In his concurrence to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization majority opinion, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas famously warned that the Supreme Court “should” revisit—and in his words “correct”—other longstanding precedents, just as they had done with Roe.
Among the decisions Thomas wanted to see on the chopping block are those, like Roe, that dealt with so-called “unenumerated rights.” These include Americans’ fundamental rights to privacy stemming from the substantive due process guarantees of the 5th and 14th Amendments.
Thomas’s logic here is that, hey, if the federal right to abortion is unconstitutional, so is access to contraception, so is the right to have sex with a consenting adult in the privacy of your own home, and yes, so is the right for same-sex couples to marry.
As Thomas wrote,
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
In his majority opinion in Dobbs, Justice Samual Alito tried to tamp down any fear that the ruling would somehow serve as a slippery slope to the overturning of other precedents, writing,
“Our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
But the message the conservative movement heard was not Alito’s, it was Thomas’s. And they have answered the call.
Just last week, a coalition of 47 conservative anti-LGBTQ+ organizations banded together to launch the Greater Than Campaign. Its express goal is to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. Or as they put it,
“Restoring marriage to the child-protecting institution it was meant to be.”
The groups involved in the campaign are a who’s who of Christian nationalist so-called “pro-family” organizations, including Focus On The Family, The Heritage Foundation, and the Family Research Council, which used to tout the virtue of “traditional marriage” and claim same-sex marriage would doom the institution of marriage altogether.
All that language is gone. Instead, this new campaign focuses on the safety of children, claiming that somehow legalizing same-sex marriage has put the “desires” of adults over the protection of children.
This messaging shift is quite telling. It betrays not just an acknowledgement of the success of the pro-equality movement over the past two decades, but it is based on insidious lies about same-sex families. And if we read between the lines, even straight couples and single parents should watch their backs.
Let’s take a look at this new campaign and see what’s really behind this new push to once again outlaw same-sex marriage.
“Children Are Greater Than Equal”
The marriage equality movement is undoubtedly one of U.S. history’s swiftest civil rights success stories. In just 20 years, we went from the overwhelming passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, which defined marriage in the eyes of the federal government as between a man and a woman, to the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision making marriage equality the law of the land.
The victory was a triumph of coalition-building, story telling, and strategic communication that focused on a message lying at the heart of American values: equality.
Represented graphically by the Human Rights Campaign’s iconic equal sign, it was equality that was central to the crucial Supreme Court victories that culminated in the granting of a federal right to same-sex marriage.
The first national victory occurred in 2013 when SCOTUS’ ruling in United States vs. Windsor overturned DOMA. According to The Brennan Center for Justice,
In a 5–4 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Constitution prevented the federal government from treating state-sanctioned heterosexual marriages differently from state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. Such disparate treatment “demean[ed] the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects.” The ruling drew on principles of federalism, equal protection, and liberty.
Ultimately, the majority found,
“DOMA’s principal effect,” wrote Kennedy, “is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.”
And then just two years later, in Obergefell, Justice Kennedy, again writing for the majority ruled,
“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
So, now in 2026, perhaps it should not be surprising that this re-constituted coalition of pro-”traditional marriage” crusaders would shift away from their failed messaging of the past and go right to the core of what led to the dramatic shifts same-sex marriage achieved in both public opinion and legal standing: equality itself.
Even graphically, the “Greater Than” campaign seeks to replace HRC’s equal sign with the greater than symbol, even stealing HRC’s color scheme.
In the video launching the campaign, the messaging twists this triumph of equality on its head, actually equating it with “inequality.”
“When Obergefell redefined marriage to include same-sex couples, it was billed as a win for adult equality. In reality, it created inequality for children. It made our children less than.”
And ultimately,
“Children are greater than equal.”
Annnd, there it is.
“Groomer” By Another Name
This pivot in messaging away from the validity of marriage between two adults to concern for children’s well-being is an age-old canard. It taps into deep and insidious fears, stoked by the Christian nationalist right, that same-sex couples somehow pose a threat to children. That they are “groomers” of children.
They may frame it in other ways, such as when Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles claims that by legalizing same-sex marriage,
“We are prioritizing the fantasies of adults…over the real needs and the real good of children.”
Or when Dr. Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says,
“If you redefine marriage…it harms children in almost every way imaginable.”
But the dog-whistle can be heard loud and clear, as the Massachusetts Family Institute puts it in their post endorsing the Greater Than campaign:
For more than a decade, our nation has elevated the sexual desires of adults above the well-being of children
Or as the thumbnail of the Greater Than’s YouTube video not so subtly puts it:
“Child rights > adult desires”
This attempt to frame LGBTQ+ couples as sexual deviants who pose a danger to children is of course based on a vicious lie.
Jim Daly of Focus On The Family claims in their launch video that,
“When you look at social science, it says beyond a shadow of a doubt that children that grow up in a loving two parent biological home, Mom and Dad, those children will do best.”
But in fact, the social science data does not say that. Quite the contrary.
According to Cornell University’s Public Policy Research Portal,
We identified 79 scholarly studies that met our criteria for adding to knowledge about the well-being of children with gay or lesbian parents. Of those studies, 75 concluded that children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children.
As for those other four studies…
We identified four studies concluding that children of gay or lesbian parents face added disadvantages. Since all four took their samples from children who endured family break-ups, a cohort known to face added risks, these studies have been criticized by many scholars as unreliable assessments of the well-being of LGB-headed households.
Concluding,
Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.
The Greater Than campaign does try to address this inconvenient data by linking to a post at Them Before Us, one of the organizing members of the Christian nationalist coalition of groups leading the effort.
They claim,
Most of the 75 studies Cornell touts depended on tiny, non-representative, hand-selected samples, parental self-reporting, or activist-aligned recruitment pools—methods that would be dismissed outright in any other area of child-well being research.
But Cornell bats this down as a straw man argument, writing,
While many of the sample sizes were small, and some studies lacked a control group, researchers regard such studies as providing the best available knowledge about child adjustment, and do not view large, representative samples as essential.
And even the post at Them Before Us highlights a study that undermines their entire argument.
A 2020 study—Mazrekaj, De Witte & Cabus—from the Netherlands employed rigorous methodology and showed that children with same-sex parents from birth had equal or sometimes better academic outcomes as children raised by heterosexual couples.
And why would that be?
However, the researchers conceded that much of the advantage could likely be attributed to higher socioeconomic standards in children raised by same-sex parents. Meaning, a bigger paycheck, not two moms or two dads, seemed to bolster academic success.
Umm, who wants to tell them?
Taken together, there is still very little evidence that children with same-sex parents fare “no different” than kids raised by their own mother and father.
Fair. There is actually quite a bit of evidence that they fare better!
“Biological” Is Doing Some Major Heavy Lifting
There is much more wrong with this framing than the obvious anti-gay propaganda and lies coming from this campaign.
First let’s take the basic premise that same-sex marriage by definition undermines children.
This, of course, implies same-sex married couples by and large have children, which is not even close to being the case.
According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, as of 2023, just 17% of same-sex married couples were parenting minors in their home. This tracks with a 2024 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law that found that number at 18%. This contrasts with about 38% of opposite-sex married couples, who had children according to the American Community Survey.
So, this coalition of Christian nationalists would have us believe that despite 82% of same-sex married couples not even having children, the institution of same-sex marriage itself is a threat to children.
That on its face is absurd, yet once again they tap into a deep tenet of far right cultural conservatism, namely that the very purpose of marriage is to procreate.
What they are really saying here is deeply troubling. To them, the very fact that same-sex couples cannot, by definition, have biological children “with a Mom and a Dad,” the institution of same-sex marriage should be torn down altogether.
Just listen to their obsession with “biological” children from their launch video.
“Children do best when they are raised in a home with married biological mom and dad.”
“Children who grow up in a loving two parent biological home, mom and dad, those children will do best…”
“There is something primal about our relationship with the two people who gave us life.”
“It’s a mother and a father that bring forth children and that’s by design. Because those children need a mother and a father.”
And while it is true that same-sex couples adopt at far greater rates than opposite-sex couples do, by fixating on the primacy of biological procreation, the Greater Than campaign is actually throwing millions of opposite-sex married couples who are only able to form a family through adoption or IVF under the bus.
They do give some lip service to adoption as one of the “two legitimate ways to unite a child to adults,” as Them Before Us spokesperson Katy Faust puts it in their launch video. But they give away the game in the “Quiz” section of their website, where they write:
Assuming authority over an unrelated child — through reproductive technology or by being in a relationship with the child’s biological parent — fails to honor the child’s right to safety, belonging, and connection to both natural parents.
“Assuming authority over an unrelated child”?? Who talks like that?
By their own words, they don’t see parenting of “unrelated children” as a legitimate family. And that must by definition include adoptive children. It is hard to overstate what a fringe view this is.
What Is The Campaign’s End Game?
It is notable that in neither the campaign launch video nor on the main pages of the website is there any mention of the goal of this campaign: to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
But if you dig, it’s clear this is their ultimate aim.
For example, it you dive into the website’s “Hard Questions” section, there are gems such as:
What about the Respect for Marriage Act?
The Respect for Marriage Act only requires states to recognize, not license, same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. After an Obergefell reversal, that recognition requirement would likely face constitutional challenge in the courts. Without Obergefell, there would also be no clear legal basis to treat child access as a “right” of same-sex marriage.
And
Will overturning gay marriage threaten interracial marriage?
Legally, Loving v. Virginia and Obergefell v. Hodges rest on entirely different foundations. [...]
Reversing Obergefell has no impact on Loving v. Virginia.
What would it mean for current same-sex marriages if they were to succeed? According to The Daily Signal, “that would not dissolve existing same-sex marriages or invalidate settled parental determinations.”
But let’s not be blind to what their playbook is. Indeed, it’s borrowed from the pro-equality movement itself: a long game that begins with moving hearts and minds.
And they know they have an uphill climb. The country simply isn’t with them. Yet.
According to Gallup, 68% of Americans now support same-sex marriage.
But that is down from a peak of 71% in 2022 and 2023, driven entirely by a fairly swift loss of support among Republicans.
Which points to a core weakness of this campaign. They are a fringe group speaking in code primarily to conservatives who already agree with them. “Other Republicans” is the only group exhibiting any softness in support for same-sex marriage, so that’s where they are trying to move the needle.
But that’s not how the pro-equality side won. They targeted the middle and moved public opinion outward from there. The messaging by Greater Than has to attack fundamentally American values to do the same. As it makes clear right there on its website:
“America’s children are being treated as less than. Less than adults’ ambitions. Less than political agendas. Less than the so-called ideals of ‘equality’ and ‘freedom.’”
“So-called.”
The far right doesn’t truly value “equality” or “freedom” in America. This rejection is central to Christian nationalism but rarely said aloud: Those values are only reserved for the right kind of Americans. Freedom and equality for “me”—meaning white, Christian, straight and cisgender—but not for thee.
This underscores why the Greater Than movement is destined to fail to move public opinion in its direction.
But would the current activist reactionary right-wing Supreme Court overturn Obergefell anyway? At least so far, it appears there is no appetite to do so.
Last November, the Court rejected a petition by former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to revisit Obergefell, which means they couldn’t muster four votes from the justices to hear the case.
While a more compelling case could of course potentially convince the Court to take it up, perhaps in a rare moment Alito was being truthful in his Dobbs majority opinion, which he reiterated during a speech just last year.
“As I said in my opinion for the court in Dobbs, more than once, nothing in Dobbs was meant to disturb [Obergefell.]
And while at that same event he reiterated his criticisms of Obergefell (he was one of the dissenters, after all), he did make a point of saying, “I am not suggesting that the decision in that case should be overruled.”
Which may point to the real uphill climb the folks at the Greater Than campaign have.
When you’re even too extreme for Samuel Alito…
If they really care about protecting children, they could start by prosecuting the men in the Epstein files...
I find it very strange and suspicious that this so called "greater than" group is so worried about children in same sex marriages when they couldn't give a damn about the children abused in the epstein files or the pedophile in the white house. Such hypocrites!