Ep 695 ｜ Why Children's Rights Trump Adults' Feelings ｜ Guest： Katy Faust
Episode Stats
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Summary
Katie Faust is the founder and director of Them Before Us, a global movement defending children's right to their mother and father. She is also the daughter of two gay women and was raised by two women. She knows what father hunger looks like, and that s part of why she does what she does.
Transcript
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What is the answer to the growing movement to sexualize children, to steal their innocence
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through things like drag queen story hour, inappropriate sex education, introducing them
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to the confusion of gender ideology, using them as political pawns and objects of validation for
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the sexual expression of adults? How do we combat the reconfiguration of the family,
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commercialized surrogacy, and the cultural and technological changes that ignore the rights and
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well-being of children? Our guest, one of my favorite guests, Katie Faust, has the answers
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to these questions for us. She is the founder and director of Them Before Us. It is described as a
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global movement defending children's right to their mother and father. She is also the daughter of two
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gay women. She has a biological mother who is married to a woman and was raised by two women,
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and that is part of the foundation for why she does what she does. She knows what father hunger
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looks like. She knows what it means to need a mother and a father present in children's lives
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to protect their well-being, to protect their innocence. There is an assault on these things
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today, and Katie is a fighter for the rights and security of children. You are going to love this
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conversation. It's going to educate you, empower you, and fire you up. That is what Katie does.
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As always, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com
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slash Allie. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie. All right, without further ado, here is our friend Katie.
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Katie, thank you so much for joining us. There are a million things I want to talk to you about.
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So first, I just kind of want to ask you to set us up because people are looking at the landscape
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right now, and we're seeing a lot of things that scare us when it comes to kids. It's getting a lot
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harder, I think, for progressives to hide the fact that sexualization of children is on the table.
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When we're looking at Drag Queen Story Hour, when we're looking at, in some cases,
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child drag shows that are being glorified and normalized in some places, when we're looking
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at the pornography that is being read in schools towards young children, the so-called sex education,
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like, give us a lay of the land. Tell us about the seriousness of this moment when it comes to the
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rights and the protection of kids. Yep. Well, obviously, sexual desire, adult sexual
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identification has become God. And because sex is connected to babies, that means that children
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have become the acceptable and necessary sacrifice on the altar of adult sexual desire. And so my
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organization deals with that primarily in the theater of marriage and family issues. But what
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you're starting to see is that children are also the necessary sacrifice in many of these other
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areas, especially when it comes to, for example, validating adult sexual expression through early
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sexualization of children who are brought to these Drag Queen Story Hours or used in the context of a
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school setting to validate adult sexual expression. And for some reason, these adults see that it is
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necessary to have these innocent children who don't have the critical thinking abilities to be able to
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push back and filter out what is being presented to them, right? They are seeing these children,
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they're functioning as accessories to validate adult sexual desire, sexual expression, because adult
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sexuality has become God. And so, of course, children are going to be brought into that. And this is harmful
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because children are not miniature adults, right? They don't have the same kind of reasoning capacity.
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They are not just smaller versions of adults that are able to process through and reason through all
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of this. We violate their innocence. We harm their minds. We harm their bodies when we then incorporate
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them into this larger conversation about adult sexual expressionism, whereas there should be a firewall,
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a protective boundary around children's right to innocence, children's right to, for example,
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an intact, unmedicalized body, and children's right to life, which we're all familiar with.
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And, of course, what we do at Them Before Us is children's right to their mother and father,
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regardless of adult sexual feeling, sexual expression, or sexual identity.
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A really good example of what you're talking about, I saw you comment on it on Twitter. I commented on it,
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too. It was a screenshot of a pregnancy announcement by a very elite private school in D.C.
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And it is sent from what's called Manatee Teachers, I guess that's the name of the preschool,
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to Manatee Families. And here is part of this email that would not have been even understood 10 years ago.
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We wanted to take an opportunity to share some exciting news with you, though you may have already
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noted Mr. Powell's growing belly. Tristan is expecting a kiddo mid-January, goes on to kind of
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detail what the parental leave will look like. And then this part I thought was really interesting and
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especially sad. When we do chat as a class, this email says, we will prepare the kids for Tristan's
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absence and explain the reason in age-appropriate ways. For kids who may have associations with
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pregnancy and a certain gender, only girls or moms can have babies. Tristan uses the language of,
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some boys have bodies that can have babies, and I have the kind of body that can have a baby.
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Isn't that cool? And then talks about how this person is going to describe being transgender and
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basically just says, look, this is how it is. This is what we're going to teach your kids.
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You can repeat our language at home. And as you said, takes down that firewall of innocence,
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that basic understanding that kids have that, oh, women have babies. Women can become moms. There's
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a difference between male and female and replaces that innate clarity that they have with confusion.
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You said that this is kind of the sexualization of children. What do you say to somebody who says,
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this has nothing to do with sex? This is just about acceptance. Oh my gosh. You know, that was such an
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example of using children as pawns to validate not just adult sexual expressionism, but to validate
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this massive child loss that this baby is going to experience because a single woman who has been
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surgically and or chemically altered to appear like a man has created an intentionally fatherless
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child, um, whose ABBA is how this, um, woman wants to be referred to, um, is not even going to reflect,
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right, the beauty of femininity. So there are, there's tragedy for this child. And then the school is
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coaching parents to condition children to validate the adult sexual expression at the expense of a child
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who is going to be intentionally fatherless. And so it's amazing how aggressive, uh, the other side
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is being in terms of messaging to young kids and they're doing it at these young, young grades because,
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um, children have this, um, you know, the, the trivium approach, the classical model of education
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recognizes that there's these sort of developmental benchmarks when it comes to, um, a child's mental
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reasoning. And up until about age 10 or 11, they're in that grammar phase where they naturally kind
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of sponge in and accept in an unquestioning way, whatever a trusted adult tells them. That is why
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you've got these aggressive educators who are seeking to introduce, um, gender confusion and these,
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um, adult ideologies into elementary school ages. And so you look at this text sent out from the
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school district, um, and how aggressive it is in terms of promoting this distorted worldview to
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preschoolers. And so my response to that is yes, we absolutely need to message to children about what
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is happening here. And it needs to align with what you said, right? What they know instinctually. And
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that is that men and women are different. Mommies have babies. Children need moms and dads. Isn't it sad
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if a child is going to intentionally lose their dad? It's sad, right? That the mommy thinks that she has to
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alter her body to be her true self, right? Like if they're going to grow up, go after our kids,
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we need to go after our kids even harder with truth and beauty because the other side isn't
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waiting for them to mature into those older stages, the middle school stage where they can process
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through competing worldviews and the high school stage where they are then able to confidently
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articulate their views. We have to get to kids as early as they are. And unfortunately it has to do with
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these distorted messages around sex and gender. Yes, I love that point. Someone is always discipling
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your children. And secular progressives take discipleship very seriously. I think in some
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cases more seriously than the church, more seriously than some Christian parents. And I don't think that
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this means, like I have a three-year-old and an 18-month-old, they don't need to know right now
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that there are people, there are women who think that they're men. They don't need to know that
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confusion. What they need right now is a foundation of what is true, a validation of what they already
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observe. Because as we just said, they already innately can tell the difference. Well, there's
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mommy, there's daddy, there's Grammy, there's papa, that's a man, that's a woman, that's a mommy. I mean,
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they make these observations all of the time. And to simply validate what is true, to lay the foundation
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of what is true. And as you were saying, eventually, you do kind of have to give them the tools to
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combat then the perversion of that, that they see. But you're absolutely right. It's happening at
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younger and younger levels. And there does seem to be this perverse motivation of needing child
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affirmation of adult sexuality. But why do they need, like, from your perspective,
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why would an adult need the validation of a four-year-old? I mean, that's really sick.
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Yeah, well, obviously, it's our self-obsession, right? This idea that the most important thing
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in the world is self or sex or maybe safety, as we saw in COVID, right? And so when that becomes
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your ultimate good, right, when that is the ultimate thing, then everything else must bow down
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to that ultimate thing. And so we're worshiping the wrong God. And the world is telling these adults
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to worship that God. We just have to make sure that our children are not participants willing or
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unwilling in their worship. So I love what you're saying about sheltering your kids. I'm actually in
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the middle of book number two called Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City, because I'm
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passionate about two things. I'm passionate about protecting the rights and well-being of children
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of the world. And I'm passionate about my children. I am passionate about making sure that my
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children are not consumed by the woke machine. And the reality is that you can do that as parents,
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even when everything is against you, your neighbors, your school district, right? So maybe your
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extended family, maybe even the church community you go to is being infected by woke-ism. And what
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you're saying about those early years is exactly right. Your job in those early years is to saturate
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your children in truth and beauty, right? They're already seeing the world as it is, you name it. And then
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you explain why moms and dads are different and why it's so good. Like why mommy has a baby in her
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belly and how incredible it is that mommy's bodies can do that, but daddy's bodies can't, you know,
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how moms and dads, they go to the same bedroom at night. But you know, when the cousin comes over
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with her boyfriend, they go to two different rooms at night. I mean, you're just narrating their world
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to bring out the beauty of the world and also the truth, right? In those early years, in the elementary
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school years, part of their world is going to involve situations that are broken, situations that
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aren't ideal. And then you explain that to them in the context of truth and beauty. But one of our
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rules is in those early years, in those elementary school years, we filter out aggressive adults. We
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filter out worldviews that seek to evangelize our children into that brokenness. But then when they
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get to middle school, that is when we begin what we call the great equipping, where we introduce them
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to those competing worldviews, because we want them to know that there are answers, and they can get
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I have so many thoughts about what you just said. I want to get first your thoughts on what the long
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term consequence is of parents replacing that kind of natural clarity and curiosity that children have
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about the world around them with confusion and chaos. Because I notice in my kids, as they are
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differentiating between genders, really without any instruction from us, that's just observations
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that they made out in the world, that that is kind of their way of making their world smaller.
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They're constantly putting things in categories, not just people, but also objects. They're
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constantly trying to make sense of where things go, what category it falls in, what purpose it has
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when they see people then out in public, and they say, you know, that's a family, or those are friends,
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or that's a boy, that's a girl. I can tell they're trying to make sense of a world that is new to them,
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it is novel to them, makes sense. They're trying to fit it into contexts that make it smaller and
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make it more chewable for them. And that seems to me like it would be a really important part of
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child development. And that if you rob that from a child, and you put them, even if it's just in a
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mental situation in which nothing really makes sense, there's no categories, you can't assume
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people's gender, you can't assume the categories that that people go, you can't assume what a family
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looks like, that that would be disorienting for a child. And I just want to know, like,
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what is the consequence of that for a child long term? What do you think?
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It's a massive destabilization, right? That you are destabilizing all of the things that they should
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be able to anchor themselves to when it comes to finding meaning, belonging, rationality, that we are
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supposed to be able to look at the natural world and then anchor ourselves to it. But if you cannot
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even trust what you see with your own eyes, you're not going to be able to rely on yourself,
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the people around you, that kind of thing. And honestly, ultimately, what it means is you are
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going to detach, right from these primary relationships in your life, and you are going
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to reattach to people that don't have the same level of commitment, trustworthiness and investment
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in your life, especially when it comes to the parent child relationship. So what you're saying is,
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you know, what I'm saying is, it's very, very important for parents to not only be the primary
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educators, but in those early years, to give children the foundations to connect themselves
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to the real world. And you as the parent are one of the main ways that that is going to happen.
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That happens a lot through what you direct their attention towards. That happens a lot in terms of
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helping them to properly contextualize when they see brokenness in the world. And ultimately,
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it is going to serve the purpose of reinforcing their relationship and their trust in you,
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You mentioned a couple minutes ago, filtering out those aggressive adults and aggressive
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influences that are either seeking sexual validation in children, in the name of inclusion
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and tolerance, that's typically how it goes, or those who are trying to indoctrinate your children
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with things that are wrong. And then equipping them, and it just reminded me of something that I read
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a while ago. I don't remember who initially said it. Maybe it was you. It sounds like something that
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you would say, is that groomers look for gaps. Groomers don't just look for who is the weak child,
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who is the vulnerable child, who is prey, but where is the vulnerable prey? Where is the fatherless child?
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Where is the child with absentee parents? Where is the child whose parents are more concerned
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about fitting in with the mainstream culture or being called the bigot than they are protecting
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a child from predation? Groomers look for gaps. And so what I'm hearing you say is that from an early
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age, parents are to be standing in the gap. And if you're not willing to do that, come what may,
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then you have abdicated really your God-given role as a parent.
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It's so true. And I think that in our world, when I grew up, I'm a Gen Xer. And so the big
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panic was strangers on the street abducting your kids. That is not generally where the battleground
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is today. The battleground is an information battle. It is a battle of authorities. Who is
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your authority? Where do you get your information from? And the gaps have got to be addressed when it
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comes to worldview, when it comes to what you think. When it comes to my kids, maybe they can't
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refute everything that a woke teacher says, but we have filled in the gaps enough for them to be
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able to spot a lie. They know enough that when a woke teacher says something about the evils of
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capitalism, they know enough to say something's not right there. And where do they go? To me and
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their father. And they say, you know, my teacher said something about capitalism, you know, and that
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being the instrument for poverty. But that doesn't sound right. Because I think that you mentioned
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that, you know, we have like decimated poverty in the last 40 years. And I thought you said something
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about the connection between, but what is that? Right? So like, we have got to fill in the gaps for
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our kids so that they are not prey for adults that are going to lie to them in all of these different
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areas. Because there are distortions abundant, unfortunately, today, when it comes to biological
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reality, economic reality, historical reality, you parent fill in the gaps so that they are not
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vulnerable to adults who would seek to prey on them, whether it's for just ideological indoctrination or
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something even more nefarious. You're telling your kids, yes, what to think in a lot of cases,
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but also how to think so that maybe you haven't covered every single possibly potential, you know,
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talking point from the left. But like you said, when they encounter one, they at least have the
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ability to say, hmm, you know what, she said this, but what about this? That's really, you at least
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want the gap, you want the pause to where they don't just automatically take it in because someone in
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authority suggested it, but they are willing to ask you, they're willing to read, they're at least
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willing to dissect it, giving them that tool of discernment after laying the foundation of clarity
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is what sets them up, as you said, to be able to combat those lies. And we hear, you know, I remember
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there was an article a couple years back from this Harvard professor saying that parenting or
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homeschooling is authoritarian. It's authoritarian because parents are telling their kids what to
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think. Look, everyone is telling kids what to think. Everyone is telling kids what to think. The
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only question is what? There is no neutral institution. The question is who has the right
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to tell a child what to think and how to think. Secular progressives apparently think that it's them
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that the parent doesn't have a right. And that example that you just gave of a son coming back to you
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and saying, hang on, mom and dad, didn't you say that? That's exactly what they're trying to prevent,
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especially when it comes to something like gender ideology.
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So ultimately, all of this comes down to the question, to whom do children belong? To whom do
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they belong? You can talk about curriculum, you can talk about medical decisions, but first you have
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to answer the question, to whom do children belong? And our answer to that question is children belong to
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parents. And from a children's rights perspective, that's really important because we have studied
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family structure for decades. And we know that parents, children's own parents are statistically
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the most invested in, protective of, and connected to their kids. That is why they have a right to
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direct their education. That is why they have the right to make medical decisions. Quick story,
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my kids are all very different. I've got four kids. They're all awesome. They're all teenagers
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right now. Teenagers are awesome. Don't let anybody tell you that they're not. But I live in
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Washington. Washington is nuts. Washington is insane. And Washington says that at 13, your child
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can direct their own medical care. And there is a requirement for the parent to leave the physical
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exam when your kid is in the room with the doctor. And so I told my daughter ahead of time,
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we were going in a year ago for her physical exam, her sports exam, so that she could play sports.
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And I said, FYI, the doctor is going to ask me to leave, but that is your decision. Do you want me
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to stay or do you want me to go? And she said, I got this, mom. And so we get to the medical,
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like the doctor's appointment, we kind of go through the height, weight, all of this medical history.
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And then he goes, I'm going to have to have you step out now, mom. And I said, that's my daughter's
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decision. Honey, what do you think? And she goes, oh, it's okay, mom, no problem. So I step out.
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Well, a minute later, he lets me back in. Right. And in the car, I was like, well, what happened
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there? And she said, well, he shut the door and he looked at me and he goes, so how many sexual
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partners I've had in the last year? And she goes, I haven't had any. And he's like, oh, you know,
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kind of like, well, it took, you know, too bad. You can really be honest with me. And he goes, well,
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have you done any drugs or are you drinking alcohol? And she goes, no, I'm not. And he goes,
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okay. And then she said, let me ask you a question. If I were having sex or if I was using drugs,
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would you tell me to stop? And he goes, well, only if it's a problem. And she goes, isn't it always
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risky for teenagers to be having sex and doing drugs? And he said, well, sometimes there's something
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that we can do to help them. And she said, don't you think it's the parent's responsibility to help
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them since they're the ones that are going to be around next year. If there is a problem, not you.
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And he just said, I think we're done here. And he opened the door and he let me come back in.
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Right. So that is an example of a parent. I mean, I've had plenty of parent fails. I have had times
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where my kids feel unequipped, but she was exactly right. It is parents who are the most invested.
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It's parents who should know that information. It's parents who should be having those conversations
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because it is parents who actually care. And we've never met this doctor before.
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He didn't know her name an hour before we got to that appointment. I am the one that is invested.
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I am the one that has been there forever. Right. I am the one that cares about where she's going to be
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two years from now, 12 years from now, 20 years from now. Right. So ultimately all these questions
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come back to, to whom do children belong? It is not doctors. It is not schools. It is not educators.
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It is not the government. It is the parents. And so first we have to get that question straight.
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And then honestly, all of the rest and all the right answers and all of the training are going
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to flow from that. There was, um, I don't know if you saw it and I don't know if I have it. Oh,
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I do. Okay. This reminds me everything that you're saying is exactly correct. And so good. And I think
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about it all the time with pushing gender ideology. And there was this, uh, delegate for Virginia,
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Elizabeth Guzman, who said that she is introducing legislation or has introduced legislation
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to, uh, expand the definition of child abuse in the state of Virginia to include parents who are not
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affirming of a child's gender identity, meaning that those parents can lose custody as has happened
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already in multiple places in the United States. If they say, okay, you know what? I don't want my
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13 year old to go on cross sex hormones. Um, they can actually have their child taken away. That child
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can be placed into the hands of the state. Um, we've already seen the consequences of that. I don't know
00:24:51.480
if you know who Yaley Martinez is a young child that was in California who was taken out of her mother's
00:24:57.340
custody because of the recommendation of school psychologists bounced around to different group homes
00:25:02.220
because her mom wouldn't, uh, affirm her male identity, ended up throwing herself on the train
00:25:07.740
tracks and committed suicide because she was taken away from the only person who cared about her.
00:25:12.780
And so like, and I guarantee you, none of the teachers or psychologists or the doctors or the CPS
00:25:18.760
workers showed up at that little girl's funeral because at the end of the day, they didn't care.
00:25:24.740
That's the consequence of separating a child from their parent for the sake of ideology.
00:25:29.160
And ultimately, again, that comes back to whom do children belong? And the school is saying they
00:25:34.600
belong to us. We can craft, we can hide, we can cultivate this alternative identity, um,
00:25:43.840
without parents' knowledge, without their consent, right? Because children actually belong to us.
00:25:48.340
So first we ask that question and answer that question to whom do children belong? Um, and if we
00:25:52.820
get that right, and that is, they belong to parents, then you can look at that situation in California
00:25:58.060
where Gavin Newsom is saying we will be a sanctuary state, you know, for children who want to gender
00:26:03.760
transition and emancipate themselves from parents or, um, put our finger on the scale of a custody
00:26:09.940
battle between two parents whose child, uh, identifies as the opposite sex. Um, and we're going to side
00:26:16.320
with the parent that wants to chemically and surgically castrate them. Um, ultimately, you know,
00:26:21.060
you get down to the question of to whom do children belong? And most of these issues are going to go
00:26:25.280
away. So that is where the battle needs to be. It is a parental rights battle in a lot of these
00:26:31.180
conversations, but then in the marriage and family debate, it's also a children's rights battle.
00:26:36.740
Yep. And unfortunately, as, as you know, and we'll kind of talk more about, um, what this is and like
00:26:42.140
how we kind of approach this, there are obviously biological parents who do a bad job. Like I'm thinking
00:26:47.620
of that family that was highlighted by Fox news just a couple months ago, this little girl whose parent
00:26:53.720
said, Oh yeah, from the time that she, or they said he was 18 months old, like he knew that he
00:26:59.820
was a boy and transitioned him into a boy and Fox news highlighted. This is like awesome and great
00:27:05.680
and wonderful. I mean, these are biological parents obviously doing, uh, abdicating their
00:27:12.360
responsibility. Then there was, I don't know, an even more disturbing story. If you can imagine it,
00:27:17.240
I saw it on Twitter. It was originally highlighted by libs of Tik TOK. This, uh, this pub in Eugene,
00:27:25.540
Oregon called old Nick's pub. They were having a child drag show and this little girl, she's 11
00:27:32.860
years old. Her name is Vanellope. I will link the thread so people can look at it. Uh, she has a drag
00:27:39.800
queen, uh, parent who is, I guess, a man who dances around like a drag queen. And this little girl has
00:27:47.640
been dressing up in these scantily clad dresses and performing for adults who are giving her money
00:27:53.660
for years. Since she was a little girl, this thread chronicles the history of her family and, um, and,
00:28:00.760
uh, how she has been raised from a very young age to kind of perform in a sexual way for people.
00:28:06.340
And this pub is defending themselves saying, it's weird that you guys are sexualizing her.
00:28:12.400
We don't see it sexually. Everyone else who is saying that they have a problem with this,
00:28:16.720
this pub is saying is sexualizing her. This mother isn't sexualizing her. The people giving her dollar
00:28:21.460
bills aren't sexualizing her. It's the people who have a problem with it. This is just about acceptance
00:28:26.940
and love. And I'm looking at this. I'm like, well, this girl is actually being sex trafficked.
00:28:31.480
She's being sex trafficked from a young age. That's what's happening. And there are people who are
00:28:35.500
actually applauding it. Who knows how much this goes on? I mean, what in the world do we do in
00:28:39.940
the face of an evil like this? Yeah. Well, we have to get very serious about who children are.
00:28:44.960
First, we figure out who children are, um, what they need, what they deserve, what they have a right
00:28:49.240
to. And yes, there are negligent, um, biological parents out there. They deserve our condemnation,
00:28:55.600
but when it comes to child thriving, um, we don't have to guess at what it takes for children to
00:29:01.400
thrive. Um, and that is whenever possible, their own mother and father married and raising them
00:29:07.100
together for life. Um, I, we have to get that right, right? First, we have to understand kind
00:29:12.600
of the concrete, what does it mean to be a human child? What do human children need? Um, they need
00:29:18.100
that mom and dad in their life. They need protection from sexualization. They need protection from adults
00:29:24.960
who would seek to exploit them. Children are vulnerable. And part of the role of adults is to
00:29:32.560
be an umbrella against all of the different ways that the world would seek to victimize them. And
00:29:38.140
unfortunately we have messages, um, going to parents these days that says, no, actually that kind of
00:29:44.700
exploitation is liberating for kids. So there is a huge role to play here. Uh, not just for thinking
00:29:52.760
adults, but especially for Christian adults, um, Christian adults who are mandated with child
00:29:58.160
protection, Christian adults who are warned against participation in anything that would cause
00:30:03.880
little ones to stumble. Um, and so there really is a place, especially for Christian adults to step
00:30:09.920
into this public debate and start to advocate on behalf of children, even if their own parents get it wrong.
00:30:22.760
Um, I'm sure that you saw a couple of days ago, everyone was reacting to this clip, uh, by a person
00:30:34.040
or the person in it is named Dylan Mulvaney. This is a guy who says that he is not just a woman, but a girl,
00:30:40.340
even though he is a grown man. And he plays kind of like a caricature of what he thinks, I guess, like a 12 year
00:30:45.960
old girl is, but has tens of millions of followers on Tik TOK and Instagram and Ulta platformed him as well as
00:30:52.340
another guy who thinks that he is a girl to talk about girlhood. And one of the things that he said, I reacted
00:30:58.020
to it on Monday is that he wants to be, um, a mom one day and that he totally can. Now people know my thoughts
00:31:06.020
on this. Give us your unfiltered reaction to not just that statement, but what it would actually look like
00:31:13.260
and mean for a child. If this person does become a parent, believing that he is a woman.
00:31:19.440
So I, I always begin answering these questions with first, we get down to what does the child need?
00:31:26.080
What is, what do they have a right to? Because once you understand that, once you can begin with
00:31:29.640
the child, most of these other questions answer themselves. So children are made from a man and a
00:31:35.200
woman, right? It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. Those two adults are statistically the adults
00:31:42.080
who are most likely to ensure that they are safe and loved. Like I already said, you know, those two
00:31:47.240
adults statistically are the most connected to invested in and protective of them. So if we really
00:31:52.580
believe that children deserve to be safe and loved, we will advocate for both biological parents, raising
00:31:57.440
them whenever possible. Those two adults also grant something to children that they crave. And that is
00:32:03.820
their biological identity. Um, whether it's an adoptee or whether it's a child created through sperm or egg
00:32:10.260
donation, many of those kids go on to have protracted searches to find their birth mother or their birth
00:32:16.660
father, because it's very hard to answer the question, who am I? If you don't know, whose am I?
00:32:23.600
And so when it comes to the children created through these third party reproduction scenarios,
00:32:28.380
it greatly impacts their identity. The largest study that we have on children created through sperm
00:32:34.040
donation, um, shows that they suffer disproportionate levels of identity issues and struggles because
00:32:41.400
being intentionally separated from a biological parent creates distress and confusion to the point
00:32:47.460
where they then are more likely to, um, battle substance abuse and delinquency in several areas.
00:32:53.600
Um, and then finally defending this fundamental child right to both biological parents will grant
00:33:00.340
children the perfect gender balance in the home, which maximizes child development because moms do
00:33:06.800
things that dads don't do. And dads do things that kids that moms don't do. And kids need both.
00:33:12.360
Um, that when you have a mom and a dad in the home, kids will have this well-rounded development.
00:33:17.880
Um, they will have their fine motor skills honed by mom. They'll have their gross motor skills
00:33:22.840
emphasized by dad. They will have a mom who's tends to focus on her, their immediate emotional wellbeing
00:33:28.520
inequality. They will have a dad who tends to push them to their limits and teach them abstract standards
00:33:34.100
of right and wrong. And, um, so like it is this amazing design. So what happens when a single man,
00:33:41.520
whether or not he pretends to be an adolescent girl, what happens when a single man decides that
00:33:47.300
he can have a child on his own? Well, he is always going to separate a child from a biological parent.
00:33:54.940
So they're going to be absent. One adult who statistically is going to the most be the most
00:33:59.500
connected to invested in and protective of them. That child will have gaps that can be exploited
00:34:07.760
because we have removed one of the greatest safeguards for child protection. Number two,
00:34:13.140
that child is going to suffer the identity struggles of not knowing who their biological mother is.
00:34:19.700
presumably this man would also rent the womb of another woman to gestate the child,
00:34:25.160
because no matter how much you identify as a woman, you cannot identify yourself into having
00:34:30.480
female reproductive organs necessary to create a child. So the child created through a surrogacy
00:34:35.800
arrangement is also going to have the loss of the only relationship that they know on the day that
00:34:41.640
they are born, something many adoptees refer to as a primal wound. And third, this child is going to
00:34:48.640
suffer mother loss. They're not going to have a woman in their home raising them. And then in the
00:34:54.780
case of this transgender man, they are going to have a distorted picture of femininity because even
00:35:01.360
though he calls himself a woman, even though he identifies as a woman, even though he, I don't want
00:35:06.500
to say dresses like a woman because I don't know women that dress like he does. I, you know, I don't
00:35:10.720
walk around in the little tube top and a pleated skirt. And I don't know a woman who acts like that
00:35:17.660
either. I mean, again, maybe some six year old girls, but anyway. Right. And so he has the brain
00:35:24.580
and the body of a man. He will interact with his child like all men do because men interact with
00:35:31.220
children, not based on how they dress, but based on their brain chemistry, based on their body
00:35:35.280
structure, their physical bodies actually drive the way that they interact with children. And if he were
00:35:42.260
to have a child, they would have the picture of a woman in their life, but they are going to be
00:35:48.940
interacting with that woman, the way that men interact with children. And so one of the main,
00:35:53.280
one of the most incredible things about having a male parent and a female parent is children have
00:35:57.500
the opportunity to interact with both halves of humanity. And, you know, I, I quote in my book,
00:36:04.160
um, children's rights champion, Bobby Lopez, who was raised by two women. And he said, you know,
00:36:10.340
Gabe, he also, um, identified as gay for many years. And he said, you know, kids that grow up
00:36:16.400
with a mom and dad, especially even gay kids that grow up with mom and dad, they don't understand how
00:36:20.500
lucky they are because you learn so much. You're socialized so much by having a female parent to
00:36:27.380
interact with and a male parent to interact with, because I did not have a male parent. I did not know
00:36:31.820
how to interact with other boys, other men in my life. I was just the social pariah. I had no
00:36:37.320
markers. I had no way to engage. I was so awkward around men because I never got the practice of
00:36:42.380
interacting with a man in my home. And so if this guy has a child, not, they're not even going to have
00:36:49.960
a male parent that they can identify with and say, this is what it's like to enter to interface with
00:36:56.100
half of humanity, because he's not even properly representing one half of humanity. And biologically,
00:37:00.880
he will be absent a female representation of half of humanity too. So what this is, is this is a, um,
00:37:08.660
this is a massive trade, right? This guy, Dylan gets his validation and this kid loses nearly
00:37:15.340
everything that they have a natural right to and that they need for proper development.
00:37:19.660
Yeah. And in some cases, I do think that having a child is an attempt to affirm their so-called
00:37:26.940
gender identity. I saw, I follow this account. You might follow them too. It's called males of Reddit
00:37:32.460
and it takes screenshots of the, like the subreddits of, um, like male to female transgender people and
00:37:43.460
just the different things that they think femininity is and wanting affirmation. And one post that I saw,
00:37:48.940
which is a pretty common theme, basically saying that when they have a child or when their partner
00:37:54.980
has a child, they are going to do everything they can to induce lactation so that they can attempt to
00:38:01.100
breastfeed their child. And one of the comments said, this is, this could be one of the most affirming
00:38:05.880
things I will ever do. So, I mean, that makes, just breaks my heart thinking about that. But again,
00:38:12.660
we have another example of adults seeking the validation of children in order to affirm their
00:38:19.900
sexual expression. Um, and I just can't imagine what the long-term consequences for society as a
00:38:28.300
whole will be. I mean, those chickens have not come home to roost fully yet. No, we have, we already
00:38:35.940
have such, um, robust data on other forms of not as extreme child deprivation when it comes to family
00:38:45.580
structure, even just no fault divorce, where the child probably still has contact with both mom and
00:38:52.700
dad, where they probably have representations of both halves of humanity in their life, even though
00:38:57.340
it's not every day, even no fault divorce has devastated children when it comes to their physical
00:39:03.460
health, their mental health, their emotional health, their academic health, their future relational
00:39:08.240
health. And that is mild compared to the total destruction of an alienation of a child from one
00:39:15.680
biological parent. And then the distortion of the parent in the home, when it comes to representing
00:39:21.280
the half of humanity that the child needs to, um, engage with, if they're going to be able to
00:39:26.400
develop those healthy social interactions later in life. So this is 100% the experimentation on children,
00:39:32.560
the use of children as accessories or tools for adult validation. You can also see those kinds
00:39:38.080
of responses. Um, when you look at men who have transitioned to women who are seeking to have,
00:39:43.440
um, wounds implanted in them, um, womb donation, um, and they're not doing it necessarily because they
00:39:51.760
want to, um, have a child that's secondary to the experience, right. And the validation that they would
00:39:59.440
get from having this female experience, right. It's not primarily about the baby. It's about, um, their own
00:40:05.920
validation for their sexual expression. And of course, of course, it's kids who have to pay the price.
00:40:22.880
Just a reminder to people is that this is all, in addition to just kind of being a sign of the times
00:40:28.880
in the evil spirit of the age that we're in, this is also a huge money making industry. And it's really
00:40:36.080
hard to create these lifelong slaves to the medical industry from, you know, childhood on,
00:40:42.640
if you have a parent who is interfering. So it really all does kind of just work together. Um,
00:40:49.520
to end the conversation, there's a million other things I could talk to you about. Let's wade into
00:40:54.400
even more, perhaps, uh, controversial territory because we haven't had an opportunity to discuss
00:41:00.000
this yet. And that is, uh, my colleague, Dave Rubin and his announcement that with his, uh,
00:41:06.560
with his partner that they are welcoming, have welcomed, I'm not really sure, um, two children.
00:41:12.560
Now I have to, you know, I have to caveat this. I've, I've, I've talked to Dave. He is,
00:41:17.920
I've met him multiple times, greatest interviewer in the business, kind person, husband,
00:41:24.160
is so kind. Um, I mean, from everything I know, great people, that to me, my response to this
00:41:32.400
saying that, you know, this is not something I can congratulate or celebrate has nothing to do
00:41:37.520
with that, but everything to do with part of what we talked about today, the belief that children have
00:41:42.320
a right to a mom and a dad. And what I think is the exploitation that is inherent in this, um,
00:41:49.200
surrogacy process. And what I want to get your response to is that, but also a lot of conservative
00:41:54.960
organizations saying, you know what? We're happy. Let's celebrate. Let's accept. We love life.
00:42:02.560
Life has already been reproduced in this case. What's the point of not, you know, saying yay to this? I
00:42:10.640
mean, what is your response to that kind of response to Christian conservatives who are like,
00:42:15.680
nah, let's just go ahead and congratulate? Well, I agree. I've been a Dave Rubin fan for
00:42:23.440
a long time. Um, he is a great interviewer and, um, it sounds like he and his husband are both great
00:42:28.800
people. Obviously I haven't met them personally. I don't have any questions about whether or not they
00:42:33.600
will be good fathers. I think that they're going to be stellar fathers. They cannot be a mother.
00:42:40.000
Neither of them can be a mother. They, to his credit, acknowledge that, you know,
00:42:44.880
in that long interview that he did with Jordan Peterson, he acknowledged we can't be a mother.
00:42:50.000
But what fascinates me is that they actually have had to have
00:42:54.400
an army of women to make up for the roles, um, and the missing gaps when it comes to the
00:43:00.880
women that they have excluded from this process. So they have purchased the eggs of a couple different
00:43:06.800
women throughout their different surrogacy attempts. Um, they are renting the womb of two different
00:43:11.280
women. Um, and there has been previous attempts as well. So they have paid several different women
00:43:15.760
for their wounds. Um, they've purchased the breast milk of several women so that they can have their
00:43:22.000
two industrial freezers of breast milk so that the baby can, um, benefit from not being formula fed.
00:43:27.920
They are going to have night nurses. They're going to have grandmothers. They are, you know, obviously,
00:43:31.760
Reuben is very close to his sister who he asked if she would be the surrogate and the genetic mother,
00:43:37.040
or at least the genetic mother, um, of the child. Their, uh, endeavor to create intentionally motherless
00:43:44.160
children has to borrow from the parts, from the female specific parts of several different women, eggs,
00:43:51.520
womb, breasts, and even the physical presence. Um, biology has made it very difficult to create
00:43:58.240
motherless children. Um, and only our modern technologies and a lot of money are able to
00:44:03.520
make it possible. Um, it's fascinating to me that Reuben in that conversation with Jordan Peterson
00:44:10.400
had a discussion about why they didn't adopt. And he said, well, there's just something so special
00:44:16.000
about a genetic connection. And, you know, Peterson absolutely validated that, right? When you look at
00:44:21.360
your kids and you can see not just your spouse or yourself, but your own parents or your siblings,
00:44:27.920
you look at that and you say, that is so precious. And that's why Dave and his husband,
00:44:32.560
David decided to each have a genetic child, because there was something they acknowledged
00:44:37.680
that was very special about seeing themselves reflected in their child. Now, the amazing thing
00:44:43.040
about this is all of this makes plenty of sense. If all that matters is what adults want,
00:44:49.120
but all of this is a very obvious violation of children's rights and well-beings. When you look at
00:44:55.040
it from the child's perspective, children long to know the biological identity of the woman whose
00:45:01.200
eggs they purchased, they're going to bond and have bonded with the woman that is gestating them.
00:45:06.960
It is her body. It's her milk. It's her voice. It's her smell that will soothe the child after
00:45:12.800
she's born. In fact, I've read testimonies of gay men who have procured children through surrogacy,
00:45:17.600
who cannot get the baby to calm down, even though, you know, they are the genetic fathers.
00:45:22.320
And only when the surrogate comes over and holds the baby, does the child calm because they have
00:45:27.120
an existing relationship. That just puts a lump in my throat.
00:45:31.840
Yeah. Like babies know their birth mothers, even though they may not be genetically related to them.
00:45:38.240
Babies long to be loved by a woman. Part of the things that we do at Them Before Us is we
00:45:42.720
catalog the stories of children who had two moms or two dads. They don't just want generic love.
00:45:47.840
They want maternal love and paternal love. And you can see this in what we call father hunger and
00:45:54.240
mother hunger. Children who are well loved by two dads very often experience mother hunger,
00:46:00.560
where they will go around to the women in their life, their aunts or their grandmothers or the nice
00:46:04.560
women at the daycare and say, will you be my mother? How about you? Will you be my mother? And
00:46:09.680
sometimes, you know, I follow these chats of gay men who have children and they'll say, gosh,
00:46:13.760
it's so weird. My kid has hit that stage where she's starting to call every woman mommy. And it's
00:46:18.160
like, there's no mommies in our world. Like most of the kids that we have around us are kids with
00:46:22.880
the gay dads too, but something inside of them longs to be loved by a woman. And so all of these
00:46:28.800
arrangements, right? When you look at it from the perspective of a child, they're losing the genetic
00:46:33.200
connection, right? Where the adults say, well, biology matters for me, but it cannot matter for
00:46:37.920
thee. They're losing the connection to their birth mother, right? The person they're bonding to.
00:46:42.560
They're losing the maternal presence in the home that they will probably long for every day.
00:46:50.320
And it's an injustice. And we can celebrate that these two babies that are born, that their life is
00:46:55.520
good and wonderful and valuable, but we cannot endorse and we cannot promote and we cannot validate
00:47:02.400
and we cannot legitimize processes that create intentionally motherless or fatherless children,
00:47:08.400
children who will likely go through the rest of their life with a lifelong mother wound or father wound.
00:47:25.680
So that genetic component, as you said, matters when a parent is looking in the face of their child,
00:47:31.040
but they're saying in this case that that genetic connection does not matter if the child is trying
00:47:37.360
to look into a face of a woman and find themselves. And I had never really thought about it exactly
00:47:43.760
like that. But as you said, we don't often look at these situations from the perspective of the child.
00:47:50.320
And I have Christians, Christians, every time I talk about surrogacy or every time I talk about this,
00:47:55.600
say that I am wrong, that I am mean for being against this. Why can't I just be happy? Well, aren't you pro-life?
00:48:05.840
Isn't this just bringing gay people and gay conservatives into like the pro-family movement?
00:48:12.380
Don't you want them to experience that? Why can't you just celebrate this? Why are you so hateful?
00:48:19.440
And they are never thinking about it from the rights and the well-being of a child. And they've also
00:48:24.720
sometimes bought into, I talked about with Dr. Brad Wilcox, the family diversity myth that the more
00:48:31.920
people are, as long as you're loved, you're fine. Or hey, and polyamorous relationships where you've got
00:48:38.080
three or four parents, whatever, that's just more people to love you. And so they just kind of delude
00:48:43.680
themselves into what we've been indoctrinated to think that love is love. And so the love of two
00:48:48.960
dads is the same thing as the love of your biological mom. And the science just says otherwise.
00:48:54.720
Well, and the stories of kids say otherwise. You know, chapter seven in our book is all about
00:49:00.400
third-party reproduction. It's all about children created through somebody else's sperm and somebody
00:49:05.060
else's egg. And we put about 30 stories in there. Read it. I dare you. I dare you
00:49:11.600
to read in their own words how these technologies, how the intentional separation from a genetic parent
00:49:18.000
impacted their sense of identity, their feelings of commodification, the discomfort that money
00:49:24.200
changed hands over their conception, the eeriness that they were treated like a build-a-bear,
00:49:30.560
a human build-a-bear, right? Like, read their stories. This is not a case of, you know, love does not
00:49:37.220
make a family when it comes to these kids and what it is that they're thinking about when they're
00:49:42.580
looking at their own life. That we know what children need to be safe and loved. We know
00:49:49.140
the major components needed for a stable identity when it comes to their development. And it is,
00:49:54.100
whenever possible, their own biological mom and dad raising them. And on the topic of surrogacy,
00:49:59.780
you are right that what we need to be as conservatives is we need to be the pro-child
00:50:06.740
party. That is what we need to be. We need to be the party that not only defends children's right
00:50:11.220
to life, but children's right to their mother and father. And on the topic of surrogacy,
00:50:16.740
that violates both. Surrogacy always involves IVF. IVF is not child-friendly technology. Only about 7%
00:50:24.420
of lab-created babies, babies created in vitro, in glass, will be born alive. The majority of them
00:50:30.740
are going to be discarded, spend their life in a freezer, deemed non-viable. They won't make the
00:50:35.620
grade the wrong sex. They won't survive the thaw. They won't survive the implantation. If they do
00:50:39.940
survive the implantation and there's too many of them or there's wrong sex, they will be selectively
00:50:44.340
reduced. That is abortion. That is standard language in surrogacy contracts. Surrogacy is not child-friendly.
00:50:51.300
IVF is not child-friendly. Add on top of that surrogacy. Surrogacy is not about babies.
00:50:56.420
Surrogacy is about on-demand designer babies shipped worldwide. It is the commodification of children.
00:51:02.980
And any conservative and especially any Christian has to stand against this. We have all of chapter
00:51:08.820
eight in our book about surrogacy. Read it, become an expert, and start to fight against it.
00:51:13.380
Yep. And most people simply have not thought about it. They just haven't thought about it. That was true of
00:51:17.780
me a few years ago. I hadn't thought about this. If you had asked me what I thought about it, I'd be
00:51:21.620
like, yeah, I don't know. Sure. It's funny. A lot of people, just because they haven't thought about
00:51:28.740
something, they assume that people who care about it are wrong or making a big deal of it. But I just
00:51:34.100
encourage you, if that's where you are, I understand because I've been there, just take some time to
00:51:38.540
educate yourself, especially through Katie. I've also had, if that comment about IVF shocked you, because
00:51:43.940
I find that it does shock a lot of people, a lot of Christian conservatives, go back and listen to,
00:51:49.780
of course, my episode that I did with Katie last year, but also I've done a couple episodes with
00:51:53.540
Jennifer Law. She talks about some of the ethical problems with IVF. And of course, this is not to
00:51:59.680
say that you who have used IVF aren't a wonderful mom or a wonderful dad or that your kids are not
00:52:05.480
valuable, made in the image of God. That's not about that at all. It's asking the questions that Katie
00:52:09.780
asks so well, what is the right of a child? What is best for the child? Not just what does mom and
00:52:16.840
dad want or what do two people want? So thank you, Katie. How can they find you and support you and
00:52:22.800
learn more about this subject that maybe they had never really thought about? Well, my nonprofit is
00:52:27.460
Them Before Us. So you can go to thembeforeus.com. Go to the bottom, subscribe, stay up on everything
00:52:33.460
that we've got going on there. This absolutely is the battle. We have to get this right. There's so
00:52:40.520
much moral confusion, even among the right, even among Christians when it comes to alternative
00:52:45.200
family structures. I think that we have in many ways, the alarm has gone off in terms of the
00:52:51.440
sexualization of children. Thank God. And we're willing to speak up and stand up and advocate on
00:52:57.140
their behalf. We also need to bring that kind of fire into the debate about marriage and family
00:53:01.760
because children are being victimized in these conversations, often under the name of love and
00:53:07.000
tolerance and acceptance. And it's just unacceptable. Children are precious. They have rights and they
00:53:13.780
need and deserve adults who are willing to stand up and speak on their behalf. Yes, definitely support
00:53:19.400
Them Before Us. Go check out their resources. They've got a lot on their website, but also make sure that
00:53:23.540
you read their book. Katie is an awesome follow. I love Katie, just what a fighter you are and how you
00:53:29.960
have helped me and educated me so much and inspired me on this topic over the last couple of years. I'm
00:53:36.260
just so thankful. So thanks for your courage and thanks for your clarity in continuing to equip people
00:53:42.060
to stand for the things that matter. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.