Some Catholic Groups Support Anti-Marriage Equality Campaign While Other Catholic Groups Oppose It

 A conservative Christian movement seeking to overturn the landmark U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v ruling that legalized gay marriage, is receiving support from at least two Catholic organizations, while at the same time multiple LGBTQ-friendly religious groups are strongly pushing back against their efforts. 

A Catholic for Marriage Equality vigil participant.

According to The Bay Area Reporter, The Greater Than campaign is a coalition of anti-LGBTQ organizations, including Focus on the Family, Them Before Us, the Heritage Foundation, and many other Protestant organizations. Catholic Vote, an ultra-conservative website, and Word on Fire, a media organization founded by Bishop Robert Barron, who has made a number of anti-LGBTQ statements, are the two identifiably Catholic members. Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, a nonprofit which promotes the idea that only heterosexual couples should raise children, told Christian Today that in addition to attempting to overturn Obergefell, the campaign also will be trying to change public opinion and mobilize churches against marriage equality.

Rather than opposing gay marriage for it’s own sake, Greater Than opposes Obergefell on the basis that “redefining marriage redefines parenthood.” The campaign’s website states that allowing LGBTQ couples to marry makes mothers and fathers “replaceable,” even if an LGBTQ couple does not have a child, and that allowing marriage equality deprives children of a mother or a father.

“Religious Americans refuse to accept these shameful attempts to strip millions of people of their fundamental right to marry and form a family with the person they love,” the Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, gay Baptist minister and leader of the Interfaith Alliance said in the Bay Area Reporter article. He continues:

“The cruel extremists behind this new campaign, many of whom also helped create the Project 2025 blueprint for the Trump administration, claim to care about children – yet they are determined to tear families apart, deprive children of their parents’ love, and prevent loving couples from forming their own families.”

The Interfaith Alliance has been at the forefront of the pro-LGBTQ movement in religious activism for many years. They are currently suing the Trump administration “over an advisory body ostensibly established to protect religious liberty,” the Religious Liberty Commission. Despite its stated aim to protect religious freedom, only one non-Christian sits on the commission, which is otherwise filled with anti-marriage equality conservatives, such as Barron. 

Though there are at least two Catholic groups joining with Greater Than, pro-LGBTQ Catholic groups have spoken out against it. When asked for comment by The Bay Area Reporter, Emmanuel Romero, co-chair of the board of directors of Dignity San Francisco, said: 

“Overturning marriage equality now would inflict financial, medical, civil, and psychological harm on countless families – which include biological, adopted, and foster children – united under same-gender marriage. The only harm bigots suffer from marriage equality is offense to their religious sensibilities.  The damages to either community if things don’t go their way are incomparable.”

New Ways Ministry’s Executive Director Francis DeBernardo adds that the two Catholic groups supporting Greater Than “represent the fringe of traditional Catholicism, not the mainstream.” He goes on:

 “The Greater Than coalition will not find support to overturn the Obergefell decision among U.S. Catholics. Though many in the U.S. hierarchy opposed the marriage equality ruling, they did so in opposition to the majority of Catholic lay people who occupy the church pews.”

—Lynzee Dick, New Ways Ministry, March 12, 2026

To learn more about why and how Catholics support marriage equality, download a free PDF copy of Marriage Equality: A Positive Catholic Approach by Francis DeBernardo.