by Jennifer Roback Morse at The Blaze
September 04, 2025
The radical redefinition of biological sex has a clear precedent: the radical redefinition of marriage.
The LGBT political coalition is beginning to fray. Andrew Sullivan is hardly alone among LGB advocates in believing the demands of the T’s are pushing the movement too far.
While I appreciate their contributions to resisting trans tyranny, I must part company with the LGBs on one important point. I don’t believe we can roll back the trans tide without at least revisiting and probably reversing the “gay gains” in general and “gay marriage” in particular.
Key ideas in the campaign to redefine marriage laid the groundwork for key ideas in trans activism. I was active in the marriage debate from the 2008 battle over Proposition 8 in California all the way to the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage in Obergefell in 2015. I remember the cavalier manner in which our arguments were dismissed at that time. Let’s revisit a few of them.
Government as arbiter of biological truth
We can start with the rewriting of public documents for ideological purposes. Trans activists claim the right to falsify their birth certificates. Many people across the political spectrum can see problems with allowing them to do so. Yet some of those same people who once promoted “gay marriage” but currently criticize transgenderism (like Andrew Sullivan) seem to forget that removing the gender requirement from marriage introduced and normalized this very process.
Some states changed marriage licenses and birth certificates. No more husband and wife, just “partner.” No more “mother” and “father,” just gender-neutral “parents.” In the state of California, “gay marriage” led to the law permitting three people to be listed on a birth certificate as legal parents.
In other words, California (and 11 other states) redefined parenthood by stealth. Before “gay marriage,” the government document known as a “birth certificate” simply recorded the biological reality of the man and the woman who contributed their genetic material to the procreation of the child. After “gay marriage,” “parenthood” becomes the creation of the state, delinked from any necessary connection between the child’s body and the bodies of the parents.
I can testify that throughout the debate over redefining marriage, few people seemed to care about this redefinition of terms.
‘Born that way’ as founding myth
