Oklahoma state Rep. David Bullard (R) and Mat Staver, the founder and chairperson of the anti-LGBTQ+ legal organization the Liberty Counsel, have both said that now is the time for Republicans to pressure courts into overturning same-sex marriage rights. Of course, other legal scholars disagree with him.

Bullard recently filed a bill, S.B. 309, that would offer a child tax credit of $2,000 per child, but only for married couples with biological children conceived during the marriage. “His bill would exclude people who adopted children or had them through a sperm or egg donor as well as “single parents (including divorced and widowed individuals), parents raising a child alone, family members raising children (such as grandparents), and LGBTQ+ couples,” writes the Oklahoma women’s public health think tank Metriarch.

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Bullard said he wanted his bill to reward couples who follow “God’s design for traditional marriage.” But he also told Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer of President Donald Trump, that now is the time and try to “push back” and try to get courts to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage rights nationwide.

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“So, really what we want to do is challenge that concept and see if we can get to Obergefell. And I think that’s kind of what we’re pushing at all the way around the board with a bill like this is to actually go straight at Obergefell and say, ‘No, the Constitution protects my right, my freedom of speech, my freedom of expression, my freedom of religion to disagree with same-sex marriage,’” he told Ellis on a web broadcast. Ellis was convicted on felony charges for writing false charges in an attempt to help Trump overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.

“The reality is we have to push back on Obergefell,” Bullard added. “If we wait too long on that Obergefell ruling to start actually sending things back up and challenging that stance that somehow we have to all get along and say that same-sex marriage is okay, it’s going to be too late at some point for us to push back.”

Ellis agreed with Bullard, saying that the 2015 ruling has harmed children and religious freedoms.

Bullard did not explain why his bill would create a legal basis for overturning Obergefell.

Bullard is infamous for repeatedly filing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. He has authored legislation to ban any public acknowledgments of Pride Month, to force school counselors to out LGBTQ+ students to their parents, and to force trans adults and children under the age of 26 to de-transition. (He wrote the last bill without talking to a single trans person).

Christian nationalist Oklahoma state Sen. David Bullard admits that his legislation to provide tax credits to married couples with "natural" children is designed to "push back on Obergefell." www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwat…

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— Right Wing Watch (@rightwingwatch.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 3:11 PM

Meanwhile, Mat Staver, founder and chairperson of the Liberty Counsel, appeared on the World Prayer Network on Wednesday night and said that the time is now “ripe” to overturn marriage rights nationwide.

“There is no so-called constitutional right in the Constitution to same-sex marriage. That’s ridiculous,” Staver said. “Obergefell will be overturned. It’s not an if, it’s just a matter of when.”

The Liberty Counsel, which opposes LGBTQ+ civil rights, filed a lawsuit last summer saying that all religious government employees should be allowed to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses in order to respect their own religious rights.

The nation’s highest court currently has a 6-to-3 conservative tilt that could vote to overturn same-sex marriage rights. In order to reach the Supreme Court, a case would first have to work its way through the lower court system and then get four U.S. Supreme Court justices to agree – or grant a writ of certiorari – to officially take up the case.

Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have both expressed support for revisiting the legal reasoning that justified Obergefell v. Hodges — leaving the two remaining granters up to Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Trump appointees: Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brent Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

While Bullard, Ellis, Staver, Thomas, and Alito all claim that there’s no constitutional basis for legalizing same-sex marriages, lawyers and judges argued that the Constitution’s equal protection and due process provisions require the government to treat all individuals equally under the law unless there’s a compelling government interest or widespread social benefit to do otherwise.

The lawyers who argued against California’s 2012 same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8, the federal Defense of Marriage Act and other state bans on same-sex marriage argued that the bans harm same-sex families, their children and companies seeking to retain LGBTQ+ employees while providing no compelling and proven social benefit since same-sex families are capable of contributing positively to society. Opponents of same-sex marriage have primarily argued that it forces Christians to recognize marriages that go against their own religious definitions of marriage.

If the court overturned Obergefell, then states would largely be able to decide whether they will conduct same-sex marriages. Right now, 25 states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in their borders. Nevertheless, the federal government and all states, regardless of their own same-sex marriage laws, would be required to recognize legal same-sex marriages thanks to the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act.

However, if Congress ever repealed that law, then the U.S. would return to a pre-2015 period where marriage laws vary by state, leaving individuals and businesses to navigate the uneven legal terrain depending on where they married and where they reside.

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