Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 482 ｜ Children Have the Right to a Mom and a Dad

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Man, oh man, I've got an amazing conversation

00:00:16.780 for you with Katie Faust. She started the organization Them Before Us. She is a children's

00:00:24.180 rights advocate. And guys, she is bold. She is brave. She is so clear on the things that matter

00:00:34.940 when it comes to protecting kids and protecting the family. We are going to wade into what is now

00:00:40.360 considered very controversial and to some people scandalous territory and talking about the

00:00:46.120 importance of the formation of the family sociologically, psychologically for kids,

00:00:51.040 also spiritually, theologically as well. I am so excited for you to listen to her and to get

00:00:57.940 behind her as she is fighting for the things that matter in such a courageous way. So excited to

00:01:04.300 introduce all of you to Katie Faust. So without further ado, here she is. Katie, thank you so

00:01:15.740 much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Katie.

00:01:21.980 I run a children's rights organization and a lot of conservatives are like, children's rights? What

00:01:27.760 do you mean? And what I'm talking about when I'm talking about children's rights is children's

00:01:32.740 fundamental right to be known and loved by both their mother and father. And some people are like,

00:01:39.200 I didn't even know kids had that right. Well, they do. It's recognized by the most widely ratified

00:01:44.500 a treaty in the world, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. And it's ratified by everything

00:01:50.780 that we know about family structure and the benefits that kids gain from having both their

00:01:57.060 mother and father in the home. So that is what we do. We take those children's rights and we apply it to

00:02:02.960 every conversation about marriage and family, whether you're talking about the definition of marriage,

00:02:07.140 the impact of divorce, the harms of sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogacy, you know, who has a

00:02:15.280 right to adopt, the rise of cohabitation. So it's actually a pretty easy template when it comes to

00:02:23.040 addressing all marriage and family issues, because when we center the conversation around the rights

00:02:28.120 of the child, we come up with good personal decisions and good policy decisions.

00:02:32.580 Yes. And I want to hear from you what it looks like ideally for those rights to be honored in a

00:02:41.540 society versus what those rights look like today in the United States.

00:02:48.340 Right. Well, you know, we just came out with a book in February that outlines all of this, you know,

00:02:55.020 applies this to all different questions of marriage and family. But chapter one, we talk about

00:02:59.780 children's rights. Why do they have rights? How do we know that these rights exist?

00:03:05.080 And then we spend chapter two talking about the importance of biological connection in the

00:03:09.500 parent-child relationship. Chapter three, we talk all about why gender matters in the parent-child

00:03:14.640 relationship. And chapter four is why marriage matters in a child's life. So when you are looking

00:03:19.800 at natural law, when you are looking at the decades of social science research that we've done on

00:03:24.960 family structure, what we see is all three of these are critical to kids. Biological connection,

00:03:31.460 having both a mother and a father, and the importance that stability brings and protection

00:03:37.480 that marriage brings to a child's life. So if you're looking at it in terms of reality, data,

00:03:46.020 research, and even just common sense, we see that kids need all of those. They need their married

00:03:51.660 mother and father loving them and loving each other. And that stacks the deck in favor of kids.

00:03:56.700 Now, that's going to be true, regardless of what our laws say, regardless of what our culture holds

00:04:02.360 in terms of what kids need. This is what the data says. And it's absolutely irrefutable.

00:04:08.620 The only way that you are going to be able to make a case that children don't need this,

00:04:13.900 that this isn't ideal for kids, is when you're living solely in a world of ideology,

00:04:18.080 which unfortunately is where much of the country is today. But when you actually confront the data

00:04:24.240 and when you confront the real life stories of kids, what you find is none of these three things

00:04:29.820 are optional. Biology matters, gender matters, and marriage matters in a child's life.

00:04:35.940 And I want to go through those two things and get down to some specifics. Obviously,

00:04:40.240 we want people to buy your book where you flesh this out in a lot more detail. But just so people kind

00:04:45.520 of understand where you're coming from and what you're talking about. First, when you talk about

00:04:49.600 biology, why that is so important in the family makeup and in a child's life, what do you mean by

00:04:54.620 that? Yeah. And so first of all, I'll say I'd love to tackle the subject of adoption with you. We

00:05:00.660 spend an entire chapter on adoption. I'm an adoptive mom. I believe adoption is a critical social

00:05:06.680 institution for children. But you can believe all of that and also recognize the statistical reality

00:05:12.460 that biology matters in the parent-child relationship. So why? For two primary reasons.

00:05:19.220 Number one, biology furnishes children with, statistically, the adults who are the most

00:05:25.580 likely to be connected to, invested in, and protective of them. Right? That, yeah, there are horrible

00:05:33.220 biological parents out there, but they are a fraction of the kind of risk that kids face when it comes to

00:05:39.700 households. Conversely, a non-biologically related adult, especially an unrelated man,

00:05:47.000 sharing a living space with a child is the most dangerous person in a child's life. And if you want

00:05:53.460 to fact check me on that, feel free to just pause this video and Google the words mother's boyfriend.

00:05:59.460 And what you're going to find is pages and pages and pages of the most horrific abuse and filicide,

00:06:04.340 that would be child homicide, that you're going to see on the internet, that biology matters. It doesn't just

00:06:12.040 matter that somebody's in a relationship with a kid's parent. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going

00:06:17.500 to treat the child the way they would treat their own biological child. So first of all, biology matters

00:06:22.460 because statistically, those are the people that are most likely to ensure the child is safe and loved.

00:06:27.540 That's one reason why adoptive parents like me have to go through months of screening and vetting and

00:06:34.580 background checks, home studies, references, all of that, because social workers aren't fools. They know

00:06:40.700 that it's risky to place a child in the home of unrelated adults. The other reason why biology matters in the

00:06:46.920 parent-child relationship is because biology, biological parents offer something to kids that no other

00:06:53.580 adults can give them. And that's biological identity. Maybe you're like, well, who cares? Why does that

00:07:00.300 matter? Well, ask an adopted child, ask a child conceived through sperm or egg donation, whether

00:07:06.020 or not it matters. 50% of kids created through sperm donation would say my sperm donor is half of who I am.

00:07:13.840 We've got decades of adopted kids searching for their first family, because something about knowing

00:07:20.580 from whom we came tells us who we are. And it seems to matter to kids who were separated from their

00:07:26.780 mother or father. So that's the reason mainly why biology matters. It provides them with the

00:07:32.440 statistically the best odds for love and safety. And it tells them something about who they are,

00:07:37.800 something that seems to really matter to kids.

00:07:40.140 Right. And I know people might have the tendency, of course, I'm sure you run across this a lot to get

00:07:44.980 defensive about something like, well, the mother's boyfriend is likely, unfortunately, statistically,

00:07:52.180 to inflict some kind of abuse or negligence on kids that are not his, even more so than, say,

00:07:57.480 a stepmother or a girlfriend of a dad. And that is obviously not to say that that is the case all of

00:08:04.200 the time. There are wonderful stories of women who find men who come into their home and become

00:08:11.380 their husband and their stepfather, who are a wonderful father and provider and protector of

00:08:17.240 those kids, who loves those kids like they are his own. And those are wonderful stories. Just like

00:08:22.360 you said, with adoption, that can be a wonderful, redemptive story. But it is important for us to

00:08:28.680 kind of remove ourselves even from our personal positive experiences with that and look at the

00:08:33.980 statistics and just accept the fact, as you have said, that biology matters when it comes to

00:08:40.460 a person's drive to really love and take care of that child. That's something that God placed in

00:08:46.660 all of us. And even if you're not a Christian, even if you don't have the same biblical outlook

00:08:51.620 on it that I do, even if you tried to look at this from an evolutionary standpoint, you could see why

00:08:59.060 biology is so important in the perpetuation of humanity and that instinct that especially mothers,

00:09:05.740 I would say, have to protect their own. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And we do recognize that there

00:09:11.820 are heroic step parents out there, people who are filling in the gap for a negligent or absent

00:09:16.620 biological parent. And those those situations absolutely exist. You know them. I know them.

00:09:23.940 But I don't know many of step parents who would say there weren't additional hurdles involved in

00:09:29.840 forging this relationship. Right. The main baseline in our movement of them before us is to put them,

00:09:38.120 the children before us, the adults. And what does that mean? That functionally means the adults need

00:09:44.440 to do hard things. So the rights of children are protected. I know step parents who are doing hard

00:09:50.300 things to try to fill the space left by a biological parent who refused to do the hard thing. They deserve

00:09:57.580 recognition. But when you look statistically, children raised by a stepfather, statistically don't fare

00:10:05.460 any better than kids raised by a lone mother. And so it's really important to recognize these realities

00:10:10.440 when we are talking about the meta story of what's going on in our society and our desire to diminish

00:10:16.860 the importance of biology in the parent child relationship that makes for bad policy. And unfortunately,

00:10:23.080 sometimes that makes for reckless decision makings in the individual home of kids.

00:10:36.880 I'm wondering where we kind of got off rails with this. I think at some point, you know, we didn't need

00:10:45.080 all of the sociological, psychological studies of the importance of the formation of the traditional

00:10:52.260 and natural family to tell us that, okay, kids fare better when they're with their biological mom

00:10:58.480 and dad. Even better, say you come from a poor family. Maybe you don't have great parents, but they're

00:11:05.020 your biological parents and they live together. You fare better with them than you would a rich family

00:11:12.400 who gives you everything and who gives you all the attention in the world who is not your biological

00:11:18.420 family. And that seems like it would have been common sense a long time ago. But somewhere along

00:11:24.160 the way, we decided that the natural formation of the family is completely arbitrary and that kids who

00:11:29.940 are thrown into a completely different situation are going to fare just fine. I think you see that

00:11:36.220 sometimes when you have things like, um, we've heard of, you know, the corruption CPS and in the foster

00:11:42.400 care system, you certainly see this in the reformation socially of the family. Where did all of this

00:11:47.840 happen? When did we lose our common sense when it comes to this? Yeah, well, two places specifically.

00:11:53.240 Um, the first one is no fault divorce, right? We used to have this idea that, well, marriage has been

00:12:00.000 the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known, right? That when we have healthy marriages,

00:12:05.480 we have healthy children. There's minor exceptions, but when you do not have marriage, you are going to

00:12:11.780 have deck. And that's what we've got. We've got generations of children who have been damaged,

00:12:17.000 broken. And that's not to say that, um, they are irredeemable. It means that they have significant

00:12:22.940 hurdles ahead of them. If they are going to reach the same level of thriving as kids whose needs were met in

00:12:28.440 their intact family. Um, but when we want to talk about where the demise really began from a legal

00:12:35.100 perspective, it was no fault divorce because previous prior to no fault divorce, what we had

00:12:40.280 was at fault divorce, which was, you can get out of this marriage, but only in cases of abuse,

00:12:47.540 abandonment, addiction. Um, and then the court would side with the innocent spouse, right? The court would

00:12:53.760 say, Hey, the parent that is trying to keep the marriage together, upholding their marital

00:12:58.420 vows, not being abusive. The one that is seeking to do the best for the kids, they would be rewarded

00:13:03.560 both legally and socially. But what happened when we passed no fault divorce laws is in essence,

00:13:10.080 what we communicated is the marriage exists to make adults happy. And when adults cease to be happy,

00:13:16.760 the marriage can cease to exist. And so then we transformed this critical institution for child

00:13:22.720 justice and child thriving into simply a vehicle of adult fulfillment. And so then you take that

00:13:28.580 mentality into everything else about marriage, right? Whether it's gay marriage or polygamy or

00:13:35.140 whatever it is, if marriage is simply in a vehicle of adult fulfillment, then there's all kinds of

00:13:40.680 things romantically that can fulfill adults. But if you're talking about marriage as an institution

00:13:46.480 that protects and provides children with everything that they need, well, that's quite rigid, right?

00:13:52.460 That means that it needs to be their own mother and their own father committed to one another

00:13:55.900 for life. So that's legally where things started to change. But then the advent of reproductive

00:14:01.760 technologies is another place where we really start to see the minimizing of the importance of

00:14:07.620 things like biological connection with family, right? And a lot of those, those kinds of sentiments

00:14:13.720 came along with phrases like, well, if I'm happy, the kids will be happy, right? And I have a right

00:14:18.260 to happiness or I have a right to parenthood, even if that means denying children their fundamental

00:14:23.440 universally recognized rights to their own parents. So we kind of have this rise, you know, in two

00:14:29.080 separate venues of the legal redefinition of family, but then the absolute breaking of the

00:14:35.060 biological norms through sperm, egg donation, and now surrogacy, where in essence, anything goes,

00:14:43.080 right? If you can put together sperm, egg, and womb, you can walk out of the hospital with a baby

00:14:48.660 that's not genetically related to you if you've got the cash. So we had kind of two forces working

00:14:54.420 together at one time, and now we're at the place culturally where there really is no expectation

00:14:59.600 that children have a claim or deserve a mother and father.

00:15:04.480 And also, I think a milestone was Obergefell, the official redefinition of what marriage is,

00:15:11.300 this idea, again, that marriage is just something for happiness and that kids really did not,

00:15:17.360 as far as I know, come into play in this decision at all. And thinking about, okay, what actually is

00:15:23.120 a marriage? How do we define it? And where does that definition come from? Why has it traditionally

00:15:28.100 been defined as, you know, naturally as a man and a woman? Why has parenthood exclusively been defined

00:15:35.120 throughout human history as a mother and a father? And then all of a sudden, in 2015, we think we're going to

00:15:40.700 change that and kids are going to be able to adapt without any negative repercussions. I think it

00:15:46.120 shows the hubris of human beings. It shows the misunderstanding of human nature of progressivism

00:15:52.620 and the weakness on the part of, I think, a lot of people who consider themselves Christians and

00:15:57.860 conservatives to say anything about it. Even Christians and conservatives today are too scared

00:16:03.060 to say that, hey, kids need a mom and a dad, even though literally all of human history everywhere

00:16:09.880 in the world tells us that that's tells us that that's true, right? Absolutely. We missed the boat

00:16:16.420 on Obergefell. Justice Kennedy did cite the needs of children with same-sex parents in his decision.

00:16:23.600 But, you know, I was one of six kids with LGBT parents to submit an amicus brief to Obergefell

00:16:30.060 in that case. You know, I was raised by my mom and dad until I was 10, and then they divorced.

00:16:36.320 And then I split time in the home of my father and then in my mother's home with her partner.

00:16:41.440 And my mom was an incredible mom. I don't consider myself to be a woman with two moms,

00:16:46.580 but I love her partner. She's my friend. And I can tell you confidently that a lesbian can be an

00:16:52.680 incredible mother because I had one. But I'll tell you what, a lesbian can never be a father.

00:16:58.180 Two women can never be, 10 women can't be a father. And so what we did in our brief that we

00:17:03.800 submitted to Obergefell is we just filled it with the quotes of kids who are raised by two moms or two

00:17:08.240 dads who talked about their incredible father hunger or mother hunger. Because I'll tell you what,

00:17:14.380 regardless of what the law says, you will never legislate away a child's longing for their mom or dad.

00:17:20.000 And that's what we do in chapter six of our book. We just fill it with dozens of stories of kids who

00:17:26.560 were starved of that intentionally. And here's a really interesting aspect of the Obergefell decision.

00:17:33.520 We made it so much, unfortunately, on the right about the cake baker and the photographer and the

00:17:40.220 florist. Right. And yeah, there was a cost to them. But there is a cost to children because I'll tell you

00:17:46.080 what happened when we legislated away husbands and wives, we legislated away mothers and fathers.

00:17:53.200 Now, I don't think you'll be able to find an institution, either legal or political, in the United States

00:17:59.140 that would even say that children should have a mother and father.

00:18:02.980 Even some Christian adoption agencies won't say that anymore.

00:18:08.420 That's exactly right. And I'll tell you what, Christians, you've got a mandate to defend the fatherless.

00:18:16.200 Right. That is one of the four demographics in the Old Testament that deserves special protection and

00:18:20.460 recognition from the people of God. You are there to protect the fatherless, to prevent them like God's laws

00:18:27.260 are actually there to prevent fatherlessness. When you compromise on marriage and God's design

00:18:34.360 for sexual relationships, functionally, you are endorsing fatherlessness. When you mix in

00:18:41.760 kind of moral weakness on the topics of reproductive technologies, now you are manufacturing

00:18:49.200 fatherlessness and you're manufacturing motherless children, something that the world has really never

00:18:54.360 seen before. Intentionally motherless children. Do you know how hard that is to create an intentionally

00:18:59.700 motherless child? And yet that's what we're doing when we fail to stand firm on the right,

00:19:04.340 rights of children. And when Christians especially compromise on God's design for marriage and

00:19:08.980 sex. So, um, I don't have a lot of patience for Christians who get this wrong. Right. Because what

00:19:13.660 you're doing is in essence, you're saying I desire my social acceptability more than I desire

00:19:18.720 protecting the most vulnerable. You're so right. We say on this podcast, that's, that's a Genesis

00:19:23.800 one issue. God made them male and female being male and female. We're talking biologically. There's no

00:19:29.720 biblical category of so-called gender identity that's independent from biological sex.

00:19:34.340 So God makes us male and female biology matters. There is a teleological aspect to us, meaning our

00:19:41.520 bodies actually have a purpose as male and female. We see the formation of marriage, sex, and the family

00:19:47.360 in the first chapter of the Bible. It's the first chapter of the Bible, which tells us it is

00:19:53.180 foundational. And then we see that marriage, um, really is a foretaste of the marriage between,

00:19:59.720 you know, between Christ and his church. And so it's not just, yes, of course it's biological. Yes,

00:20:06.260 it's social. Yes, it's foundational. All those things are so, um, important, but for the Christian,

00:20:11.940 it's spiritual because the formation of the family in Genesis one is talked about in a way as a metaphor

00:20:18.840 for the formation of the family, um, of God, the formation of the church, the gospel itself.

00:20:25.420 Ephesians five says, wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Paul explains that this is actually

00:20:32.180 a picture of Christ in the church, that a wife submitting to her husband, a husband leading

00:20:37.020 sacrificially, his wife is a picture of Christ in the church. Therefore, the definition of marriage

00:20:42.240 is between a man and a woman has gospel significance. It has eternal significance. It

00:20:47.560 has spiritual significance. So the Christian saying, well, you know, there are just a couple

00:20:52.520 of verses about sex and stuff. It's really not that important. I'm like, dude, if you can't defend

00:20:57.720 Genesis one, there's no way you're going to be defending the gospel, which is far more controversial

00:21:02.280 than God made the male and female. Don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. You know, um, when I'm not

00:21:07.560 doing children's rights activism, I'm a pastor's wife. Um, and so like, this is my world, right?

00:21:13.300 And when I'm, and you can make a case and we do in our book completely secular, right? It's just all

00:21:21.300 research and all stories of kids. But once you get into that world of the Christian worldview,

00:21:26.500 there's no excuse, no amount of textual gymnastics is going to be able to justify compromising on the

00:21:33.100 topic of marriage. Number one, this is the object lesson that God gave to express his commitment to

00:21:38.420 the church. And if you want to adulterate that, like literally adulterate that picture, you are

00:21:44.220 going to distort people's ability to understand the gospel. This is how God chose to reveal himself

00:21:49.640 right to the world is through the physical picture of husband and wife, devoting themselves to one

00:21:54.400 another for life and creating new life through that union, right? So you're going to miss out on that,

00:22:00.920 but the more practical, and I think the more damning consequence of compromising on this,

00:22:06.680 um, is what I would like to know is a child who's raised by two women, um, created through sperm

00:22:12.820 donation, for example, who desperately longs for a father, which can I just say is the norm among

00:22:18.680 children with two moms. We categorize the stories and catalog those stories on our website. We fill our

00:22:24.680 book with them. I run a secret group chat of kids with two moms who don't feel like they can talk to

00:22:29.800 this about anybody else. And I'll tell you what, longing to know your missing parent, desperately

00:22:34.840 wanting the love of a man, the love of a father, those are not the outliers. That is the majority

00:22:40.740 of kids. So this is what I would like to know. I would like to know what some tolerant, progressive,

00:22:46.460 um, pastor would say to the son, to the boy who said, I desperately wanted a father. In fact,

00:22:54.260 the first commandment with a promise is for me to honor both my mother and my father, but you

00:22:59.760 officiated a wedding that officially denied that I would ever be able to follow that command. What

00:23:06.940 would they say to that kid? What would they say? Well, you are the acceptable sacrifice on the altar

00:23:12.340 of progressivism. Would you say that to a kid? I really would like to know. Right. We use that

00:23:18.040 exact phraseology here is that kids very often are the unconsenting subjects of progressive social

00:23:26.760 experiments or really just secular social experiments. And again, now there are even

00:23:31.300 conservatives and Christians who are too nervous to even say that, which is so obvious throughout

00:23:39.100 the Bible. I don't even think people think about the definition of marriage being in something like

00:23:44.240 that. The first commandment with a promise, honor your father and mother so that you may live long

00:23:49.140 in the land. I mean, that's repeated in the new Testament as well. That right there again is the

00:23:54.600 definition of the family. Um, I want to hear you talk a little bit more about maybe the science behind

00:24:00.560 the importance of gender. So I think that goes hand in hand with the importance of biology. Obviously

00:24:05.840 you need a man and a woman to make a baby. Um, I've actually had people try to argue about that with me,

00:24:11.500 but you do right now. You still need a sperm and an egg. You need a mom and a dad. That's how

00:24:15.580 God made it. But talk about the importance of the actual roles that mom and dad play that are

00:24:22.760 different than what two men or two women can play in a child's life. Yeah, very good. Yeah. That's

00:24:29.520 the other incredible thing about biology is it gets the gender balance exactly right every time,

00:24:33.900 you know, so fascinating to me that, um, people on the progressive left desperately want female

00:24:39.520 representation in the boardroom, right? Desperately want, you know, celebrate when we've got a female

00:24:43.980 justice on the Supreme court, if they are of the right political persuasion. And yet they have

00:24:48.700 relentlessly spent the last couple of decades destroying the one institution that gets the

00:24:53.360 gender balance perfect every single time. And that's the natural family, right? And why is that

00:24:58.560 so important? Well, because it maximizes child development. Um, so different are the ways that men

00:25:04.040 and women interact with children that many sociologists would say, there's no such thing

00:25:08.960 as parenting. There's only mothering and fathering men don't mother women don't father and kids need

00:25:16.740 both, right? This has to do with our biological wiring, right? We spend all of chapter three of

00:25:21.980 our book talking about why gender is not a social construct, why you can see gender differences,

00:25:26.540 both in the pre-born when you do scans of their brain. And you can see differences in,

00:25:31.560 in gender, in the most egalitarian societies, the place where women have the most choices,

00:25:36.780 where they have the most educational and job opportunities. You, those societies promote,

00:25:42.040 they, um, create the most female typical women and the most masculine men. So this is not a social

00:25:48.420 construct. There are naturally ingrained biological differences between men and women. And I think the

00:25:54.640 place where those differences are demonstrated most critically is in the home. Men tend to be a little

00:26:00.960 more physical, more aggressive, more competitive. They push kids to go faster, bigger, higher,

00:26:05.760 stronger, right? They tend to orient kids towards the world in a different way. Like think about the

00:26:11.080 last time you saw a woman throwing a baby in the air and you're all going, have I ever seen that? I

00:26:16.820 don't know. When was the last time you saw a dad throw a baby in the air? And you're like, yesterday

00:26:20.840 at the park, at church, whatever. Right. So men just tend to bring the fun, the adventure. They

00:26:27.840 push boundaries. They encourage competitiveness, risk-taking kids really need that. Moms tend to

00:26:34.340 focus on fairness, equity, what we call mundane caregiving. Have you eaten your broccoli? Did

00:26:39.640 you go to bed on time? Are you packed for school in the morning? They tend to be more focused on the

00:26:43.620 immediate emotional wellbeing of their own kids. And these differences manifest themselves in the way that

00:26:49.420 women and men talk to their kids, discipline their kids, read books to their kids. I mean,

00:26:54.520 the differences are stark and it's manifest in every way that men and women interact with kids

00:26:59.860 and how incredible for kids to have representatives of both halves of humanity in their own home every

00:27:06.100 day of their life. Not only do they learn about who they're going to become from their same sex

00:27:11.140 parent, but they learn about what kind of spouse they should pursue with their opposite sex parents.

00:27:16.040 Boys have a chance to interact with both halves of humanity when it comes to their moms. Girls have

00:27:20.940 a chance to practice being around boys when it comes to their dads. Neither one of these parents are

00:27:25.320 optional in a child's life. Right. And what you gave obviously are particular examples that there's

00:27:31.360 always going to be someone who says, well, you know, I'm a woman. I threw my baby up yesterday. And

00:27:35.380 you know, even I can think about like throwing my baby up in the air. And that's not obviously your

00:27:39.540 point that that never happens or that that's necessarily always what makes a mom and a dad. Even if you

00:27:45.180 have a dad who maybe he is very artistic and he is someone who likes to cook and clean the house and

00:27:53.940 things like that, that doesn't make him any less of a dad. And the same way with the mom who maybe she

00:27:59.220 does have a more aggressive personality that just because gender isn't a social construct, which both

00:28:05.660 of you and I agree on there, of course, are particular norms that may be socially constructed and may

00:28:13.780 vary. But that doesn't change the fact that it's still a mom. It's still a dad. What they offer, no

00:28:19.000 matter what their personalities are and how traditionally masculine or feminine they may be,

00:28:24.860 they bring something unique to the table. You know, my my oldest, my daughter, she is she just

00:28:34.160 turned two. And long before she was two, I knew that she could tell a difference between not just

00:28:40.780 me and her dad, obviously, but just between men and women in in general, like as much as she loves

00:28:47.160 both of my parents and all of her grandparents and all of her cousins and aunts and uncles, I noticed

00:28:51.300 she would gravitate towards like her girl cousins and her aunts and her grandmother more than she

00:28:58.860 would her uncles and her grandfather. She could just tell there was an innate difference there.

00:29:06.040 They were a little bit more nurturing. But, you know, when she's in a particular mood, she wants to run

00:29:11.440 around the house and be chased and, you know, be picked up. Then she's going to say, Daddy, run,

00:29:16.100 Daddy, run. That's her thing right now. Daddy, run. But when she needs comfort, when

00:29:21.140 she's tired, you know, when she just wants to hang out like she wants she wants Mom. There are

00:29:27.260 different things we bring to the table, even just, you know, my husband's presence, just the

00:29:33.000 knowledge, OK, that there's security there. There's no question between my husband and me

00:29:37.880 that if someone tries to hurt our kids or someone tries to break our space and security in some way,

00:29:43.780 who's who's going to go down so that the rest of us go free? Like who is going to be the one

00:29:49.080 that's on the front line making sure that we're safe? Who's going to fight the bad guy? Who's

00:29:53.560 going to run after our kid if it looks like they are like riding their bike into the pond? Like

00:29:59.100 it's going to be him. And so I think even just that innate knowledge that our kids have that, OK,

00:30:05.500 you know, this is this is what Daddy does. And like I know that I can trust him for that. And this is

00:30:11.060 what Mommy does. I just imagine that that without any kind of sociological,

00:30:15.720 you know, statistical knowledge of that, I just imagine that that offers a lot of security for

00:30:22.060 kids and a sense of belonging and peace and identity, too. Yeah, totally. And, you know,

00:30:29.320 no couple is going to fit the stereotypes and shouldn't fit the stereotypes every single time.

00:30:33.700 We just took our oldest to college and. Either her father or I cried a lot of the time and it wasn't

00:30:40.520 me. So like he's just honestly a very, very tender hearted guy. And I do tend to kind of I'm the one

00:30:47.840 that jostles my kids in the hallway when I pass them. Right. But yeah, I am the one that is tends

00:30:53.260 to be more concerned about their immediate emotional well-being. And he's always like,

00:30:56.560 can you take more classes? Can you hit that goal a little harder? Come on. I really think that you

00:31:00.680 could serve a little bit stronger. So he's pushing them in ways that I'm not pushing them.

00:31:04.960 Um, that protectiveness, that dad protectiveness that also comes in really handy when your daughters

00:31:10.200 start dating, because when guys come around and they see a father who's protective, um, they know

00:31:15.780 that they've got to up their game a little bit when the dad has a conversation with them and says,

00:31:19.720 I expect you to treat my daughter as well as I treat her, which is very well. And you're going to

00:31:24.120 have to, you're going to have to deal with me if that doesn't happen. I'll tell you what that keeps

00:31:28.480 guys in checks. The first couple of times my daughter started to, um, have a, have an interest. My father

00:31:33.820 or my husband said, um, you're welcome to text them. I will be in the group chat.

00:31:38.000 Oh my goodness. Everything that you say to her, you say to me. And that's a great way for guys to

00:31:43.120 know that, um, there is a protective parent that's, that's standing there. You know, I often get the

00:31:49.280 objection from people who say, well, two moms, um, they can offer that kind of love and protection

00:31:53.900 and nurturing. In fact, I've noticed that a lot of lesbians, there's like a more masculine

00:31:58.320 and there's more a feminine, right? There's like, you know, some of the kids that I'm,

00:32:02.680 whose stories I share, they say, yeah, I had a butch mom. And then I had a really feminine mom.

00:32:07.600 I have not yet heard any of them say, yeah, that butch mom totally satisfied my longing and desire

00:32:13.080 for a father. It's just not the same. Kids genuinely long for a male parent, male love,

00:32:19.460 paternal love, and they crave maternal love as well. It's as if both of these are, um, critical to

00:32:26.200 their development and wellbeing. Right. Let's talk a little bit more about how reproductive technology

00:32:31.220 has interrupted that. Um, I see this a lot, uh, when you have, um, you know, uh, a gay couple who,

00:32:40.140 like you said, I think I can think of several gay couples that I'm like, yeah, they're, they're

00:32:45.060 awesome people. Like they're going to make wonderful dads or wonderful moms. Um, but,

00:32:51.140 but it makes me sad when the process, um, I didn't realize this about surrogacy, that you're

00:32:57.460 actually taking an egg from one woman and planting it in another woman. Um, and the sperm from, you

00:33:04.080 know, one of the male partners, if it's a male gay couple and then delivering that baby. And then

00:33:09.960 obviously taking that baby to, um, be taken by perhaps one of the actual biological dads. I mean,

00:33:17.860 I just imagine, I just, what does that do to a child's sense of identity and belonging? Um, when that

00:33:24.240 was your conception and gestation and adoption process? Yeah. So first let's talk about sperm

00:33:30.920 and egg donation. Um, because, uh, that was, that was already quite a violation of children's rights.

00:33:37.240 Right. So what these kids are experiencing is, um, genealogical bewilderment, right? A lot of times

00:33:43.460 deep, deep identity struggles. Um, even if they're not told that they were created through sperm and egg

00:33:48.420 donation, a lot of them have a sense that something is off. You know, they had to ask, am I adopted? Like,

00:33:53.600 why don't I look like anybody else? So serious identity struggles. Um, the next thing they

00:33:58.940 struggle with when they do find out, or if they'd known all along is feeling like they were commodified,

00:34:03.500 that they were purchased, that they were bought and sold because they were bought and sold.

00:34:08.120 Like you can go online and look at egg donor catalogs or sperm donor catalogs. These kids are

00:34:14.180 like, my parents literally picked me out of a catalog. Um, many of them struggle with household

00:34:19.200 instability. So they are, um, brought into homes that don't have the same level of stability. Um,

00:34:25.680 probably because that biological connection really does have an impact on whether or not the people

00:34:30.720 raising them are going to stay committed and connected to them. The research bears that out.

00:34:34.920 Um, so if you're just talking sperm and egg donation, even if you're being raised by a heterosexual

00:34:40.060 couple, um, a lot of these kids struggle deeply. So now let's talk about surrogacy.

00:34:45.660 What surrogacy does in essence is it splits one woman, somebody that should be all one woman,

00:34:51.740 the mother into three, in essence, optional women, right? So you've got the genetic mother

00:34:57.820 who is the egg donor, the birth mother, who is the surrogate, and then the social mother,

00:35:03.520 the woman whose presence is going to be in the child's life every day. Surrogacy says,

00:35:08.100 which of these mothers do you need? Which ones do you not want? Because if you need one of them,

00:35:12.280 write the check, we can figure it out for you. Right. But the thing is that none of these three

00:35:17.580 women are optional in the life of a child, right? If a child's raised without their genetic mother,

00:35:21.860 they're going to struggle with all the same things that the donor conceived kids struggled with,

00:35:25.800 right? The genealogical bewilderment, um, the feeling of commodification for kids who are, um,

00:35:32.140 created through surrogacy and, um, have to lose a relationship with their birth mother.

00:35:37.460 We call that a primal wound in the book. It's something that adoptees have actually been

00:35:43.020 speaking out about for decades. There is a book called the primal wound and it's considered the

00:35:48.300 adoptee's Bible. What happens when we intentionally separate children or separate them, even if it's a

00:35:54.040 tragic situation from their birth mother, these kids, um, because they lose their,

00:35:58.760 their relationship with their very first and only, um, person that they know their mother

00:36:05.100 at birth, they report, um, having a difficulty trusting and attaching, forming relationships

00:36:11.880 in the future. And again, the, the research bears this out that that separation from the birth mother

00:36:17.360 can have long-term detrimental effects on kids. So sometimes it is necessary in adoption,

00:36:23.440 but to inflict it intentionally is an injustice. Right. And then many of these kids created through

00:36:29.360 surrogacy will never have a social mother. They won't even have the presence of a woman in their

00:36:34.040 everyday life. And so when you are losing any one of these three, it's going to harm kids.

00:36:40.280 Surrogacy inflicts the loss of one or all in the name of progress. And so surrogacy is never a

00:36:47.460 child-friendly process. The child always has to lose something, um, when, when those processes take place.

00:36:53.620 Yeah. And I, I just think of, um, a lot of the arguments that you hear that, well, children don't

00:37:10.000 remember. They don't remember being taken away from their mother. And look, this child with same-sex

00:37:15.920 parents or this child who is conceived through IVF is happy. They're a totally happy child, but yeah,

00:37:22.520 children can undergo trauma that they don't remember. And they can be affected in a way that

00:37:27.700 is very profound, that might not manifest itself. Number one, in the same way across the board. And

00:37:33.900 number two, until later in life, they can still have that father or mother hunger, um, that shows up

00:37:42.020 in different ways. And so simply to point to a situation and say, well, look, that hap, that child

00:37:47.100 is clothed and happy has two parents that are happy. That's really all they need. Well, not really,

00:37:53.480 not if there is this, um, not when you interrupt the natural process and all of the innate longings

00:38:02.800 and feelings and needs, um, that, that really come with that. And so I just find the argument that I

00:38:10.700 hear a lot of times, well, as long as the kid seems happy and as long as the kid doesn't remember

00:38:15.880 the trauma at birth or that separation, it's not, it's not a big deal. I mean, we're told like

00:38:22.400 when we have, if you have, uh, babies yourself, we're told like, okay, as soon as you have that

00:38:27.960 baby, they need that skin to skin. Like you put that baby on your chest, like you're told that's

00:38:33.040 important. Why would we be told that if those first few moments in that attachment from a young

00:38:38.360 age, we're told constantly to smile at our kids, to look into our kids' eyes when they're babies,

00:38:43.800 to connect with them. And not that everyone has to breastfeed, but breastfeeding is also a very

00:38:49.180 bonding experience, a necessary experience for the security of that child. So we're told all these

00:38:55.040 things sometimes by the very same people who say that none of that matters. If you just want to have

00:38:59.740 this kind of artificial process and give the child to, uh, you know, two dads or two moms.

00:39:06.740 Exactly. You know, we don't put a baby on a mom's chest so they can create a bond.

00:39:11.940 We put a baby on a mom's chest because they have an existing bond, right? That is the only person

00:39:16.960 that the baby knows her smell, her milk, her body, her heartbeat, right? This is the child's only

00:39:23.120 relationship at that point. Um, I know that when my second daughter was born after a very, uh, rushed

00:39:29.120 and somewhat traumatic birth, she was crying, she was wailing. And then they put her on my chest and I

00:39:34.100 started humming to her and she was quiet in an instant because she said, this is the only thing

00:39:38.460 that I know. This is the only thing I'm familiar with, right? It's so amazing to me that the families

00:39:44.020 belong together crowd is also largely the people that endorse reproductive technologies where you

00:39:50.700 are violating your intentionally separating a child from their mother and father. Um, do these primal

00:39:57.640 wounds have an impact on kids? Well, adoptive parents tend to be more highly educated. They,

00:40:04.100 tend to be more wealthy and they tend to spend more time with their adopted children compared to

00:40:10.020 the rest of the population. And yet adopted children struggle more in school, struggle more

00:40:16.940 emotionally and do have increased obstacles they need to overcome. And so you really can't make the

00:40:23.600 case that these connections at birth are negotiable or not. Like we actually have the data and the

00:40:31.940 stories to say that they really, really matter to kids. Right. And like you said, there's obviously

00:40:36.660 a difference between adoption by necessity and adoption, uh, you know, sheerly for the pleasure

00:40:46.180 and in accordance to the whims of parents who intentionally create a child for the purpose of

00:40:54.340 surrogacy and adoption. Obviously we see in scripture that adoption, um, again, is a picture of God's

00:41:02.940 redemption of Gentiles through Christ. Like we were adopted, we were grafted in. So obviously in the same

00:41:11.600 way that a natural child parent relationship is also a picture of God loving his children through Christ.

00:41:18.860 So adoption is a picture of God adopting us. So obviously, um, we know that it is redemptive,

00:41:27.940 but I think that most adoptive parents would also say, but the ideal situation for my beloved adopted

00:41:35.140 child would have been that their natural mom and dad stayed together and loved them. Right.

00:41:40.600 Yeah, exactly. I say my adopted son is a Faust through and through. I'm so grateful he's with us. Um,

00:41:50.520 he completes our family and I will never fully compensate for what he's lost, but he does have

00:41:58.540 increased obstacles, um, because he wasn't able to remain with his birth mother and father. And so we,

00:42:05.640 um, can recognize adoption as a redemptive and critical institution for the wellbeing of children

00:42:11.120 in need and not play that game of minimizing the kind of loss that they experience. Um, a lot of

00:42:18.240 people are like, well, reproductive technologies are just another form of adoption. And when you look at

00:42:23.460 it, it's actually the total opposite of adoption. Um, you know, in adoption, the adults are seeking to

00:42:29.980 mend the wound that the child has suffered, um, adoption done right, I should say, which is most

00:42:36.280 adoptions these days. Um, adoptive parents are hammered about adoption being a lifelong process

00:42:42.120 and the mourning and the grieving that the child will go through. Most of us go through training

00:42:45.620 and post-placement to make sure that we are able to navigate those challenging waters with our adopted

00:42:51.580 child. So very few adoptive parents these days are going into this as, uh, oh, this is going to fix

00:42:58.260 all the problems. That's not the way adoption is discussed with foster parents or adoptive parents

00:43:03.040 these days. So adoption done properly is adults seeking to mend the wound. The child has experienced

00:43:10.460 reproductive technologies is adults creating the wound. They're saying, I'm going to inflict this

00:43:16.480 parental wound on you because I want it that way in adoption. The child is the client, right? When I used

00:43:23.060 to work at the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world, and my boss would say, the parents are

00:43:28.600 paying us, the child is the client. When adoption is done right, every child that needs a family is

00:43:34.060 going to be placed in the loving home, but not every adult who wants a child is going to get one.

00:43:39.120 That's exactly the opposite in reproductive technologies. Any adult that can pay will get a

00:43:44.400 kid, even if they have a criminal record, even if they would never pass an adoption background

00:43:48.700 checked. There's no, there's no background checks in reproductive technologies. The only

00:43:53.300 check that has to clear is your check at the bank. And so we've got kids going home with unrelated adults

00:44:00.580 who, um, have no business having kids that are not related to them. So we spend a lot of time in

00:44:07.660 chapter nine of our book, contrasting adoption and reproductive technologies, because one supports

00:44:12.780 children's rights and the other one is a flagrant violation of children's rights.

00:44:17.800 Yeah. We really see the absurd conclusion that all of this leads to just the redefining of gender,

00:44:23.620 the redefining of marriage, the redefining of the family. When we see stories, there was,

00:44:28.760 um, you know, Courtney Cox, she apparently does this show that she talks about, you know, different

00:44:35.040 people's pregnancy journeys. And it was devastating. We talked about it on here. Um,

00:44:40.720 an example of, or a story of this woman who identified as a man and a man who identified as

00:44:48.540 a woman, you know, coming together and creating a baby, how you typically do. Although, you know,

00:44:53.740 of course they think that there's some special case and the biological woman who identifies as a man

00:44:59.940 having this child, but the biological man who identifies as a woman still wanting to breastfeed the

00:45:06.720 child and obviously not being able to lactate and still try to get this child to latch. And like

00:45:12.180 that in and of itself is abusive, um, because you are forcing a child to, um, hunger and to try to

00:45:22.980 seek something that it innately is going to seek. That's what children do. They root around to try to,

00:45:28.780 you know, naturally nourish themselves. And, um, you're doing it, you know, on the altar of your

00:45:35.000 delusions. And again, that goes back to this whole idea that really started back maybe at even

00:45:39.820 no fault divorce, that the definition of marriage and the definition of sexuality and gender and all

00:45:45.440 these things is really about what makes us happy and kids. Well, they can't really speak for

00:45:51.240 themselves. And so they can just kind of come along for the ride. What repercussions is all of this

00:45:57.420 craziness going to happen on future generations? Yeah. Yeah. The case you just talked about it's

00:46:03.140 children as accessories, right? This kid exists to validate me. My happiness is primary. The kids

00:46:09.340 need to fall in line so that I can be happy. And we really do see that in all of these conversations

00:46:14.560 about marriage and family, right? In essence, like what should be happening is the adults should be

00:46:20.400 sacrificing understanding and accommodating when it comes to what children need. Anytime you are talking

00:46:25.680 about a modern family and let the reader understand modern family just means child loss.

00:46:32.280 The child had to lose something to be in that home. There are some justifiable situations for

00:46:40.460 divorce. That's not the majority of divorces today, right? And then same-sex parenting,

00:46:46.180 third-party reproduction. All of these modern families means the child has to lose something

00:46:51.200 they have a right to, something they need, something that is developmentally optimal for them

00:46:56.880 to be in the home. So what's going to be the repercussion? What's going to be the fallout?

00:47:00.780 We have decades of emotionally malnourished children. We talk in the book about how there's

00:47:05.760 three staples of a child's social emotional diet, mother's love, father's love, stability.

00:47:11.340 All those three things will be found in the natural family, the intact home. Anytime you're

00:47:17.080 working outside of that, you're going to have emotionally malnourished children, children that

00:47:21.440 have a hard time governing themselves and therefore are going to have more run-ins with police,

00:47:25.280 children who can't thrive in school, which we're seeing today, children who are more likely

00:47:29.480 to seek that parental affection, mother's love or father's love, in the context of a boyfriend

00:47:34.360 or a girlfriend. That's why we see drastically increased numbers of teen pregnancy in kids who

00:47:39.780 are fatherless. I mean, every social ill that we are facing today, 90% of homeless youth are

00:47:44.720 fatherless, right? 67% of kids who attempt suicide are fatherless, right? When we starve children of their

00:47:52.460 fundamental rights, we are going to see it manifest in behavioral disorders, in poverty rates, in

00:47:58.920 incarceration rates. And so you can't mess with a child's life and childhood and expect that there's

00:48:05.720 going to be no fallout in their adulthood. There will be. So, you know, I know that the recent study

00:48:12.280 survey that came out said that conservatives don't really care about the gay marriage issue anymore,

00:48:17.760 right? They don't really care about marriage as an issue. Well, guess what? You're never going to get

00:48:21.800 anything you want, conservatives, unless you major on marriage, marriage as a social justice institute

00:48:28.000 for children, because you can't have small government without big marriage. That's the bottom line.

00:48:33.900 You won't get anything you want unless you can restore the natural family.

00:48:38.540 And the left understands that in a way that conservatives don't, I think, because

00:48:43.100 they understand that, as I've heard it said before, that

00:48:48.340 the family is the incubator of liberty. It's where you get your values. It's where you get your

00:48:52.260 sense of belonging and security. If you don't get that from the family, which is what

00:48:56.120 happens when you start to redefine the family and you tear apart the family and

00:49:01.080 you even come after parental rights, when you start to break that down,

00:49:05.440 then, like you said, kids start to look for their values in other places. So you look

00:49:09.320 for it, you know, government-run schools. You look for it on social media.

00:49:13.100 You look for it ultimately from the state. Everyone wants to belong somewhere.

00:49:17.720 Everyone wants to feel that they're taken care of. If you're not getting that from your mom and

00:49:22.040 your dad, you're going to get that from something else. And that is what progressivism bets on,

00:49:28.440 that it can get, especially an impressionable child, to find their meaning and find their belonging

00:49:35.920 and find their sense of care from the state, from activism, from, you know, the political

00:49:44.600 social movement of progressivism. That is why you see so often government-run schools and teachers

00:49:51.800 trying to insert themselves between the parent and the child, especially when it comes to things

00:49:55.860 like gender identity. That is why you get these corrupt judges and corrupt agencies and organizations

00:50:02.560 and bureaucrats trying to usurp the role of the parent in the name of liberating a child.

00:50:11.200 What that ends up with is vulnerable kids who are at risk for so much. And I just remind people all

00:50:18.220 the time, the state does not care about your kid. They don't care about your kid. They don't care

00:50:22.300 about their well-being. Progressivism and all these social movements in general, even, you know,

00:50:26.820 conservatism, whatever it is, they don't love your kid and care about your kid and want the

00:50:31.960 well-being of your kid the way that you do. So you're absolutely right. This is something

00:50:36.460 conservatives and Christians, especially those who say they're inclined towards social justice,

00:50:40.220 have to care about. That's exactly right. There will be no social justice until we can secure

00:50:45.780 individual justice for every kid. There just won't be. And you're exactly right. Kids tend to,

00:50:51.920 you know, we used to answer that. Every adolescence is asking the question, who am I?

00:50:55.580 And the answer used to be, well, I am Italian, you know, my family's Italian, or I am the daughter

00:51:01.660 of my father, right? You know, who immigrated from Mexico and then, you know, made his life here.

00:51:06.780 Well, when you have the breakdown of the family, kids are still asking that question and the world

00:51:11.020 is happy to give them an answer. The world, unfortunately, especially the LGBT crowd says,

00:51:18.200 we're happy to tell you who you are, right? And who you are is whatever sexual feelings you're having

00:51:24.540 at that moment. Very fleeting. But I'll tell you what, they're going to give kids the community,

00:51:30.380 the belonging, the connection, the identity that they are made to have answered with their family.

00:51:35.420 The government is happy to offer the protection that fathers should be giving. They're happy to

00:51:40.240 offer the care and the nurturing that mothers should be giving. These are primary needs that when

00:51:46.940 the family breaks down, it's not like those needs go away. Kids are going to just find it in less

00:51:52.300 stable, less trustworthy, less connected sources. I just went to the doctor yesterday

00:51:56.560 with my kids for a physical exam. I posted the picture on Twitter and the doctor said,

00:52:03.260 you know, I want you to step out of the room, mom. And I said, I will, if my kid's okay with it.

00:52:07.120 But we were going through the form of like all the different things. Like, are you doing this?

00:52:11.840 Are you involved in drugs? Are you wearing a seatbelt? And my daughter and I talked about,

00:52:15.180 why are they asking these questions? Who's really responsible for that when it comes to the kids?

00:52:18.920 And my daughter said, well, the parents. And I said, well, what these forms are saying is

00:52:22.320 parents really aren't responsible. Like the question is to whom do children belong? The answer

00:52:28.180 should be parents. But when you're talking about like primary care and safety, like, and the doctor's

00:52:33.700 asking that, what the form is really saying is kids belong to doctors, kids belong to the government.

00:52:39.520 And when schools are offering these kinds of curriculums and answers and separating them

00:52:45.280 from their parents through LGBT questions, what they're really saying is kids belong to

00:52:49.800 schools. Right. And that's wrong, right? Kids belong to parents because parents are the ones

00:52:54.260 ultimately who offer the protection and provision that kids need.

00:52:58.340 And I know it's often done under the guise of, you know, for example, a teacher saying,

00:53:05.520 you know what, if you want to change your pronouns, or if you you're a little girl, if you want to act

00:53:09.720 like a little boy, and we won't tell your parents, it's you, it's, it's done under the guise of,

00:53:16.440 you know, protection from abusive parents or something like that. Really what it is, I mean,

00:53:22.560 it's no, I mean, it is different, but it is same. It's the same essential thing is when some kind of

00:53:28.700 abuser says, this is going to be our little secret. You don't need to tell your parents about

00:53:32.080 that. I mean, that's a telltale sign of abusing a child. And I don't think that's the intention of some

00:53:37.260 of these teachers and administrators doing that to these kids, not all of them. But anytime you try

00:53:42.800 to insert yourself between a parent who loves their child, um, uh, and the child, uh, you are

00:53:51.640 creating, you are creating an abusive environment, whether or not you intend that the most well-meaning

00:53:58.760 progressive teacher, you're not going to, you're, that teacher is not going to care if that child ends

00:54:04.080 up mutilating their body at 15 through hormones and surgery. And then it's suicidal because it

00:54:09.580 didn't fix the problems that they really had. That teacher is not going to lose a wink of sleep over

00:54:13.800 that. The parent will, the parent will never overcome it because they actually love that child.

00:54:18.440 Um, I hate to wrap this up, go ahead. The teachers, the doctors, they're not going to be raising the

00:54:22.800 kid, you know, created through an unplanned pregnancy because they were validating this child's,

00:54:27.580 you know, sexual identity or encouraging them to be sexually, um, you know, explore themselves

00:54:32.740 sexually, right? They're not the ones that are going to face the consequences with the child.

00:54:36.700 That's why parental rights actually are parental rights because they have a duty to care for the

00:54:41.220 child. That duty entails responsibility and those responsibilities extend to rights.

00:54:46.320 Government doesn't have a right to kids. Teachers don't have a right to kids. The doctor doesn't

00:54:49.580 have a right to kids because they don't have the same duty and obligation to kids. Um, if anybody

00:54:54.020 has more questions about this, I did a video on it for, um, what would you say.org with the Colson

00:54:58.300 Center on do parental rights conflict with children's rights? The cheat, the short answer

00:55:03.220 cliff notes version is nope, they don't. They work hand in hand. Okay. Tell us some more. I know that

00:55:08.840 people are going to be just, they're going to love this conversation. How can they support you? How can

00:55:14.860 they support your organization? Tell us a little bit about what you guys do so they know what they

00:55:19.040 are supporting if they choose to donate or follow along. Yeah. So we've got the very modest goal of a

00:55:25.100 global takeover. We want every conversation about marriage and family everywhere, whether it's a

00:55:30.560 conversation you're having with your friend, who's thinking about sperm donation, or whether it's

00:55:35.500 talking, um, with the Czech Republic about their, um, the pushes in their country to redefine the family.

00:55:42.040 We want every conversation to begin with. What about the kid? So we aim to change hearts and we aim to

00:55:48.680 change laws because right now there are very few organizations that will speak up when Virginia wants

00:55:54.680 to strip the words mother and father from their parenthood laws. Um, there's very few organizations

00:55:59.820 that even talk about the harms of surrogacy when New York slips that provision in, um, in the midst

00:56:05.320 of a government shutdown. So nobody is standing up for the legal rights of children when it comes. I

00:56:10.200 mean, we've got, thank God, hundreds of organizations defending children's right to life. We need to start

00:56:15.840 defending the rights of children on this side of the womb as well. So we're aiming for cultural change,

00:56:19.960 heart change, mind change, but I want kids to have a presence in the courtroom and in the legislature.

00:56:28.040 So we're working on that as well. Um, and threats to children are global. So this is a global children's

00:56:33.600 rights movement. You can go to our website, subscribe to our newsletter. Um, if you've got a story of

00:56:39.580 missing out on what you needed in terms of not knowing your mother or father, if you were raised

00:56:44.960 by two moms or two dads, um, we're the safe space for you. Okay. This is the place where you can be

00:56:50.120 honest and, um, share your story with us. Um, because the world needs to know and, um, I'll do

00:56:55.920 everything I can to, to change the world with your story. And I love that you're not using these people

00:57:00.840 as some kind of political football. You really are providing a safe space. Obviously, if they want

00:57:05.920 to share their story publicly, um, I'm sure that you help with that, but I'm sure that there are also

00:57:10.880 people who just want to come to you and to say, Hey, I had a similar experience that you did.

00:57:15.840 Um, I, and want to feel validated because they're hearing from the world that if you were raised by

00:57:21.660 same-sex parents, that your feelings of longing for a mom or a dad are not valid, that maybe they're

00:57:26.400 homophobic. Maybe you hate the people that raised you that actually those kids probably love. I

00:57:31.420 guarantee they love both the parents that raised them and they don't know what to do with these

00:57:36.460 feelings of wanting to know where they really come from because now there's not even a word for

00:57:40.840 it within polite society, that father hunger and mother hunger that's just seen as bigoted in some

00:57:46.620 way. So, um, I'm thankful that you provide a refuge for that. Yeah. It's gaslighting. And that's what

00:57:53.860 these kids have experienced is, you know, the whole world is telling them, you're so lucky to have two

00:57:58.200 moms. And yet they're like, but I desperately want a dad. And so that just means they feel guilty

00:58:03.760 for wanting what every kid in human history has wanted. And yeah, about 25% of the stories that people

00:58:09.820 share with us, make it to the website. Most people just need a place to share. Yeah. So we can be

00:58:14.660 that. Yeah. Thank you so much. I love the work that you guys are doing. I loved this conversation.

00:58:19.940 I was actually, um, like typing to my team while you were talking. I was like, Oh my gosh, I love her.

00:58:25.680 You are so clear. And that is what I appreciate so much about you. Gosh, the church needs clarity. We need

00:58:33.860 clarity. So many people are so vague on this subject because we're just so afraid and you know,

00:58:39.920 maybe rightfully so we're afraid of hurting feelings. And I don't ever want to intentionally

00:58:43.420 hurt anyone's feelings. Um, cause everyone is made in the image of God and they're, these are

00:58:48.540 sensitive identity laden topics, but man, we need clarity and to speak the truth in love. And it is

00:58:55.660 in love when we are talking about the rights of children and being a voice for the voiceless,

00:59:01.020 because children are so marginalized universally and really don't have a voice. So thank you.

00:59:06.880 Thank you so much. Can you remind me again? What's your, uh, what's the website? How can

00:59:10.240 they follow you? Then before us.com, uh, there's a subscription, um, place at the bottom where

00:59:16.840 you can get our newsletters. Um, I'm on Twitter at advo Katie, like advo underscore Katie kind

00:59:22.440 of like advocate, but kind of activisty. Um, we're on Instagram them underscore before underscore

00:59:28.280 us. Um, so there's a lot of places you can find us on social media. We'd love to connect

00:59:33.120 with you. Perfect. Thank you so much, Katie. I appreciate it. Great. Thanks so much for having

00:59:38.360 me. Of course.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 02, 2021

Ep 482 ｜ Children Have the Right to a Mom and a Dad ｜ Guest： Katy Faust

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