Project 2025 would not end gay marriage, but it calls heterosexual families 'ideal'

Nine years since a landmark Supreme Court ruling made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, U.S. Census figures show more than 700,000 same-sex couples are exercising their right to that legal protection. But some people warn that the gay marriage landscape could drastically change if the next presidential administration adopts a controversial set of conservative policy proposals known as Project 2025. 

"Gay and Married? You won’t be under Project 2025," read a July 13 Facebook post that drew a slash through the phrase "Project 2025." Other posts we saw carried similar doomy messages about gay marriage: Project 2025 will "end marriage equality," "overturn" the right to gay marriage or "ban" gay marriage, they said. During an event hosted by the Center for American Progress, a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, also warned the plan would "ban gay marriage." 

Project 2025 refers to a 900-page policy plan titled "Mandate for Leadership" that was drafted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, as a "2025 presidential transition project" for the next Republican administration. Former President Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the blueprint, saying he knows "nothing about it" and has "no idea who is behind it." On July 30, the Heritage Foundation announced the project’s director, Paul Dans, would be stepping down.

Trump’s views on gay marriage have evolved over the years to a stance that PolitiFact found to generally support same-sex people’s right to marry. Advocating for or against same-sex marriage was neither a significant part of Trump’s presidency nor his current political platform.

Aside from the topic of marriage, Project 2025’s LGBTQ+-related policy proposals include cutting funding for gender-affirming care, shrinking the scope of federal LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination policy and prohibiting trans people from serving in the military.

PolitiFact’s review of Project 2025 found no call to eliminate the right to same-sex marriage. 

There were no calls to overturn the 2015 Supreme Court precedent legalizing gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges or to repeal of the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, which federally recognizes same-sex marriage.  

"The legal recognition of same-sex marriage is not discussed in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership," its website says. Independent fact-checkers at Verify and The Dispatch determined the same. 

But we found statements and policies in the document that promote heterosexual families and marriages as the ideal. For example:

• "The Secretary (of Health and Human Services) should proudly state… that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them."(Page 489.)

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• "Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden's HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on "LGBTQ+ equity," subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families." (Page 451.)

The document also says, without a citation, that nonheterosexual, intact marriages involve higher instability, financial stress, and poorer outcomes for children. (Page 481.)

It discusses HHS’ Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education Program, which distributes federal grants to fund initiatives to promote healthy marriages and relationships. Project 2025 said the federal program should "protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family." 

"For the sake of child well-being, programs should affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father. Despite recent congressional bills like the Respect for Marriage Act that redefine marriage to be the union between any two individuals, HMRE program grants should be available to faith-based recipients who affirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman." (Page 481.) 

Project 2025’s website characterizes this section as calling for "the protection of faith-based grant recipients who maintain support for the traditional definition of marriage." 

Lindsey Dawson, LGBTQ policy director at KFF, a nonpartisan source of health care policy analysis, told PolitiFact that although she saw no explicit policy position to ban gay marriage, Project 2025 "heavily promotes the idea of a traditional nuclear family consisting of a man, woman, and children and reversing LGBTQ+ equity efforts, including those related to family."

Asked for evidence of a ban, Talarico’s senior adviser, Seth Krasne, highlighted a 2022 opinion piece from the Heritage Foundation’s president that argued the Supreme Court’s decision "invented a constitutional right to same-sex marriage out of thin air." He also pointed to the plan’s language promoting heterosexual marriages. 

Before his presidency, Trump expressed in interviews that he supported "traditional marriage," but following the Supreme Court’s legalization, he described the issue as "settled." The recently released 2024 Republican party platform also removed a 2016 condemnation of same-sex marriage legalization, and remains silent on the issue. 

Social media posts claimed that Project 2025 would "ban" or otherwise end gay marriage.

Project 2025’s policy proposals do not call for a ban. Language in the document uplifts heterosexual marriages as "ideal," and says that certain federal grants should be more accessible to faith-based groups that oppose same-sex marriage. But that is not the same as banning or ending legal access to same-sex marriage. We rate this claim False.

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