Christian soldier, legal battefield

Mathew Staver left behind his celebrity clients and $20,000 copy machines to become one of the country's leading conservative lawyers. Today, his goal is to fight gay marriage.

ORLANDO - He hasn't always had the confidence of a man who believes he's destined for heaven.

Years ago, before the law degree and beautiful wife and luxury high-rise office building, Mathew Staver was a sandy-haired high school graduate with a terrible grade point average and no plans.

Deliverance came in the form of a traveling preacher who spoke of eternal life. His certainty appealed to Staver, who rededicated himself to Jesus Christ.

That was, by Staver's estimation, his first step in becoming a Christian soldier, a duty that has required equal knowledge of Bible verses and legal precedents.

Over time, he has emerged as one of the country's leading conservative lawyers, showing up in courthouses from Whitley City, Ky., to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the San Francisco mayor began issuing same-sex marriages licenses in February, Staver hired bodyguards, filed an injunction and went to stop him. He is involved in more than 30 gay marriage cases nationwide.

He tried to stop a retarded South Florida woman from aborting her rapist's baby and has made it easier for children to evangelize in public schools. He will appear before the U.S. Supreme Court this winter to argue in a precedent-setting case that governments should be able to display the Ten Commandments.

Staver represents a growing breed of Christian lawyer, better financed than many of his liberal counterparts, passionately driven to prevail. He also is among the 22 percent of Americans who, in exit polls, cited moral values as the most important issue in the presidential election.

"We are in a cultural war," Staver says. "As it intensifies, we will, too."

To enemies, Staver is a dangerous zealot, intent on denying liberty to anyone who doesn't share his views. But they agree he cannot be ignored.

"Mat Staver is certainly to be taken seriously," said Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, "even though he's almost invariably advocating for the wrong side."

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Staver opened his law firm in 1989, just he and a secretary.

Within six years he had 40 employees and was parking his Mercedes at a 15-story high-rise in Maitland. He had 10,000 square feet of space, a day maid to clean spills and a client list that included the Orlando Magic and the Hyatt hotel chain. He primarily defended companies in workers' compensation claims and also ran a lobbying firm in Tallahassee.

A former preacher, Staver always has been more interested in religious liberty and abortion cases. So, he took proceeds from his firm and opened the nonprofit Liberty Counsel, working cases for free on the side.

Liberty Counsel was not well known until 1994, when Staver argued before the U.S. Supreme Court against limits on abortion clinic pickets. The court upheld a 36-foot barrier, but struck down a broader safety zone.

Encouraged by his success, Staver decided five years later to focus full time on Liberty Counsel.

"I felt convinced that the Lord was telling me to shut down the law firm and walk away," Staver said.

He had to give up his high-rise and sell the $20,000 copy machines.

"I didn't know how it would work out," Staver says. "But we were willing to give up everything we worked for."

Staver moved into an old construction company office in a Longwood warehouse, owned by a supporter who discounted the rent. He covered the concrete floors with carpet, brought in his leather chairs, hung pictures of the U.S. Supreme Court and Washington Monument.

You'd never know it was a law firm from the outside, with its beige metal siding and overgrown grass. The building has no sign, just the number "210."

It is purposefully nondescript, as Staver has received an occasional death threat and numerous pornographic e-mails.

Every morning, shortly after the coffee stops brewing, a woman's voice is heard over the loudspeaker inside: "To the front, please."

Secretaries and lawyers form a circle in the lobby, hold hands and pray. Requests range from continued success in court to asking God to unclog the arteries of someone's mother.

"Bless the work of our hands, for everything we do and say brings glory to you," one lawyer said.

Every year, Liberty Counsel has grown.

It had total revenue of $163,341 in 1997. That jumped to $1.4-million in 2003, according to tax records provided by Guidestar, a philanthropic research group. Most funding comes from donations and court awards, and cases are still handled pro bono. Staver earns $70,000 a year.

He hired four more lawyers within the past year, increasing his staff to 24, and has opened a satellite office in Virginia. Like him, many of the lawyers could be making more money. One recently left a job paying $500,000 a year in Manhattan.

Critics note the firm has benefited from Staver's friendship with Jerry Falwell, the evangelical minister who famously blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on lesbians, feminists and gays.

Staver produces regular radio broadcasts and has written nine books, including his most recent, Same-Sex Marriage, Putting Every Household at Risk. In court, his success rate is 86 percent, Staver says. He has helped Christian groups hold meetings in public libraries, and fought for students wanting to pray at graduation ceremonies.

"We're not asking for special treatment, just equal treatment," Staver says. "We've blown doors wide open that were shut for decades for people with faith."

Critics believe Staver has caused problems for public schools.

"If schools don't conduct themselves in accord with the religious right's view of the Constitution, they go after them," Lynn said. "They're extremely aggressive and have a significant bank roll to back up those threats."

And although religious access remains a primary focus of Liberty Counsel, Staver and his lawyers are increasingly devoted to one issue: gay marriage.

For a man whose primary mission is defending "traditional marriage," it is not surprising he can look through a glass window in his office every day and see his wife, lawyer Anita Staver.

They met 22 years ago at a church party in Lexington, Ky., where Anita worked toward a degree in psychology and Staver, a local preacher, was contemplating law school.

He was down on one knee, petting his beagle, Precious, when the tall blond walked through the door. They spent that Saturday evening talking, arranged for lunch the next Tuesday, and have been together since.

She got a master's degree in counseling, but eventually took great interest in Staver's legal work. She enrolled in Orlando's Barry University Law School, where a former professor says she earned his highest grade ever on a paper: A+

Staver describes her as his "best friend," and it's clear she takes care of him. On a recent morning, she walked into his office in her tailored black suit and left snacks - sliced apples in a plastic baggie - before starting work.

Staver believes the world works best when it is anchored by marriages like his: between a man and a woman.

Allowing people of the same sex to marry, Staver believes, is the most dangerous threat facing society.

"It's the No. 1 issue that could have widespread impact on changing culture in a radical way," Staver says.

In his view, homosexuality is not about biology, but stems from something broken inside. He believes allowing gays to marry would take the country to a dangerous cultural fault line, denigrating the institution of marriage.

Asked whether heterosexuals, who have a hearty divorce rate, haven't already made a sufficient mess of marriage, Staver admits they have.

"But you don't push marriage off the cliff because its wobbly," he said.

Staver thinks children suffer without a mother and father, perhaps a surprising belief for a man who grew up in a broken home.

Staver's father, who ran a sod and sea wall business in Charlotte Harbor, left when Staver was 4 and took two of the children. His mother kept five, including Staver, the baby.

She waited tables during the day, nursed hospital patients at night and delivered newspapers before dawn to support her children. She switched from the Lutheran to the Catholic church because its multiple services better fit her busy schedule.

Money was tight, so Staver nursed his college dreams on the high school football field. Weighing only 175 pounds, he focused on place-kicking and set school records. But a leg injury his senior year killed hopes of a scholarship.

He drifted around town, mowed lawns for cash and drank too much.

"I was at a crossroads," he says.

Then the preacher came to town.

"He kept saying that he knew, when his time was up, that he would have eternal life," Staver said. "He was so certain. I was attracted to that."

Staver decided to pursue the ministry and arranged to work on a dredge in Nicaragua to save money. He was accepted on academic probation at Southern Missionary College in Tennessee and graduated with honors. He pursued a master's degree in Michigan before heading to Kentucky.

At a weekly pastors meeting in 1983, Staver saw a video that he credits with changing his life. One pastor showed footage of an aborted baby - a little hand, ribs - resting on a tray.

"It looked like a miniature human being, splattered by a truck, just ripped apart," Staver says. "It changed me."

He looked up an antiabortion group in the yellow pages and drove to an old woman's home to pick up literature. He also went to the University of Kentucky and asked the law librarian to help him find a copy of Roe vs. Wade, the first court case he read.

A fervid opponent, he believed the issue was being decided not by advocates or preachers but in the courts. He enrolled in law school.

The crusade had begun.

For a while, Staver got high marks from his critics.

Although they thought he was often wrong, he at least appeared a thoughtful advocate in his religious access cases.

"I don't think he engages in the hate talk the way others have done," said Frank S. Ravitch, law professor at Michigan State University who specializes in church-state issues. "He doesn't cast his opponents as these horrible, horrible beings. He fights his battles, as a good lawyer should do."

At 48, Staver looks rather benign, his thick gray hair combed over to the side, his eyeglasses a little too large for his face. He still dresses like a well-paid lawyer, wearing starched white shirts and gray pinstripe suits. His tone is often quiet and monotonous.

Recently, though, Staver has gotten poor marks on his handling of some gay and sexuality issues.

Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said Staver's handling of a Pasco transsexual seeking custody of his children was offensive. Minter, representing the man in the case, said Staver's firm has ruthlessly attacked his client.

"We can have disagreements, but saying deliberately humiliating and painful things is morally wrong," Minter said.

Minter doesn't understand why people such as Staver are so intent on thwarting gay marriage.

"Just on the most basic level, Jesus said we should love our neighbors as ourselves," Minter said. "His views seem fundamentally un-Christian."

Every morning, Staver says he awakes with the same anticipation he felt while standing in the locker room at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, padded up and ready to begin battle on the football field.

But now, he sees his enemy as a far more powerful force.

"Satan is a glutton," he writes in his latest book. "He always overgorges himself.... When he overplays his hand, we must be willing to stand in the gap at that critical moment."

For the next four months, Staver is focused almost exclusively on his Ten Commandments case, hoping to convince the court that public buildings can display the commandments as part of historical displays.

He will argue near a frieze in the Supreme Court building that shows Moses carrying the Ten Commandments along with other historical lawmakers.

To Staver, it will be one more sign that God is on his side.

"I am thrilled that I am not sitting on the sidelines of this cultural war," Staver writes. "Our head coach has called us onto the field and placed us right in the midst of the game."

Win or lose, Staver says, "We can never give up."

-- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Jamie Thompson can be reached at 727 893-8455 or jthompson@sptimes.com

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