Marriage – Page 2 – Family Council

Children Are Greater Than Our Desires: Guest Column

Feb 6, 2026John StonestreetMarriageChild Welfare, Children, Commercial Surrogacy, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Surrogacy

“Babies aren’t a tool for adult validation,” and other messages society seems primed to hear.

Recently, singer Meghan Trainor posted a picture of herself in a hospital bed, teary-eyed, and holding a newborn for skin-to-skin contact. The woman who carried and birthed the child, however, was nowhere in sight. Trainor and her husband used a surrogate.

Of course, as images go these days, this one is preferable to men pretending to be postpartum, having just bought a child via the surrogacy market. But that just shows how disordered our society is about marriage, sex, and babies.

Many people, including many Christians, consider surrogacy a harmless and helpful technological advancement. People want babies, and more babies are good, the thinking goes. All the while, a blind eye is turned to the severe moral problems inherent in the mechanics of surrogacy, including the commodification of children and the desecration of the maternal bond. Not to mention, the system is so underregulated, pedophiles and child abusers have been able to acquire victims.

Thankfully, more are learning the truth about this practice and this industry. As Katy Faust of Them Before Us put it in response to Trainor’s post:

Thousands are finally speaking up against surrogacy. The tide is turning. We’re grateful your baby is here, alive, and loved. But we won’t pretend the method was harmless. No child should be created through a system that turns women into means and babies into products.

That system is enabled and protected by the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision. Severing marriage in law from the intrinsically biological realities of male and female also severed the connection between children and those whose union creates them. Marriage is presumed now, both in culture and in law, to be an institution of adult feelings. Kids are accessories.

As Faust told The Colson Center:

Across the globe 38 countries have legalized gay marriage. Exactly 0 of them have simultaneously strengthened children’s claim to their own mother and father. All of them have either abolished or significantly weakened the idea that children belong to the two people responsible for their existence.

This week, Faust announced the formation of a coalition of leaders and organizations called Greater Than. Advocates of same-sex “marriage” campaigned on the promise of marriage equality, posting memes of equal signs across social media. Greater Than proclaims the hard truth that children are treated as less than when they are deprived of mom and dad. As Faust described,

Greater Than is a coalition of pastors, parents, influencers, policy makers, theologians, lawyers, students, and normie Americans who are all speaking with one voice. What are we saying? “Don’t touch the kids.” Marriage does not exist as a tool for adult validation. It is God’s Plan A for child protection, and we intend to retake it on their behalf.

Rather than seeing kids as truly equal and deserving adult protection, the dangerous combination of abortion, surrogacy, and redefining marriage reduces them to one option among many, as a means to fulfill adult desires. Legally, just as Roe v. Wade deprived preborn children of their right to life, Obergefell is depriving children of their right to their mom and dad. Just as a culture of death enables the holocaust of abortion, a culture of sexual autonomy enables the commodification of children. As pro-lifers have done for decades now on the issue of abortion, so the Greater Than coalition is committed to the legal and cultural work necessary to protect children.

The Colson Center is proud to join this list of 43 (and growing!) organizations and leaders. The Greater Than website features answers to difficult questions, opportunities to get involved, and the latest news and information about this pressing problem.

Join the movement. As the Greater Than website puts it:

The line has been crossed. The cost is our kids. It’s time to fight back—with truth, courage, and conviction. It is our responsibility to give kids their identity, security, and childhood back.

U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Reconsider Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Nov 10, 2025Jerry CoxMarriageMarriage, Obergefell v. Hodges, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty, Same-Sex Marriage

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, November 10, 2025

Little Rock, Ark.— On Monday, Family Council expressed disappointment after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a case challenging its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling on same-sex marriage. Family Council President Jerry Cox said the Court missed an important opportunity to correct what many continue to view as an overreach of judicial authority.

“Obergefell was a poorly reasoned decision from the moment it was handed down,” Cox said. “The Constitution does not give the federal government the power to redefine marriage. That authority rests with the states and with the people. By refusing to take this case, the Court has chosen to leave in place a ruling that short-circuited the democratic process.”

Cox said the Obergefell decision is about a lot more than just same-sex marriage. “The bigger question has always been about how marriage will be defined in America and who gets to write that definition. From 2004 to 2015, voters in more than three-fifths of the country democratically passed laws and amendments defining marriage in their respective states. In most cases, those measures defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Voters in three states chose to define marriage differently. The court’s Obergefell decision struck down every one of those state marriage laws.”

Cox noted that despite the Court’s refusal to hear the case, the debate over marriage is far from settled. “Millions of Americans still believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and that belief is rooted not only in religious conviction but in thousands of years of human history. The Court may choose not to review Obergefell today, but the conversation about marriage and family will continue. We remain committed to defending the freedom of people who hold to the traditional understanding of marriage.”

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Will the U.S. Supreme Court Revisit Same-Sex Marriage?

Aug 18, 2025Jerry CoxMarriageMarriage, Religious Freedom, Same-Sex Marriage

News outlets report the U.S. Supreme Court may review the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that overturned state marriage laws and instituted same-sex marriage nationwide.

Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis — who has been taken to court for declining to issue same-sex marriage licenses — is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is also challenging the essence of the Obergefell ruling.

ABC News reports:

She [Kim Davis] claims the high court’s decision in Obergefell — extending marriage rights for same-sex couples under the 14th Amendment’s due process protections — was “egregiously wrong.”

“The mistake must be corrected,” wrote Davis’ attorney Mathew Staver in the petition. He calls Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell “legal fiction.”

The petition appears to mark the first time since 2015 that the court has been formally asked to overturn the landmark marriage decision. Davis is seen as one of the only Americans currently with legal standing to bring a challenge to the precedent.

Back in 2015, we said that Obergefell was about a lot more than just same-sex marriage. The bigger question has always been about how marriage will be defined in America and who gets to write that definition. From 2004 to 2015, voters in more than three-fifths of the country democratically passed laws and amendments defining marriage in their respective states. In most cases, those measures defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Voters in three states chose to define marriage differently. The court’s Obergefell decision struck down every one of those state marriage laws.

In 2020, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito made blunt statements that Obergefell has had “ruinous consequences for religious liberty,” saying it lets courts and governments label people who believe in traditional marriage “as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.”

Support for same-sex marriage has actually declined in recent years. Reversing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision may not seem likely right now, but the same thing seemed true of Roe v. Wade 50 years ago.

The reality is Obergefell was a deeply flawed decision in 2015. It’s still a deeply flawed decision today. And as Justices Thomas and Alito said in 2020, “the Court has created a problem that only it can fix.”

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.