Katy Faust – Greater Than Campaign video screenshot
A coalition of at least 47 right-wing groups, operating under the name “Greater Than,” has launched a coordinated campaign to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, part of a renewed push by social conservatives to reshape national marriage policy.
At the center of the campaign’s argument is the claim that the sole purpose of marriage is to raise children, and that the Obergefell decision, along with the cultural shifts that followed it, violates children’s rights.
The coalition has outlined a three-part strategy: crafting marriage policy around the parent-child relationship, attempting to shift public opinion by arguing that same-sex marriage “and other forms of family breakdown” harm children, and mobilizing Christian churches to advocate for those changes under the banner of “protecting children.”
As previewed in the launch video, the messaging casts same-sex couples who seek to marry or become parents as “selfish,” accusing them of placing adult “fantasies” and “desires” above children’s wellbeing. As reported by Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way, that framing echoes long-standing efforts to portray LGBTQ people as inherent threats to children, while laying rhetorical groundwork for the denial of legal protections and government benefits to families headed by same-sex couples.
Some conservatives involved in the campaign have already begun attempting to discredit multiple studies showing that same-sex couples are capable parents, arguing that the research is flawed or ideologically driven. At the same time, they have promoted other studies they claim show that children raised in same-sex households experience greater emotional, behavioral, and academic difficulties than those raised by opposite-sex couples.
“Since the redefinition of marriage a decade ago, we’ve seen the consequences: parenthood treated as replaceable, and children deprived of the unique love and guidance only a mother and father can provide,” said Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us and a spokeswoman for the “Greater Than” campaign. “Ten years of Obergefell have shown us, loud and clear, that children deserve better and that they are Greater Than adult desires — and it’s time we make a change.”
In an interview on the American Family Radio program At the Core, Faust promoted the “Greater Than” campaign and emphasized the breadth of the coalition, at one point calling same-sex parenting a “destructive state-sanctioned gaslighting experiment on children.”
“We’re all going to speak with one voice,” Faust said of the groups involved in the campaign, “and it is ‘don’t touch the kids.'”
In addition to Them Before Us, the coalition includes several organizations that have spent decades opposing the recognition and expansion of LGBTQ rights, including the American Family Association, the Colson Center for Biblical Worldview, the Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family.
The coalition also includes national groups such as the Christian Medical and Dental Association, the pro-life group Live Action, the Ruth Institute, and the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, as well as at least fourteen state-level family policy organizations. Organizers told the Daily Signal that the coalition includes additional groups beyond those publicly listed on its website.
Even the campaign’s primary logo — a yellow “greater than” symbol on a blue background — appears designed to echo, and mock, the branding of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, whose logo features a yellow equals sign on a blue field.
The campaign’s launch video features a lineup of prominent religious-right figures and conservative commentators, including Allie Beth Stuckey, Michael Knowles, Tony Perkins, Lila Rose, and Newsweek columnist Josh Hammer. Several speakers invoke rhetoric long used to portray LGBTQ people as threats to children.
“Marriage policy should be about the children,” Hammer says in the video. “It’s not about bestowing public policy legitimacy and conferring economic benefits when it comes to adults who have their own idiosyncratic romantic desires.”
“We’re prioritizing the fantasies of adults — no matter how earnestly those fantasies are felt — over the real needs and the real good of children,” Knowles says.
The campaign’s launch comes just months after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who was found liable for damages and attorneys’ fees after refusing to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple.
Many conservative commentators, including some gay Republicans, dismissed warnings that the Supreme Court might revisit Obergefell, accusing LGBTQ advocates and liberals of exaggerating the threat. But as LGBTQ legal expert Chris Geidner has noted, the Kim Davis case was never a viable vehicle for the court to reconsider — much less overturn — its marriage equality precedent.
Geidner has also warned that opponents of marriage equality are unlikely to stop — and could be emboldened to bring a more carefully constructed case before the court, particularly if Republicans retain control of the presidency and Senate and are able to reshape the judiciary. At least two sitting justices — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — have already signaled their willingness to overturnObergefell if given the opportunity.
The year's nearly out. Sometimes that calls for taking sweet stock of the past months' wonderful events. Coming to the end of 2025, on the other hand, is more like getting to that denouement in the action movie where the survivors take a breath and pat each other on the back for having made it out alive. At this stage, we are Newt getting tucked-in to her Sulaco hibernation tube.
With some effort and a pinch of luck, may we all fare better in 2026 than poor Newt's end at the start of Alien 3.
Why such a shitty year? So much of it, obviously, can be laid at the feet of Lame Duck Donald. Not that he hasn't had loads of assistance in his evil efforts to erase our transgender family and friends, colleagues, and leaders during 2025. The purge, as promised, began right out of the gate on Inauguration Day.
Alexandria City Councilman R. Kirk McPike won Tuesday’s Democratic firehouse primary for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The openly gay McPike, who works as chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), secured 60.5% of the vote in the four-way race among Democrats in the 5th House District.
Eileen Cassidy Rivera, a former Alexandria City School Board member, placed second, finishing ahead of criminal defense attorney Chris Leibig and Gregory Darrall, an openly gay teacher and labor leader.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, the first out gay leader of the Israeli parliament, angered the ultra-Orthodox parties within the conservative Likud-led governing coalition after voting in favor of a civil marriage bill last week.
The proposed bill, which was ultimately defeated, was introduced by the centrist Yesh Atid party, the largest faction in the opposition. It would have established a legal framework for regulating same-sex partnerships in Israel, including a couples registry, eligibility requirements, registration procedures, and mechanisms for dissolving civil marriages.
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