On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the right to marry someone of the same sex is a fundamental liberty protected by the 14th Amendment. That was a milestone in a decades-long push in our nation to undermine God’s design for marriage and family. Ten years out from this decision, and the social landscape has fundamentally changed.
As with any seismic societal shift, nearly everyone has felt its effects. It was not just a small group of adults who were impacted. Rather, as society has continued to move away from God’s intent for marriage, it’s been the children who have paid the biggest price.
Marriage, as defined by the government
No human relationship illustrates the inherent biological distinctives between men and women more clearly than marriage. Complementarity is on full display in their union, their ability to create life, and their respective roles of motherhood and fatherhood. The differences are striking, time-tested, and beautiful.
Sadly, in the United States, a push to redefine marriage has been taking place, and well before 2015. The sexual revolution of the 1960s culturally blurred the meaning of sex and degraded its purpose down to an act of recreation. Then the question became: what’s wrong with it in the context of two men or two women? And why can’t they also consummate their intimacy with marriage?
This question would take center stage in many state legislatures, with states from California to Massachusetts legalizing same-sex marriage. Then, a ruling at the U.S. Supreme Court sealed the right to same-sex marriage as a fundamental liberty. With that decision, the government took on a power it was never designed to have: the power to fundamentally redefine a natural, sacred union as old as time itself.
The logic of Obergefell
What happens to the children in all of this? The mantra is often that they’ll be fine. But not so.
Shortly after Obergefell, it became legal in all 50 states for same-sex couples to adopt children. Many of these couples choose to have children by surrogate, which introduces a third party (and the potential for greater instability) into the equation of the family unit. Most importantly, the child is intentionally deprived of either a mother or a father, and the family structure is fundamentally altered.
Taking the logic a step further, if there’s no longer a need for one father and one mother in a loving, monogamous marriage, then other biologically-based differences could be called into question. Reality could be defined less by truth and more by feeling. And if so, what about a person’s sex? Can’t that be changed too? This notion falls under the “T” in “LGBT,” and has produced a money-making industry that has too often been pushed on impressionable minors.
Tragically, those who have life-altering procedures are often destined to become lifelong patients, and many must try to become comfortable in bodies filled with pain, and without healthy body parts that were taken. This is yet another “sexual revolution,” and like the first, it’s failing society miserably.
Think of the children
Children thrive best with a loving mother and father. That is not lost on many Christians.
Courageous couples like Brian and Katy Wuoti seek to provide a safe, loving foster home for children in Vermont. They have been denied this ability because they believe that God created everyone as either male or female, whereas the state would require them to affirm ideas about gender ideology that contradict their faith.
And compassionate counselor Kaley Chiles has made it part of her life’s work to speak into the lives of individuals who want to live aligned with God’s design for marriage and gender. But states like Colorado are taking extreme approaches toward pushing a harmful ideology on children, as seen in counseling bans that keep kids from the help they need and bills like the Kelly Loving Act.
The government was never supposed to legally redefine fundamental truths like marriage, male and female, and the family. Yet it now asserts that power. And through the lies of the sexual revolution and the repercussions of Obergefell over the past 10 years, children have felt it keenly. It is they who must be protected going forward in litigation, legislation, and in everyday life.
