisonment for sexual relations between persons of the same sex. On August 1, 2014, however, the Constitutional Court of Uganda ruled the act invalid on procedural grounds.
In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center classified FRC as an anti-LGBT hate group due to what it says are the group's "false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science" in an effort to block LGBT civil rights. In 2012, the FRC's headquarters were attacked by a gunman, resulting in an injury to a security guard. The gunman later told investigators he selected the organization as a target after seeing it listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the SPLC.
History The Council was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1983.Timothy J. Demy Ph.D., Paul R. Shockley Ph.D., Evangelical America: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Religious Culture, ABC-CLIO, USA, 2017, p. 153Hilde Løvdal Stephens, Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family's Crusade for the Christian Home, University of Alabama Press, USA, 2019, p. 19 James Dobson, Armand Nicholi Jr., and George Rekers were some of its founding board members. In 1988, following financial difficulties, FRC was incorporated into Focus on the Family, and Gary Bauer joined the organization as president. FRC remained under the Focus on the Family umbrella until 1992, when it separated out of concern for Focus' tax-exempt status. Tony Perkins joined FRC as its president in 2003.Michael Foust, Tony Perkins, pro-family leader & Baptist in La., named FRC president, baptistpress.com, USA, August 13, 2003
On June 18, 2013, Josh Duggar was named executive director of FRC Action, the non-profit and tax-exempt legislative action arm of Family Research Council. Duggar resigned his position on May 21, 2015, after his history of sexual misconduct as a minor became public.
2012 shooting On August 15, 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II, a resident of nearby Herndon, Virginia, entered the lobby of the FRC's Washington, D.C., headquarters with a 9mm pistol and two magazines with 50 rounds of ammunition. Corkins shot an unarmed security guard, 46-year-old Leonardo Johnson, in the left arm. Although injured, Johnson assisted others who wrestled Corkins to the ground until police arrived and placed him under arrest. Politico reported that "Corkins was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches that he intended to smear on employees’ faces in a political statement, he told the FBI."
The FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department investigated jointly "to determine motive/intent and whether a hate crime/terrorism nexus exists." During his FBI interview, Corkins was asked how he chose his target. His response was "Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups. I found them online." Corkins had told Johnson "words to the effect of 'I don't like your politics. Corkins had served as a volunteer at an LGBT community center.
In January 2013, Corkins pleaded guilty to two charges in the District of Columbia, possession of a handgun during a violent crime and assault with intent to kill, and interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition, a federal charge. He was found mentally ill and, in September 2013, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
On the day of the shooting, a joint statement of 25 LGBT groups condemned Corkins's action. The SPLC also condemned the shooting, but refused to take the FRC off its hate map.
The National Organization for Marriage, an active campaigner against same-sex marriage,Virginia man charged in shooting at Family Research Council, CNN. issued a statement saying "Today's attack is the clearest sign we've seen that labeling pro-marriage groups as 'hateful' must end".
FRC president Tony Perkins issued a public statement calling the shooting "an act of domestic terrorism" and criticizing the Southern Poverty Law Center for being "reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy." SPLC spokesman Mark Potok called Perkins's accusation "outrageous", and in a statement said: "The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence." Potok posted that "The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people—not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage.""SPLC: Family Research Council License-to-Kill Claim 'Outrageous'" , August 16, 2012; retrieved May 6, 2015.
Politics, policies and positions
Tony Perkins has blamed the constitutional separation of church and state for encouraging the rise of ISIS and similar Islamic extremist groups.
The FRC has opposed efforts to make the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine mandatory for school attendance. HPV is a virus that can be transmitted by sexual contact, that can cause cervical cancer. FRC defends its position on the basis of the rights of parents and because of its support for abstinence prior to marriage.
It supports a federal conscience clause, allowing medical workers to refuse to provide certain treatments to their patients, such as abortion or birth control. It also advocates for abstinence-only sex education, intelligent design, prayer in public schools and the regulation of pornography and other "obscene, indecent, or profane programming" on broadcast and cable television. It unsuccessfully opposed the introduction of an .xxx domain name and lobbied for an increase in indecency fines from the Federal Communications Commission. The group holds that hotel pornography may be prosecutable under federal and state obscenity laws. It opposed the expansion of civil rights laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity as illegal bases for discrimination.
Family Research Council supports the requirement of a one-year waiting period before a married couple with children can legally get a divorce so that they can receive marital counseling, unless the marriage involves domestic violence. FRC also supports permanently eliminating the marriage penalty and estate taxes.
The Council opposes legalized abortion, stem-cell research which involves the destruction of human embryos and funding thereof. (It advocates for research solely using adult stem cells.) It opposes legal recognition of same-sex domestic partnerships in the form of marriage or civil unions. It has opposed all forms of gambling. The Council has questioned whether humans are mainly or completely responsible for climate change, and has opposed other evangelicals who accepted the scientific consensus on it.
Statements on homosexuality The FRC maintains that "homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed", and asserts that it is "by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects." The Council also asserts that "there is no convincing evidence that a homosexual identity is ever something genetic or inborn". These positions are in opposition to the consensus of mainstream psychological and medical experts that homosexuality is a normal, healthy variation of human behavior, and that sexual orientation is generally not chosen.
Certain FRC statements and positions have been criticized as based upon pseudo/junk science;Why is Scott Pruitt meeting with an anti-gay group? . Akin, Emily. The New Republic, October 7, 2017.Violence against Family Research Council is wrong . Jonathan Capehart, The Washington Post, August 16, 2012.Bess, Gabby. Uncovering the Christian Think Tanks Behind the Bogus Studies on Gay Parenting, Vice, February 16, 2017. according to Wired, the group has misrepresented data and mis-designed sociological studies in order to negatively depict LGBT people.
FRC also states that "[s]ympathy must be extended to those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions, and every effort should be made to assist such persons to overcome those attractions, as many already have". Evidence on the effectiveness of sexual orientation change efforts is limited; according to a 2009 publication from the American Psychological Association, "[there] are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent [sexual orientation change efforts] do or do not work to change a person's sexual orientation."
In 2012, Rob Schwartzwalder, then a senior vice president at FRC, wrote: "To love people who identify as gays or lesbians means to extend grace to them: to welcome them as friends, to care for them when ill, and to respect them as persons whose creation was ordained by the God of the universe and for whom the Son of God died. Such love will oppose attempts to legalize homosexual marriage, as to do so would vindicate a corruption of that which God intended. ... To love homosexuals means that believing churches cannot accept those practicing or advocating homosexuality as members, ministers, or leaders any more than persons living in any other kind of sexual sin."
Jointly with Focus on the Family, the Council submitted an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court case in which anti-sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional on privacy grounds. The summary of the amicus curiae brief declares that "[states] may discourage the 'evils' ... of sexual acts outside of marriage by means up to and including criminal prohibition" and that it is constitutionally permissible for Texas to "choose to protect marital intimacy by prohibiting same-sex 'deviate' acts".Full text available from:
Similar positions have been advocated by representatives of the organization since Lawrence was decided in 2003. In February 2010, Family Research Council's senior researcher for policy studies, Peter Sprigg, stated on NBC's Hardball that same-sex behavior should be outlawed and that "criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior" should be enforced."CHRIS MATTHEWS: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior? PETER SPRIGG: Well, I think certainly- MATTHEWS: I'm just asking you, should we outlaw gay behavior?