An Ohio anti-LGBTQ+ organization is part of a new coalition formed to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage.
Tyler O’Neil, a reporter with the far-right publication the Daily Signal, announced the coalition on a post on X on Thursday with an accompanying article and video. The Daily Signal is owned by the Heritage Foundation, an anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think-tank.
“The campaign declares that children are ‘Greater Than’ so-called ‘Equality,’” O’Neil wrote. “Marriage and family law should prioritize the needs of children, not the predilections of adults.”
The coalition will seek to overturn the court case by lobbying for marriage policies to “focus on the parent-child relationship,” the article stated, mobilizing Christian churches to protest marriage equality and shift public opinion against same-sex marriage by claiming that such marriages “harm children.”
Misleading claims
The video announcing the new campaign repeated anti-LGBTQ+ talking points and selectively quoted from research papers comparing the outcomes of children raised by two parents compared to one.
Yet a 2023 systemic review of such outcomes, published in the medical journal BMJ Global Health, found that “most of the family outcomes are similar between sexual minority and heterosexual families, and sexual minority families have even better outcomes in some domains.”
The anti-marriage equality video also claimed that being raised by both biological parents led to the best outcomes for children.
However, a 2011 study from Cornell University and University of Minnesota found that high conflict within a two-parent marriage can lead to poor outcomes.
“We conclude with the perhaps obvious point that marriage is not a blanket prescription for the well-being of children, any more than it is for the well-being of adults,” the authors wrote.
CCV in the mix
The Center for Christian Virtue (CCV), an Ohio-based far-right Christian nationalist think-tank and designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, is one of the coalition’s members. CCV has partnered strategically with elected officials and other anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups to help pass Ohio House Bill (HB) 68, the state’s current ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.
CCV President Aaron Baer spoke unchallenged in January at the City Club of Cleveland, a historic free speech forum, sparking public backlash from LGBTQ+ Ohioans and their allies.
Other organizations in the coalition include the anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups Focus on the Family and Family Research Council.
An attempt in 2025 to repeal marriage equality failed when Kim Davis – a former county clerk in Kentucky who was ordered to pay $360,000 in damages for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples – appealed to the Supreme Court to reconsider her penalty and overturn Obergefell. The Court refused to hear the case.
Equality support
A majority of Americans support marriage equality. However, survey data from Pew Research Center show that men ages 24 and under are less supportive of marriage equality than men born in the 1980s and 1990s.
Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in Obergefell, said the coalition’s purpose “denies children loving homes” and “denigrates the millions of single parents – moms and dads alike – who are raising children in happy homes.”
“Denying marriage rights to an entire community based on strict gender roles and discriminatory beliefs does not protect children,” Obergefell told The Buckeye Flame. “If these conservatives believe marriage is solely the right of opposite-sex couples who can and do procreate, then they should also fight to deny marriage rights to opposite-sex couples who are unable to conceive, those who choose not to have children and those who are past child-bearing age.”
LGBTQ-advocacy organizations decrying the announcement include Ohio Equal Rights, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization that is currently collecting signatures to put nondiscrimination and marriage-equality laws on Ohio’s November ballot.
“Parents—and the diverse families that love and raise children—are not political tools,” said Lis Regula, executive co-chair of Ohio Equal Rights. “The video misrepresents the reality that children thrive in homes built on stability, love, and commitment, whether raised by same-sex parents, single parents, or extended families.”
LGBTQ+ leaders also spoke out against the anti-equality coalition’s attack on same-sex couples who adopt. Dwayne Steward, executive director of Equality Ohio and the father of an adopted child, noted the thousands of youth in foster care in Ohio and the lack of adoptive families to meet the need.
“We need to be creating more opportunities for kids to be placed with families, not limiting them,” Steward said.
Steward also highlighted that the anti-equality campaign has no basis in fact or science.
“The propaganda of this initiative is simply dangerous,” Steward said. “It not only takes unfair aim at erasing my family, and families like mine, but it also ignores the majority of families in America. Most modern families do not look like the picture they are painting, which ultimately does a disservice to anyone who has dared to love and protect a child in need.” 🔥
IGNITE ACTION
- Ohio Equal Rights invites individuals and groups interested in collaborating on the marriage equality and nondiscrimination ballot intiatives to reach out via the organization’s website, http://www.ohioequalrights.org.
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