Antigay rhetoric got a new mouthpiece when Tony Perkins was named president of the Family Research Council (FRC). The announcement came in an Aug. 14 news release. Perkins will take over on Sept. 1.

The FRC is the Washington, D.C.-based, political arm of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, which was founded 20 years ago and led for a dozen years by Gary Bauer. Ken Connor, FRC’s most recent president, resigned in July for personal reasons — though some speculate that he was not sufficiently antigay for Dobson.

Perkins has no such problem. The Louisiana state legislator successfully led the fight against a repeal of his state’s antigay sodomy law in 2001. “This legislation has nothing to do with what married couples do in their bedrooms. It has everything to do with legitimizing homosexuality,” he said during debate on the repeal.

Perkins is perhaps best known for pushing passage of the 1997 “Covenant Marriages Laws,” a kind of optional super-marriage law that requires premarital counseling and sets up tougher standards for divorce.

He also championed legislation that tightly regulates abortion clinics and requires public schools to install filtering software to prevent students from accessing pornography and other materials deemed objectionable.

A 40-year-old father of four, Perkins graduated from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. His checkered work history includes stints in the Marines, in police work, as a television reporter and news director.

He had vowed to serve only two terms and is leaving the state legislature after eight years. Perkins ran for the U.S. Senate last year and, in Louisiana’s unique open primary, garnered barely 10 percent of the vote, coming in fourth. He made noises about running for lieutenant governor this year, then announced for state treasurer. In June, when the incumbent decided to run for reelection, Perkins switched to insurance commissioner.

At a Baton Rouge news conference withdrawing from that race, Perkins said that going to the FRC “will allow me to address the issues I’m most passionate about.” Among the most immediate will be “defending the sanctity of marriage and keeping it to one man and one woman.”