Southern Baptist Convention delegates overwhelmingly call for ban on same-sex marriage

A messenger attending the Southern Baptist Convention participates in worship during the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Richard W. Rodriguez)

Southern Baptist delegates at their national meeting overwhelmingly endorsed a ban on same-sex marriage — including a call for a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 10-year-old decision that made it legal.

The vote came at the gathering of more than 10,000 church representatives at the annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in Dallas.

The wide-ranging resolution doesn’t use the word “ban,” but it left no room for legal same-sex marriage in calling for the “overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.” Further, the resolution affirmatively calls “for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one women.”

A reversal of the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision wouldn’t in and of itself amount to a nationwide ban. At the time of that ruling, 36 states had already legalized same-sex marriage, and support remains strong in many areas.

However, if the convention got its wish, not only would Obergefell be overturned, but so would every law and court ruling that affirmed same-sex marriage.

There was no debate on the marriage resolution. That in itself is not surprising in the solidly conservative denomination, which has long defined marriage as between one man and one woman. However, it marks an especially assertive step in its call for the reversal of a decade-old Supreme Court ruling, as well as any other legal pillars to same-sex marriage in law and court precedent.

Gender identity, fertility and other issues

The marriage issue was incorporated into a much larger resolution on marriage and family — one that calls for civil law to be based on what the convention says is the divinely created order as stated in the Bible.

The resolution says legislators have a duty to “pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life, and family” and to oppose laws contradicting “what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.”

The same resolution calls for recognizing “the biological reality of male and female” and opposes “any law or policy that compels people to speak falsehoods about sex and gender.”

It urges Christians to “embrace marriage and childbearing” and to see children “as blessings rather than burdens.”

But it also frames that issue as one of public policy. It calls for “for renewed moral clarity in public discourse regarding the crisis of declining fertility and for policies that support the bearing and raising of children within intact, married families.”

It laments that modern culture is “pursuing willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate,” echoing a growing subject of discourse on the religious and political right.

The pornography resolution, which had no debate, calls such material destructive, addictive and exploitive and says governments have the power to ban it.

The sports betting resolution draws on Southern Baptists’ historic opposition to gambling. It called sports betting “harmful and predatory.” One pastor urged an amendment to distinguish between low-stakes, recreational gambling and predatory, addictive gambling activities. But his proposed amendment failed.

Andrew Walker, chair of the Committee on Resolutions, said at a news conference that the marriage resolution shows that Southern Baptists aren’t going along with the widespread social acceptance of same-sex marriage.

But Walker, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, acknowledged that a realistic rollback strategy would require incremental steps, such as seeking to overturn Obergefell.

“I’m clear-eyed about the difficulties and the headwinds in this resolution,” he said.

(Copyright 2025 The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)