Wisconsin’s Top Anti-Gay Group Switches Moniker
Madison - Fair Wisconsin no longer the only advocacy group to pull a name switcheroo following the recent passage of the constitutional amendment to ban civil unions and marriage for same sex couples. The  Family Research Institute of Wisconsin announced March 15 that its not-for-profit arm has changed its name to Wisconsin Family Council, Inc.
  “Although we’ve changed our name, our mission remains the same,” WFC CEO Julaine Appling wrote in her press release. “We have changed our name to better reflect who we are and what we do, as well as to better identify our national association as a state family policy council.”
  The former FRI-WI’s moniker swap reflects the recent financial support given to the “Yes” side of the amendment battle by James Dobson’s Focus On The Family (FOTF). Wisconsin State Elections Board records show the political arm of the FOTF was the largest out-of-state contributor to the side supporting the amendment. FOTF’s cash input arrived the day after the final campaign financial reporting deadline, timing that effectively hid the Colorado-based group’s involvement in the Wisconsin election until after the November vote.
  FOTF’s contribution mimicked similar support to the “Yes” side by another group. The largest single donation to either side in the amendment campaign came to ban supporters from the Coalition for America’s Families, a Middleton-based  group run by former state Republican party chairman Steve King. CFAF also delivered its contribution - the largest  ever in a state referendum - to “Vote Yes” immediately prior to the November 7 ballot, in a possible move to obscure the partisan motives that had been behind the marriage ballot since its inception.
  The WFC name swap also moves the former FRI-WI away from a sound-alike name with another “national associate,” the Washington DC-based Family Research Council, a group perceived by some political strategists as having less influence in social conservative circles in recent election cycles. The name switch would also seem to eliminate what some have found disingenuous in the former FRI-WI’s appellation: the term “research.” No records appear to exist for any peer-reviewed, academic research actually conducted by FRI-WI.
  WFC also touted its “national association” with another Dobson-created group, the Alliance Defense Fund, best known in Wisconsin as the group hired by the then GOP-dominated state legislature to insert themselves into the ACLU of Wisconsin lawsuit by lesbian state employees seeking equal benefit rights for their life partners. State law prohibited had any legal recognition for the couples even prior to the amendment campaign.
  Just prior to the name switch, the freshly-minted Wisconsin Family Council, Inc. was awarded Focus on the Family’s State Family Policy Council’s 2006 “Community Impact Award” for providing the statewide leadership in support of the gay civil union and marriage ban.
  While the WFC renaming might seem to be a touch of “me too”-ism, considering last December’s name change by former Action Wisconsin to its now more widely recognized moniker, it is not the first-time one of the state’s anti-gay groups has pulled such a switcheroo. Ralph Ovadal’s “Wisconsin Christians United” organization dropped off the radar just months prior the loss of “Pastor” Grant Storms’ civil lawsuit against Action Wisconsin and the subsequent decision allowing the LGBT civil rights group to recoup the legal fees it incurred in defending against the suit. Ovadal, who publicly had encouraged Storms to file the lawsuit and who also had been on the losing end of several other legal battles over the years, has since resurfaced helming the Monroe-based Pilgrim’s Covenant Church. That group’s mission and tactics mimic nearly completely those of the former WCU.