Earlier this year a national coalition of conservatives launched the "Greater Than Campaign," aimed at overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The campaign directly challenges a decade of established legal rights for same-sex couples, even as public support for marriage equality remains broad. In Washington state those rights have existed since 2012, when the state enacted a law legalizing same-sex marriage and voters upheld it in a referendum — three years before the Obergefell decision. That system of direct democracy in the state allowed conservative groups to gather signatures for the R-74 referendum, but residents still supported the law.
One of the leading activists behind the nationwide effort to overturn those rights now lives in Seattle, despite the city’s reputation as a liberal stronghold. Katy Faust is the president and founder of Them Before Us — a conservative nonprofit that, she says, defends “every child’s right to a mother and a father.” Little known locally, she has nevertheless become a prominent figure in national conservative circles. Faust appears in the campaign’s launch video alongside leaders from the Heritage Foundation and the Southern Baptist Convention, positioning her as a key figure in the fight against same-sex marriage. Notably, although Seattle is one of the most liberal cities in the U.S., it does contain conservative neighborhoods such as Magnolia, Queen Anne and parts of Belltown, but overall the city remains predominantly liberal.
Faust spoke last September at the National Conservatism Conference, an influential gathering associated with the Christian nationalist movement that included U.S. senators and former senior Trump administration officials. In a speech titled “How Obergefell Turned Children Into a Commodity,” she argued that the way to reignite what many consider a settled cultural dispute is to shift the focus from adults’ rights to what she calls the “real victims” — children. She blamed a range of social ills on the “black hole of marriage equality,” including child abuse and human trafficking. Faust urged Christian churches to join the fight, rejecting what she called the “lie” that pastors’ highest calling is to be “welcoming and affirming” of nontraditional marriages.
Faust, who lives in West Seattle, declined interview requests from The Seattle Times, as did Paul Guppy, chairman of the Them Before Us board and longtime leader of the conservative Washington Policy Center. That think tank promotes free-market policies and limited government, wields influence among state Republicans, but its proposals rarely become law because of the Democratic majority. Still, Faust has for years publicly detailed her campaign to ban same-sex marriage in other outlets, speaking on podcasts, publishing blog posts and giving speeches in the U.S. and abroad. In a 2022 interview with a conservative European magazine she described her ambitions as a “global takeover” that would make a child-centered, traditional model of marriage and child-rearing the “dominant idea in every culture in the world.” Her views extend beyond same-sex marriage and include opposition to surrogacy, in vitro fertilization and divorce.
In a 2025 podcast conversation with a former deputy prime minister of Australia, Faust said young women should prioritize marriage and motherhood over their careers. “If you can, marry young and have children first. And then you need to allow your world to become smaller. You should not be working to make partner at a law firm in your 20s or 30s,” she advised. Her organization has grown significantly in recent years as her influence has expanded. Founded in 2018, Them Before Us reported annual revenue under $50,000 for its first three years, then jumped to $200,000 in 2022 and nearly $1 million in 2024, when Faust’s salary was $135,000.
Much of Them Before Us’s funding has come from conservative Christian sources. In 2024 the group received $300,000 from The Servant Foundation, a nonprofit partly funded by Hobby Lobby billionaire David Green and known for the high-profile “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ads depicting Jesus. That foundation is one of the largest conservative donors in Washington state, funding not only anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives but also lawsuits challenging climate measures and antiabortion organizations. As funding has grown, so has the influence of Faust’s ideas in conservative political and legal circles. However, many lawyers and LGBTQ+ advocates say an attempt to overturn Obergefell remains unlikely both legally and politically, since the decision already makes it impossible to overturn state laws through referendums.
Karen Loewy, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, said the campaign echoes arguments that failed in earlier marriage-equality battles. “It’s very much like the ‘all new is well-forgotten old’ campaign. It’s largely the same players and the same message those who opposed marriage equality raised two decades ago,” she said. Faust herself was a co-author of an amicus curiae brief opposing same-sex marriage in the Obergefell case, advancing many of the same claims the Greater Than Campaign is now promoting. That earlier brief, as well as the legal challenges pursued at the time by opponents of marriage equality, did not persuade a majority of the justices.
Faust’s personal story has become central to how she frames her activism. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, where her parents divorced when she was 10, according to her online biography. Her mother later fell in love with another woman, and Faust has said she was raised by that couple and remains close to them. Interestingly, conservative organizations in Seattle, such as the Freedom Foundation and the Discovery Institute, also operate actively in the region, but their influence is often limited because of the political and cultural contrast between ultra-liberal Seattle and more conservative eastern Washington, where support is higher
Based on: Meet the Seattle woman behind a national effort to end same-sex marriage