The Pacific Justice Institute is not a particularly well-known group. In fact, it is quite likely that most people who read this blog don't even recognize the name ... but they probably recognize this video:
That is Brad Dacus, PJI 's President, explaining before the 2008 election how failure to pass Prop 8 in California would be akin to failing to stop Hitler.
But just because PJI is less well-known than many of the other right-wing legal groups, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some rather high-profile supporters, like Karl Rove and James Dobson:
Addressing a group of roughly 600 people, a senior advisor to former president George W. Bush recently spoke on the importance of faith, family and freedom -- the "timeless values of America."
At the Pacific Justice Institute's 2010 Celebration of Justice Banquet in Anaheim, California, Karl Rove exhorted listeners to defend these values and to make an "argument" for them in all communities. He praised the family as the source that defines America and molds its individuals, saying, "It's in the family where hearts and minds of children are shaped. If society loves and cherishes life, it is because families love and cherish life."
...
He exhorted the audience to continue taking a stand for the values in which they believe, concluding that "if we stay in the fight, we will win the fight. If we love our country, we need to defend our country."
Other gala speakers included PJI attorney Brad Dacus, Dr. James Dobson, and Father Frank Pastore of Priests for Life.
For those that are interested, the East Bay Express ran a good profile of Dacus and PJI last year:
Religious convictions have compelled Dacus to take on such cases as a fight to allow Bakersfield students to opt out of a homosexual teacher's class, a tussle with a Utah public school that he claims was peddling a book "promoting witchcraft" via the Scholastic Book Club catalog, and — while employed by the conservative Rutherford Institute — the defense of the family of a teenage Nebraska boy who, with his parents' help, had his girlfriend arrested for seeking an abortion. For the courts to find in favor of the girl, Dacus told Time in 1994, would have had "a chilling effect" on free speech.
