The Patriot Post® · The Movement to Overturn Obergefell

Marriage is between a man and a woman. Indeed, it was ordained by God for the purpose of creating a family. Ten years ago, however, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. The result was further degradation of the family and the victimization of countless children.

Let’s define the idea of child victimization. A child in a same-sex household is denied the right to both a male and female parent. Or as Colson Center President John Stonestreet explains, “Moms don’t dad and dads don’t mom. It’s not enough to say kids need loving parents because kids need a particular kind of parent.” Furthermore, children in same-sex households are placed in very vulnerable — and sometimes even very dangerous — positions.

Obergefell redefined marriage, but it also redefined parenting. It opened a can of worms, defining same-sex couples as “infertile.” In and of itself, this makes light of the tragic hardship of married heterosexual couples who are struggling with infertility. For them, it’s a sad reality. For homosexuals, it’s a lifestyle choice. Yet their status as “victims” allows them to use surrogacy and IVF to purposely create motherless and/or fatherless children. Moreover, Obergefell made adoption agencies more likely to give children, particularly babies, to homosexual couples, making an already broken situation for that child exponentially worse.

In other words, same-sex persons living together in what Obergefell deemed “marriage” fundamentally violates the family rights of children. The sexual desires of adults should never be allowed to infringe on the rights and safety of children.

Now, 47 Christian and conservative organizations have gathered to launch a new campaign, “Greater Than,” to overturn Obergefell. Here is the campaign video:

The campaign’s corresponding slogan, “Greater Than Equal,” hearkens back to the original push by LGBers when they first declared same-sex marriage a right to which they were entitled. They argued that just because they were engaging in sterile sex didn’t mean they weren’t also entitled to the rights and privileges of marriage, up to and including children. The Human Rights Campaign even made its logo a yellow equal sign on a blue background to call for gay and lesbian “equal rights.”

However, that narrative shifted over the years, and instead of being about “equality,” it became about “love.” Because who can argue against someone who is just fighting for what they love? “Greater Than Equal” is a positive slogan that puts kids at the center because it is ultimately their rights that have been infringed.

In 2012, an infamous study was published by Mark Regnerus, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. His study, which followed 3,000 families, 248 of whom comprised homosexual parents, showed that children raised in those 248 same-sex households suffered “suboptimal results” from that rearing. These included lower economic advantage, lower academic success, depression, drug use, and higher adult unemployment status.

In 2019, the American College of Pediatricians published a scientific analysis of children in same-sex households, and its conclusion concurred with Regnerus’s. The authors wrote that “biology matters” and that “children need a mother and a father.”

The 2012 study caused an uproar. However, its findings were revisited last year and subjected to an even more rigorous test to address political bias. The newer critical analysis confirms the original hypothesis: Kids with non-heterosexual parents were more likely to have negative outcomes than those in mother-father families.

Obergefell was the natural, terrible culmination of what started decades before: no-fault divorce. This is where the victimization of children truly started. With the advent of no-fault divorce and the onset of the sexual revolution, children’s lives were torn apart. Millions of kids were born into intact families, and then divorce ripped stability away, setting them up for many hardships emotionally, socially, and economically.

While “Greater Than” advocates have no specific plans to start the process, their platform is likely to have a stronger footing than that of former Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, who famously refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple. The Supreme Court declined to hear her case at all.

Katy Faust, the founder of Them Before Us, which is spearheading the “Greater Than” movement, declared, “It’s time we make a change, which is why this coalition of concerned citizens, parents, siblings, faith leaders, nonprofit organizations, and others have linked arms to overturn Obergefell’s failures, law by law.” Faust added, “We will reassert sex-based realities, insisting that family law reflect the fact that sexual difference is essential to child development. We seek to give biological parentage primacy, recognizing the natural parent-child bond as a child’s first and most reliable safeguard, while requiring adoption screening for any unrelated adults who seek parental status. Above all, we work to center children’s rights across parentage law, birth certificates, divorce, and marriage policy, so that a child’s objective right to his or her mother and father supersedes subjective adult preferences.”

“Greater Than” is a powerful call to change. Children have been the unwilling and miscounted victims of leftist social experiments. They have been turned into commodities. It’s time that we address their rights as a culture and change course.