Same-sex marriage is not following expected cultural trends. Eleven years after the Supreme Court legalized it nationwide by judicial fiat, public support for the practice appears to be suffering an about-face. As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins observed last week on this trend, “major social changes have historically become more accepted over time, not less.” But not for same-sex marriage — not anymore.

According to a Gallup poll released earlier this month, support for same-sex marriage has dropped six percentage points since 2022 and 2023, although it remains at an elevated 65%. Most Democrats (87%) still support same-sex marriage. But support has stumbled among Republicans, falling from 55% to 37% in just four years, and support is down among Independents, too.

“It really challenges … the assumption that the sexual moral revolution really only moves in one direction,” responded Dr. David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview. “For years, the cultural elite in this country told us that, once same-sex marriage was legalized, public opinion was only going to continue to move in the direction of affirmation.”

“Americans are increasingly reconsidering what they were told because they have now lived with the results,” Perkins premised. “The experiment is no longer theoretical. It has become personal.”

Specifically, the consequences of the lawless court precedent are now being perpetrated against children. Once same-sex couples won access to the label “marriage,” many sought to further imitate a normal family structure by adding children to their households — children which their same-sex behavior could not produce. This either led to same-sex couples obtaining children through surrogates, or by adopting a child. In either case, the children were denied an opportunity to be raised in a home with both a mother and a father, and the data conclusively shows that that really matters.

Closson referenced a recent survey by the Greater Than Campaign of conservative and right-leaning moderate voters in the United States. “Ninety-six percent of those who were polled said that it was really important for children to be raised by their mother and their father. Eighty-two percent agreed with the idea that no child should be deliberately denied a mother or a father. And then it was 78% said that, when a child’s needs conflict with the desires of an adult, well, the child should come first,” Closson summarized.

“I think a lot of Americans … are starting to see that ideas really do have consequences,” Closson declared. “A lot of Americans realize that Obergefell ultimately was never really just about redefining marriage, but it was a part of a larger cultural shift that really is one that elevates the desires of adults over the rights and well-being of children.”

“Americans are waking up to the fact that Obergefell, again, was never just about ‘love is love,’” he reiterated. “It really was about redefining something as basic as marriage. And … when something as old and fundamental and that gets to the basis of ontology, like marriage is — when that’s redefined, well, why not human nature itself? … When same-sex marriage was imposed upon us … what came along right after that? The whole gender identity debacle.”

“For 6,000 years, civilization understood what marriage was. And just in the last nanosecond in human history, people have redefined, or at least sought to redefine, marriage,” Closson clarified. This now presents the church with “in my view, a massive discipleship challenge,” he added.

Now that same-sex marriage is more than a decade old, “our youngest adult demographic, Gen Z, they only understand a world in which marriage is elastic. It can include same-sex couples,” he said.

“Churches simply cannot assume that young Christians actually understand a biblical doctrine of marriage simply because they grow up in the church,” Closson warned. “Our young adults are being catechized every day by entertainment, education, social media, and now by the law.”

“Pastors, parents need to be proactive at really teaching about a theology of marriage,” Closson exhorted. “We don’t just oppose same-sex marriage, but we need to teach what marriage is: Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Ephesians 5. Let’s explain to really all people in our churches that God created humanity as male and female design. Marriage is the one-flesh union. It’s a covenant between man and woman, and … marriage points beyond itself to Christ in the church. That’s the positive, beautiful, and theological vision of marriage we need to recapture and to do it quickly.”

“As Christians, this anniversary, it’s sobering,” Closson concluded. “It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade.” But he urged, “those of us who believe in the created order just need to continue to make the case that God’s design for marriage, between one man and one woman for life, is what’s best for society. It coheres with the reality. It’s the way God has ordered it. We just need to keep pressing that case, especially with the younger generation.”