Liberty Counsel Has Prepared to Take Down Gay Marriage for Years. Their Biggest Attack Is Now
The group has a long history of fighting against LGBTQ rights.
Last month, it was reported that the Supreme Court will formally consider a petition for a case calling on them to overturn their 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic ruling that made gay marriage legal nationwide. The petition comes from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has made headlines and been embroiled in legal battles since she refused to sign marriage licenses for gay couples.
While Davis has been fighting against gay marriage since it was made legal, her lawyers have been doing it for longer. Davis is being represented by Liberty Counsel, a far-right Christian legal group and Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group.
Since its inception in 1989, the group has opposed gay rights causes, including fighting against gay marriage, the legalization of homosexuality and bans on conversion therapy. In one instance, the group’s Facebook cover photo referenced the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, which reads, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
When asked about the cover photo, the group responded in an email that “Liberty Counsel has never promoted or condoned the killing of anyone or asked anyone to ‘like’ any quote about killing gays.”
Experts say Liberty Counsel is arguably more powerful than ever in 2025, fueled by publicity from Davis’ case and the opportunity to capitalize on a moment when American politics are stacked toward the right-wing—something that could upend gay marriage.
“The alignments will never be as favorable as they are at this moment,” Anne Nelson, author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” told Uncloseted Media. “That’s why they’re going for broke.”
History
Liberty Counsel was founded by preacher turned lawyer Mat Staver and his wife Anita.
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Mat Staver, who now serves as the chairman, senior pastor and primary spokesperson for the group, authored the 2004 book “Same-sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk,” where he wrote that “homosexuality is rooted in fractured emotions” and “a common thread in virtually every case is some sort of sexual or emotional brokenness.”
While the organization started operations solely in Florida, Mat Staver told the Orlando Sentinel shortly after Liberty Counsel launched that the group “would be a Christian antithesis to the ACLU” and that he “always felt the Lord calling [him] to combine [ministry and law] together.”
Liberty Counsel was active throughout the 1990s, with a focus on First Amendment cases, but Staver and his group didn’t gain national attention until 1994, when he argued before the Supreme Court for a case that challenged the constitutionality of a Florida court ruling that barred anti-abortion protests outside of a clinic. Some parts of the ruling were successfully overturned while others remained in place.
After that, the group built up a reputation for taking up cases related to religion in schools and other public institutions, including one instance where they threatened a lawsuit against one school for changing the lyrics of a Christmas song in a school play.
Attacking Gay Rights
After the turn of the century, Liberty Counsel became more active on gay issues. In 2003, they filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that decriminalized gay sex nationwide, arguing in favor of state laws banning it by saying that “deregulating human sexual relations will erode the institution of marriage.”
When California was taken to court over Proposition 8, a 2008 state constitutional amendment that sought to ban gay marriage in the state, Liberty Counsel attempted to be among the lawyers defending it. The group publicly criticized fellow far-right Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom for, in their view, arguing the case poorly.
One lawyer for Liberty Counsel also disagreed with legal positions taken by one pro-Prop 8 lawyer, who reportedly refused to argue that homosexuality is an “illness or disorder.” In their amicus brief in support of the proposition, Liberty Counsel argued that homosexuality “presents serious physical, emotional, mental, and other health-related risks.”
And in 2015, just months before the Obergefell ruling, the group offered to represent Alabama judges who refused to perform gay marriages after a state ban was overturned.
Once gay marriage became legal nationwide, Liberty Counsel took up Kim Davis’ case, which brought them more media attention than ever before.
“Kim Davis was a boon to Liberty Counsel,” says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way, an advocacy group aimed at challenging the far right. “[She] got them a huge amount of publicity, and I think they’ve really grown since they first took up her case.”
Much of the earned media from the Davis case, however, was negative. Liberty Counsel received criticism for encouraging Davis to continue refusing gay marriage licenses in violation of a court order. And even a Fox News panel of legal experts called Davis a “hypocrite” and Mat Staver’s legal arguments “stunningly obtuse” and “ridiculously stupid.”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel took issue with criticism of the group’s past litigation, writing that “[they] have 40 wins [they] briefed or argued at the US Supreme Court, including a 9-0 win in Shurtleff v. City of Boston."
Liberty Counsel has created their own media, including a daily 11-minute radio broadcast, Faith and Freedom. Launched in 2010, the program is syndicated on 145 stations across the country and frequently contains anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including assertions that LGBTQ-inclusive policies in the Boy Scouts create “a playground for pedophiles”; that gay people “know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive”; and that gay people are “not controlled by reason,” but rather “controlled by … lust.”
And after being boosted in popularity by Kim Davis, a 2016 CBS News investigation found that the group had worked with lawmakers in at least 20 states to author anti-LBGTQ bills, including trans bathroom bans.
“They’re pretty much anti-LGBT in every way you can be,” Montgomery told Uncloseted Media. “Staver is pretty shameless in lying about gay people and the laws.”
Why Now?
Davis’ case has fallen in and out of public attention over the years, with the Supreme Court rejecting a previous petition in 2020. Despite this, Liberty Counsel has remained confident in the case’s potential to upend gay marriage. In 2023, the group told their supporters in an email that they planned to use Davis’ case to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell. These comments came a year after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas expressed interest in reconsidering Obergefell in his opinion on the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“[The far right have] been working for decades to get their pieces in place, so at this particular moment, looking at the chessboard, they’ve got a critical mass of conservative states with Republicans in the state house, they’ve got the White House, they’ve got both houses of Congress, and they’ve got a majority on the Supreme Court,” says Nelson. “In a year, that could change.”
Increasing Notoriety
Montgomery says that Liberty Counsel’s popularity and influence has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic, when the group gained traction by opposing restrictions on churches meeting during COVID lockdowns. During this period, Staver claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are designed to “prevent people from procreating.”
“One of the ways that [Staver] has boosted his visibility and influence was riding that parade, which a number of people on the religious right did, and took advantage of the resentment of public health restrictions,” says Montgomery.
Since then, the group has falsely claimed that the Respect for Marriage Act “would allow pedophiles to marry children,” and Staver wrote in a newsletter that “the LGBTQ agenda seeks nothing less than to eliminate all religious freedom rights that might make them feel bad about their choices.”
In the meantime, affiliates of the group have been cozying up to the Supreme Court. In 2022, a representative of the Liberty Counsel-owned D.C. ministry Faith & Liberty was caught bragging about praying with Supreme Court justices just weeks after the court overturned Roe v. Wade. Staver told Rolling Stone these allegations are “entirely untrue.”
In his majority opinion on the case, Justice Alito cited an amicus brief filed by Liberty Counsel where the group argues that “the birth control and abortion movements are racist and eugenic.”
Part of a Bigger Picture
Liberty Counsel’s website reports that it generated nearly $28 million in revenue between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. While their internal team has roughly 40 employees listed on LinkedIn, they have claimed to have anywhere from 90 to 700 affiliate attorneys across the country. Some of the group’s larger and more consistent donors reportedly include fracking baron Farris Wilks; the Christian TV network Good Life Broadcasting; and Liberty University, where Staver previously worked as dean of the law school.
“The big Christian nationalist and plutocratic donors understand that the Supreme Court, and the judiciary in general, are central to their aims … so over the past few decades they spent enormous sums grooming and promoting candidates for the judiciary whose interpretation of the law is favorable to their interests,” Katherine Stewart, an author and expert on religious nationalism, told Uncloseted Media in an email. “Liberty Counsel has successfully positioned itself as one of the players in that space. It only picks up a slice from the total pie, but the pie is so well-funded that even a slice is rich indeed.”
Beyond this, Liberty Counsel is affiliated with a number of other right-wing groups, several of which operate directly under the group’s umbrella. Staver holds leadership positions in other conservative groups, including Salt & Light Council and National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference—the former of which has been outspokenly anti-LGBTQ. Liberty Counsel is also a member of the Remnant Alliance, a coalition of groups known for coordinating to elect Christian nationalist candidates to local school boards. A leaked membership directory from 2020 also listed Staver as a member of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group that includes Republican politicians and major leaders of Christian right organizations, though Staver told Uncloseted Media that Liberty Counsel and the Council for National Policy are not affiliated.
Nelson says connections like these allow different groups on the far right to coordinate together on anti-LGBTQ policies.
“They’ll have coordinated messaging about whatever campaign they’re launching at the moment. And it’s highly coordinated, as in the same story, the same language, the same spokespeople. It’s really quite impressive. And so all of a sudden there’ll be a story that will just erupt.”
The Council for National Policy did not respond to a request for comment
When Liberty Counsel filed its most recent petition for Davis’ case to the Supreme Court, multiple right-wing media outlets whose leadership have been members of the Council for National Policy quickly covered the story with a favorable spin, including Salem Media Group, the Washington Times and WorldNetDaily. And earlier this year, Staver networked at the National Religious Broadcasters conference, where he discussed plans to overturn Obergefell.
Montgomery says that this coordination is especially powerful because different groups are able to influence different spheres. For example, while Liberty Counsel pressures the courts, a group like Salt & Light Council works to activate supporters in ministry.
“They have this broader vision of wanting to change the culture and change the country,” he says. “They are all different approaches to moving the country in the direction they want: courts, legislative advocacy, lobbying, organizing, and media outreach.”
Nelson says the far right’s recent legal success is thanks in part to the influx of right-wing judges since the start of Trump’s first term.
“It’s worked initially with trying to get local and political opposition to these laws, and it’s linked to getting the appointments of judges who’ve had to pass a litmus test,” she says. “And then [their strategy involves] mounting the lawsuits, starting usually at the state level and working their way up the court system, specializing in states where they believe they’ll have sympathetic judges. … It’s gaming [the system].”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel says this characterization does not describe their litigation strategy.
What Does This Mean for Marriage Equality?
Despite all of this, many legal experts believe that this latest challenge to marriage equality is a long shot. Liberty Counsel’s arguments were largely rejected by a federal appeals court panel earlier this year, and several of the justices have shown little to no interest in revisiting Obergefell. Just this month, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the right to marriage is “fundamental” and called for people to “tune … out” concerns about gay marriage being overturned.
However, given the current political moment, Nelson says that the threat to Obergefell should not be underestimated.
“This long-range strategy is coming to fruition and a lot of the pieces are in place,” she says. “Under the current circumstances, with the current judiciary, they’ve got a reasonable chance of allowing states to ban same-sex marriages on a state level with an eye towards eventually banning it [on a nationwide level] in the future.”
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