Tony Perkins
President of the Family Research Council since 2003. Transformed FRC from a lobbying organization into an explicit culture-war command center, took it to SPLC hate group designation (2010) without flinching, and built FRC's Values Voter Summit into the annual gathering of the Republican evangelical establishment. Perkins's explicit Christian nationalist theology and his FRC leadership made him the primary institutional voice of the anti-LGBTQ Religious Right through the Trump era.
View in the interactive map →Tony Perkins (b. 1963) became president of the Family Research Council in 2003, succeeding Gary Bauer. Perkins had served in the Louisiana House of Representatives (1996–2004) and had a background in law enforcement and military service. His arrival at FRC marked a shift from Bauer's primarily policy-focused leadership toward more explicit cultural and political warfare. Perkins's background includes a documented 2001 payment of $82,000 from his Louisiana gubernatorial campaign to Duke Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's former campaign manager Tony Perkins — David Duke himself, Louisiana state senator — for his voter contact list. Perkins settled an FEC complaint regarding the improper payment without admission of wrongdoing. The SPLC documented the payment as part of its case for FRC's hate group designation. Under Perkins, FRC: 1. Expanded its annual Values Voter Summit into the flagship event of the evangelical-Republican political calendar, drawing Republican presidential and congressional candidates as speakers every year. 2. Maintained and defended FRC's publications linking homosexuality to pedophilia, disease, and social pathology despite the SPLC's 2010 hate group designation — treating the designation as a badge of honor and a fundraising tool. 3. Became one of the primary institutions coordinating evangelical voter mobilization for Republican candidates, including the Trump campaign. 4. Expanded FRC's state policy council network — affiliate organizations in roughly 40 states that advance FRC's legislative priorities at the state level. 5. In 2022, reorganized FRC as a 'church' under IRS regulations, eliminating financial disclosure requirements. Perkins's explicit Christian nationalism: in 2020, he published 'No Fear: Real Stories of a Courageous Christian Nurse Practitioner,' and has argued consistently that America was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian principles should govern American law and public life. His relationship with Trump: Perkins was a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board during the 2016 campaign and has maintained a close relationship with Trump's political operation. He was a consistent Trump defender through the Access Hollywood tape controversy and the subsequent Trump administration. In the Trump era, Perkins has been one of the most reliable institutional voices arguing that evangelical Christians must support Trump as a matter of Christian civic duty. FRC's 2022 church reorganization is particularly significant: by claiming church status under IRS rules, FRC eliminated the requirement to file a Form 990 public disclosure, making its donor base and financial operations invisible to public scrutiny.
Documented themes
Connections from Tony Perkins
- influenced → Family Research Council (2010) — When the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the Family Research Council an anti-LGBTQ hate group in 2010 — citing FRC's publications linking homosexuality to pedophilia, disease, and social pathology — Tony Perkins used the designation as a fundraising and mobilizing tool rather than a deterrent. He framed it as evidence that FRC was effectively fighting the cultural left, and FRC's donor base and budget expanded in the years following the designation. FRC did not moderate its positions.
- led → Family Research Council (2003) — Tony Perkins became FRC president in 2003 and has led it continuously through the SPLC's 2010 hate group designation (which FRC embraced as a badge of honor and fundraising tool), through the Trump era evangelical mobilization, and through FRC's 2022 reorganization as a 'church' under IRS rules to eliminate financial disclosure requirements. Under Perkins, FRC became the most operationally central organization of the anti-LGBTQ Religious Right establishment.
Sources
- The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 90–115
- Anti-Gay Groups — Southern Poverty Law Center (2010)
- Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 240–265