On Jan. 28, the anti-Խ+ hate group Them Before Us led the announcement of the “Greater Than” campaign, an effort to repeal marriage equality. The campaign represents an alliance of at least a dozen anti-Խ+ hate groups and other allied organizations to promote the debunked claim that “gay marriage resulted in child victimization.”1
In recent months, Katy Faust, president and founder of Them Before Us, has pushed a rhetorical strategy to reinvigorate discredited social scientists and anti-Խ+ ideologues that were rejected by courts during the 2010s legal fights over marriage equality. The Greater Than campaign’s reliance on falsehoods derived from anti-Խ+ pseudoscience and conspiracy theories undermines its claims to represent what’s best for children and families.
“We need to change public opinion,” Faust said in a video posted to the campaign website. “No longer are people going to think about marriage just as a vehicle of adult fulfillment or a tool of adult validation. No, natural marriage is about child protection, and gay marriage resulted in child victimization. And we’re going to make sure that everybody understands that those two things go hand in hand.”2
Scott McCoy, a deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, disputed the assertion in an interview with Hatewatch.
“Americans have rejected the threadbare, worn-out and false negative tropes, stereotypes and scare tactics deployed by right-wing marriage fundamentalists — especially those attempting to paint Խ people and recognition of their relationships and marriages as threats to children — because, after more than a decade of marriage equality, Americans’ own life experiences and their objective reality demonstrate that those dire predictions of harm to society and children have not materialized,” McCoy said. “There is simply no evidence that gay marriage has resulted in child victimization. And Americans know it. Simply repeating over and over that it has will not change the fact that it hasn’t.”
A marketing strategy to reframe marriage equality
The Greater Than campaign implies that Խ+ people have created a situation in which they are legally treated “greater than” children. On its campaign website, Them Before Us states: “If you are tired of seeing children ignored, victimized, and treated as ‘less than’, it is time to join us in taking a stand.”3
The campaign is a new way to inject the dangerous myth that Խ+ people are harmful to children back into the public consciousness, after opponents of marriage equality lost the public policy fight in 2015 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision. In a video posted to the Them Before Us Substack, Faust says, “Whatever you want to do in your private life — fine. Don’t touch the kids. But we will not be able to achieve that until we overturn Obergefell.”4
In a Feb. 10 interview with anti-Խ+ speaker and activist Frank Turek, Faust suggested that the campaign was a marketing strategy to shift public opinion. “If we have learned anything from the demise of Roe, it is not enough to overturn bad Supreme Court decisions,” Faust said. “We have to change public opinion.”5
To that end, Faust indicated that she was using hard-right influencers to help shape the narrative. “I have these amazing conservative spokesmen, influencers who are on board with me,” she told Turek. “They’ve been in working group meetings, Steve Deace and Delano Squires and Jack Posobiec and Heidi St. John, among a variety of others. And what are we going to do? […] We are going to train America to help them understand the direct connection between gay marriage and child victimization, and natural marriage and child protection.”6
The campaign is supported by at least one dozen anti-Խ+ hate groups, including the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council (FRC), Ruth Institute, Center for Family and Human Rights, Family Watch International and several state affiliates of the Family Policy Alliance.
The anti-Խ+ hate group Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) wrote in a Jan. 30 email that it joined the campaign “with the goal of ultimately overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex ‘marriage’ in 2015” — LFF added the scare quotes around marriage. LFF wrote that marriage equality puts “adult desires and ambitions” ahead of “children’s needs.”7
Contrary to LFF’s claims, research shows Խ+ people with children report that marriage “provided more security for their children by providing legal protections, offering a greater sense of legitimacy, and conveying a sense of stability for their family,” according to the Williams Institute.8
The name of Faust’s group, Them Before Us, uses children as a marketing strategy for Christian-right crusades against Խ+ rights and access to reproductive healthcare. Like the Greater Than campaign, “Them Before Us” suggests the group is the only one putting the needs of children first. The name implies, cynically, that Խ+ Americans’ right to equal treatment under the law is in direct competition with children’s rights.
In 2025, the group was awarded a $100,000 grant from The Heritage Foundation to produce a so-called “children’s rights database” that it claimed would provide “advocates, lawmakers, and concerned citizens with state-by-state information about the status of children’s rights across the United States.”9
During comments at the FRC’s 2025 Pray Vote Stand Summit, Faust expounded on a litany of harms she attributed to marriage equality, surrogacy and in vitro fertilization techniques that help millions of people overcome infertility. These items, she said, in combination with the social and medical trends, increased the likelihood that gay couples would abscond with children from hospitals.
“If they can assemble sperm, egg and womb and ‘intend’ [Faust held her fingers up in air quotes] to parent the baby and they have a valid contract, they can go home with a newborn from the hospital, even if they’re unrelated, even if they’re foreign nationals, even if they are sexual predators, even if they have a criminal record. All in the name of adult equality,” Faust said.10
Revitalizing debunked studies
In December 2025, Them Before Us published a blog post claiming the social scientific consensus that there is no statistically significant difference in health or emotional outcomes between children raised by lesbian and gay and straight parents “wasn’t built on science at all.”11
The group claimed that dozens of studies of lesbian and gay families suffered from “researcher bias” and their authors were engaging in “little more than advocacy with footnotes.” The accusation was ironic, since these practices are a well-documented hallmark of far-right pseudoscientific propaganda.12
The group claimed that studies of lesbian and gay parents and their children before Obergefell were too flawed to have any meaning. However, the group picked out three studies published before the case that supported its claims and represented the “gold standard” of scientific methodology.13
The three reports were the discredited 2012 “New Family Structures Study” authored by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus; a 2015 study authored by anti-Խ+ hate group Ruth Institute researcher Paul Sullins; and a 2013 study by Canadian economist Douglas Allen, who testified in court in 2014 that “without repentance,” Խ+ people would go to hell.14
Selective amplification of social science that fits the anti-Խ+ ideology while discounting or denying contradictory evidence has been a common strategy of anti-Խ+ hate groups for decades. The Խ has previously reported how anti-Խ+ hate groups use pseudoscience, including studies with faulty or questionable methodologies, to promote public policies and litigation that restrict Խ+ people’s freedoms, access to healthcare and protections from discrimination.
Faust wasn’t the first to attempt to revitalize these debunked claims about gay families. In 2024, the anti-Խ+ hate group Focus on the Family claimed Regnerus provided “reliable data” that lesbian and gay families “are shown to markedly hinder” child development.15
Contrary to hate groups’ claims, a robust body of scientifically sound literature “consistently shows that LGBQ adults are just as capable and efficient at parenting children as their cisgender heterosexual counterparts” and that “children of sexual minority parents, though exposed to unique experiences, perform and develop at similar rates as children with heterosexual parents,” according to the American Psychological Association.16
Image at top: Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, speaks at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 3, 2025. (Photo illustration by the Խ; source photos from iStock and Middle East Images via Reuters Connect)
Citations
1 Katy Faust, “Today, We Take Back Marriage,” January 28, 2026, Greater Than Campaign website, 2:06.
2 Ibid.
3 “Join the Greater Than Movement,” Greater Than.
4 “Today, We Take Back Marriage,” Them Before Us, January 28, 2026.
5 “Does Love Make a Family? Dismantling the #1 Lie of Modern Parenting with Katy Faust,” February 10, 2026.
6 Ibid.
7 “Children’s Needs > Adult Desires,” Louisiana Family Forum, January 30, 2026.
8 “Marriage equality improved security, stability, and life satisfaction for same-sex couples,” Williams Institute, Press Release, June 20, 2024.
9 “Heritage Awards over $1 Million to Conservative Organizations in 2025 Innovation Prizes,” Heritage Foundation, Press Release, June 4, 2025.
10 Katy Faust, Pray Vote Stand Summit 2025, 3 min.
11 “Exposing the Rigged Research of the Same-Sex Parenting Movement,” Them Before Us, December 4, 2025.
12 Ibid.
13 “Exposing the Rigged Research of the Same-Sex Parenting Movement,” Them Before Us, December 4, 2025.
14 Emma Margolin, “Trial concludes in challenge to Michigan’s gay marriage ban,” MSNBC, March 7, 2014.
15 Glenn T. Stanton, “Key findings of Mark Regnerus’ New Family Structure Study,” Focus on the Family, July 5, 2024.
16 “APA RESOLUTION on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity (SOGI), Parents and their Children,” American Psychological Association, February 2020.
