David Green, the founder of the conservative Christian retailer Hobby Lobby, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Them Before Us, an anti-LGBTQ organization behind the Greater Than Campaign, a national effort seeking to overturn the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.
Them Before Us, the lead organization behind the Greater Than campaign, was founded in 2018. It advocates against marriage rights for LGBTQ couples based on the presumption that being raised by same-sex parents is harmful to children.
IRS reports show that, for its first few years, Them Before Us had less than $50,000 in revenue. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a national right to abortion, the group’s revenue surged. In 2022, it received $200,000, growing to nearly $1 million in 2024, with founder and president Katy Faust collecting a salary of $135,000.
Them Before Us’s 2024 filings show a $300,000 donation from The Servant Foundation, a Christian organization funded by Green and his family. The foundation is behind the “He Gets Us” ads about Jesus — an advertising campaign aimed at reintroducing the Jesus of the Bible to Americans — which gained widespread attention after airing during recent Super Bowls.
Hobby Lobby was previously at the center of a landmark 2014 Supreme Court case ruling that private, “closely held” for-profit corporations do not have to provide insurance coverage for contraception — and, potentially, other health treatments — if doing so would conflict with the corporation’s religious beliefs.
The Greater Than campaign, which is comprised of 47 right-wing groups, including Them Before Us, seeks to radically alter U.S. marriage policy — beginning with overturning the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision — so that only opposite-sex couples who can potentially procreate would be allowed to wed.
While the Greater Than campaign does not explicitly say what steps it would pursue after the overturn of Obergefell, the campaign’s partners and allied religious organizations would likely seek to reinstate state-level bans on same-sex marriage, repeal the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires same-sex marriages to be recognized even in the case of Obergefell being overturned, and potentially impose some form of nationwide ban on same-sex marriage.
The Greater Than campaign also seeks to shift the broader public’s views on same-sex marriage under the guise of “protecting children.” Its chief argument is that the sole purpose of marriage is to raise children, and that allowing same-sex marriage to exist prioritizes the “feelings” of adults over children and violates the rights of any children who might potentially be raised by same-sex couples.
The campaign has already been criticized for attempting to conflate LGBTQ people and same-sex couples with “groomers” who abuse and exploit children — a decades-old trope that has been echoed in recent years by right-wing activists seeking to erase LGBTQ visibility.
Faust, the chief spokeswoman for the Greater Than campaign, has argued that marriage equality has made children’s lives worse and that there is no “right to adopt,” but that children “have a natural right” to be raised by a mother and a father.
An adoptive mother herself, she is the child of a lesbian mother who divorced Faust’s father when the anti-LGBTQ activist was 10 years old. She later converted to Christianity while in high school.
In an interview with Uncloseted Media’s Spencer Macnaughton, Faust claimed that her activism against same-sex marriage has nothing to do with resentment over being raised by her mother and her mother’s female partner, saying their home was actually more stable than her father’s. But she insists that children are harmed by same-sex marriage, just as they are by divorce, because having parents of opposite genders is essential to a person’s development.
The Tennessee State Senate has approved a bill requiring clinics to report detailed data on patients receiving gender-affirming care, a move critics warn could enable the state to track transgender people and the doctors who treat them.
The measure requires all gender clinics in Tennessee to submit monthly reports to the Department of Health on patients who receive transition-related treatments or surgery. The state would then publish annual reports based on that data.
The reports would exclude patients’ names but include details such as age, sex assigned at birth, prescribed medications, and the dates prescriptions were written or surgical referrals made. The requirement would apply not only to those receiving gender-affirming care, but also to patients seeking treatment for side effects or those who later experience "regret" and pursue "detransition."
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a case brought by parents who say their child’s school district failed to notify them of the student’s social transition, including the use of a new name and different pronouns during school hours.
The high court offered no explanation for declining the appeal, leaving in place a 2-1 ruling from a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that sided with the school district.
The case stems from a dispute involving January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, whose middle-school-aged child, assigned female at birth, told her parents in 2020 that she was questioning her gender and asked to go by "J" and use they/them pronouns. The parents did not agree but told their child, referred to as "A.G." in court documents, that she could use "J" as a nickname at school.
A new rule from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could effectively criminalize transgender people who attempt to buy firearms, raising concerns about their ability to exercise Second Amendment rights.
The move stems from an executive order by President Donald Trump declaring that the federal government will recognize only two sexes -- male and female -- based on biological anatomy at birth.
Under the change, all gun buyers would be required to list their sex assigned at birth on purchase paperwork, even if they have legally changed their gender or undergone gender confirmation surgery. That would force transgender people to either "out" themselves or risk lying on a government form -- a crime punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or up to 10 years if the lie is deemed "material" to the sale.
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