A new anti-marriage-equality coalition relies on an old tactic of smearing LGBTQ people as threats to children.
Right Wing Watch:
Right Wing Watch reported in November that right-wing activist Katy Faust had appeared on the Family Research Council's "Washington Watch" program to promote the End Obergefell movement she was organizing. Today her anti-equality coalition officially launched its campaign to get the Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry.
The coalition of 47 right-wing groups is calling their campaign “Greater Than” and using the tagline, “Children are greater than equal.” The basic message is that same-sex couples who want to get married and become parents are selfishly putting adult “fantasies” and “desires” over the wellbeing of children. A number of religious-right figures are featured in a campaign launch video. Influencer Allie Beth Stuckey, for example, mocks equality advocates’ use of the phrase “love makes a family.”
47 right-wing groups launch an anti-LGBTQ+ campaign called “Greater Than” to call for the overturning of Obergefell by using bigoted faulty logic that marriage equality is “dangerous” to children.
A recent Washington Examiner/YouGov poll found that “76% [of registered voters] thought social media companies had too much influence, compared to just 6% who said too little and 11% who picked about the right level of influence. The majority includes 82% of Republicans, 71% of Democrats, and 73% of independents.” In addition, the poll found that a majority of voters believe social media platforms are politically biased.
This newly formed Seattle meet-up, composed of both long-time conservatives as well as formerly apolitical moms activated by increasing leftist extremism, was the embodiment of that silent, tech-wary, majority. . . .
“To be honest, I didn’t believe censorship was happening until it happened firsthand to me,” one young Latina mom shared. “I wasn’t active in politics before. I hadn’t even voted before. But now that many of my personal posts have been blocked or removed, I am more motivated than ever to help keep our freedom of speech free.” Her first vote will be for the Republican ticket.
One formerly non-political mom admitted that she “never ever watched any politicians until COVID.” While she was anti-Hillary in 2016, she wasn’t a Trump fan. When the pandemic resulted in massive upheaval for her family of nine, she tuned into Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings.
“I realized that all the things I was holding against him [were] just based on rumors,” and then the blatant media bias became more obvious. “I would watch his speech, and immediately see people posting things about what he had said during the speeches and I could say absolutely, ‘That is not true!’ They were twisting his words and changing things to fit in their agenda!” While she doesn’t love that Trump has had “like seven wives,” the overt media and big tech manipulation has contributed to her “emphatic” vote for Trump in November.
Another mom shared that six months ago, she saw herself as a “solid centrist.” But “there’s no middle anymore.” She is very concerned about the “loss of objectivity” fueled by a biased media. She eventually felt that she had to “choose a side” and ended up choosing the party that was always on the wrong end of Big Tech “errors” and censorship. She didn’t mark her ballot for Trump in 2016, but this year her ballot will be “very very Republican.”
The latest nauseant from MAGA types pretending to care about children was dished up last week, but amid the internment of kindergartners, the slashing of funds to catch child predators and a measles outbreak at a detention center, you are forgiven for missing it.
I am talking about a coordinated campaign launched by the religious right to overturn gay marriage, arguing it harms children. The effort is a direct attack on the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision making same-sex marriage a fundamental right of equality under the 14th Amendment, but also seeks to engage churches on the issue and change public opinion.
Good luck with that last part. Most Americans support marriage equality. But the Supreme Court? That’s much iffier these days.
But what disturbs me the most, while we wait for litigation, is that the campaign is yet another disingenuous ploy by MAGA to use children as an excuse for attacking civil rights, and attempting, Christian nationalist-style, to impose religious values on general society.
MAGA frames so much hate — especially around immigrants and diversity — as protection of children, and through decades’ worth of conspiracy theory has attempted to paint LGBTQ+ parents as deviant and predatory. (QAnon, for example, was all about saving kids from gay and Democratic predators.)
In reality, it’s the MAGA folks who are traumatizing children.
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Attacking marriage equality isn’t about protecting children any more than deporting immigrants is about stopping crime. Allowing it to be framed that way actually puts in danger the stability of the approximately 300,000 kids nationwide who are being raised by about 832,000 couples in same-sex marriages.
It endangers the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ kids in any family who are growing up in a world that is increasingly hostile to them — with gender and identity hate crimes on the rise.
And it endangers everyone who values a free and fair democracy that separates church and state by eroding the rights of the vulnerable as precedent for eroding the rights of whomever ticks them off next. If LGBTQ+ marriages aren’t legally protected, how long before racists come for the Loving decision, which legalized interracial marriage?
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But framing it around protecting children is a powerful manipulation — a last-ditch effort as same sex marriage does in fact become more accepted. Because who doesn’t want to save our kids? From whatever.
Anita Chabria at Los Angeles Times on anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group Greater Than's hateful quest to end marriage equality under the guise of "protecting children" (02.06.2026)
Anita Chabria wrote a solid opinion piece in Los Angeles Times about how anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group Greater Than is using the “protect children” card to justify their hurtful agenda to ban marriage equality.
See Also:
The Big Picture (Todd Beeton): The Right Is Coming For Same-Sex Marriage With An Insidious New Campaign
The Contrarian (Jennifer Rubin): Who is Hurting Kids?
Katy Faust is the leader of the Greater Than Campaign, a new effort of at least 47 anti-LGBTQ groups to overturn Obergefell.
Hope Pisoni at Uncloseted Media:
In September 2025, the National Conservatism Conference hosted a meeting of America’s biggest right wing players in Washington, D.C. Some notable attendees included the Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) president Kristen Waggoner, Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, and U.S. representatives and government officials, including Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
On the evening of its second day, Katy Faust took the stage: “We, as a country, have to do what no other country has dared. We retake marriage on behalf of children. … A massive coalition spearheaded by my nonprofit … aims to do exactly that,” Faust, the founder of Them Before Us—a 501(c)(3) whose goal is “defending children’s right to their mother and father”—told the crowd.
A video of her speech would later be uploaded to YouTube with the title: “How Obergefell Commodified Children.”
Four months later, and just two months after the Supreme Court rejected a case aimed at overturning Obergefell, Faust launched the Greater Than Campaign, a coalition of at least 47 anti-LGBTQ organizations united to reinvigorate the fight to end gay marriage.
Faust has advocated against gay marriage for over a decade, declaring in 2021 that she and her organization, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, “have a very modest goal of a total global takeover of all conversations around marriage and family.” Since entering the spotlight during the Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015, she’s pushed her own vision of the anti-marriage equality movement.
[...]
The group also pushes for anti-LGBTQ policies in the corporate space. Last year, they published a set of Human Resources guidelines for companies designed to exclude LGBTQ families. They recommend that companies refuse to cover artificial fertilization and gender-affirming care and deny parental benefits to gay couples, claiming that “same-sex couples can not furnish a child with the gender-diverse parenting that maximizes child development and satisfies the child’s longing for maternal and paternal love.”
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Where Did Greater Than Come From?
Faust began pitching the campaign that would become Greater Than last June, presenting it as an alternative strategy to that of the far-right Christian legal group Liberty Counsel, who unsuccessfully represented Kim Davis last year in an effort to overturn Obergefell.
Unlike Liberty Counsel, Faust’s focus is on turning public opinion against gay marriage and passing state laws that could “create the kind of live issue that the justices could then rule on”—the same strategy used to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“It’s taking a cue from the anti-abortion movement,” says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way. “They built public support in red states to get laws passed that dramatically restricted or banned women’s access to abortion, knowing that then those laws would be challenged and would give the right-wing court a chance to overturn it.”
When the court declined to take up Liberty Counsel’s case, Faust wrote an op-ed arguing that the effort failed because Davis was the “wrong victim,” and the case was asking the “wrong question.”
“This is a problem that the marriage debate has had for a long time,” Faust says. “The reality is, adults are not victims of bad marriage policy—children are victims of bad marriage policy, and it is their perspective and their voice that needs to be central to the conversation.”
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Co-opting Children’s Rights
Faust’s definition of children’s rights, which forms a rhetorical basis for Greater Than, is based on four principles: “Protect children’s right to life” by restricting abortion; “protect children’s right to be raised by their mother and father” by restricting same-sex marriage and parenting; “protecting bodies” from gender-affirming health care; and “protecting minds” from sex education in schools.
Uncloseted Media has a detailed look at Katy Faust’s anti-LGBTQ+ extremist organization Greater Than Campaign’s goal to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges under the guise of “defending children.”
The Greater Than Campaign is formed by 47 organizations that have an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.
Obama has supported LGBTQ+ unions since 1996. This hate group's campaign wants you to believe otherwise.
Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:
Greater Than, a recently launched campaign to overturn marriage equality nationwide, misrepresented a quote from former President Barack Obama to falsely imply that he supports their campaign — he does not.
The campaign’s website shows Obama’s image alongside those of other anti-LGBTQ+ bigots, like slain MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, Christian conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey, and right-wing “satirical news” peddler Seth Dillon.
Below Obama’s image is a 2010 quote in which he said, “We know that children benefit not just from loving mothers and loving fathers, but from strong and loving marriages as well.”
The insinuation is that Obama agrees with the anti-gay trope that “all children deserve a father and mother” (rather than two parents of the same sex) and that he considers same-sex marriages as weaker or less loving than different-sex marriages.
Obama’s quote actually comes from a 2010 event promoting responsible fatherhood, according to Right Wing Watch, not an anti-gay speech.
Obama expressed support for same-sex marriage during his 1996 Illinois state Senate campaign, telling The Windy City Times that he supported legalizing same-sex marriage and would fight efforts to ban it.
He infamously backtracked on this position during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns — stating that he supported civil unions for LGBTQ+ couples but believed “marriage is between one man and one woman” — likely in an effort to court conservative moderate voters and avoid GOP anti-gay attacks. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer even dishonestly claimed that Obama’s 1996 statement had been forged, but Pfeiffer’s claim was later walked back by a White House spokesperson.
Barack Obama publicly declared his support for same-sex marriage in a May 9, 2012, interview with ABC News, making him the first sitting U.S. president to do so. He also appointed two Supreme Court justices — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — who both voted in favor of the landmark 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
Greater Than’s website also features what appears to be an AI-generated image of a Black teenage boy looking sad and troubled, while his oblivious and uncaring white gay dads hold hands in the background.
It’s notable that a campaign seemingly entirely run by white Christian conservatives would misrepresent the only Black president’s words and then fabricate a computer-generated photo-realistic image of a Black boy menaced by gay men in order to gain sympathy from Black community members and people who care about children’s well-being; essentially treating Black people as puppets and props.
Katy Faust, the anti-marriage-equality activist behind the campaign, has also peddled decades-old anti-gay smears insinuating that LGBTQ+ people harm kids.
“There is a direct connection between gay marriage and child victimization,” Faust recently told Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ+ organization that has been certified as a hate group. Faust has also said that her campaign’s central message will be, “Don’t touch the kids,” a phrase insinuating right-wing smears of queer people molesting and “sexualizing” children.
The right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ ”Greater Than” campaign to overturn Obergefell falsely claimed former President Obama supports ending marriage equality by distorting the “We know that children benefit not just from loving mothers and loving fathers, but from strong and loving marriages as well” quote.
In reality, Obama has supported marriage equality for a large part of his adult life but switched to the “civil unions are fine, no on same-sex marriage” stance during his first presidential campaign before reverting back to his pro-marriage equality stance in 2012.
On Jan. 28, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Them Before Us led the announcement of the “Greater Than” campaign, an effort to repeal marriage equa
SPLC Hatewatch:
On Jan. 28, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Them Before Us led the announcement of the “Greater Than” campaign, an effort to repeal marriage equality. The campaign represents an alliance of at least a dozen anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups and other allied organizations to promote the debunked claim that “gay marriage resulted in child victimization.”1
In recent months, Katy Faust, president and founder of Them Before Us, has pushed a rhetorical strategy to reinvigorate discredited social scientists and anti-LGBTQ+ ideologues that were rejected by courts during the 2010s legal fights over marriage equality. The Greater Than campaign’s reliance on falsehoods derived from anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience and conspiracy theories undermines its claims to represent what’s best for children and families.
“We need to change public opinion,” Faust said in a video posted to the campaign website. “No longer are people going to think about marriage just as a vehicle of adult fulfillment or a tool of adult validation. No, natural marriage is about child protection, and gay marriage resulted in child victimization. And we’re going to make sure that everybody understands that those two things go hand in hand.”2
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A marketing strategy to reframe marriage equality
The Greater Than campaign implies that LGBTQ+ people have created a situation in which they are legally treated “greater than” children. On its campaign website, Them Before Us states: “If you are tired of seeing children ignored, victimized, and treated as ‘less than’, it is time to join us in taking a stand.”3
The campaign is a new way to inject the dangerous myth that LGBTQ+ people are harmful to children back into the public consciousness, after opponents of marriage equality lost the public policy fight in 2015 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision. In a video posted to the Them Before Us Substack, Faust says, “Whatever you want to do in your private life — fine. Don’t touch the kids. But we will not be able to achieve that until we overturn Obergefell.”4
In a Feb. 10 interview with anti-LGBTQ+ speaker and activist Frank Turek, Faust suggested that the campaign was a marketing strategy to shift public opinion. “If we have learned anything from the demise of Roe, it is not enough to overturn bad Supreme Court decisions,” Faust said. “We have to change public opinion.”5
To that end, Faust indicated that she was using hard-right influencers to help shape the narrative. “I have these amazing conservative spokesmen, influencers who are on board with me,” she told Turek. “They’ve been in working group meetings, Steve Deace and Delano Squires and Jack Posobiec and Heidi St. John, among a variety of others. And what are we going to do? […] We are going to train America to help them understand the direct connection between gay marriage and child victimization, and natural marriage and child protection.”6
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The three reports were the discredited 2012 “New Family Structures Study” authored by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus; a 2015 study authored by anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Ruth Institute researcher Paul Sullins; and a 2013 study by Canadian economist Douglas Allen, who testified in court in 2014 that “without repentance,” LGBTQ+ people would go to hell.14
Selective amplification of social science that fits the anti-LGBTQ+ ideology while discounting or denying contradictory evidence has been a common strategy of anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups for decades. The SPLC has previously reported how anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups use pseudoscience, including studies with faulty or questionable methodologies, to promote public policies and litigation that restrict LGBTQ+ people’s freedoms, access to healthcare and protections from discrimination.
Faust wasn’t the first to attempt to revitalize these debunked claims about gay families. In 2024, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Focus on the Family claimed Regnerus provided “reliable data” that lesbian and gay families “are shown to markedly hinder” child development.15
Contrary to hate groups’ claims, a robust body of scientifically sound literature “consistently shows that LGBQ adults are just as capable and efficient at parenting children as their cisgender heterosexual counterparts” and that “children of sexual minority parents, though exposed to unique experiences, perform and develop at similar rates as children with heterosexual parents,” according to the American Psychological Association.16
SPLC’s Hatewatch has a solid report on how anti-LGBTQ+ extremist hate group Greater Than, led by Them Before Us founder Katy Faust, uses pseudoscience-laden arguments à la the discredited Regnerus Study to justify the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges in the name of “child protection.”
Anti-LGBTQ activist Katy Faust has launched a campaign to get SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell by convincing the court that "the ultimate victi
Kyle Mantyla at People For The American Way's RWW:
After the Supreme Court rejected a petition to overturn the court’s 2015 Obergefell marriage equality ruling last week, anti-LGBTQ activists vowed that this was only the beginning of their effort to eliminate the constitutional right of same-sex couples to wed.
In the wake of the court's decision, right-wing activist Katy Faust appeared on the Family Research Council's "Washington Watch" program to promote the End Obergefell movement she has launched. She wants to convince SCOTUS that Obergefell must be overturned because children are losing "their right to their own mother and father."
"When you take a case to the court and it's the wrong victim or you're asking the wrong question, you'll get a wrong decision that can sometimes reaffirm a previous bad decision," Faust said. "We do not need to bring a court case to the Supreme Court, in my opinion, that says, should a cake baker have to bake this cake, should a woman have to arrange these flowers, should Kim Davis have to sign this document? That matters, but that does not ultimately matter."
Right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ activist Katy Faust has a goal she wants to achieve in her quest to overturn Obergefell: “protect” the children.
From the 11.11.2025 edition of Family Research Council's Washington Watch:
Surrogacy may feel like a nice way for infertile couples to have babies, but the facts reveal that wherever surrogacy goes, the commodification of children follows.
Unlike adoptive parents, adults who acquire children under the UPA need not undergo any pesky background checks, home studies, vetting, or training, despite their lack of biological connection to the child. A valid contract and “intent” to parent is all that’s required. Dog breeders take more care to interview potential families for their puppies than the UPA requires of adults creating children via surrogacy.
This isn’t fear-mongering. We already have disaster surrogacy cases of men mass-producing surrogate babies, pedophile “intended parents” who created surrogate children, and babies handed over to unstable adults over the objections of the surrogate. In some cases, it’s difficult to distinguish surrogate pregnancies from child trafficking. The Kim and Kanyes of the world are opening the door for wider acceptance of surrogacy, and the predatory Newton and Truongs of the world are eager to walk through it.
When Shapiro remarked that surrogacy can be “useful and wonderful,” he may have pictured a married couple using their own egg and sperm, who don’t create surplus embryos, refuse to “selectively reduce,” and reject eugenic child-selection. This is an extremely rare scenario due to the high cost. Yet even in those “ideal” scenarios, surrogacy inflicts trauma on the child. Why? Because at the moment of birth, the child loses a relationship with the only parent he or she has ever known.
