The Fight To End Same-Sex Marriage
Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, is a leader in “flipping the script on modern family lies.” All 38 countries that have legalized same-sex marriage “subsequently weakened the rights children have to their own mother and father,” she told ChurchLeaders. Faust added, “Gay marriage is incompatible with a child’s claim to the two people responsible for their existence.”
Them Before Us, the creator of Greater Than, called Jan. 28 “the first day of the first serious effort to restore marriage to what it was always meant to be: a child-centered institution.” The group detailed the “direct line between gay marriage and child victimization,” saying the 2015 Obergefell ruling turned children into “functional accessories to be assigned to unrelated adults via state-enforced contracts.”
For example, Obergefell created new “parentage pathways” that fall short of the screening requirements applied to other adoptive parents. “Ten years of Obergefell has made one thing clear,” Them Before Us stated. “The law cannot simultaneously uphold a child’s right to his or her mother and father while affirming same-sex marriage.”
On the Greater Than website, people can take a quiz about the implications and impacts of gay marriage. The organization also addresses “hard questions,” such as, “Do you believe gay people are bad parents/don’t love their kids?” The answer: “A woman who identifies as a lesbian can be a loving mother, but she cannot be a father. A gay man can be a loving father, but he cannot be a mother. Children need, deserve, and have a right to both.”
In response to the question, “Do same-sex couples have a right to parenthood?,” Greater Than stated, “Children have a right to their mother and father. No adult has a right to a non-biologically related child. No child should lose their mother or father so an adult—gay, straight, single or married—can create a baby.”
Regarding the well-being of children, Greater Than wrote, “Every credible study of family structure proves that biological connection advantages children; mothers and fathers offer distinct and complementary benefits; and parental loss diminishes child outcomes.”
How Pastors and Churches Can Get Involved
Greater Than plans to “restore the primacy of the natural mother-father-child bond in culture and law” through three approaches. From a governmental angle, it will address policy reform and legal cases, noting that “the Supreme Court will ultimately be forced to choose: natural bonds or children as commodities.”
Second, the movement will work to change views about the true “victim” of redefining marriage. “It’s not adults seeking insurance benefits or hospital visitations, all of which could have been secured through other legal means,” stated Greater Than. “We must highlight the real victims, the children who have been starved of maternal or paternal love, acquired by predators, mass produced, trafficked across borders, struggling with identity confusion, and subjected to risky households.”
The final approach involves the church, which has a history of working to protect children. “The church is charged with defending the fatherless (and motherless), not standing by while they are legally orphaned to serve adults,” noted Greater Than. “Child protection is, and always has been, one expression of a Christian’s pure and undefiled religion before God.”
