Posts on Florida Family Policy Council

It’s been a banner year for Florida’s Religious Right. In 2006, activists failed to get enough signatures to put their anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot (despite help from the Republican Party), and its favored candidate for governor lost the GOP primary, leading one conservative commentator to declare that “the once-mighty ‘organized’ Christian-conservative voting bloc is no longer intact.”

The last few months have been a different story. In September, dozens of national religious-right activists converged on Fort Lauderdale for the Values Voter Presidential Debate, including Don Wildmon, Phyllis Schlafly, and Rick Scarborough. Even more headliners came to the state just days later for the Family Impact Summit, including Tony Perkins and Richard Land. All the attention must have paid off: Florida 4 Marriage succeeded in gathering enough signatures to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the 2008 ballot.

Meanwhile, a CBN report warns of the threat of the “gay agenda” in Washington State, which recently passed a domestic partnership law, and in California, where anti-gay activists are in a frenzy over a recently-passed law that bars schools from promoting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. While this protection is already in effect when in comes to discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, according to “700 Club” host Pat Robertson, when it comes to gays it’s a matter of “trying to recruit more of the straight population.”

The Florida Family Policy Council is hosting a Gala Dinner tonight and attendees will not only get to hear from Ft. Lauderdale’s anti-gay Mayor Jim Naugle, but Fred Thompson as well:

The Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC) will host a Gala Dinner at the Westin Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida beginning at 6:30pm on Friday evening, November 16, 2007. The event is being designed to introduce South Florida to the mission of the FFPC and will feature former Senator and Law and Order Actor Fred Thompson as the keynote speaker. Mr. Thompson will be accompanied by his wife Jeri Thompson.

For a mere $10,000, you can secure seats at Thompson’s dinner table, but don’t expect to talk to him about his flagging presidential campaign:

The FFPC is a 501c3 non-profit organization and therefore Mr. Thompson is attending the event as a private citizen and not as a campaigning presidential candidate.

Given Thompson’s notorious work ethic and unremarkable one-and-one-third term in the Senate , it seems slightly implausible that Thompson would be invited to address this dinner were he not running for President, but it’s probably a good thing that he’s attending as a private citizen since “the Florida Family Policy Council is associated with Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family” and Dobson has already declared Thompson unacceptable as a candidate.  

But hopefully for Thompson and those in attendance, he’ll be interesting and informative enough that he won’t be reduced to begging for applause when he finishes his remarks.