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.”
In an interview about the campaign with American Family Radio, Faust made it clear that the campaign will continue a long and dishonorable legacy of anti-LGBTQ forces smearing gay people and couples as threats to children. She called parenting by same-sex couples a “destructive state-sanctioned gaslighting experiment on children.” Faust names a few of the religious-right leaders involved in the campaign, saying, “We’re all going to speak with one voice, and it is ‘don’t touch the kids.’”
The campaign announcement was made through the Heritage Foundation’s “Daily Signal,” which was not surprising given that the Heritage Foundation responded to the Obergefell ruling by insisting that it was not legitimate and publishing a road map to overturning it.
Last year, as equality advocates celebrated the tenth anniversary of Obergefell and the supermajority support for marriage equality among the American public, Right Wing Watch reported that anti-LGBTQ religious-right groups were determined to overturn it. And in November, when the Supreme Court rejected Liberty Counsel’s request to overturn marriage equality, the religious-right legal group insisted that “it’s not if, but when, Obergefell will be overturned.”