Meet Katy Faust, the New Leader Coming for Gay Marriage
In the series premiere of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” Spencer speaks with the woman at the helm of the Greater Than Campaign, a new coalition working to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
“UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: YouTube // Spotify // Apple
When Katy Faust was 10 years old, her mom and dad divorced. After that, her mom began a relationship with another woman.
Faust says she loves her mom. So it may surprise you to learn that she’s now at the helm of The Greater Than Campaign, a new coalition of at least 47 anti-LGBTQ groups fighting to overturn gay marriage. Faust and her campaign argue that children are victims when raised by gay couples.
In the premiere episode of “Uncloseted, with Spencer Macnaughton,” Faust speaks about her campaign, her motivations—both professional and personal—and why she believes her efforts are the “right-wing boogeyman” LGBTQ media has long feared.
Watch the full podcast above or read the transcript below.
Spencer Macnaughton: Hey everyone, welcome to Uncloseted with me, Spencer Macnaughton, a new podcast brought to you from me and the team at Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused newsroom that launched in September 2024. We’re thrilled to bring you a video and audio podcast that offers you exclusive scoops, raw interviews and voices you don’t here anywhere else. We’ll be publishing a podcast episode every single Wednesday morning, and it’ll go straight to wherever you get your podcast. And for our very first episode, I’m thrilled to interview Katy Faust. She is the leader of a new campaign called Greater Than, which is a coalition of what she says includes 100 organizations, many who have very anti-LGBTQ track records. Katy’s at the helm, and her goal is to overturn Obergefell and gay marriage nationwide in the United States. Katy, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
Katy Faust: Looking forward to the chat, Spencer.
SM: Fabulous. Yes, so without further ado, let’s get right into it. You founded Them Before Us in 2018, I believe. For the viewers, listeners who have never heard of that, just tell us what it is. What is Them Before Us?
KF: It is a movement that aims to center the child in all conversations about marriage and family. Children have a fundamental, natural right to be known and loved by the two people responsible for their existence, their own mother and father. And we think that that should be the dominant perspective when we’re looking at all different aspects of marriage and family, whether it’s in the cultural, legal or the technological—that those two adults do things for children that no other adults do. It grants them their biological identity. It helps children answer the question “who am I?” in a way that unrelated adults do not. When children are raised by the two people responsible for their existence, they get the perfect gender balance in the home 100% of the time. That distinctive male love and female love that maximizes their development and satisfies their longing to be loved by a mother and a father. So we think that children should supersede, their rights should supersede the desires, the agendas, the identities, the feelings of adults. And that requires that everybody—single, married, gay, straight, fertile and infertile, conform to those fundamental rights. Because the only alternative is for children to lose their rights so adults can have what they want. And we think that’s an injustice.
SM: No, I know that children’s rights are integral to Them Before Us and a lot of your work. So tell me a little bit, with Them Before Us specifically, what is the work you guys do to try and achieve that goal?
KF: Well, we want to change hearts and we want to change laws. Anytime that these legislative matters are being debated, we want the perspective of the child represented. So whether that is sharing resources with lawmakers—we don’t do any direct lobbying, but we do try to inform lawmakers about the interests of children and the benefits of being raised by their mom and dad and the drawbacks when they are separated from them, especially intentionally and commercially. But also you need to make the case in the public sphere. So in these kinds of cultural conversations, we also try to change hearts by helping people understand the harm to children when they grow up without their mom or dad.
SM: And the Greater Than campaign, that was launched in, I believe, January of this year, and it’s now a coalition of over 50 organizations, and you’re at the helm of this. And this is really a new effort to overturn gay marriage in the United States. Peel back the onion for people who have never heard of this campaign, what is it? And how did it form? It’s impressive that that many organizations banded together in this way. I’m assuming it took a lot of organization.
KF: It did. But thankfully, there’s a lot of good people that have been doing good work for a long time and have held on to the reality that children need their mother and father. Marriage is the tool that most effectively gives it to them. So Greater Than is the effort to recenter the child in marriage policy. Because what happened when Obergefell passed is we centered something else. We centered adult validation and adult identity. Marriage is not a way to afford dignity or validation to adults. It is, at its heart, the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known because it unites the two people to whom children have a natural right. And that purpose was subverted when we actually removed a man or a woman from that union. So it’s very clear that gay marriage as policy is incompatible with the reality that children come from a man and a woman, need that man and woman, benefit from being raised by that man and woman and have right to that man and woman. So that is the Greater Than campaign. We are here to say that children need their mother and father.
SM: If that’s the argument, saying that they are the folks who should be raising children, that’s the way to do it, let’s overturn gay marriage. Do you also have your sights set on illegalizing things like divorce or illegalizing things like adoption or illegalizing things like single mothers going through IVF and having a child on their own? Should all of those things be illegal as well?
KF: We’ve allowed adults to make all kinds of decisions about their own personal lives, even though it very often is harmful to children. But what took place in Obergefell is different.
SM: How so?
KF: We’re not just saying: “You can arrange your personal lives,” right? “You can make the decisions that you want for your own romantic decisions.” We actually enshrined a version of the family that excludes a child’s mother or father, and we said it is now unconstitutional to elevate the one family form where they do not have to lose their mother or father to be in it. There’s a difference between permitting and promoting. And Obergefell promoted a form of family that excludes one or both natural parents of a child.
SM: But aren’t we promoting family structures like divorce when you legalize the opportunity for people to divorce? So should we take that right away from Americans? The right to divorce, the right to adopt? You’re still permitting those things which would go against your coalition’s core argument, no?
KF: So I’m talking about natural rights. I am talking about things that are endemic, things that should be recognized by the government, but not provided by the government.
SM: And if they don’t come from the government, where do they come from?
KF: They come from a natural law. They come from what we can observe about human nature and the structure of the world around us. It is actually a system of understanding natural rights, again, that was utilized by our founders to set out the Bill of Rights, something that they think is inherent to all of humanity based on looking at the natural world. They did not appeal to scripture, they appealed to natural law. And it is on that basis that we find our freedom and our prosperity that has allowed this nation to not only flourish, but also protect the genuine human rights that have allowed us to have such a great level of flourishing. So I do not think that adults have a right to adopt. And I don’t think adults have a right to divorce. And adults do not have a right to same-sex marriage. Those things may be very desired, but they are not natural rights. On the other side, children have a right to life, so do you and so do I. But children also have a natural right to be known and loved by their mother and father because it meets that criteria of being pre-political, not something someone has to provide for you and something everybody has in equal measure. There actually are very few natural rights that exist in the world. And just because somebody wants something does not make it a right that the government or a provider has to deliver to them.
SM: That’s actually a really interesting thing: “A child has a right to be loved by their mother and father.” So just a personal example, my boyfriend grew up in a gay evangelical town where his parents did not love him, pushed him out, did not accept him. He’s now no-contact with them. He’s representative of millions of gay kids across the country. Do you think there should be a similar fight to stop evangelicals from parenting gay kids? Shouldn’t kids have the right to parents who love them unconditionally if they’re gay or straight?
KF: Gay kids have a right to be loved by their mother and father. They need them just as much as everybody else. And it’s incredibly painful.
SM: Yeah.
KF: When they get that rejection from their parents because they crave it, they long for it, they’re made for it. And it’s crushing. It’s crushing when there’s that rejection. So gay kids need their mother and father too. I exist in the evangelical world and I do know of one scenario where people have kicked out their gay kid for how he identified. They also kicked out their heterosexual kid for sleeping around. And I’ll tell you, in my world, I know a lot more gay kids that have cut off their Christian parents for failing to completely go along with their identity. They’ve said, “we want to love you. We want to be in a relationship with you, but we are not gonna use your preferred pronouns. And we’re not going to attend your wedding because we feel like this not only goes against our convictions, but we would like our children’s children, we’d like our grandchildren to have a mother and a father.” So I would say that rejection really goes both ways.
SM: It kind of counters your argument if you’re saying that it goes both ways in certain situations, but not others. Like, it’s a child’s right to have a loving mother and father, which you said. There are tons of kids across this country who don’t have loving mothers and fathers simply because of their religious affiliations. And you’re extremely working in tandem with a lot of these organizations so it’s hard for me not to recognize some kind of hypocrisy. I mean, you have a lot of evangelical parents who are involved in corporal punishment, who are rejecting their kids, who are saying get the F out of my house simply because of your sexual orientation. And is it not a child’s right to be gay? Does this not counter the argument that you have for overturning gay marriage?
KF: What do you mean by “right to be gay?” I mean, you’ve actually just packaged so many different rabbit trails that I’m actually not sure where to begin. Why don’t you dial down and let’s get really specific about certain organizations or certain practices or certain parents or something. And then we might be able to make a little more progress because right now it kind of feels like you’re just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what’s gonna stick. So what do you wanna talk about here? Like what exactly do you want to talk about?
SM: Sure, let’s talk about some of the coalitions and the allies in the Greater Than campaign. So one of them is Focus on the Family, where they’ve said that same-sex attraction is preventable and a treatable condition, it’s biologically unnatural. Another is Liberty Counsel, who have said that—
KF: Well, let’s go one at a time.
SM: No, no you asked, let me answer.
KF: Okay. Because I want to answer it.
SM: Please, but if you don’t mind letting me finish, please. The second one is Liberty Counsel, who have said that gay people know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural and self-destructive, and that they are not controlled by reason, but rather controlled by lust. And a third is Family Watch International, and they have worked with politicians in Uganda who have passed bills criminalizing homosexuality. Can you denounce those groups that you’re allied with?
KF: No, I’m not gonna denounce those groups. No way I’m gonna— Are you kidding me? Focus on the Family has been working so hard for decades to try to build strong families. And I know them, they are never, they were not coming from the place of “you should reject your gay children.” If that is what you think, you actually should follow them every now and then. They have so many resources on being compassionate with your kids if they have a different kind of gender identity. You are, that is one of the worst strawmans I’ve actually ever heard.
SM: Well, it’s just direct quotes. I mean, it’s literally direct quotes, I’m not saying anything.
KF: That they don’t think that it’s biologically determined? Is that scandalous to you?
SM: That same-sex attraction is preventable? Do you think it’s a preventable and treatable condition?
KF: Can you please show me the exact quote and the context? Show that to me.
SM: They have said that1.
KF: I’m not gonna denounce Focus on the Family. Are you kidding me? Some of their research—
SM: That’s fine. You don’t have to get fired up about it, you don’t have to denounce them. I’m just asking you.
KF: No, they’re doing incredible work. And actually, they’re completely grounded in all of the research, especially as it relates to factors that contribute to same-sex attraction. Yeah, they’re really, really good.
SM: Yeah, what makes them so good about treating same-sex attraction?
KF: Because they deal with it honestly. They recognize that it’s not biologically determined, but they also recognize that it’s often not chosen. It’s not necessarily something that somebody goes, “hey, I think I’m gonna choose to be attracted to somebody of the same sex.” They recognize that, very often, there’s all kinds of factors involved in that that are environmental, and beyond the control of the child that experienced it, and that is why they come at it from the perspective of “hey, you need to deal compassionately with your kids if they come and say, ‘I feel like I’ve got same-sex attraction, or identify as gay, or I think that I’m transgender.’” They’ve got all kinds of great resources on understanding where your kid is coming from.
SM: And so you stand with all the allied organizations of the Greater Than campaign?
KF: Their message and their mission is not my mission. I am not there to approve of everything that they say, but everybody in that coalition believes that children have a right to their mother and father, because we’re all very familiar with the research and the natural law systems and the common law of the United States that all point to that being a self-evident reality. And that is the message that we’re communicating through the Greater Than campaign.
SM: Tell me how you guys got all together. It’s 56 organizations. Like I said, it’s really impressive. How’d you guys all get together for one big organization? And you’re at the helm of this. You’re kind of the star, if you will. How’d you become the star and get all these other organizations together?
KF: Thanks, Spencer. I’ve just needed somebody to acknowledge that I am giving the main player energy here and you’re the first one.
SM: Really?
KF: I really appreciate it.
SM: Wait, I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. Really?
KF: I’m kind of being sarcastic, but also, we can do this. I totally can. How did it all come together? I asked them, and it’s not 50, it’s 100.
SM: Wow.
KF: We just don’t have everybody listed on the website. So I did a little research on your platform where I think that you’re looking into the ecosystem of organizations, hate groups that are trying to come against LGBT interests or something like that. There actually has not been any kind of organization or coordination. I know you guys think that there’s some big right-wing boogeyman. There really never has been, but this is. This is the organized effort that you guys have suspected existed, but really never has. And everybody came together because we all understand that children are being victimized in this culture. Not solely because of the redefinition of marriage, but Obergefell really did crystallize so much of what we’ve already seen taking place in culture as it relates to law and technology. And so this is a coordinated effort that I’m really honored to say, all these organizations did get in on eagerly.
SM: What do you think about your perspective surrounding children’s rights is more persuasive than, say, Liberty Counsel’s efforts using Kim Davis as a plaintiff last year that the Supreme Court rejected?
KF: I wrote about the Kim Davis case at World Magazine, and I said I’m glad they didn’t take her case because she was the wrong victim and they’re asking the wrong question. And honestly, this is a problem that the right has had for a long time. Pro-gay marriage activists framed gay adults who could not get what they wanted in the marriage debate as victims. And the right framed religious Christians who wouldn’t be able to arrange the flowers they wanna arrange or bake the cake they wanted to bake as the victims. And the reality is adults are not victims of bad marriage policy. Children are victims of bad marriage policy. And it is their perspective and their voice that needs to be central to the conversation. We’ve all been called hateful, homophobic, bigoted white supremacists for so long, and honestly it did used to make a lot of people on the right cower because we actually love our gay family and friends, and we want to serve people who are different from us, and those kinds of accusations did silence people for a while. But then we realized it really didn’t matter how loving we were, it did not matter how reasonable we were. People were going to call us that name regardless.
SM: Obviously you’re super passionate about this and I know that it’s personal, there’s a personal element to this too. Your parents divorced at 10, right? And then your mom is a queer woman, right? She’s in a relationship with another woman. And tell me about how that personal experience inspired what you do today and your fight because obviously some people are going to think there’s a huge contradiction there.
KF: Well they can think whatever they want. The reality is that there is no contradiction. And in fact, it is their worldview that is absolutely upside-down as it relates to my experience. So my mom is not a queer woman. She does not identify that way. She has been in a relationship with her partner probably since— I’ve probably been living with lesbians longer than you’ve been alive, Spencer, if I’m doing the math right about your age.
SM: Nice
KF: So this was never a, “oh, I’ve got this axe to grind, oh, I’ve had this terrible experience.” I didn’t get into this because I was terribly wounded as a child. I got into this because I had been working with kids for 20 years when the gay marriage debate started raging. And after working with junior highers and senior highers, college students, working at the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world, I had never yet met a kid that did not care whether or not their mother or father loved them or was in their life. So how do I reconcile this with my own upbringing? It is actually to say that it is your camp, your agenda, that is lying about me.
SM: Whose agenda?
KF: I would say the LGBTQ agenda to overhaul the family and elevate gay marriage as some form of civil right. That is lying about me and my experience, because my experience says my mother and my father, who thankfully I was connected to before and after the divorce, both of them were irreplaceable in my life. But the gay marriage rubric says, actually, two random men who are completely unrelated could have substituted for my mother and would have had zero impact on my development, my identity, my understanding as a woman, my ability to mother. It is the greatest lie because my mother is so critical to me. She’s critical to my understanding of myself as a woman. I am now a mid-century woman and she still mothers me. So if gay marriage is true, she is completely replaceable and optional in my life. And it’s one of the most dishonoring things that you could say about a mother.
SM: And so, after you were 10 then, I could imagine given the passion you feel for having those two parents’ presence and in the same household, was there trauma for you?
KF: Well, you’re 10 and you have to kind of roll with what divorce brings you. So I don’t think that I was super aware or reactive to that. You just have to adapt.
SM: But I’m assuming if you’re this passionate about it now, it must have been like a massive struggle for you from 10 onwards. Take me inside your head. Take me inside little Katy’s head.
KF:Yeah, divorce is devastating for kids. It’s devastating. It’s actually an ACE, an adverse childhood experience, as divorce researchers often say.
SM: But I want to know, I’m actually really curious about you personally. Tell me about little Katy after 10. What did it do to you internally to have that happen to you? Cause that from your perspective is, I’m assuming, traumatic.
KF: It’s traumatic because your mother and father are not living in the same house anymore and you’re only gonna get 50% of each one. And thankfully, my mother and her partner had a lot of stability. I didn’t necessarily have that at my father’s house. So you did have a lot of different— my father dated and eventually remarried. So it’s just divorce world for kids. Did it mean that I was horribly traumatized with an axe to grind? No, it didn’t. I learned to get along with it just like most children of divorce do.
SM: And there’s obviously a swath of research that would disagree with what you’re saying here about how gay parents are lesser than biological parents in terms of their ability to parent. I don’t want to go tit-for-tat with you. I’ve heard you speak about other studies before.
KF: Well, I would like to hear the studies that you feel are reliable and informative and credible on this topic. Since you brought up the studies, I just would like to hear which ones you point to to say, this is really good research.
SM: Sure, sure. Yeah. First, I’ll point to one that you point to, which is that you argue that same-sex parenting is harmful because children intuitively long for both motherly and fatherly love. And one of the studies that you often cite is the New Family Structures Study, right?
KF: I do cite that sometimes.
SM: Yeah, and that was from 2012, which was primarily funded by the Witherspoon Institute, which you worked for, which is trying to overturn gay marriage and was funded through $700,000 worth of grants. So, I mean, that’s kind of funny, no?
KF: Well, good research is expensive.
SM: Well, if it’s your conservative organization funding it, it’s a little bit of a nothingburger of research if they’re looking for something that the president at the time wrote was a study designed to, quote, “settle the question in the form of public debate about what kind of family arrangements are best for society.” I mean, it’s kind of funny that you’re citing that one.
KF: I just want to hear your critique of Regnerus’ methods. What methodology do you feel like he really got wrong there?
SM: I think the idea of citing the place you work, where it was funded, $700,000, the place you work at the Witherspoon Institute, which is an ideologically bent organization that has a perspective on it, there’s an issue with citing that study.
KF: I didn’t work there at the time. I was very happy to work there later though. They’re really doing incredible work.
SM: But you’ve cited that many times since you worked there.
KF: Yeah, I totally have. Love them. Absolutely, love them.
SM: Yeah, yeah, I bet.
KF: I love them because the methodology is good. Why do we cite Regnerus? Because he has really good methodology2. So tell me, if you’re talking about the no differences and that kids fare no different, tell me what studies you feel are really credible and authoritative to make that claim.
SM: I mean, there’s swaths of studies from the UK, from Australia, from many different places that—
KF: Which ones, Spencer?
SM: Well, first—hold on. Hang on. I don’t want to argue with you, Katy. First, I just want to say, can you tell me that there’s some kind of conflict of interest there, of you repetitively and repeatedly citing a study that was primarily funded by the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative organization that is trying to overturn gay marriage when you had worked there as well. Is there not a conflict of interest there in terms of citing that?
KF: So the study was conducted in 2012. I think I started with the Witherspoon in 2014, and there is no conflict of interest. There’s no money flowing both ways for me to pitch something. I simply go where the great research is.
SM: You’ve never been paid by the Witherspoon Institute?
KF: Oh, I’ve totally been paid by them, thank God. They really helped me through paying the soccer fees and the camp fees when I was working five and 10 hours a week for them. Yeah, they were a godsend to me. And if you think that I’m promoting Regnerus because I’m making, at the time I was making $500 a month, then that’s a pretty great, hot angle, Spencer. And really, the study that I cite the most is by Dr. Sullins3 because he’s the one that actually culled government data. But let’s just go back, you brought up research, “kids don’t fare any different, there’s all these studies.” Spencer, before we move on, tell me which studies you feel are credible and authoritative, showing that children have fared no different.
SM: So there are comprehensive systematic reviews from the UK4 and Australia5 studying data from over 30 years that have showed that parents’ sexual orientations are not a significant determining factor for the quality of a child’s development. So that comes from BMJ Global Health, there’s another one here from the National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information.
KF: So you’ve just listed a comprehensive review from a couple different aggregates. What studies are they citing that you feel are specifically authoritative?
SM: I can send you them later if you like.
KF: I’d like you to do it right now, since this is a really important point.
SM: I don’t think it’s useful for us to go tit-for-tat. I described the studies to you. I listed where they were from for our audience as well. We can link them in the show notes after for anyone who wants to look at them and dissect the methodology. We’ll also link the study from the Witherspoon Institute in fairness to you.
KF: Spencer, give me a few criteria that sociologists tend to use when they want to take some conclusion they have and extrapolate to the general population, what criteria would they use for those studies?
SM: Look, I am not a sociologist. I’m a journalist. What I can say though, what I can say is that your argument to overturn gay marriage is flawed.
KF: Are you saying you want to move on from the study conversation?
SM: I’m saying I’m letting you know a personal thing, if you don’t mind.
KF: Alright.
SM: That I have countless friends and people in my life who are amazing people, who have amazing kids, who are parenting amazingly. And I think right now, your work in this space to overturn something that gave equal rights to same-sex people is something that is going to pull rights away from a marginalized group of people.
SM: So tell me, Greater Than campaign, it’s reported there’s as many as 56 organizations in this coalition. You’re saying there’s 100, so even more. Tell me about the process. The ultimate goal is to overturn gay marriage in the US. What’s the game plan? How do you actually get there and make it happen? Because there’s obviously been other efforts that have failed. How does this make it different to where you can actually effectively overturn it.
KF: I don’t know what efforts have been tried, except for the Kim Davis case.
SM: Yes, the Kim Davis case.
KF: Yeah, which definitely was sort of a shot in the dark, long shot. I don’t think that anybody’s ever tried this before. We are going to create a credible judicial strategy that centers the child in the conversation, not the adults. We’re going to change public opinion. We’re going to make it very, very clear that there is a direct connection between gay marriage and child victimization in that children are not being raised by their mother and father, and the way that this has reshaped parenthood laws so that unrelated adults can acquire children outside of biology and adoption through intent-based parenthood laws that spring from Obergefell, in essence rendering children as functional accessories and commodities to be awarded to adults based on state-backed contracts, not because of their best interest like adoption does.
And then we’re going to create materials for the church to help them understand that it is their job to protect children. This is what the church has done in every century it has existed, in every country where it has been established. The church stands for children. And there’s a lot of churches, I don’t know if you’ve been exposed to them or not, that are not very clear about marriage. Why? Because they don’t want to offend people that disagree. But we need to be clear about marriage because when you look at it sociologically, this is the vehicle—man-woman marriage that is permanent for life is the vehicle that best protects children, and that’s not something the church should be quiet about.
SM: What are the minute details you will try to do to make it happen?
KF: I’m not gonna share the minute details with you, Spencer, I’m sure that you understand.
SM: And what’s the timeline? Do you think we could see this, if it works, and the strategy is effective, this year, could it get overturned?
KF: I don’t have a timeline. My guess is it’s going to be slowly, slowly, slowly and then all of a sudden.
SM: And to gay, lesbian, bisexual people who hear this argument, who hear what you have to say, who are listening to this interview right now, who are maybe pulling their hair out and saying, “This is equality and what you’re doing is discrimination.” What do you say to those folks?
KF: Children have a right to their mother and father. Why is it that legalizing gay marriage always seems to infringe on that right? That’s what I would say.
SM: What else have I not asked that you wanna say? I wanna really give you the microphone to say anything that I have missed asking you.
KF: No, I don’t think so. I gotta go pick a kid up from early release.
SM: Katy Faust, the person at the helm of the Greater Than campaign and the founder of Them Before Us, we want to get different varying opinions on this podcast. And I really am grateful for you coming on and speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
KF: Great, thanks for having me, Spencer.
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The quote in question is from a guide to Focus on the Family’s 2006 “Love Won Out” conference. It advertises a conference session titled “Prevention of Male Homosexuality” as follows: “Contrary to the popular myth that homosexuality is genetic, same-sex attraction is a preventable and treatable condition. The speaker offers practical tools in directing children toward a healthy heterosexual identity and provides insight into what parents can do to protect their children from those who would tell them otherwise.”
Since the New Family Structures Study was published in 2012, the results have been called into question by researchers. Marc Musick, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, conducted a review of the study’s methodology and concluded that it “is fundamentally flawed … and should largely be disregarded.” He cited numerous criticisms including an “overly broad definition of gay parents,” “conflating family structure with family instability,” and lumping respondents who lived with same-sex parents together in the same category as those who had a gay parent but never lived with same-sex parents.
The Sullins study referenced by Faust is “Emotional Problems among Children with Same-Sex Parents: Difference by Definition,” published in the British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioural Science in 2015. It uses data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey to compare the emotional well-being outcomes of children raised in different family structures and concludes that biological opposite-sex parents produce the best outcomes. Its sample size of 512 families was, at the time, “several times larger than typical samples of this population.” Like Regnerus’ study, Sullins’ has been criticized by social scientists for failing to sufficiently control for family stability (i.e., whether the children’s parents were divorced, separated, etc.).
Additionally, both the author and the journal have been called into question. The journal is published by Indian publisher ScienceDomain International, which has been listed as a “potential predatory scholarly open-access publisher,” which indicates a lack of credibility from academic authorities and lax peer review requirements, and Sullins has had other work retracted due to concerns raised by external reviewers.
The UK-based review is “Family outcome disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual families: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” published in the British Medical Journal in 2023. It reviews 34 studies from 2004 to 2021, and concludes that parents’ sexual orientations are not an important determinant of a child’s development. Some scholars have criticized the review for including the Regnerus and Sullins studies as well as others which have been scrutinized or used to argue that children of same-sex parents fare worse, but it is well regarded by the scientific community.
The Australia-based report is “The kids are OK: it is discrimination not same-sex parents that harms children,” published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2017. It cites earlier systematic reviews by the Public Policy Research Portal at Columbia Law School, the American Sociological Association and the Australian Institute of Family Studies, all of which conclude that having same-sex parents does not harm children.
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