The John-Henry Westen Show - Can I attend my grown-up child's same-sex 'wedding'？

00:00:00.500 Welcome to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show, where I'm very pleased to give you someone who is going to be able to answer some of the most difficult questions.

00:00:09.240 All the time at LifeSite, we hear from parents who are really troubled about their kids are going to enter a same-sex relationship, or even if they are in such a thing.

00:00:18.140 You know, now the parents are being asked about going to a same-sex wedding, and what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to deal with this?

00:00:25.480 We're going to be talking to someone who has written a book about such things, but also has lived inside this element.

00:00:33.940 She's also got a new book out called Them Before Us. We're going to be talking to Katie Faust. Stay tuned.

00:00:55.480 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:01:02.760 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:01:08.260 Katie Faust, welcome to the program.

00:01:10.660 Thanks for having me, John Henry. I'm so glad to be here.

00:01:13.460 Very good to have you.

00:01:14.500 For those of our viewers who might not know you so far, tell us a little about your background and why you came into this field, which is so fraught with trouble and questions and accusations and all sorts of things.

00:01:28.420 Please tell us how you got here.

00:01:30.120 Well, I kind of like to say that the other side radicalized me, honestly.

00:01:34.320 I think I'm like a lot of your viewers, where I just wanted to live my life.

00:01:37.640 I wanted to keep my friends, you know, my husband's a pastor at a Baptist church.

00:01:41.800 I was ministering to my people.

00:01:43.540 I was raising my kids, my four kids.

00:01:46.960 But the other side, really, on the topic, right around the gay marriage debate in 2012, when it really started to heat up, what I heard the other side saying is kids don't need moms and dads. 0.91

00:01:58.500 And they also said, also, if you disagree with us about gay marriage, that means you hate gay people.

00:02:02.980 And I thought, okay, first of all, lie and lie, because I've been working with kids for a couple of decades. 0.93

00:02:10.360 And some of the deepest wounds that kids have and experience is when they have lost their mother or father.

00:02:15.940 And it doesn't matter how.

00:02:17.000 It doesn't matter if their parent died or if they lost them through divorce.

00:02:21.480 Or now, you know, I'm acquainted with so many kids who are created through sperm and egg donation who experience profound loss because they have been intentionally separated from a mother or father.

00:02:32.040 So I was like, kids don't care if they're being raised by two men or two women. 0.66

00:02:37.120 What you're saying is they've lost their mother or father, and that's never a small thing for kids. 1.00

00:02:42.720 Number two, this idea that if you support traditional marriage, you hate gay people is ridiculous. 0.99

00:02:50.440 You know, my parents were married until I was 10. 0.99

00:02:53.120 They divorced.

00:02:54.060 My dad dated and remarried.

00:02:55.560 My mom repartnered with a woman, and they've been together for more than 30 years.

00:03:00.360 I love them.

00:03:01.260 I love my mom.

00:03:02.580 I love her partner.

00:03:03.400 I don't consider her partner my mother, but I consider her partner my friend.

00:03:06.820 So this idea that animus or phobia or hatred or intolerance towards gays was motivating traditional marriage supporters, I just thought, well, this is insane.

00:03:16.920 And so that was kind of my breaking point where I thought, I need to start speaking up, especially when it comes to this lie that children don't need mothers and fathers.

00:03:24.740 So that's kind of how I got into this business, this friend-losing discussion.

00:03:29.340 An incredible background.

00:03:31.440 But also, you are sort of a living, breathing example of the lie that's being told, and it's being told big time about those who defend traditional marriage, those who, which is very much close to your heart, defend the rights of children to have a mother and a father.

00:03:49.440 And it really shows the lie of those who say, oh, you're a hater and a bigot.

00:03:54.280 And it's funny, even from a very traditional Christian perspective, which we come from here, the whole notion of wanting everyone in eternal life is one of love, never one of hatred or bigotry or anything like that.

00:04:09.220 So thank you for that.

00:04:11.800 Well, and I think, let me just frame it even a little further.

00:04:14.640 The reason why it's never motivated by hate is because we're always for something, right?

00:04:19.860 We are for people being in a relationship with God.

00:04:23.560 We are against certain ideas and certain behaviors.

00:04:26.580 The same is true in the marriage and family debate.

00:04:28.660 We are not against gays.

00:04:29.880 We are not against people who are in struggling marriages or who are infertile or who are divorced or single mothers by choice.

00:04:35.120 We're not against them.

00:04:36.360 We are for children.

00:04:38.080 We are for children's rights to be protected and respected.

00:04:41.800 And that means we must be against certain ideas and certain behaviors and certain adult choices.

00:04:47.220 But it's not because we're against those adults.

00:04:49.100 It's because we are for children.

00:04:51.320 Absolutely.

00:04:52.100 Absolutely.

00:04:52.620 And it's really for the good of those children.

00:04:55.680 You talk about, you write about, and in your book you cover many, many proofs, studies showing the harms that children experience from these types of things.

00:05:07.980 If you would, tell us a few of those.

00:05:09.680 Yeah, you know, kind of the overall theme is, well, one of them is modern family is really just code for child loss.

00:05:18.320 If you hear the term modern family, it really means the kid had to lose something to be in that family.

00:05:23.480 Sometimes kids lose a parent to tragedy.

00:05:26.940 A birth mother has to relinquish her child for adoption.

00:05:30.660 We mourn over that, even though we recognize that adoption is, you know, as one of my adoptive parent friends says, divine plan B.

00:05:38.340 We still recognize that there's loss there.

00:05:40.540 If a child loses a parent to death, we mourn with them.

00:05:43.060 But now we're in this new era where children are not losing their parents due to tragedy.

00:05:48.040 Children are losing their parents through intentionality.

00:05:51.120 And that's an injustice.

00:05:52.220 Anytime an adult asks a child to sacrifice so they can live as they please, that's an injustice, especially if it's happening, you know, within the Christian world. 0.52

00:06:00.280 The weak don't have to sacrifice for the strong in our faith lexicon, right?

00:06:08.560 It's always the strong who sacrifices for the weak.

00:06:11.240 But in our cultural moment, when it comes to marriage and family, the exact opposite is true.

00:06:16.120 Adults are expecting children to sacrifice their rights so the adults can live as they please. 0.90

00:06:21.320 And that's something that we fight against all through the book, that we refute all through the book.

00:06:25.500 And we are indiscriminate in terms of what we're going to go after when it comes to that.

00:06:32.520 We land firmly on the rights of the child.

00:06:35.380 And then we look at every marriage and family issue through the lens of that right.

00:06:39.640 So the definition of marriage, right?

00:06:41.660 We can come to a right understanding of the definition of marriage because man, woman, marriage for life is the only relationship that unites a two people, the two people to whom children have a natural right.

00:06:52.700 We can look at no-fault divorce and say, this is an injustice because children will lose at least 50% of both parents and the stability that they need to thrive.

00:07:02.680 We can look at same-sex parenting and say, look, kids are always going to be losing an adult to whom they have a natural right.

00:07:09.060 They're going to be missing out on the maternal or paternal love that they crave.

00:07:13.740 We can look at reproductive technologies, sperm and egg donation, where we are intentionally at birth separating children from their mother or father.

00:07:22.440 We can look at surrogacy.

00:07:24.380 Look, this is always the loss of a child towards their birth mother, the only person that they really know in the whole world on the day that they are born.

00:07:33.020 We can look at adoption and say, look, of all of these different situations, adoption is an institution centered around the needs of children, whereas reproductive technologies are a marketplace centered around the desires of adults.

00:07:47.660 And so the whole theme through the book is, look, nobody gets a pass here.

00:07:51.720 It doesn't matter if you're single or married or gay or straight.

00:07:55.200 All adults must conform to the rights of all children.

00:07:58.520 And unfortunately, right now in our culture, we've got that exactly backwards.

00:08:03.540 Absolutely.

00:08:04.600 What an incredible lens to view all of these problems that seem so momentous in people's lives.

00:08:12.500 And yet focusing on them this way is an incredible lens to see the truth for what it is.

00:08:17.720 But also a challenge because these are not easy things.

00:08:23.760 You're asking people to live virtuous lives, what used to be called virtuous lives, which take sacrifice, as you said.

00:08:32.220 And it's challenging because that gets back to men being faithful to their spouses, including not tempting themselves with looking even at films that might depict things that they know are going to tempt them.

00:08:44.920 And down the road might come infidelity, which is harmful to children.

00:08:49.360 What do you, where do you, you know, I guess you don't even apologize for knowing that this is challenging and calling for a sacrifice.

00:09:00.080 Well, you call it living a virtuous life.

00:09:02.460 Throughout every chapter of the book, we call it doing hard things.

00:09:05.240 That is the only way this gets turned around.

00:09:08.940 And that is that adults need to do hard things in every single situation.

00:09:12.440 Because when adults don't, what they're really saying is, I don't want to do the hard thing.

00:09:16.040 Here, kid, you do it instead.

00:09:17.840 Right?

00:09:18.380 Like my husband is a pastor.

00:09:20.520 We spend a fair amount of time doing marriage for couples that are struggling.

00:09:25.040 I'm not going to diminish the challenges that married couples face.

00:09:28.300 You know, you mentioned a couple of them.

00:09:31.180 There's endless reasons that couples struggle.

00:09:34.000 But when we don't insist that the adults do the hard work, what we're really saying to them, if they say, you know what, I'm just, I just can't do this anymore.

00:09:41.540 I'm just so frustrated with the financial situation.

00:09:43.660 Or, you know, he doesn't communicate with me the way that I want.

00:09:46.980 When adults in the situation of a married couple refuse to do the hard work, really what they're saying is, hey, kids, this cross is just too heavy for me.

00:09:56.480 Here, you take it instead.

00:09:58.460 And that is what we find in every single marriage and family issue.

00:10:01.720 Somebody that experiences same-sex attraction, who desperately wants to be a parent, who probably would be an incredible mother or father.

00:10:08.260 If they were to form their family around their emotional and romantic inclinations rather than around a child's right to their mother and father, they're forcing the child to sacrifice for the sake of the adults rather than doing the hard thing and forcing their desires to conform to the child's rights.

00:10:24.100 It's the same thing with couples who struggle with infertility, which is a crushing load.

00:10:30.880 You know, for my friends who have struggled with infertility, they'll say, this is like having your heart broken month after month after month.

00:10:37.700 But we as adults must address those devastating questions of infertility in ways that do not infringe on children's right, right to life or right to their mother and father.

00:10:48.980 So there's nobody that gets a pass in the children's rights world.

00:10:52.920 At some point, almost all of us are going to have to sacrifice our own desires to protect the rights of children.

00:11:00.400 And that's just something that is pretty absent from the culture today.

00:11:04.680 Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:05.640 Well, even though in the culture today, there are some areas people are willing to sacrifice for.

00:11:12.500 There's all sorts of programs to bodybuild and take on a special diet so you can look really super.

00:11:19.360 And that's hard to stop, you know, drug abuse and drinking or something.

00:11:24.260 Those are hard things, but those seem to be like the socially acceptable forms of sacrifice, whereas giving up the extra sexual desires or whatever else would also lead to sacrifice is said, oh, no, you shouldn't do that.

00:11:42.020 Yeah, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Helen Alvarez.

00:11:48.240 She's one of our advisors.

00:11:49.600 We cite her in chapter one of the book about how not just culture is moving away from encouraging adults to do hard things in the area of marriage and family, but the courts have, right?

00:11:59.840 The courts over the last several decades have favored what she terms adult sexual expressionism over these fundamental rights of children.

00:12:07.160 And so we've got a battle on all fronts.

00:12:09.520 We're fighting the culture. We're fighting, you know, the current political push, the trendy political push.

00:12:16.280 We're fighting many of these terrible court decisions that have come down.

00:12:20.060 And so, you know, what we say in the book in chapter 10, it's all about, like, how do we fight well?

00:12:24.320 What does this global children's rights movement look like?

00:12:27.500 And we tell people, you know what? No one's going to do this for you.

00:12:31.380 Politicians aren't going to do this for you. Your celebrities aren't going to do this for you. 0.99

00:12:34.620 The academia is not going to do this for you.

00:12:36.320 You must do this. You must be the children's rights advocate, because if not you, then no one.

00:12:43.120 Absolutely. Amazing.

00:12:45.780 Tell us, and this is really some of the hardest questions we receive at LifeSite.

00:12:50.240 You know, we are, well, our culture is full of right now these broken relationships, these invitations really by the culture to enter into relationships really that, as you said, are harmful for children.

00:13:03.160 How is a parent to deal with this, with their older kids who are considering a same-sex relationship, or in one, and now saying we're going to get married, and perhaps the parents are invited to a wedding, or things like this.

00:13:16.720 And it's just, they're not only heartbroken, they don't even know what to do to, do we go and do this?

00:13:23.460 And do, you know, and it's so confusing for people.

00:13:26.580 I know you've spoken to this, so I'd be very interested to hear you respond.

00:13:31.660 Well, how long do you have?

00:13:35.040 We've got the time.

00:13:36.040 This is one of those questions I think for most people is so burning.

00:13:39.180 But I will say, I'm a mom with four kids, raising them in Seattle.

00:13:45.640 A couple of them are at the public school now and have been in the past.

00:13:49.380 And so I will say, it is a war zone.

00:13:53.320 And I'm never, ever, we cannot diminish, right, the reality that our children are drinking a firehose of ideology everywhere that they turn.

00:14:01.180 They're getting it in the schools, they're getting it on their social media platforms, they're getting it from their friends, everywhere they turn.

00:14:06.540 They are getting this distorted idea of what it means to be a human, and what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be a man, and what marriage is, and what children are, and what you should do with your bodies.

00:14:14.820 And so parents need to, first of all, hopefully when their kids are very young, be very honest with themselves about the threat.

00:14:22.900 Yeah.

00:14:25.040 And the reality that you will be fighting this on every side.

00:14:28.100 So here's my brief recommendation.

00:14:31.760 Up until age 10, you must saturate your children in truth and beauty.

00:14:35.060 You need to filter out damaging and distorted ideologies and people that would seek to lead your kids astray, okay, up until age 10 or 11.

00:14:41.960 Once they get to middle school, they shift into a new way of thinking.

00:14:45.320 You'll see it happen, because they'll start saying, but how do we know that Jesus is the only way to heaven?

00:14:49.400 Well, but what if we're wrong?

00:14:50.580 But what if this isn't the truth?

00:14:51.940 And a lot of parents are taken aback by that.

00:14:53.880 Like, they panic.

00:14:54.720 Oh, no, my kid's going to reject.

00:14:56.000 No.

00:14:56.500 That is simply your indication that they are ready to be equipped to be warriors.

00:15:00.840 So by the time they are in sixth grade, you should be introducing them to challenging concepts.

00:15:06.740 Your children, hopefully, my recommendation is you want to equip them to be experts on all of these difficult subjects.

00:15:14.560 They should know more about it than all of their friends.

00:15:17.620 That means that we have to talk with our kids sooner than we would like about things like socialism, abortion, transgenderism, same-sex attraction.

00:15:24.980 All of the things that they're going to get the distortions from the rest of the world, you need to get to them first.

00:15:29.940 And it's not just a little mom and dad come together in a special embrace, and that makes a baby.

00:15:35.720 Nope.

00:15:36.300 You need to get down into the weeds with your kids.

00:15:38.980 It has to be you.

00:15:39.960 You have to be first.

00:15:41.200 Because whoever the kid hears from first about all of these subjects, they are going to automatically consider the expert.

00:15:47.020 So if the first time your kid sees porn is when his friend in sixth grade puts the cell phone in his face and says, look at this.

00:15:53.960 Who do you think the kid's going to go back to when he wants to know more information about porn?

00:15:57.800 It's not going to be you.

00:15:58.780 So parents, in those middle school times, especially, you need to get to your kids first, okay?

00:16:05.140 I actually did an article about this at The Federalist where I go into a little detail.

00:16:08.880 But the bottom line is you have to equip your kids on these difficult subjects.

00:16:13.860 And that means you're going to be talking about them a lot.

00:16:16.260 When you see it in the news, you pull your kid into the world and you say, hey, look at this decision that the U.K. court just came out with last year saying that they feel like kids can't consent to puberty blockers.

00:16:26.720 Do you know what a puberty blocker is?

00:16:28.900 Why do you think kids can't understand the implications of that, right?

00:16:32.080 And it's very much a Deuteronomy chapter six kind of thing, right?

00:16:35.100 You talk about this as you walk along the road, when you sit down at a meal, when you lay down at night.

00:16:39.580 You are bringing these questions and answers into every aspect of life.

00:16:43.720 It's not a, we're going to go over this book this week.

00:16:46.320 And then you never talk about it again.

00:16:48.080 You've got to instill these principles into your kids.

00:16:50.260 You need to show them how it applies to real life, because I guarantee you they are getting it everywhere else.

00:16:54.920 And if you don't talk to your kids about this, the world is happy to do it for you.

00:16:59.140 Wow.

00:17:00.500 That is, that is awesome.

00:17:02.900 I know.

00:17:03.300 And so true.

00:17:04.180 How much time do you have?

00:17:05.260 No.

00:17:05.920 Oh, and we did a same-sex wedding question.

00:17:08.380 We can talk about that too.

00:17:09.380 Please do.

00:17:10.080 Because that, that's one of those burning questions.

00:17:12.160 But that, what you've just said is such an eye-opener.

00:17:14.780 I want to make sure, just before we get to that, people know where to find you.

00:17:19.140 People know where to find your book, your other book, and where to find your site.

00:17:22.620 If you can mention that first, and then we'll go into that, that second question.

00:17:26.540 Yeah.

00:17:26.740 So I run zenbeforeus.com, which is the only organization solely devoted to defending children's rights on this side of the womb.

00:17:36.240 I love my pro-life friends.

00:17:39.640 I love the fight against abortion.

00:17:41.240 I'm so grateful for the hundreds of organizations that are doing this.

00:17:44.780 And now it's time to take that mentality into the marriage and family debate and defend children's rights now and here on this side of the womb.

00:17:52.840 I wrote a book called Them Before Us that is coming out in, gosh, like two weeks from now.

00:17:59.560 With my co-author, Stacey Manning, you can find that on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

00:18:03.920 Christian Books has it on discount right now.

00:18:05.660 So if you need to avoid the Amazon pipeline, there's a great place to buy it.

00:18:10.640 I'm on Twitter and Facebook.

00:18:12.180 But, you know, I don't have a huge, heavy presence.

00:18:14.960 I'm really just an ordinary mom, probably just like you.

00:18:17.680 But that's kind of what we've got right now is we've got a lot of ordinary people who are willing to do the extraordinary things that the big people that we're electing to do or the, you know, the social influencers, that it's just too expensive for them to do.

00:18:32.140 Because this is hard, right?

00:18:33.500 You choose to speak out on this.

00:18:35.100 You're going to lose some friends.

00:18:36.100 And that's pretty painful for most of us.

00:18:38.280 Like on the, I'm more of a grace giver than a truth teller naturally.

00:18:41.660 And so it's hard for me to speak up on this because I don't want the rift and I don't want the conflict in my relationships.

00:18:47.100 But kids are worth it.

00:18:48.420 So we need to.

00:18:49.600 Absolutely.

00:18:50.260 And if this is your hard, oh boy, you've been gifted in a huge way by the Holy Spirit.

00:18:55.680 So let's get to that really hard one with same-sex relationships and your kids and what do you do when you're invited to a wedding and so on.

00:19:04.800 How do you speak to them in a way that they can hear you and still hear your love?

00:19:09.260 Good.

00:19:10.080 Let's start with high schoolers.

00:19:11.480 Okay.

00:19:11.800 Because my kids are in high school.

00:19:14.020 They have a lot of friends who are identifying as bi or trans or bi-curious or queer or whatever.

00:19:19.560 So first of all, with your high schoolers, you want to get down and first of all, you want to be the person that they are talking to.

00:19:26.160 So with high schoolers, rule number one, don't flip out.

00:19:31.300 Okay.

00:19:31.780 When they say to you, hey, I kind of think that I'm bi or I feel like I might be a boy trapped in a girl's body.

00:19:38.500 Your heart might think, what the?

00:19:41.600 Your face needs to say, thanks for telling me.

00:19:44.980 Like, can you explain it to me a little bit more?

00:19:46.780 I'd love to just hear more why you're coming to those conclusions.

00:19:49.560 Okay.

00:19:50.220 And so you are going to either be able to reaffirm to your kid in your response, whether or not you are the best person to talk to or the worst person to talk to.

00:19:58.580 Now, I would recommend you, parent, becoming an expert on this.

00:20:02.380 I'm going to shift really quickly and talk about CanaVox.

00:20:05.520 CanaVox, C-A-N-A-V-O-X. 0.96

00:20:08.300 It is the best place for parents, moms, dads to get equipped on all of these difficult topics so you are ready for those conversations.

00:20:16.780 CanaVox.com.

00:20:17.600 So let's talk about the people with adult children who are in same-sex relationships, who have invited them to a same-sex wedding.

00:20:24.180 At CanaVox, I help them with some videos called Dear Katie.

00:20:28.000 You can find that at the CanaVox website.

00:20:29.660 And we have a video specifically on this.

00:20:31.540 Here is the kind of spark notes version.

00:20:35.460 Your daughter, who is in a same-sex relationship, is precious.

00:20:39.400 You love her.

00:20:40.520 There is no reason.

00:20:41.760 There is no need.

00:20:42.520 And you should not cut her out of your life.

00:20:44.860 Right?

00:20:45.200 Actually, I would say you should be the most faithful and the most devoted to her of anybody that she knows.

00:20:50.100 I hope that my mom and her partner think of me that way.

00:20:53.920 I hope that when they think about the top people that love them, I make like the top two.

00:20:58.280 I hope that that's what they think about me.

00:21:01.700 So you should be hosting your daughter's birthday party.

00:21:04.380 You should be having her and probably her partner over for brunch. 0.79

00:21:07.460 But there are a few places where that is going to cross a line into your conscience.

00:21:12.940 And I would say the same-sex marriage is probably it. 0.55

00:21:15.920 Because what really is a wedding?

00:21:18.320 Right?

00:21:18.520 What is that?

00:21:19.460 It's not, hey, we're celebrating her and her tennis partner's victory. 0.85

00:21:24.380 You are celebrating the sexual union of two women.

00:21:27.960 And you can look at that from the perspective of natural law and public policy and say,

00:21:32.640 that is not what marriage is for. 0.99

00:21:33.840 But my guess is many of your viewers also are going to have a conflict with that on a faith level.

00:21:39.440 And so you cannot violate your conscience.

00:21:41.880 And that's really painful.

00:21:43.080 Because we all know that the world is telling that daughter that this is who she is.

00:21:48.640 That if people do not accept not just her feelings of same-sex attraction and recognize that as a reality,

00:21:54.380 but also validate and encourage and endorse all of her same-sex behavior and choices,

00:21:59.080 that they are rejecting that woman herself.

00:22:00.960 And so that is a very difficult situation and one that I think requires a lot of contemplation and prayer.

00:22:09.060 But ultimately, what you're doing when you attend a same-sex wedding is you are validating a same-sex sexual union.

00:22:17.400 And for many Christians and Catholics, and even those who are basing their arguments on natural law,

00:22:23.440 that would be one of the few activities that you would say, that's not something I can participate in.

00:22:28.220 But I also don't want to sugarcoat that we all know that there's a cost to making that decision.

00:22:32.300 Yeah.

00:22:32.960 Yeah.

00:22:33.640 These costs are very, very real.

00:22:37.280 Sometimes it leads to, sometimes temporarily, but, you know,

00:22:40.880 real outbreaks of animosity and rejection and saying, never contact me again.

00:22:47.460 Are there ways back?

00:22:48.740 You've been in this for a long time.

00:22:50.380 You've talked to a lot of people who have gone down this road.

00:22:54.620 Is there hope on the other side of having to make that hard decision and doing it in love as best you can

00:23:00.820 and having befriended them and having done sort of everything you thought in your heart and with your faith

00:23:05.980 and with any reason that you could muster it, this was the right thing.

00:23:09.200 But still, I'm being rejected here.

00:23:13.140 In the long run, have you seen some hope come from that stance?

00:23:19.220 Yeah.

00:23:19.860 Well, I will quote one of my favorite writers.

00:23:22.520 His name is Doug Mainwaring.

00:23:24.100 I think you probably know who he is.

00:23:25.620 And I love it because he says, you'll never be on the wrong side of history when you're on the right side of natural law.

00:23:32.800 And that is just that these truths will never be buried.

00:23:38.380 It doesn't matter what kind of legal decisions are being made.

00:23:40.700 It doesn't matter where it's going.

00:23:41.940 Natural law, the realities of what it means to be human, the realities of male and female are going to rise to the surface at some point.

00:23:48.040 And hopefully when they do, either in relationships or in public policy discussions, we are going to be able to return to a more human honoring perspective.

00:23:58.420 You know, what you're talking about is very real right now.

00:24:00.760 I was talking with one of my children who has said, Mom, my friends are going in a really difficult direction.

00:24:07.200 I've been really understanding.

00:24:10.700 I've asked lots of questions.

00:24:12.000 I've empathized.

00:24:13.600 I've tried to really get in and do hard things with them so that they know I'm committed to them.

00:24:18.940 But it's time.

00:24:20.700 It's time for me to say something.

00:24:22.600 But I know the cost is going to be high.

00:24:24.400 I know that some of them are going to say, I don't want to be your friend anymore.

00:24:27.580 And I said, OK, let's figure this out.

00:24:30.420 Because there are good reasons to lose friends.

00:24:32.900 And that's what we need to think through.

00:24:34.620 What are the reasons to lose friends?

00:24:37.200 And, you know, what we boiled it down to is you need to lose friends because you are speaking the truth.

00:24:44.380 But you cannot lose friends because you fail to speak the truth in love.

00:24:48.120 Right?

00:24:48.640 So how can you make sure that it's only the truth?

00:24:51.640 And this reality is reflected in 1 Peter, that Christ and his truth is a rock.

00:25:01.500 Some of us build our lives around it.

00:25:03.400 But some people stumble over it.

00:25:05.140 You don't get to decide whether or not the truth is a rock.

00:25:08.180 You should not try to change it into anything but a rock.

00:25:10.940 It's simply a question of, are people going to build their life around the truth you're sharing or will they trip over it?

00:25:16.140 So you need to make sure that how you present this, that his truth, Christ's truth, the reality of our bodies is the only thing they have to stumble over.

00:25:24.780 Not because you chose a poor time to speak about it.

00:25:27.680 Not because you didn't lay a great foundation.

00:25:29.700 Not because you added additional stumbling blocks to their path.

00:25:33.240 This truth is enough.

00:25:34.660 And if they choose to stumble over it, there's nothing you can do about it.

00:25:37.860 So I think that kind of helps free us up.

00:25:41.200 Sometimes we think there's a way that I can do this where everything's going to be fine.

00:25:45.240 No.

00:25:46.120 Sometimes it won't be fine.

00:25:47.540 But there's reasons for it not to be fine that are acceptable.

00:25:50.960 People.

00:25:53.220 Wow.

00:25:55.040 Amen.

00:25:56.300 Katie Faust, that is just amazing.

00:25:59.780 I want to thank you so much for being with us on the John Henry Weston Show.

00:26:03.860 And I'm going to encourage, please, all of our viewers, please go check out Katie's website, thembeforeus.com.

00:26:10.780 And you'll be able to reach her there and all of her amazing offerings.

00:26:15.140 Many thanks again, Katie.

00:26:18.960 Thanks for having me.

00:26:20.060 And God bless all of you.

00:26:22.160 We'll see you next time on the John Henry Weston Show.

00:26:26.640 Hi, this is John Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

00:26:31.140 I'm coming to you today because we want to be sure that we're communicating clearly with you, our loyal followers.

00:26:38.880 Things are really heating up, as I'm sure you can see.

00:26:42.600 Christians, conservative truth-tellers are being targeted, are being banned from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter.

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00:26:54.740 They are attempting to suppress any narrative that does not fit that of the mainstream media.

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00:29:04.180 I'm John Henry Weston, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

The John-Henry Westen Show - February 16, 2021

Can I attend my grown-up child's same-sex 'wedding'？

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