Southern Baptists Declare War on Marriage Equality
The resolution urges laws enforcing Christian values, promoting heterosexual marriage and childbearing, and reinforcing traditional gender roles.
Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention’s national meeting in Dallas have overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution opposing same-sex marriage.
On June 10, more than 10,000 church representatives — referred to as “messengers” — voted without debate to approve a measure urging the “overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family,” according to the Associated Press.
The resolution also calls for laws that “affirm marriage between one man and one woman.”
While a reversal of Obergefell — which has been targeted by nine Republican-led legislatures and supported by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — would not automatically outlaw gay marriage nationwide, it would allow individual states to do so.
Due to the Respect for Marriage Act — approved by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022 — same-sex marriages would remain legal in 18 states that either never had, or have since repealed, bans on such unions.
Legal recognition would also remain in Washington, D.C., and in U.S. territories overseas, even if Obergefell were overturned.
The remaining 32 states’ bans would be revived.
However, the governments in those states — and the federal government — would still be required to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in the other 18 states as valid and treat them equally to heterosexual marriages in terms of rights, tax benefits, and child custody matters.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s call goes much further beyond Obergefell — which some conservatives, like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), argue was wrongly decided — demanding the overturn of all laws and court rulings that permit same-sex marriage or recognize same-sex couples’ relationships and parental rights as equal to those of heterosexual marriages.
The resolution opposing marriage equality was part of a broader statement addressing marriage, family structures, and sexuality. It urges that all civil laws be rooted in biblical principles and the denomination’s religious beliefs. Specifically, it calls on lawmakers to “pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life, and family,” and to reject any legislation that contradicts “what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.”
The resolution calls for recognizing “the biological reality of male and female” and opposes any law or policy that “compels people to speak falsehoods about sex and gender.”
The resolution embraces pro-natalist views, urging Christians to “embrace marriage and childbearing,” seeking to frame family relationships as a public policy issue. For instance, it calls for “renewed moral clarity in public discourse regarding the crisis of declining fertility and for policies that support the bearing and raising of children within intact, married families.”
The resolution condemns modern culture for “pursuing willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate,” echoing the rhetoric of Vice President JD Vance, who has called for laws that would punish people he labels as “childless” Americans — potentially stripping away even their right to vote — if they do not have biological children within the confines of a heterosexual marriage.
Andrew Walker, chair of the Committee on Resolutions and author of the measure, told reporters at a news conference that the passage of the non-binding resolution makes clear that Southern Baptists will never accept the validity of same-sex marriage — even as he acknowledged the logistical and practical challenges of repealing existing laws recognizing such unions.
“What we’re trying to do is keep the conversation [about repealing same-sex marriage] alive,” Walker, an ethicist at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, told The New York Times.
LGBTQ advocates dismissed the resolution as yet another attack by right-wing conservatives against LGBTQ people — as well as any non-LGBTQ person, including religious individuals or congregations, who fail to live according to the moralistic edicts of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Marriage equality is settled law. Love is love, and the right for LGBTQ+ couples to marry is supported by an overwhelming majority of the American public,” Laurel Powell, the communications director of Human Rights Campaign, told the UK newspaper The Guardian in a statement.
“This is a very visible example of how attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as a whole have intensified, even as politicians take aim at transgender people as a tactic to divide us. We will never stop fighting to love who we love and be who we are.”
In addition to approving the marriage and family resolution, messengers at the Convention’s annual meeting also passed a separate resolution condemning pornography as “destructive,” addictive, and exploitative.
The resolution calls for a complete ban on “pornographic” materials — a term that, in conservative parlance, often encompasses far more than explicit content.
It can extend to any material that deviates from conservative beliefs about sexuality, gender, or morality. This includes books featuring non-Christian or LGBTQ characters, scholarly articles that do not promote a conservative Christian worldview, and movies, TV shows, advertisements, or artworks that include LGBTQ themes, nudity, sexual content, or depictions of the human body.
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