The Family Policy Alliance (formerly CitizenLink and Focus on the Family Action) is the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family, with affiliate “Family Policy Council” chapters in 40 states. According to information supplied directly to GLAAD from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC), the Family Policy Alliance is the group that is most influential on the current slate of 2021 anti-trans bills. Among other priorities, the organization advocates:
Against marriage equality
Against transgender rights
Against sexual consent education
For traditional gender roles
—Advocates against race and LGBTQ identities claiming “parental rights” as a Florida chapter mobilized in support of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay/Trans” classroom censorship bill.
—Partnered with WoLF, Women’s Liberation Front, a group that criticizes transgender people and access to society as “gender theory,” to falsely claim that a Biden administration executive order protecting transgender children “sexualizes” all children and baselessly conflates support of LGBTQ youth with promoting “unnecessary, life-altering, and permanent medical procedures.” In a joint statement, FPA and WoLF claimed: “Though we may not agree on every issue, rest assured that our organizations will use the full weight of our resources to oppose this dangerous and out-of-touch executive order.”
—Partnered with WoLF to oppose high school student Gavin Grimm’s right to use the boys’ bathroom, disingenously and inaccurately noting alignment as activist groups, “Pro-family Christians and radical feminists may not agree about much, but they agree that redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ is a truly fundamental shift in American law and society.”
—Provides funding to extremist religious groups in nearly every state with the goal of undermining marriage equality and access to abortion, donating nearly $7 million to 37 different affiliated organizations from 2011–2015.
—Sponsored a resolution drafted and approved by the Kansas Republican Committee, which said the GOP affirms “God’s design for gender as determined by biological sex and not by self-perception.” The resolution opposes “all efforts to validate transgender identity,” including opposing any medical treatments to alter a person’s body to conform with his or her perceived gender identity. The resolution’s sponsor was Eric Teetsel, president of the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas.
—Trains legislators through its Statesman Academy with the aim of helping lawmakers pass bills oriented to Christian theology. In 2020, the Family Policy Alliance issued a statement congratulating 52 of its alumni on winning elections, and said that Statesmen Academy graduates are now serving in elected office in 33 states.
—In their #SaveGirlsSports campaign, applauded Idaho’s ban on trans athletes. The site doubly misgenders them and purposefully misrepresents their age by referring to them as “men.”
