Abortion fight won, conservative Christian mimic Dobbs tactics to go after same-sex marriage

If you listened closely at a meeting of mostly evangelical Christian communicators, activists and lawyers that took place in Dallas in February, you could hear more than a few panel discussions and hallway conversations repeatedly circle back to the same topic: same-sex marriage.

Having helped to engineer the demise of Roe v. Wade after half a century of anti-abortion activism, attendees at the National Religious Broadcasters conference openly discussed plans to make shorter work of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

“Obergefell is on very shaky ground,” Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative Christian nonprofit legal group Liberty Counsel, which leaders describe as a ministry, told the audience of one panel at the conference. “It’s not a matter of, in my opinion, if it will eventually be overturned, but when it’ll be overturned.”

Religion & Politics

Photos of the Week: Pope leaves hospital, tattoo removals

Pope Francis leaves the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Sunday, Match 23, 2025. He was admitted on Feb. 14 for bilateral pneumonia. (AP Photo/Marco Ravagli)

In Opinion

And finally, Catholic clergy hype Lent on TikTok with Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us' dance

In the moments before Kendrick Lamar launched into his Grammy-winning diss track, “Not Like Us,” at the Super Bowl, a quartet of background dancers asked him, “You really ’bout to do it?” It was seemingly a question about the legal risks of blasting rival rapper Drake as a pedophile on the most-watched halftime show of all time.

A little over two weeks later, that same audio played over a TikTok video of Catholic deacon David Workman and his daughter, Lexy, with the caption “lent era is coming.” Playing off a secular dance trend, as the first riffs from “Not Like Us” begin, Workman changes from green Ordinary Time vestments to purple Lenten ones. The deacon from the Diocese of Beaumont, Texas, copies Lamar’s walking dance steps with his daughter backing him up in altar server surplice.

After the video posted to Lexy’s TikTok account received over 34 million views and 5 million likes, the Catholic priests got on board. Dancing to the diss track became a trend to hype up congregants and social media users for Lent.

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