Southern Baptists called for the overturning of the Supreme Court decision that ruled same-sex marriage constitutional, and also declared their support of laws that “recognize the biological reality of male and female.”
Meeting in Dallas on the first day of their Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting Tuesday, they adopted a resolution titled “On Restoring Moral Clarity through God’s Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family.” It states “we call for the overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”
More than 10,000 messengers, or local church delegates, attended the gathering at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
The resolution reflects a growing interest among conservative Christians in overturning the 2015 Obergefell decision, modeling their effort on the fall of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, in the court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
The statement also urged the “complete and permanent defunding of Planned Parenthood” and declared that the “normalization of transgender ideology — especially the participation of biological males and females in opposite gender sports and the medical transition of minors — represents a rebellion against God’s design for male and female, inflicts unjust harm on children, men, and women, employs coercive language control, and undermines fairness, safety, and truth.”
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SBC President Clint Pressley, without speaking directly about the resolution, declared in his Tuesday presidential address his pride in the Southern Baptists’ stance, written in their faith statement, in favor of marriage being restricted to one man and one woman.
“For Southern Baptists, the waters of sexuality are not muddy,” he said, noting how their 100-year-old Baptist Faith and Message describes marital unions, citing a passage in the New Testament. “We take young people now to Ephesians 5, and we tell them to memorize Ephesians 5, what a husband is supposed to do and what a wife is supposed to do, and how that marriage is under the Lordship of Christ, a picture of the gospel.”
Pressley, in his address, also pointed to the confession of faith’s statement that God “created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation” and voiced his opposition to “the irrationality of the transgender movement.”
“I don’t have to be a Christian: I have eyes that tell me a grown man participating in a female sport is wrong,” he said. “Creation tells me that.”
At a separate Baptist Women in Ministry event held at a United Methodist church near the convention center, two speakers critiqued that resolution’s references to a biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” and acceptance of “pursuing willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate.”
Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr, author of “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry,” said the language is rooted in white supremacy.
“It’s a replacement theory that we need to have more white babies,” she told BWIM Executive Director Meredith Stone, “and especially white babies within conservative evangelical spaces, because that’s the way to raise up that theology.”
In another resolution, the messengers urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions as well as to control some types of high blood sugar, and encouraged “those considering chemical abortion to pursue alternative solutions which protect and promote life.”
They also adopted a resolution on “the Harmful and Predatory Nature of Sports Betting,” encouraging fellow Baptists to condemn all forms of it, but especially pointing to the rise of gambling facilitated by the internet.
“The sports betting industry fosters a culture of greed while specifically exploiting and preying upon young adults, the impoverished, and those with addictive personality traits,” the resolution reads.
One resolution celebrated the 100el anniversary of the Cooperative Program, their funding mechanism that has been supported with more than $20 billion given through local churches for domestic and foreign missions, the operations of seminaries and other national entities and of state conventions.
During a presentation ahead of the passage of the resolution, Taffey Hall, director and archivist at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, described how over the decades giving to that program has been based on Baptists’ trust in the system.
“Just as our Baptist forerunners from the 1920s accepted that challenge, it’s up to us to renew that commitment, because when we don’t work together, the gospel retrenches,” Hall told the Southern Baptists in the convention center. “But when we do work together, the gospel advances and all this broad scope of missions and ministries that Southern Baptists care about, well, they multiply and expand too.”
Recent debates, including about how respond to sexual abuse scandals, within the denomination have prompted some churches to withhold their mission giving.
SBC Executive Committee President and CEO Jeff Iorg, speaking Tuesday about a proposed business plan and 2025-26 budget, asked Baptists to increase their giving as SBC leaders seek to set aside $3 million they may need to spend on legal expenses and other costs.
“If we resolve our legal costs without using these funds, they can be distributed to SBC entities according to the Cooperative Program allocation percentages,” he said. “And a 1% increase in Cooperative Program giving by churches next year would more than offset whatever we would spend on these legal expenses.”
Southern Baptists also continued to condemn pornography, asking for churches and parents to work against it and for Congress and state legislatures to pass laws that ban pornographic content, citing as a model the recently enacted “Take It Down Act,” which prohibits online publication of individuals’ intimate visual depictions.
Southern Baptists also passed a resolution expressing their continuing advocacy for international religious freedom and “support and solidarity with our brothers and sisters experiencing persecution worldwide.”
Adelle Banks es editora de producción y corresponsal nacional de Religion News Service.
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14 Responses
Rather than trying to create a theocracy here in the US, maybe they should better defend Biblical marriage by dealing with the rampant unbiblical divorce, adultery, and sexual abuse by SBC members and leaders. Classic misdirection by authoritarian leaders to misdirect the mind-numbed ship away from internal problems.
Glad I walked away from these people many years ago.
Charles,
I hate that you walked away from the SBC just from personal selfishness, and I find your comments here to be spot-on!
Maybe they should open their Bibles for once and read 1 Corinthians 5:12 and clean up their own dumpster fires of abuse and wickedness first.
Southern Baptists have long championed traditional Christian values, but their latest resolution calling for the reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges raises critical questions about the intersection of faith and governance. While the resolution reflects deeply held beliefs, should one religious perspective dictate national policy?
The resolution’s broad scope—addressing same-sex marriage, gender identity, and fertility—suggests an effort to legislate morality. While faith communities have every right to uphold their convictions, applying them universally risks marginalizing those who do not share the same worldview (Baptist News, 2025). The U.S. is a pluralistic society, and governance must balance religious freedom with civil liberties.
Historically, legal shifts influenced by religious doctrine have sparked debate, particularly following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Critics caution that this precedent may enable faith-based policies with sweeping implications beyond the evangelical community (Pressley, 2025). While conservatives argue that moral clarity demands legislative action, opponents highlight risks of exclusion and government overreach.
Evangelical Christians hold profound convictions, yet the country’s legal framework must accommodate diverse perspectives. Would it be more effective to foster dialogue rather than enforce legal reversals? As Southern Baptists push for policy changes, transparency is essential—who defines moral law, and how does it accommodate differing beliefs?
Faith should inspire, not impose. If the goal is to uphold Christian values, how can that be done without infringing on the rights of others?
Who defines moral law? Well, I guess no one…or everyone. No wonder John the Baptist lost his head.
I am pleased to see so many comments confirm what overreach this is – not to mention deflection from the dumpster fire happening within the church.
We live in a nation that protects and provides freedom of expression and religion. Legislating that everyone believe in and practice marriage as Christians do (or should) trounces on this.
You want to change lives and hearts? Focus on sharing the gospel – and practicing it – rather than enforcing it via the government.
All laws are an imposition of somebody’s morality, Christians have just as much right to influence public policy issues as anyone else. It’s what the abolitionists and Dr. ML King did.
“For Southern Baptists, the waters of sexuality are not muddy,””
Pay no attention to the youth pastors.
How did Beth Allison Barr go from the premise, “people should not marry with the intention of remaining childless” to “white supremacy”? The theological conundrum posed by our culture’s embrace of child-free marriage is grounded in birth control, not racism. Regardless of one’s race, viewing parenthood as a liability in marriage is not a biblically ordered perspective.
I guess I’m astonished that the SBC and the American “church” in general is so incredibly baffled by the idea that the church is supposed to behave like the church and the world will continue to behave like the world.
Scripture seems pretty clear on that to me.
To try to hold the world to the moral standards of conduct that are supposed to exist within the church is arrogant, presumptuous madness.
While they are at it, why doesn’t SBC push for a Constitutional Amendment banning the manufacture and sale of alcohol? There is a reason why the anti-liberty and insidious regulatory capture is called “Bootleggers and Baptists.”
As is clearly (and repeatedly) evidenced on this website, the American “church” can’t even keep itself free of its own moral turpitude.
And yet, the “church” thinks it should go out and try to make the world conform to a “Christian” standard of morals and conduct that we as individuals and we as a church do not even remotely live up to?
The church is insisting that the world should live up to standards that the church itself doesn’t keep?
Is it just me, or is this rank hypocrisy?
Are we not individually and corporately called to be holy?
Maybe we’d better clean up our own backyard(s), while also doing the Great Commission.
The culture changes one person at a time. As the Gospel goes forth and God calls those who are dead in their trespasses and sins to life, the individual changes. And thus, those changes will have their effect in that individual’s world and sphere of influence.
Scripture and history both show that the ONLY way the church can genuinely change the world is to do what Jesus told us to:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Jesus gave us the Great Commission as His command.
Jesus did NOT command us to go and take dominion over the 7 mountains.
Jesus did NOT command us to force our minority view upon the majority.
That’s NOT Christianity.
And, it is NOT American.
First remove the plank from your own eye…
for once I say praise the lord good news.I am surprised.but they must have fired the former sbc president J D Greear who was a pro lgbt advocate..but thank god for repentance. And by the way if you don’t know what I referring to Greear coined the phrase christians should be the first to stand up for gay and lesbian rights