Founded by lawyer and former pastor Mat Staver and his wife Anita in 1989, Liberty Counsel has been designated an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for the extreme views and public policy positions it supports. Liberty Counsel is closely affiliated with Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, where Staver served as dean of the law school until 2014.
Liberty Counsel produces a daily radio program where Staver and fellow Liberty University dean Matt Barber routinely rail against reproductive choice, LGBT equality and Islam and organizes a yearly "Awakening" conference that promotes other Religious Right activists who share such views. In 2015, Staver and Liberty Counsel rocketed to fame for providing legal representation to Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who went to jail rather than refuse to allow her office to issue marriage licenses in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.
