When the Family Equality Alliance was created in 1982, the Boston-based non-profit had its hands full offering advice, support and defense of the then-pioneering families headed by same-sex couples. But as it approaches its 30th anniversary, the group has decided to expand into the public policy arena.

In 2008, the group hired Kara Suffredini, former state legislative director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, as its public policy director. Now the group, which boasts 50,000 supporters and a $1.7 million budget, has just opened a Washington office and hired full time lobbyist Emily Hecht, formerly a staff attorney with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network -- a group that lobbies and provides legal services focused on discrimination against gays in the military.

The group not only lobbies at both the state and federal level on issues that no other outfits are focused on, Suffredini says, but because its constituency includes children, the organization also offers a new, politically persuasive voice to issues already lobbied by the broader gay rights community, such as same-sex marriage, or ending employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. At the federal level, the group is focused on promoting a new bill -- which would penalize the roughly half-dozen states who ban or restrict adoptions by gay, transgendered, or unmarried individuals by withholding some federal child welfare funds.