The Nebraska Family Alliance (NFA) held its annual Life & Liberty Gala on Saturday night at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, drawing a record 1,600 attendees to the sold-out event, including numerous elected officials and candidates for public office.
Headlining the evening were Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer who has become a national advocate for restricting women’s sports to biological females, and Kirk Cameron, an actor best known as Mike Seaver on the sitcom Growing Pains, who has since become a conservative Christian activist and author.
Girls Sports on the Ballot
Among NFA’s most recent victories was helping gather more than 211,000 signatures to place the “Fairness for Girls” amendment on the ballot this fall — the largest signature haul ever submitted for a Nebraska ballot measure.
The measure would write into the Nebraska Constitution the restriction on girls’ sports by biological sex enacted in the Stand With Women Act, which Gov. Jim Pillen signed in 2025. This move would make it far harder for a future Legislature — or bodies such as the University of Nebraska Board of Regents — to reverse the policy.
“This issue really is common sense,” NFA Executive Director Nate Grasz told The Plains Sentinel. “It’s about safety. It’s about fairness, about doing the right thing for the next generation of women and girls in Nebraska. There’s overwhelming support, and we’re excited that we have this opportunity on the ballot this November.”
The issue is personal for Gaines, who came to national prominence in 2022 after competing against — and being required to undress in front of — biological male Lia Thomas in the women’s 200-yard freestyle final at the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships in Atlanta. The two tied for fifth place.
Gaines told the crowd the scene felt less like championship swimming than a late-night parody.
“I look over at the lane next to me, and there’s what is very obviously a man, standing at six-foot-four, size fifteen feet, taking up the entire diving block,” Gaines said. “Visible from his side profile is not only his Adam’s apple, but the bulge in his women’s swimsuit. It was like we were living out an SNL skit, when SNL was actually kind of funny, or a Babylon Bee headline.”
What stayed with her, she said, was not only frustration but betrayal by the NCAA and her sport in the 50th anniversary year of Title IX.
“I felt so betrayed by an institution that I loved, that I trusted, an institution that I dedicated my life to,” Gaines said. “Without even a blink of an eye, they were throwing our rights as women — our rights to equal opportunity, to privacy in areas of undressing, to safety in our sports — out the window.”
Gaines has since married fellow former Kentucky swimmer Louis Barker and now has an 11-month-old daughter, Margot. Motherhood, she told the audience, sharpened the reason she keeps speaking.
“It sounds like it’s in the job description for parents, but defend your kids,” Gaines said. “I can’t tell you how many parents reach out to me who say, ‘Look, you keep fighting. I’ve got a daughter in middle school or high school, and she’s facing this. Can you do something for her too? I have a job. I don’t want to lose my job.’ I always ask myself then, do I have to care about your kid more than you do? As a mom myself now, I certainly say it’s worth it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my child.”
Grasz opened his own remarks with a similar note. His wife had just given birth to their third child and was unable to attend the gala.
“There’s something special about holding a newborn baby in your arms,” Grasz said. “It has a way of just putting everything else into perspective. When you’re holding that child and you see that little face staring back at you, you pretty quickly start to wonder about the type of country they’re going to inherit.”
Reformers pushing back against a hostile culture
In his keynote address, Cameron divided people into two categories: “reporters” and “reformers.” Reporters, he said, traffic in problems, fear, and outrage and rarely get to solutions. Reformers look for light-filled alternatives and then act.
“This is what NFA is doing. This is who Nate [Grasz] is. He is a reformer,” Cameron said. “These are the guys I want to hang out with. Reformers change the world.”
Cameron, who became a Christian at 17 while still starring on Growing Pains, has spent recent years in public-library fights as much as in studios. In 2023 he launched the “See You at the Library” effort, reading his children’s book As You Grow — a story built around the fruit of the Spirit — after more than 50 public libraries initially refused him even as they hosted Drag Queen Story Hour events.
“If you want to show up as a guy in a dress and stilettos, it’s a yes,” Cameron said. “But you want to come and talk about faith, hope, kindness, faithfulness, and goodness, it’s a hard no.”
He said libraries later reversed course under pressure, the readings spread to cities including Indianapolis, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, and the Department of Education later invited the project to the Library of Congress.
Cameron held up King Alfred the Great as a model of Christian leadership under siege. In the ninth century, Viking armies drove the Christian king of Wessex from his castle as they burned their way across Britain. Alfred then gathered faithful men and marched them 50 miles to battle, defeating the Viking leader Guthrum. Then, rather than beheading him, as was the custom of the age, Alfred offered him baptism and a share of the kingdom if he would convert, which Guthrum did.
“Alfred was not waiting for someone else to rescue him,” Cameron said. “He was not sitting on his couch as the culture deteriorated, watching Fox News with his head in his hands, crying in his Chick-fil-A soup, hoping for the rapture.”
Engaging politics with faith
The Plains Sentinel asked Cameron after the event what he hoped the audience would take away. He said Christians should focus not just on electing candidates, but first on raising the next generation with biblical values.
“I think the big takeaway is that people, as Riley said, defend your children,” Cameron said. “So much of the change that needs to happen has got to happen in the hearts and minds of our children as we play the long game and raise them in our homes, not just getting the next governor elected.”
Grasz struck the same note from the stage, urging Christians not to treat politics as off-limits.
“The biggest myth in our society that led us to this place — where men are competing against women and children are trying to change their gender — has been to convince people that Christians have to avoid government and politics, and that isn’t biblical,” Grasz said. “That’s a strategy to silence Christians on the most important issues of our time. Because when Christians disengage, we create a gap, and that gap gets filled by everything except the truth.”
Cameron told The Plains Sentinel the political landscape can still shift if biblically minded citizens stay in the fight.
“I think it definitely could change if people wake up and they get involved like they are here in Nebraska,” Cameron said.
