by Katy Faust, First Things
Gay marriage did not merely redefine an institution. It created child victims. After ten years, a coalition of Catholic and Protestant leaders has come together to say: no more. The Greater Than campaign is dedicated to defending the rights of children by urging the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
The debate that preceded Obergefell, which imposed same-sex marriage on all fifty states, was relentlessly adult-centric. Proponents argued that gay adults would be harmed—emotionally, socially, and legally—if the definition of marriage were not upended. Opponents generally responded in kind, warning that religious adults would be harmed if it were. Both sides framed marriage as a contest between adult interests and adult liberties. Both sidelined the true victims of marriage redefinition: children.
For gay marriage supporters, that omission was not accidental. It was essential. Children pose an inconvenient problem for any attempt to redefine marriage around adult desire rather than natural reality. Marriage exists because children exist, because they are conceived through the union of a man and a woman, and because they need the protection, stability, and care of a father and mother over time. To acknowledge children honestly would have required conceding that marriage is not merely a vehicle for adult fulfillment, but a child-protecting institution ordered toward permanence, exclusivity, and sexual complementarity. So children were largely written out of the story.