A coalition of Christian conservative organizations and leaders has launched a new national effort aimed at mobilizing churches and families to advocate for the reversal of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the country.
The initiative, called the Greater Than campaign, is led by the child-centered advocacy group Them Before Us and is supported by a broad alliance of faith-based and conservative organizations, including Focus on the Family, Live Action, Colson Center, Word on Fire, American Family Association, and Citizens for Renewing America.
Organizers say the campaign’s central objective is to encourage the Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled that the 14th Amendment guarantees a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Greater Than describes itself as a “coalition of parents, students, researchers, think tanks, influencers, and citizens who are willing to state the self-evident but costly truth: children need, deserve, and have a right to their mother and father.”
Public supporters of the campaign include pro-life activist Lila Rose, Blaze Media host Steve Deace, Princeton University professor Robert P. George, and author and speaker Heidi St. John.
“When marriage was redefined in 2015, parenthood was too. Once husbands and wives became optional, mothers and fathers became replaceable,” the campaign’s website states.
“But for a child, their mother and father are never optional; they are essential. Children need both a mother and a father to provide stability, guidance, and the unique love only a man and woman can give. No adult desire or ideology can change that.”
Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, said in an interview that the idea for the campaign took shape as the nation approached the 10th anniversary of the landmark ruling.
“It dawned on us: has anybody really, really put together an effort to overturn this?” Faust said. “I kept thinking, another organization that has more legal chops than we do was ultimately going to do it. But it dawned on us leading up to the 10-year anniversary that no, this is probably something that we need to do.”
“We can pull in a lot of other wonderful, faithful, grounded, virtuous, clear-eyed organizations into the mix, because there's a lot of people that have been steadfast before Obergefell and ... I think are ready to really make an effort to take it down,” she added.
The Obergefell decision, issued on June 26, 2015, passed by a 5–4 margin and invalidated state constitutional bans on same-sex marriage nationwide, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the majority opinion.
In 2022, the ruling was further entrenched into federal law when a Democrat-controlled Congress passed bipartisan legislation codifying same-sex marriage protections, which was signed by then-President Joe Biden.
In recent years, social conservatives have pursued new legal strategies, hoping the current Supreme Court’s more conservative composition could lead to a reconsideration of the 2015 ruling.
Those efforts suffered a setback last November when the high court declined, without comment, to hear a petition from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis seeking to revisit the Obergefell decision.
