Truth is a fixed reality. Genesis’s account of marriage is still true. What Jesus upheld as a New Covenant institution anchored in creation order is binding (Matt. 19:4–6). What Paul teaches about marriage being a picture of the gospel (Eph. 5:21–33) remains authoritative. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. God is the creator of marriage. By his authority alone we rightly name same-sex marriage for what it is: a sinful counterfeit.

I’ll never forget where I was when the push alert came through on my phone.

As I sat in the lobbyist bullpen in Kentucky’s Capitol annex, the New York Times alert notified readers that the Obama administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law from the 1990s that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allowed states not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The push to redefine marriage had been gaining steam long before this event. Still, in February 2011, it was no guarantee that same-sex marriage was inevitable, despite gains by gay-rights activists nationwide. The news that the Obama administration would no longer defend DOMA, however, was a significant symbolic shift in giving presidential-level imprimatur to the plausibility of same-sex marriage someday gaining federal recognition.

I vividly recall reading this notification and thinking, A society that refuses to recognize the truth of marriage is a society at odds with history, common sense, and God’s will for the family. This development is at odds with a flourishing society.

2011: Entering the Fray

In 2011, I’d recently started my first “real” job out of seminary. It took me all over Kentucky to talk with pastors, lobby legislators, mobilize churches, and write editorials on socially conservative causes that Christians care about—usually the sanctity of life, religious liberty, and marriage. I almost became the pastor of a church in northern Kentucky, but I sensed that the Lord had called me to advocate for causes that Christians care about and were under increasing attack in the culture.

I was drawn to the arguments of individuals like Robert P. George and his young acolytes Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis (all three would eventually become my mentors and good friends). Together they wrote a well-regarded essay defending marriage on a philosophical basis (later, the essay became a book). Their arguments reflect and confirm what Scripture teaches: Marriage is the institution where a man and a woman come together as husband and wife to be father and mother to their children. It’s complementary, exclusive, and permanent (Gen. 1:26–28; 2:18–24).

As a Christian, I believe that what Christianity teaches about marriage is a public truth that even non-Christians can understand and find compelling. Call it “natural law” or “creation order,” the basic idea is that marriage is a fixed and ontological institution that political majorities or court rulings cannot simply rewrite.

But marriage was under unceasing attack from cultural elites, LGBT+ activists, and organizations like the Human Rights Campaign. Marriage needed to be defended, and—possessed as I am with the constitution that likes to stand “athwart” society when society is going in the wrong direction—the cause of defending marriage became my cause, so much so that the earliest part of my career was almost singularly devoted to defending it.

2012: Continuing the Fight

In 2012, I was offered a job at the Heritage Foundation, working alongside Anderson in the think tank’s religion and civil society department. The marriage battle was in full throttle, and our efforts went toward that. There were countless editorials, coalition meetings, and media prep sessions—as well as meetings to develop talking points and rebuttals to the onslaught of attacks waged against marriage in the culture.

We reeled in defeat from the 2012 presidential election that also saw several state referendums approving same-sex marriage. One of the talking points quickly became the unstoppable momentum of same-sex marriage. It became a cause célèbre of elite culture. Those of us who followed the debate professionally could read the polls. More and more Americans, especially younger Americans, were in favor of same-sex marriage.

The conservative intellectual George Will even said the opposition to same-sex marriage was literally dying out from old age. That led Anderson and me to write an essay for National Review titled “Not Dead Yet.” Our message was simple: No matter what direction the culture goes, truths of nature persist even if they become unpopular.

Here were two millennials risking their early career credibility and reputation in the broader culture by standing against the elites in the intelligentsia, all the powerful institutions of society, and what seemed to be the arc of history. Anderson took more blows than I did, like ridicule on CNN and vandalism against his home. Ad nauseam, we read that opponents of same-sex marriage were “on the wrong side of history.” Critics alleged that society would one day view opponents of same-sex marriage the same way it now views racists.

The New York Times even profiled some friends and me. While the reporter did a fine job describing our cause, the article’s subtext was clear: We were a dying breed, similar to some exotic and almost extinct zoo animal that spectators peer at in bewilderment.

2013–15: Anticipating the Inevitable

Then came the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision in 2013, which dispensed with the Defense of Marriage Act and declared the federal definition of marriage (the union of a man and a woman) a violation of the Constitution.

We were all waiting for the other shoe to drop—full, nationwide same-sex marriage guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. At the time, this move seemed all but inevitable (even if we didn’t want to say it out loud).

That day came on June 26, 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in the Obergefell decision and extended same-sex marriage nationwide. I believed then, as I do now, that the court lawlessly imposed its definition of marriage on all 50 states.

2015–25: Learning from Obergefell

Since it’s June 2025, the month of Obergefell’s 10th anniversary, what can we learn a decade after the ruling?

The rest of this essay could focus on the litany of religious liberty conflicts that opponents said would happen (and did). But I’m less interested in writing a “We told you so” postmortem than I am in what evangelicals and conservatives can learn 10 years after the fallout of same-sex marriage. I’m now 40. I entered these debates when I was around 25. Let’s look backward at the blessings and hardships of life’s struggles in contending for what Russell Kirk calls the “permanent things.”

Consider five lessons.

1. Foxhole Friendships Are Essential

It would’ve been almost impossible to wage the battle we did alone. Standing against powerful crowds, with invectives and accusations of causing suicides made against you, requires that others have your back.

After the Windsor decision, a friend hosted a gathering of marriage activists so we could nurse our wounds and encourage one another. Someone casually joked, “I hope a bomb doesn’t go off in this room, because if it did, there would be no one else left to defend marriage on the national stage.” While this comment was said in jest, the point was real: The number of individuals and organizations invested in the fight was few. It was a lonely battle.

But in the Lord’s kindness, he forged friendships through those fights that stood the test of time. I can think of friends like Anderson, now president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Eric Teetsel, CEO of the Center for Renewing America. 

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