The "Greater Than" campaign claims loving gay parents are the real threat to kids

Inside the evidence-free campaign to roll back marriage equality and revive Christian grievance politics

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While the Trump administration terrorizes children, causes measles outbreaks by downplaying the efficacy of vaccines, and blocking federal funding for child care, a coalition of Trump supporters have launched a campaign to save kids from what they believe is the biggest threat to their safety: Gay parents who love each other.

Yesterday, 47 groups—including Christian ministries, anti-abortion zealots, and state-based conservative organizations— announced the “Greater Than” campaign, suggesting that children deserve better than marriage equality under Obergefell and calling for the overturning of the Supreme Court decision that made same-sex marriage legal nationwide.

In a video announcing the campaign, people like Michael Knowles (who once appeared in bed with another man for a short film) and Tony Perkins (who once stood in front of a Confederate flag during a speech to a white nationalist group) said that same-sex parents were putting their “fantasies” and “desires” over the needs of children. Others like dinosaur denier and empathy hater Allie Beth Stuckey mocked the very idea that “love makes a family.”

The campaign was launched by right-wing activist Katy Faust, who has previous said children with gay parents are inherently “victimized”:

“Since the redefinition of marriage a decade ago, we’ve seen the consequences: parenthood treated as replaceable, and children deprived of the unique love and guidance only a mother and father can provide,” Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us and a spokeswoman for the campaign, said in a statement Wednesday.

“Ten years of Obergefell have shown us, loud and clear, that children deserve better and that they are Greater Than adult desires—and it’s time we make a change,” she added.

While the video has received the bulk of the attention so far, it’s the campaign’s website that actually deserves a closer look. Because surely there’s evidence that children with gay parents suffer, right?

Nope. There are no studies cited on the website. There’s no proof of any sort offered anywhere.

On a Q&A page that asks “Don’t studies show that children with same-sex parents fare just as well as those raised by their mother and father?” the response is that any study affirming that notion… must be a bad study.

Studies of same-sex-headed households — which are always missing a biological parent, maternal or paternal love, and in which the child has suffered parental loss — largely suffer from poor methodology.

There’s another question that asks “Do you believe gay people are bad parents/don’t love their kids?”

Instead of saying “Yes” or “No,” the website just repeats the conservative talking point that same-sex couples can’t provide kids with what they need:

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.

What about straight parents who are on their third marriage (like Trump), or in abusive relationships (like Trump, allegedly), or who just fight all the time? There’s no acknowledgment anywhere on the website that there exist plenty of opposite-sex couples who are horrible at parenting.

In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find the campaign’s actual demands anywhere on the website, though when you finally come across them, they’re so vague that they’re meaningless. (E.g. “Changing public opinion so Americans understand the link between natural marriage and child protection.”)

The right-wing Daily Signal has a better summary of their goals:

The coalition lays out a three-part strategy to overturn Obergefell and same-sex marriage: returning marriage policy to focus on the parent-child relationship; changing public opinion by emphasizing how same-sex marriage and other forms of family breakdown harm children; and mobilizing Christian churches to take a stand for protecting children.

There’s a very real possibility that this Supreme Court could overturn Obergefell, even if they haven’t found a case that would allow them to do it yet.

But how can you possibly emphasize the harm of same-sex marriage to kids when the hypocrisy would be front and center? Hell, the Christian denominations many of these supporters belong to are hotbeds of sexual abuse where pastors have used their power to go after women. How can you say same-sex parents are automatically harming their kids when there are countless examples of wonderful, loving parents who provide far more for their children than so many straight couples?

Incredibly, there doesn’t even appear to be anything on the website that explains what a mother or father specifically need to do for their kids that two same-sex parents can’t provide assuming they have the same resources.

That’s because none of this is actually about the children. This is nothing more than repackaged bigotry and finding new ways to express anti-gay hate because the old ways no longer work. On Faust’s personal website, she uses terms like “child trafficking” and “acquired by predators,” terms that appear nowhere on the campaign’s website.

She also claims that marriage equality “has made children ‘less than,’” which is horrible messaging for her side. It implies that children with gay parents are somehow broken, a claim that is so easily disputed that it confirms how much of a right-wing bubble Faust lives in. I’m sure that rhetoric goes over fine in white evangelical churches where congregation members believe they’re better than the rest of the world, but it doesn’t play in the real world where damn near everyone knows and loves gay people and children of gay parents.

Also, consider what Faust said during an interview with American Family Radio yesterday. She argued that same-sex marriage was a “destructive state-sanctioned gaslighting experiment on children.” She then added that the campaign’s message was simple: “Don’t touch the kids.”

It’s not clear, even in context, if she’s suggesting children of gay parents are molested or if she’s saying kids shouldn’t be collateral damage in same-sex relationships. If it’s the former, that’s a wild message to send when the Trump administration is currently refusing to release the Epstein files in which Trump’s name appears who-knows-how-many number of times and when numerous religious groups are dealing with their own sex abuse scandals. (If you’re this concerned about kids being molested, put out the damn fires in your own homes.)

If it’s the latter, though, her campaign—if it succeeded—would make it tougher for gay couples who don’t even want kids to get married. Which goes right back to its real goal: They want to make life worse for gay people by limiting their access to the options that straight people have.

As Right Wing Watch pointed out, though, when you realize who’s behind the campaign, none of that comes as a shock:

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.

While the Supreme Court will do whatever the Supreme Court wants to do, this campaign is likely to backfire. Public sentiment is firmly on the side of same-sex marriage at this point because most Americans understand that loving parents matter far more than what’s in those parents’ pants, which is all that conservatives ever seem to care about.

According to Gallup, 68% of Americans support marriage equality.

The Pew Research Center puts that number at 67%—and they also found that 55% of Christians overall support marriage equality, including a majority (56%) of Historically Black denominations, 71% of Mainline ones, and 70% of Catholics (even though the Vatican actively opposes it).

Getting some of the most hateful bigots in the country together to call for the end of same-sex marriage isn’t the PR coup Faust seems to think it is. And creating a culture war battle over gay people during an election year is a horrible idea for Republicans who are already facing an uphill climb given that everything they seem to do makes your life worse. At this point, you have to wonder if a Democratic strategist created the campaign.

Like so many Christian grifts, there’s a donation link on the campaign’s website, but it’s completely unclear how the money will be used. (It’s not like they need to bribe Clarence Thomas for this one.) There is, however, a place for supporters to plug in their emails so they can be spammed by the coalition members.

None of the people involved in this campaign are seriously concerned about children. They’re concerned about their own relevance. So they’re doing what they always do when the country is dealing with real problems: They try to distract by finding new scapegoats. It’s been a while since they’re gone after gay people, so they’re revving up their old talking points.

But it’s not going to work, at least in terms of public perception, because they’ve lost the culture. They have no evidence. They’re ignoring everyone else’s lived reality. They’re relying on hateful messaging and bigoted rhetoric. To paraphrase the Adam Serwer line, the cruelty of the campaign is the point.

They’re insisting that children raised by same-sex couples are inherently damaged even though we know families that are led by gay parents are thriving. To say those families are somehow illegitimate, or that the love gay parents have for their children is somehow fake, won’t make anyone think those couples are immoral; it’ll make them think these Christians are projecting their own marital failures on other people. It’s especially disturbing coming from political and religious groups with well-documented records of ignoring, enabling, or actively covering up abuse in their own institutions.

Even if the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell, it’s not going to turn back the clock on civil rights. It’ll just create more pressure for states to fix the problem (at least until Democrats finally figure out they need to pack the Court and make those conservative justices irrelevant). After all, Obergefell didn’t create same-sex-led families; it recognized them. Overturning it wouldn’t make those families disappear; it would only expose the hate from the right and accelerate the backlash.

That’s why this project is doomed. “Greater Than” doesn’t offer a better vision for the future. It’s just a way for right-wing bigots to whine about the past. They have no clue what they’re even complaining about because none of these people are willing to step outside their bubbles and realize their faith-based hate isn’t a selling point. They can’t tell us what gay parents supposedly fail to provide. They can’t reckon with reality of bad parents who are straight. They can’t handle the fact that love and stability—not a particular set of chromosomes—are what kids need.

Previous campaigns to formalize this kind of Christian hate have gone nowhere. This one will be forgotten quickly, too. But at least we’ll always have a reminder of who agreed to join this awful campaign.

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