Florida Family Policy Council

John Stemberger is a leading Religious Right activist in Florida.  He was deeply involved in the Rifqa Bary saga and also serves as the President of the Florida Family Policy Council, which was the organization behind the successful 2008 Florida For Marriage effort to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing marriage equality in the state.

On Saturday night, Michele Bachmann will be the keynote speaker at FFPC's 6th Annual Policy Awards Dinner:

We hope you will be able to join us for our Florida Family Policy Council, 6th Annual Policy Awards Dinner on August 27, 2011 at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel in Orlando

In addition to celebrating the amazing and historic pro-life, pro-family victories achieved recently in Florida, and announcing exciting new developments here at your FFPC, you are sure to enjoy hearing from U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, our special Keynote Speaker!

Recently, I had the opportunity to personally experience hearing Congresswoman Bachmann speak in a live forum. I was so impressed, that I wanted you to have the opportunity to hear from her personally as well. (There is nothing like being there in person!)

This year’s theme is “Igniting A Cultural Transformation” and I can’t think of a time in our history when it was needed more!

If Bachmann doesn't want to talk about "fringe" issues like gay marriage on the campaign trail because she doesn't judge people, perhaps she shouldn't be keynoting events for Religious Right groups that dedicated to fighting "fringe" issues like gay marriage.

As we have mentioned several times before, John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council, was an early and central player in the Rifqa Bary saga when she turned up in Florida in 2009.  His actions during that case have now resulted in misconduct complaint being filed against him by the Florida Bar as well as a $10 million defamation lawsuit from the attorney who represented Bary's parents.

As such, Stemberger has set up a legal defense fund to cover his mounting legal expenses that has the support of Jerry Bokin, Newt Gingrich, Tony Perkins, Lou Engle and David Barton. 

And today, Barton had Stemberger on his "Wallbuilders Live" radio program where they, along with Rick Green, alleged that the lawsuit and misconduct complaint are an attempt by radical Muslims to destroy anyone who dares to criticize them. [I would like to point out that none of the claims made by Bary about her parents or the claims Stemberger asserts in this interview were ever substantiated by state investigators who examined them]:

Barton: The message is don't talk about us or we'll come after you the same way.

Green: It's an intimidation factor.

Barton: We're showing you what happens to people who talk about us or people who come after us in court - we will make you pay. And they may eventually lose, but that's only if you have enough money to outlast them. And so it really is a bad thing and we've got a good friend of ours on today that's in the middle of one of these things were Islamic groups have come after him because he stood and actually won a court for justice. And because he won, now they are going to make him pay a price.

Stemberger: Well, as your listeners may remember the name Rifqa Bary was a former Muslim teenager who made international headlines in about the summer and fall of 2009 when she ran away from her parents in Ohio to Florida, to a Methodist pastor and his wife after her parents threatened her life for not renouncing her Christian faith.

You know, she knew the repercussions of this so she was very, very careful to be discreet with it. But then when the parents, when the [leaders] of the mosque confronted the parents, that's when they began to blow up and the father specifically threatened her, demanded she denounce her faith, said that "you'll be dead to me" and that, according to her affidavit which is public knowledge, made some really specific threats ... But when they found a book on Esther in her bedroom, that's when they just said "we're going to send you back to Sri Lanka" and she knew she would just be a walking dead girl at that point.

Just weeks after [Rifqa turned 18] the lawyer who opposed Rifqa in court and who represented Rifqa's parents, Mr. Omar Tarazi, whose family has deep ties with CAIR, which is the Council on American Islamic Relations, he filed a grievance against me.

Green: This is their typical game plan. You mentioned CAIR, this is how they strike back, they trump up these kind of things and just give you a barrage of quote "ethical complains" so that you have to spend your time, energy, and money defending those instead of fighting the real fight, right?

Stemberger: Well, there is a clear growing trend of malicious lawsuits and other legal actions which are filed by adherents of radical strains of Islam and they're designed to punish, silence, and to chill legitimate speech and public discourse about Islam.

Barton: That's Islamic lawfare. I mean, they're coming after you to make him an example and say "don't anybody else every try to intervene ..."

Green: Whether they win or lose, they example is made that we're going to cost you money ...

Barton: And if there is every a time to step up and help a brother, this is it. We're not going to bring a BB gun to a tank fight. We're going to show up and we're going to take you toe-to-toe on this thing.

You may recall John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, from his involvement a few years back as the Rifqa Bary saga was being played out in Florida, when he used short-lived role as Bary's attorney as an opportunity to recklessly sling allegations that her Muslim parents had ties to terrorist organizations and that she had been physically and sexually abused by family members.

Because of his actions, Stemberger is facing a $10 million lawsuit from the attorney who represented Bary's parents and is now looking at being disciplined by the Florida Supreme Court for misconduct:

The Florida Bar asked the state Supreme Court to discipline Orlando lawyer John Stemberger for his conduct in the high-profile case of teenage runaway Rifqa Bary, according to documents released Tuesday ... According to a complaint mailed to the Florida Supreme Court on Monday, that action would have ended Stemberger's representation of Bary.

But Stemberger went on Fox News on four separate occasions and said or implied during the ongoing dependency case in Ohio that he remained Bary's attorney, the complaint said.

Stemberger also accused Omar Tarazi, the attorney for Bary's parents, of being paid by terrorist-associated organizations.

At the time, Tarazi was under a gag order in the Ohio case and couldn't refute the accusations, the Bar's complaint said.

Tarazi, in his complaint to The Florida Bar, accused Stemberger of making false and damaging statements about him.

...

On Tuesday, Stemberger responded to the complaint, by saying in a statement: "I have talked with several former members of other grievance committees who have stated that this complaint should have been closed down by the Bar immediately after it was filed as being without merit …In time, the facts presented, will cause this frivolous complaint filed by a disgruntled, opposing lawyer who lost his case to be dismissed."

It was one year ago when I wrote my first post about Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who fled from Ohio to Florida claiming that her Muslim parents were going to kill her for converting to Christianity.

Ove the past year, the person who most eagerly and relentlessly sought to expolit the Rifqa Bary saga for her own political ends was anti-Muslim zealot Pamela Geller of Atlas Shurgs  ... and for her efforts, she is now being sued for $10 million by the attorney who represented Rifqa's parents:

An Ohio lawyer says a blogger and a former attorney for a runaway Christian convert defamed him by alleging he has contacts with terrorists and criminals.

Omar Tarazi (tuh-RAH'-zee) is seeking $10 million in damages in a federal lawsuit filed Friday to compensate for damage he claims to his reputation.

Tarazi represented the parents of Rifqa Bary, a teenage convert who ran away to Florida saying she feared harm from her Muslim mother and father.

He says blogger Pamela Oshry wrongly linked him to Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

"Pamela Oshry" was the name Geller went by before her divorce.

UPDATE: Tarazi is also suing John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council:

A Muslim attorney on one side of the Rifqa Bary dispute has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against Orlando attorney John Stemberger, an activist Christian attorney who worked for the other side.

The suit was filed by Omar Tarazi in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, Friday. It names John Stemberger of the conservative Florida Family Policy Council.

...

Stemberger represented Rifqa for several weeks in Florida. That was in the days just after she ran away but before a state circuit judge in Orlando ordered her returned to Ohio.

In the suit, Tarazi accuses Stemberger of falsely claiming on Fox News that Tarazi was associated with a Columbus-area mosque that had ties to terrorists. It also says Stemberger defamed Tarazi by saying Rifqa's parents fired qualified court-appointed Ohio attorneys to use only one – Tarazi – who was paid by a pro-Muslim group in Ohio, the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.

Tarazi was paid by no one, according to the suit.

Stemberger on Tuesday called the suit "ridiculous and frivilous."

"This is just an attempt at grandstanding after a loss," he said.

Stemberger acknowledged but would not discuss an investigation by the Florida Bar into possible ethics violations by him for statements he made about the case.