July (Web-only) 2003

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When Ken Connor resigned as president of the conservative Family Research Council (FRC), effective July 14, he cited unspecified "professional and personal reasons." Connor, 56, experienced a life-threatening bout with pancreatitis earlier this year.

Knowledgeable sources told CT Connor resigned in part because of a disagreement with members of the board of directors over the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), but FRC founder James Dobson said there was no ill will and that the disagreement did not cause Connor's resignation.

"Ken has said emphatically that this issue was not the reason he resigned as president of FRC," Dobson told CT in a statement. "Good people often disagree on strategy, but that does not have to mean there is resentment or ill will between them. In this case, there was none of which I am aware."

Connor declined to say whether the FMA played a role in his exit from the organization, based in Washington, D.C. "I don't want to cause division among the brethren," he said.

A constitutional amendment is an expensive long shot that doesn't address the problem of "runaway judges," Connor said. "Some people want to throw all these resources into phone banks, grass roots campaigns, and the like," he told CT. "There have been 1,700 proposed constitutional amendments [in the country's history]. We only have 26 added to the Constitution. That tells you something."

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law in its Lawrence v. Texas decision in June. In response, Dobson's Focus on the Family and other conservative organizations renewed their efforts to get the U.S. Congress to pass a constitutional amendment saying that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

"The Federal Marriage Amendment is ...