Forty-seven conservative and anti-LGBTQ groups are teaming up in an effort to overturn the 2015 SCOTUS decision which legalized gay marriage. There is one interesting roadblock in their efforts, though. Their goal is to change public opinion by utilizing the same tired lying narrative of "gays are dangerous to kids" which led to their defeat.
From People for the American Way by way of The New Civil Rights Movement:
Forty-seven right-wing organizations have joined together to try to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling that found same-sex couples have the same rights and responsibilities to marriage as different-sex couples. The coalition’s focus is to change national public opinion on same-sex marriage by declaring that children are “Greater Than” equality.
“We’re all going to speak with one voice, and it is ‘don’t touch the kids,’” the group’s founder, right-wing activist Katy Faust, told American Family Radio, as People for the American Way reported.
“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,” PFAW added. “She called parenting by same-sex couples a ‘destructive state-sanctioned gaslighting experiment on children.'”
According to The Daily Signal, which was launched by The Heritage Foundation, Faust also said that since the Obergefell ruling, children have been “deprived of the unique love and guidance only a mother and father can provide.”
According to The New Civil Rights Movement, several studies refute this claim:
Numerous studies have shown that children raised by same-sex parents fare at least as well as children raised by different-sex parents.
A large 2014 study found that children raised by same-sex couples were happier and healthier than their peers raised by different-sex couples.
In 2023, The Guardian reported on a study that also found that “children of same-sex couples fare just as well, if not better, than those of heterosexual couples.”
“The findings chime with several other studies, including three decades of research from Australia that revealed children raised by same-sex parents do as well emotionally, socially and educationally as their peers in heterosexual families.”
This, however, doesn't seem to deter Faust nor anyone else on the video which you can view above as they spew generalized nonsense about the virtues of heterosexual couples raising kids. They offer no proof that children are damaged by living in married same-sex households or same-sex households in general.
Neither do their website.
Hemant Mehta at The Friendly Atheist pointed this out: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.
