Katie Faust is a writer, speaker, and advocate for the rights of children to have a mother and a father. She is also the author of the new book, "They Were Created By Us," which details the story behind the creation of gay and lesbian children.
00:00:00.500Welcome 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.
00:00:09.240All 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.
00:00:18.140You 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?
00:00:25.480We're going to be talking to someone who has written a book about such things, but also has lived inside this element.
00:00:33.940She's also got a new book out called Them Before Us. We're going to be talking to Katie Faust. Stay tuned.
00:00:55.480Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:01:02.760In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:01:14.500For 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.
00:01:46.960But 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.
00:01:58.500And they also said, also, if you disagree with us about gay marriage, that means you hate gay people.
00:02:02.980And I thought, okay, first of all, lie and lie, because I've been working with kids for a couple of decades.
00:02:10.360And some of the deepest wounds that kids have and experience is when they have lost their mother or father.
00:02:17.000It doesn't matter if their parent died or if they lost them through divorce.
00:02:21.480Or 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.
00:02:32.040So I was like, kids don't care if they're being raised by two men or two women.
00:02:37.120What you're saying is they've lost their mother or father, and that's never a small thing for kids.
00:02:42.720Number two, this idea that if you support traditional marriage, you hate gay people is ridiculous.
00:02:50.440You know, my parents were married until I was 10.
00:03:03.400I don't consider her partner my mother, but I consider her partner my friend.
00:03:06.820So this idea that animus or phobia or hatred or intolerance towards gays was motivating traditional marriage supporters, I just thought, well, this is insane.
00:03:16.920And 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.
00:03:24.740So that's kind of how I got into this business, this friend-losing discussion.
00:03:31.440But 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.
00:03:49.440And it really shows the lie of those who say, oh, you're a hater and a bigot.
00:03:54.280And 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.
00:04:52.620And it's really for the good of those children.
00:04:55.680You 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.
00:05:52.220Anytime 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.
00:06:00.280The weak don't have to sacrifice for the strong in our faith lexicon, right?
00:06:08.560It's always the strong who sacrifices for the weak.
00:06:11.240But in our cultural moment, when it comes to marriage and family, the exact opposite is true.
00:06:16.120Adults are expecting children to sacrifice their rights so the adults can live as they please.
00:06:21.320And that's something that we fight against all through the book, that we refute all through the book.
00:06:25.500And we are indiscriminate in terms of what we're going to go after when it comes to that.
00:06:32.520We land firmly on the rights of the child.
00:06:35.380And then we look at every marriage and family issue through the lens of that right.
00:06:41.660We 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.
00:06:52.700We 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.
00:07:02.680We 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.
00:07:09.060They're going to be missing out on the maternal or paternal love that they crave.
00:07:13.740We can look at reproductive technologies, sperm and egg donation, where we are intentionally at birth separating children from their mother or father.
00:07:24.380Look, 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.
00:07:33.020We 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.
00:07:47.660And so the whole theme through the book is, look, nobody gets a pass here.
00:07:51.720It doesn't matter if you're single or married or gay or straight.
00:07:55.200All adults must conform to the rights of all children.
00:07:58.520And unfortunately, right now in our culture, we've got that exactly backwards.
00:08:04.600What an incredible lens to view all of these problems that seem so momentous in people's lives.
00:08:12.500And yet focusing on them this way is an incredible lens to see the truth for what it is.
00:08:17.720But also a challenge because these are not easy things.
00:08:23.760You're asking people to live virtuous lives, what used to be called virtuous lives, which take sacrifice, as you said.
00:08:32.220And 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.
00:08:44.920And down the road might come infidelity, which is harmful to children.
00:08:49.360What 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.
00:09:00.080Well, you call it living a virtuous life.
00:09:02.460Throughout every chapter of the book, we call it doing hard things.
00:09:05.240That is the only way this gets turned around.
00:09:08.940And that is that adults need to do hard things in every single situation.
00:09:12.440Because when adults don't, what they're really saying is, I don't want to do the hard thing.
00:09:20.520We spend a fair amount of time doing marriage for couples that are struggling.
00:09:25.040I'm not going to diminish the challenges that married couples face.
00:09:28.300You know, you mentioned a couple of them.
00:09:31.180There's endless reasons that couples struggle.
00:09:34.000But 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.
00:09:41.540I'm just so frustrated with the financial situation.
00:09:43.660Or, you know, he doesn't communicate with me the way that I want.
00:09:46.980When 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.
00:09:58.460And that is what we find in every single marriage and family issue.
00:10:01.720Somebody that experiences same-sex attraction, who desperately wants to be a parent, who probably would be an incredible mother or father.
00:10:08.260If 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.
00:10:24.100It's the same thing with couples who struggle with infertility, which is a crushing load.
00:10:30.880You know, for my friends who have struggled with infertility, they'll say, this is like having your heart broken month after month after month.
00:10:37.700But 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.
00:10:48.980So there's nobody that gets a pass in the children's rights world.
00:10:52.920At some point, almost all of us are going to have to sacrifice our own desires to protect the rights of children.
00:11:00.400And that's just something that is pretty absent from the culture today.
00:11:05.640Well, even though in the culture today, there are some areas people are willing to sacrifice for.
00:11:12.500There's all sorts of programs to bodybuild and take on a special diet so you can look really super.
00:11:19.360And that's hard to stop, you know, drug abuse and drinking or something.
00:11:24.260Those 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.
00:11:42.020Yeah, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Helen Alvarez.
00:11:49.600We 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?
00:11:59.840The courts over the last several decades have favored what she terms adult sexual expressionism over these fundamental rights of children.
00:12:07.160And so we've got a battle on all fronts.
00:12:09.520We're fighting the culture. We're fighting, you know, the current political push, the trendy political push.
00:12:16.280We're fighting many of these terrible court decisions that have come down.
00:12:20.060And so, you know, what we say in the book in chapter 10, it's all about, like, how do we fight well?
00:12:24.320What does this global children's rights movement look like?
00:12:27.500And we tell people, you know what? No one's going to do this for you.
00:12:31.380Politicians aren't going to do this for you. Your celebrities aren't going to do this for you.
00:12:34.620The academia is not going to do this for you.
00:12:36.320You must do this. You must be the children's rights advocate, because if not you, then no one.
00:12:45.780Tell us, and this is really some of the hardest questions we receive at LifeSite.
00:12:50.240You 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.
00:13:03.160How 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.
00:13:16.720And it's just, they're not only heartbroken, they don't even know what to do to, do we go and do this?
00:13:23.460And do, you know, and it's so confusing for people.
00:13:26.580I know you've spoken to this, so I'd be very interested to hear you respond.
00:13:53.320And I'm never, ever, we cannot diminish, right, the reality that our children are drinking a firehose of ideology everywhere that they turn.
00:14:01.180They'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.
00:14:06.540They 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.
00:14:14.820And so parents need to, first of all, hopefully when their kids are very young, be very honest with themselves about the threat.
00:14:56.500That is simply your indication that they are ready to be equipped to be warriors.
00:15:00.840So by the time they are in sixth grade, you should be introducing them to challenging concepts.
00:15:06.740Your children, hopefully, my recommendation is you want to equip them to be experts on all of these difficult subjects.
00:15:14.560They should know more about it than all of their friends.
00:15:17.620That means that we have to talk with our kids sooner than we would like about things like socialism, abortion, transgenderism, same-sex attraction.
00:15:24.980All of the things that they're going to get the distortions from the rest of the world, you need to get to them first.
00:15:29.940And it's not just a little mom and dad come together in a special embrace, and that makes a baby.
00:15:58.780So parents, in those middle school times, especially, you need to get to your kids first, okay?
00:16:05.140I actually did an article about this at The Federalist where I go into a little detail.
00:16:08.880But the bottom line is you have to equip your kids on these difficult subjects.
00:16:13.860And that means you're going to be talking about them a lot.
00:16:16.260When 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.
00:16:26.720Do you know what a puberty blocker is?
00:16:28.900Why do you think kids can't understand the implications of that, right?
00:16:32.080And it's very much a Deuteronomy chapter six kind of thing, right?
00:16:35.100You talk about this as you walk along the road, when you sit down at a meal, when you lay down at night.
00:16:39.580You are bringing these questions and answers into every aspect of life.
00:16:43.720It's not a, we're going to go over this book this week.
00:16:46.320And then you never talk about it again.
00:16:48.080You've got to instill these principles into your kids.
00:16:50.260You need to show them how it applies to real life, because I guarantee you they are getting it everywhere else.
00:16:54.920And if you don't talk to your kids about this, the world is happy to do it for you.
00:17:41.240I'm so grateful for the hundreds of organizations that are doing this.
00:17:44.780And 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.
00:17:52.840I wrote a book called Them Before Us that is coming out in, gosh, like two weeks from now.
00:17:59.560With my co-author, Stacey Manning, you can find that on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
00:18:03.920Christian Books has it on discount right now.
00:18:05.660So if you need to avoid the Amazon pipeline, there's a great place to buy it.
00:18:12.180But, you know, I don't have a huge, heavy presence.
00:18:14.960I'm really just an ordinary mom, probably just like you.
00:18:17.680But 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.
00:18:50.260And if this is your hard, oh boy, you've been gifted in a huge way by the Holy Spirit.
00:18:55.680So 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.
00:19:04.800How do you speak to them in a way that they can hear you and still hear your love?
00:19:50.220And 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.
00:19:58.580Now, I would recommend you, parent, becoming an expert on this.
00:20:02.380I'm going to shift really quickly and talk about CanaVox.
00:23:41.940Natural 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.
00:23:48.040And 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.
00:23:58.420You know, what you're talking about is very real right now.
00:24:00.760I was talking with one of my children who has said, Mom, my friends are going in a really difficult direction.
00:25:05.140You don't get to decide whether or not the truth is a rock.
00:25:08.180You should not try to change it into anything but a rock.
00:25:10.940It's simply a question of, are people going to build their life around the truth you're sharing or will they trip over it?
00:25:16.140So 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.
00:25:24.780Not because you chose a poor time to speak about it.
00:25:27.680Not because you didn't lay a great foundation.
00:25:29.700Not because you added additional stumbling blocks to their path.
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