FRI was instrumental in stopping President Clinton’s gays in the military initiative. FRI was the only private organization to run an empirical survey on attitudes toward homosexual enlistment and the effects of past homosexual presence in the military. Results of this study were given to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

FRI played a key role in defeating the 1993 state gay rights initiative in Louisiana. During debate on the bill, the FRI pamphlet Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do was distributed to each state delegate. A predicted gay rights victory was turned into a 9–1 defeat by legislators who could be seen holding our pamphlet as they voted.

The Attorney General of Texas came to FRI for an affidavit to defend the state’s anti-sodomy law, since none of the professors contacted in any of the state colleges or universities would oppose gay rights.

FRI materials and expertise have been used to seed anti-gay rights referenda in Oregon and Rhode Island, the successful Amendment 2 in Colorado, and successful initiatives in Cincinnati and Portland, Maine. FRI helped citizens groups overturn gay rights laws in Houston and Baltimore in 1985.

FRI helped to prevent adoption of a gay rights ordinance in Saskatchewan, British Columbia in 1988 and provided expertise to the Canadian Armed Forces in 1990 in its fight to keep gays out of the military.