In a year already overflowing with right-wing assaults on queer existence, the “Greater Than” campaign is here to remind us that, yes, they’re still coming for your rights and this time, by reigniting the battle to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and end marriage equality in the U.S.
Launched under a thin veneer of “protecting children,” this campaign is recycling outdated talking points, and it’s resurrecting a full-on moral panic, one that aims to cast queer families as threats to civilization itself. And while the campaign tries to wrap itself in concern for kids, it’s really a Trojan horse for the same tired bigotry that’s fueled anti-LGBTQ+ movements for decades.
This isn’t about the welfare of children. This is about power. It’s about control. It’s about rolling back hard-won rights and telling queer people, especially queer parents, that their love, their families, and their futures are disposable.
“The Kids Aren’t Fine” But Not Because of Queer Parents
The campaign’s core claim is laughably unscientific. It claims that marriage equality has somehow harmed children by making “mothers and fathers optional.” But here’s what decades of real research actually tell us. Kids raised by same-sex parents do just as well, if not better, than those raised by heterosexual couples. Loving, stable, affirming homes raise thriving children, whether those homes include one mom, two moms, no moms, or a polycule of aunties and uncles.
In fact, one of the few consistent findings across parenting research is that lesbian couples tend to outperform straight couples in everything from co-parenting skills to household equity. So if the far-right wants to go toe-to-toe on data, they’re already losing.
And let’s not pretend this is about “all kids.” If it were, these same political operatives would be pouring their millions into holding absentee dads accountable, funding school lunch programs, or passing universal childcare. Instead, they’re scapegoating a statistically tiny population of queer families while turning a blind eye to the actual crisis of widespread abuse, poverty, and neglect in straight households, often exacerbated by the very patriarchal values these groups champion.
“Moms Don’t Dad”? More Like Bigots Don’t Think
The campaign’s video, featuring professional moralizers like Michael Knowles and Josh Hammer, leans hard into gender essentialism, asserting that “moms don’t dad and dads don’t mom.” That’s not an argument. That’s a slogan for people who’ve never met a single parent, a grandparent raising grandkids, or a queer couple juggling diapers and soccer practice.
This is about projecting nostalgia for a 1950s fantasy that never existed. The world is more complicated than their fairy tale, and kids are living in it, not waiting for Ward and June Cleaver to show up.
The campaign paints queer love as some selfish adult indulgence, a bedroom fantasy with no moral weight. But the reality is that marriage equality is about protecting families. It’s about hospital visits, inheritance, legal guardianship, and shared responsibilities. It’s about love, sure, but it’s also about commitment, care, and choosing to build a life together despite a world still trying to tear us apart.
If anything, the queer community has shown just how serious we are about the institution of marriage. We fought like hell to be included in it and now they want to take it away because they can’t stand seeing us thrive.
The Mask Is Off
Let’s also talk strategy. Because as much as this campaign is dangerous, it’s also useful. It unmasks what some on the right have tried to downplay. The attacks on trans people, on drag performers, on queer books, and now on gay marriage, are all part of the same playbook. They don’t just want to “protect kids.” They want to erase us.
And that might just backfire on them.
Support for marriage equality in the U.S. sits around 71%, including a majority of independents and a growing chunk of Republicans. These extremist campaigns may still get airtime on platforms like the Daily Wire, but most Americans are not here for a return to 2004. The moral panic isn’t catching fire like it used to. We’ve seen too much. We’ve come too far.
We know this playbook. We’ve seen it before. We lived through it.
And we’re not going back.
If these groups want to drag the country into another culture war over marriage equality, then let them try, but they’re going to have to do it in broad daylight, facing a generation that grew up with queer friends, queer teachers, queer neighbors. A generation that sees queer families as normal, not a threat.
To queer families everywhere. You are valid. You are loved. Your kids are thriving. And no slick propaganda campaign or billionaire-funded PAC can change that.
To the rest of us. Let’s make some noise. Let’s call out these lies for what they are and remind the world that equality isn’t negotiable.