Why Focus on the Family Believes Obergefell Must Be Struck Down

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision that radically redefined marriage and the family by nationalizing the de-sexing of both. That is precisely what happens when that court required every state in the union to accept that same sex couplings are every bit as valuable and important as the ageless and life-producing marital and familial union of the two essential parts of humanity in male and female.

Marriage between a man and a woman is a cross-cultural institution that existed before it was defined in human laws. What the court did in Obergefell was a logical impossibility. It has been hailed as a progressive victory, but the result has been terribly regressive.

There are at least four compelling reasons why Obergefell must be struck down.

First, Obergefell neutered our legal conception of what it means to be human. If male nor female are not essential to the family – and this is precisely the defective logic this landmark decision resulted in — both lose any consequential meaning. This is why it was absolutely no coincidence that the transgender movement was launched when Bruce Jenner infamously appeared as “Caitlyn” on the July 2015 cover of Vanity Fair magazine … within hours of Obergefell being handed down! There was no daylight between these two revolutionary events because one follows from the other.

If male and female have no essential, distinctive meaning for the family, they then have no real meaning for society. People can just assume new “gender identities” at will … and they are.

Second, Obergefell should be overturned because it does a dramatic injustice to children by asserting children have no fundamental right to be loved and cared for by their own mother and father. Every same-sex family, by definition and design, denies every child it contains the maternal and paternal love he or she craves and requires. And does so to fulfill novel adult wishes. Thus, Obergefell establishes the right of adults to form experimental sexless families over any child’s right to his or her own mother and father. This is always immoral, full stop.

Third, Obergefell fails to protect women by casually dismissing the essential power, quality and character of the feminine. It was largely males who argued most persuasively for this redefinition of marriage, demonstrated in numerous early books on the topic, here, here, here, and here. And if the family headed by two males does everything and meets every need that a wife and mother can – and this is, after all, precisely the claim of gay marriage proponents and the reasoning of the Obergefell majority – then the feminine half of humanity becomes meaningless. This created the worst and most dramatic brand of misogyny.

Fourth, Obergefell is based on bad law. As Justice Clarence Thomas correctly explained in his dissent to the razor-thin majority opinion in Obergefell, “The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built.” He then noted an indisputable fact:

The Constitution provides no right to so radically change and redefine the essential human institution of marriage and family that predate all human law. Obergefell, just like Roe v. Wade before it, is radically bad law because it is extra-constitutional. It is usurped legislative power.

Obergefell compels all Americans to do the impossible: assent to the radical idea that male and female are merely optional for the noble and essential purposes of marriage and the family which are universal human truths given by God to all of humanity in His wise goodness. That decision put us on a vast, untested experiment with the family and our very understanding of what it means to be human as male and female.

Some warned gay marriage would lead us to slippery slopes. It certainly has. But the wildest imagination never considered it would create this wildly popular cosplay misogyny or this full frontal assault on mothers and fathers. The intentional queering of the family wrought all this and our nation’s Supreme Court enabled it ten years ago this week.

For all these reasons and more, Focus on the Family strongly calls for the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges and we will work hard to achieve that end.