The Family Policy Alliance is celebrating recent Supreme Court victories for state laws it promoted that halt transgender medical treatments for minors and restrict online porn to viewers who can prove they’re 18 years old. The court also has agreed to hear a case on FPA’s state laws against transgender athletes.
Craig DeRoche
FPA has welcomed the “parade of good news each week from the Supreme Court,” as CEO Craig DeRoche described it on a conservative podcast. DeRoche praised the court for halting the “most evil experiments” on minors, procedures he says give them a chronic disease that requires care costing “hundreds of thousands of dollars a year” and makes them dependent on Medicaid for life.
Created within Focus on the Family in the early 1980s, Family Policy Alliance is Focus’ partner for advancing its family values agenda through legislation in 40 states by organizing voters in 50,000 participating churches. A recent IRS ruling permitting preachers to endorse candidates from pulpits may provide more funding for such work.
By 2015, when the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage constitutional, FPA already was working on its transgender legislation strategy.
FPA partnered with its better-known sister organizations — the legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom and DC-based Family Research Council — to craft model legislation restricting trans treatments and sports participation That eventually was made law in dozens of states. ADF is now successfully defending these laws in courtrooms.
Focus and the activist groups it founded are celebrating more than court victories. Conservatives are sensing a shift in public attitudes as some corporations, law firms, nonprofits and Democratic leaders back away from their earlier support for LGBTQ issues.
“The forces that once propelled corporate America into the arms of LGBTQ America have pivoted, retreating under the weight of political backlash and the calculus of risk aversion,” claimed a recent article, “We’ve Reached Rainbow Capitalism’s End,” written by the editor of Out, a pro-LGBTQ outlet.
Family Policy Alliance is the host of the annual Social Conservative Policy Conference, featuring groups such as Focus on the Family and the Heritage Foundation. The event runs July 22 to 25 in Indianapolis. Tickets cost $799 and must be purchased by July 15. Heritage is the group behind the Project 2025 blueprint for the Trump administration.
Presentations scheduled for SoConCon 2025 show the movement has no plans to pause its mission:
- Heritage will lead three sessions: “Correcting Carter’s Mistake: Closing the U.S. Department of Education,” “Shaping the Private Sector to Serve American Families,” and “Restoring American Wellness: Challenging the Blob: Big Food, Big Pharma, and the Biomedical State.”
- ADF will lead the session “Safeguarding Women’s Privacy: Strategies to Slam the Door on Gender Ideology.”
- Another legal group, First Liberty Institute, will present “Restoring Faith in America” and “Battle for the Next Generation: Conquering Public Schools.”
- The American Family Association’s political arm, AFA Action, will present “The Future of Marriage and Morality in the States.”
- Jim Banks (Ind.), who formerly worked for Focus, will present “How and Why to Kick Cultural Marxism Out of Our Schools.” (His wife, Amanda Banks, is senior vice president at Family Policy Alliance and leads its Statesmen Academy for would-be GOP officials.)
- The 7,500-member American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists will present “The Importance of Highlighting Medical Voices to Advance Life-Affirming Policies.” (This group is not to be confused with American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the 74-year-old American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which has 60,000 members.)
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