No, Project 2025 doesn’t eliminate gay marriage

VERIFY readers have sent us dozens of questions about Project 2025, an initiative to radically transform the federal government launched by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.

Some of those questions concern the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. Susan emailed us to ask how gay marriage will be affected by Project 2025. Other readers asked if Project 2025 calls for eliminating gay marriage or is otherwise against gay marriage.

THE QUESTION

Does Project 2025 eliminate gay marriage?

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

No, Project 2025 does not propose eliminating gay marriage. However, it does propose policies that roll back protections for LGBTQ+ people or favor heterosexual marriage over gay marriage.

WHAT WE FOUND

Project 2025 includes no policy proposals that would forbid gay marriage. However, several of its proposals would roll back anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people and favor federal funding and support for heterosexual marriages over gay marriage.

Gay marriage became legal nationwide in 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that it was unconstitutional for a state to deny a same-sex couple the right to marry. That means gay marriage is unlikely to be eliminated unless the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell.

However, several of the chapters include proposals that favor heterosexual couples over gay couples or are otherwise anti-LGBTQ+.

The chapter on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explicitly calls on the next president to “protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.” This “definition” of marriage and family it references is that of a heterosexual marriage.

For example, Project 2025 says that Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) grants “should be available to faith-based recipients who reaffirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman.” 

The HMRE program gives federal funding to school and community groups that run programming designed to teach young people, adults and couples how to communicate effectively, manage conflict, identify unhealthy relationships and develop and maintain healthy relationships, according to the Marriage Strengthening Research and Dissemination Center, which exists to support HMRE programs.

Project 2025 proposes that HMRE grants be given to organizations that exclusively promote heterosexual relationships. This directly opposes recent research from the Office of Family Assistance, which oversees HMRE, that found “enhancing the inclusivity of HMRE programs is imperative for improving the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ people and their families.”

Other Project 2025 policy plans involving LGBTQ+ people include limiting the application of sex discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, having the Department of Justice defend religious freedom rights over the rights of LGBTQ+ people in discrimination cases, directing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to cease the promotion of the “bullying LGBTQ+ agenda,” rolling back HHS LGBTQ+ equity programs and various policies that would target and discriminate against transgender people, according to a list made by accountable.us, a nonpartisan research organization that investigates the influence of special interest groups on government policy.