(RNS) — If you listened closely at a meeting of mostly evangelical Christian communicators, activists and lawyers that took place in Dallas in February, you could hear more than a few panel discussions and hallway conversations repeatedly circle back to the same topic: same-sex marriage.
Having helped to engineer the demise of Roe v. Wade after half a century of anti-abortion activism, attendees at the National Religious Broadcasters conference openly discussed plans to make shorter work of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
“Obergefell is on very shaky ground,” Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative Christian nonprofit legal group Liberty Counsel, which leaders describe as a ministry, told the audience of one panel at the conference. “It’s not a matter of, in my opinion, if it will eventually be overturned, but when it’ll be overturned.”
It’s a brazen claim critics and legal analysts have dismissed as unlikely in the short term. But conservative Christian advocates say they are emboldened by President Donald Trump’s election and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, a …