DALLAS (LifeSiteNews) — The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the governing body of the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the United States, voted at its annual legislative assembly this week to reaffirm longstanding Christian teaching on life, marriage, and sexuality, but also to formally endorse legally repealing homosexual “marriage” for the first time.
The Tennessean reports that several resolutions were adopted affirming traditional Christian conservative views, including the sanctity of life “from conception to natural death,” marriage as a monogamous man-woman union, and the existence of only two genders.
But the resolution to draw the most attention was language declaring, “Legal rulings like Obergefell v. Hodges and policies that deny the biological reality of male and female are legal fictions, undermine the truth of God’s design, and lead to social confusion and injustice.”
The resolution also encourages “the overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”
The Guardian adds this is the first time the SBC has specifically called for reversing Obergefell, the 2015 Supreme Court precedent forcing all 50 states to recognize same-sex “marriage,” although it has always opposed same-sex “marriage.”
“I’m grateful that Southern Baptists took up my call to overturn Obergefell. We know that we are in the minority on this issue, but we want to be a prophetic minority,” said Denny Burk, president of Louisville-based Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, one of the driving forces behind the resolution. “We don’t mind being countercultural when it comes to marriage. We want to bear faithful witness to God’s good design—that marriage is the conjugal union of one man and one woman.”
“What we’re trying to do is keep the conversation alive,” the resolution’s author, Andrew Walker, told the New York Times.
At least half a dozen states have adopted resolutions urging the nation’s highest court to revere Obergefell. They have no legal force nor can they begin any legal battle that could eventually put the issue back before the nation’s highest court, but they raise awareness of an issue that, while long since declared “settled” by the establishments of both parties, remains a major issue for conservative Christians and a serious affront to biblical morality.
Thirty-two states still have duly-enacted homosexual “marriage” bans on the books, according to World Population Review (which lists 33, but has not yet been updated to reflect Colorado’s recent repeal of its unenforced ban), all of which are blocked from enforcement. Only 18 states plus the District of Columbia have no ban in place.
As a practical matter, even if the Supreme Court reverses Obergefell, recognition of homosexual “marriage” would still be mandatory nationwide, thanks to former President Joe Biden signing the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act,” which codified Obergefell, in 2023.
Three of the current sitting justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and conservatives Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – dissented from Obergefell. The latter two are considered reliable votes to overturn if the chance arises, given statements both have made in the years since. But it is less certain how Roberts and the Court’s three more recent Republican appointees would rule, given past statements about deferring to precedent and their mixed records on cases important to conservatives.
Social conservatives are likely to have an uphill battle on the issue for the foreseeable future. In July 2024, the Republican Party adopted a dramatically shortened national platform with various changes sought by returned President Donald Trump. Among them was removing language declaring that “Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society,” and calling for that understanding to be reflected in law, including with the “reversal” of Obergefell as judicial activism.
Last year, the SBC voted to formally condemn embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization (IVF), demanding the “government to restrain” the industry, which entails “the willful destruction or even donating to scientific experimentation of non-implanted human embryos wantonly created in the typical IVF process.”
