Save Our Children: Overcoming the Narrative that Gays and Lesbians are Harmful to Children

The United States has seen a dramatic shift in support for marriage equality for same-sex couples over the past decade, culminating in a recent gay rights victory in the U.S. Supreme Court.1 Also in the past year, several states have approved marriage rights for same-sex couples through the legislative or initiative process, reflecting the increasing cultural and political acceptance of marriage between same-sex partners. Polls support this cultural shift in the United States, with a 16% jump in approval for same-sex marriage since 2001 and a 24% jump since 1996.2 This reflects a significant change in public opinion over a very short period of time and is in stark contrast to the large number of states that have passed and continue to enforce constitutional amendments banning marriage rights for same-sex couples.3 After the Hawaii Supreme Court held in 1993 that a ban on same-sex marriage was presumptively unconstitutional because it made an impermissible classification based on sex,4 opponents of same-sex marriage successfully used the initiative process to pass several state constitutional amendments to prevent similar rulings by other state courts.5 This backlash prompted many legal scholars to debate whether gay rights activists should have used the judicial system or the political process to gain marriage rights.6 On one side, scholars