WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The redefinition of marriage to encompass same-sex unions is not a settled issue despite widespread belief to the contrary, according to the president of one of America’s oldest conservative policy institutions.
Dr. Kevin Roberts, who took over as president of the Heritage Foundation last year, sat down with the New York Post’s Daniel McCarthy for an interview published April 3 about his vision for the prestigious think tank, which has long been associated with mainstream conservative orthodoxy but under Roberts’s tenure has taken on more of an independent streak, both echoing and critiquing some of the ideas of the so-called populist or “New Right” movements on economic and foreign policy issues.
“We would like to see a court case go up to the Supreme Court and completely tear out, root and branch, Obergefell [v. Hodges],” the 2015 ruling that forced all 50 states to recognize same-sex “marriage,” Roberts said. “Which means that — well, it could mean that marriage goes back to the states, but Heritage’s position, to be really plain, is that marriage is between one man and one woman, full stop.”
When pressed if that would extend to annulling same-sex unions that have been formed since Obergefell, he answered “I hope so. That would be good for civil society. And almost — not every single but almost every single study that I have read, we’ve pored over here, about the effects of same-sex ‘marriage’ on children being raised in those families is negative.”
“And I know what I’m saying: There’s nothing against the human persons who are in those partnerships, certainly nothing against their children,” he added. “It’s just that this is a really bad social experiment that we’re only beginning to see the rotten fruit of.”
A substantial amount of social science literature supports the conviction that children are best served by homes with both a mother and a father, as each sex tends to bring unique strengths and emphases to parenting, which complement one another; and gives children a positive role model of their own sex as well as helping them understand and relate to the opposite sex. By contrast, a homosexual male couple would by definition lack a mother, and a lesbian couple would be unable to provide a father.
Roberts’s stance contrasts sharply with the prevailing approach to the issue in the Republican Party, which largely considers it “settled law.”
Last December, President Joe Biden signed the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” codifying Obergefell in federal law, with the support of 39 Republican votes in the House of Representatives and 12 Republican votes in the Senate.
Despite months of lobbying against the bill by conservative groups, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, and former President Donald Trump all declined to speak out against the bill. Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, meanwhile, embraces LGBT “pride” as part of a “big tent” approach.
Public opinion has solidified in support of same-sex “marriage” over the past decade of Republicans largely ceding the issue, although polls also show that disregarding marriage is alienating to conservative and Republican voters. The public also overwhelmingly opposes “gender transition” procedures for minors, suggesting that articulating the relationship between marriage redefinition and gender fluidity could help reverse opinion trends on the former.
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has also argued that Obergefell should be reconsidered. As a practical matter, however, there is no indication that a majority of the current justices would vote to do so; Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was one of the five votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, wrote that doing so “does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.” Nor is there any indication that a case to raise the issue is anywhere close to reaching the nation’s highest court.