Ohio community hits back as anti-LGBTQ+ billboards appear

Anti-LGBTQ+ billboards funded by Seattle-based group Them Before Us have sparked widespread backlash across rural Ohio, prompting residents and advocacy groups to launch their own campaigns in support of LGBTQ+ families.

The signs, which read, “No child has two fathers. No child has two mothers,” have popped up in several communities and quickly went viral after northwest Ohio resident Megan Tucker-Manley shared the photo on Facebook on July 17.

tuckermanley said buckeye frame In an interview on July 23, he said the message is not just targeted at same-sex parents, but negates the experiences of children in foster care, blended families, divorced families and other non-traditional families. Despite living with stage IV cancer, she said she felt compelled to speak out. “I don’t sit when I should because I have stage IV cancer and I should be focusing on other things,” she said. “If anything, this just started the fire.” [in me]”

LGBTQ+ nonprofit organization Have a Gay Day purchased its own billboard space to share positive messages. According to a July 23 report, a fundraiser started to keep the support sign up has raised more than $18,000. facebook announcement.

“A peaceful rally will be held on July 27 at 6 p.m. in front of City Hall, 50 Town Square Street, Lima. The directive is to bring a positive sign of love and support to all families,” the nonprofit organization said on July 26, posting a mock-up image of a planned sign design that reads, “Many children have two fathers. Many children have two mothers.”

Lima Pride Alliance and Equality Ohio have also condemned the Them Before Us campaign, and Equality Ohio released a statement on Tuesday, July 21, saying the signs “not only attack LGBTQ+ families, they erase all of Ohio’s children whose homes don’t fit into the narrow mold of manufactured homes.”

A spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign called the billboards “disgusting” and “hopeless” in a statement to The Buckeye Flame, pointing to polls showing a majority of Ohioans support marriage equality.

Them Before Us has long opposed marriage equality, in vitro fertilization and no-fault divorce, and says the campaign aims to promote what it sees as the ideal family structure.

They Before Us is also one of dozens of organizations supporting the “Greater Than” campaign, which was launched earlier this year to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

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