Republicans Supported Gay Marriage ‘Rights’ Until They Saw It Destroy Children’s Rights

At last, a conservative news aggregator that does not bow to the woke right.

In this The Federalist article, Katy Faust argues that Republican support for same-sex marriage has fallen because conservatives now see it as inseparable from legal changes that undermine children’s rights to their mother and father.

Faust cites a new Gallup poll showing Republican support for same-sex marriage dropping from 55 percent in 2021 and 2022 to 37 percent today.
She argues that many Republicans originally accepted same-sex marriage because they were told it was about treating gay friends and family with dignity, not about redefining parenthood.
The article contends that after Obergefell v. Hodges, marriage law could not remain limited to adult benefits because same-sex couples also sought legal recognition as parents.
Faust points to Pavan v. Smith as a key moment when the Supreme Court required states to treat same-sex couples equally on birth certificates, which she says converted a child-centered presumption of paternity into a sex-neutral “parentage” framework.
She criticizes the Uniform Parentage Act and state-level parentage reforms for replacing “mother” and “father” language with sex-neutral terms while creating pathways for adults to acquire parental rights through intent, contracts, and surrogacy.
Washington state’s 2018 parentage overhaul is presented as a major example, with Faust saying it legalized commercial surrogacy, scrubbed sex-specific parental terms, and allowed payments connected to parental-rights arrangements.
The article argues that once husbands and wives became optional in law, mothers and fathers became optional as well, leading to what Faust calls the “legal obliteration of the nuclear family.”
Faust also connects the shift in Republican opinion to broader backlash against transgender ideology, arguing that the same movement that said sex does not matter in marriage later pushed the same claim in sports, prisons, locker rooms, and medicine.
She frames recent abuse cases involving children raised by same-sex adults or obtained through surrogacy as symptoms of a legal regime that prioritizes adult desires over biological realities and child protection.
Faust concludes that Republicans are not becoming less compassionate, but less naïve, and says the goal of the Greater Than campaign is to overturn Obergefell because, in her view, it harms children.