[16][17] IFI was founded as "an educational and grassroots action resource for public policy issues that affect Illinois citizens and their families".

IFI is affiliated with organizations including Liberty Counsel, the American Family Association (AFA), and Alliance Defense Fund.

[18] LaBarbera previously worked at Concerned Women for America, and was the editor of an anti-gay journal called The Lambda Report on Homosexual Activism.

IFI explicitly opposes "efforts to include 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' as a categories [sic] for preferential status under civil rights statutes at the federal, state and local levels".

According to IFI, "those efforts enabled us to keep objectionable sex education and mandatory teaching of evolution out of the standards, leaving such issues to local control".

What is happening here in Illinois is a tragic attempt by radical forces to advance a political agenda by using the authority of the government to validate wrong and unhealthy relationships."

In 2009, Laurie Higgins, the directory of school advocacy for IFI said: "There was something profoundly good for society about the prior stigmatization of homosexual practice".

[25][37] The Institute has also strongly opposed speeches and presentations by Dan Savage of the It Gets Better Project which campaigns to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth.

IFI and other conservative groups opposed the bill, claiming its real goal was "to use public education to promote unproven, non-factual beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and 'transgenderism'.

On IFI's website, Higgins wrote "If you care about children's temporal and eternal lives, please oppose any anti-bullying efforts in public schools that imply that homosexual behavior is worthy of affirmation.