A broad coalition of 47 anti-LGBTQ+ organizations announced this week the launch of a campaign to end marriage equality in the U.S.
As People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch reports, the coalition announced their explicitly anti-equality “Greater Than” campaign on Wednesday via the Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal.
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The campaign’s core principle is that the sole purpose of marriage is to raise children and that the constitutional right of same-sex couples to legally marry in the U.S., as established by the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, violates children’s rights.
In a statement, Greater Than spokesperson Katy Faust argues that legal same-sex marriage has resulted in “parenthood treated as replaceable, and children deprived of the unique love and guidance only a mother and father can provide.”
“Ten years of Obergefell have shown us, loud and clear, that children deserve better and that they are Greater Than adult desires,” Faust, the founder of anti-marriage equality organization Them Before Us, adds.
In an interview with American Family Radio posted Wednesday, Faust described parenting by same-sex couples as a “destructive state-sanctioned gaslighting experiment on children,” echoing language deployed by opponents of gender-affirming care for minors.
In reality, studies consistently show that same-sex couples are just as good of parents – and sometimes better than – opposite-sex couples.
A video accompanying the announcement features a number of prominent far-right figures — including Faust, Tony Perkins, and Michael Knowles — spouting similar anti-LGBTQ+ dog whistles transparently intended to evoke the specter of the false “groomer” narrative that LGBTQ+ people abuse children.
Marriage policy, Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer asserts in the clip, is “not about bestowing public policy legitimacy and conferring economic benefits when it comes to adults who have their own idiosyncratic romantic desires.”
Similarly, John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview claims that same-sex marriage “puts adult desires over children’s needs.”
“We’re prioritizing the fantasies of adults… over the real needs and the real good of children,” claims Knowles.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler further claims that marriage equality “harms children in virtually every way imaginable.”
The video ends with each anti-LGBTQ+ talking head repeating the nonsensical tagline “children are greater than equal.”
According to The Daily Signal, the coalition behind Greater Than — which includes the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family — described its three-part strategy for overturning Obergefell: refocusing marriage policy on the parent-child relationship, convincing the public that same-sex marriage harms children, and mobilizing Christian churches.
Notably, Greater Than’s iconography and sloganeering appear to intentionally subvert that of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ+ rights organization in the U.S. The campaign’s adoption of the mathematical symbol for “greater than” – in yellow on a blue background – is a direct response to HRC’s logo, which is an equals sign in yellow on a blue background.
The campaign’s launch comes just months after the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Obergefell brought by anti-LGBTQ+ group Liberty Counsel on behalf of former Rowan County, Kentucky, county clerk Kim Davis. At the same time, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — two members of the court’s conservative supermajority — have repeatedly signaled in recent years that they are eager to reconsider the landmark civil rights case.
In October, Justice Amy Coney Barrett claimed that SCOTUS is unlikely to overturn Obergefell. But in the wake of the court’s decision not to hear Liberty Counsel’s case, President Mat Staver vowed that “the fight to overturnObergefell and protect religious liberty has just begun.”
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