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Southern Baptist Convention headquarters in Nashville
A resolution adopted by the denomination also includes anti-transgender language.
Delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting have approved a resolution opposing marriage equality, funding for Planned Parenthood, the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports, and more.
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The resolution, OK’d Tuesday at a Dallas convention center, is titled “On Restoring Moral Clarity Through God’s Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family.” The conservative denomination has long opposed marriage equality, and its churches do not conduct weddings for same-sex couples. However, in this resolution, for the first time, the Southern Baptists urge the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 ruling that established marriage equality nationwide.
The resolution further calls for the invalidation of any other court rulings or laws that “defy God’s design for marriage and family” and for the passage of “laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman,” the Associated Press reports.
The measure does not obligate courts or legislators to do anything; it merely expresses the denomination’s opinion. And to overturn Obergefell, the Supreme Court would have to accept a case dealing with marriage equality. One prominent anti-LGBTQ+ figure, former Kentucky official Kim Davis, is trying to get such a case to the high court, but her case isn’t there yet. She is not a Southern Baptist but is a member of another conservative denomination, the Apostolic Christian Church.
Southern Baptist leaders were inspired to call for an end to Obergefell because of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade,Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized the right to abortion nationwide. Right-wing activists had been trying to dismantle Roe for years, but the Dobbs ruling, which shocked many Americans, came as a result of Donald Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the court.
“What we’re trying to do is keep the conversation alive,” the resolution’s author, Southern Baptist academic Andrew Walker, told The New York Times.
The vast majority of Americans — 68 percent — support marriage equality, according to a recent poll from Gallup. This includes 88 percent of Democrats, compared to only 41 percent of Republicans. Southern Baptists overwhelmingly vote Republican.
But the resolution “puts Southern Baptists on the record,” Denny Burk, president of the denomination’s Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, told the Times. “We know that we’re in a minority in the culture right now, but we want to be a prophetic minority.”
If the Supreme Court reverses Obergefell v. Hodges, marriages between same-sex couples would still be recognized federally under the Respect for Marriage Act, which mandates that the federal government recognize same-sex and interracial marriages, and that all states recognize those performed in other states. However, the act does not require states to allow marriages between same-sex couples.
The wide-ranging resolution further “calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, for ‘parental rights in education and healthcare,’ and ensuring ‘safety and fairness in female athletic competition,’ a reference to the debate over transgender women in women’s sports, the Times reports. Other anti-trans language “calls for recognizing ‘the biological reality of male and female’ and opposes ‘any law or policy that compels people to speak falsehoods about sex and gender,’” according to the AP.
Additionally, it decries the declining U.S. fertility rate and urges the creation of large families. Despite this language and the anti-Planned Parenthood segment of the resolution, the denomination does not oppose the use of contraception, the Times notes.
Delegates approved separate resolutions that call for banning pornography and denounce gambling on sports.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with 12.7 million members as of 2024.
