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

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Today we're talking to children's rights activist Katy Faust about standing up for the most vulnerable group in America: our kids. Faust believes that acknowledging the biological differences between men and women is integral to kids' development, as well as being raised by a married couple to ensure proper development. If you look at the statistics, kids who are raised in traditional homes tend to fare better in life than those who aren't. Marriage, as Faust says, is the most child-friendly institution there is, but unfortunately, the Left's attacks on marriage have hurt children over the years. --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers have traveled the US and met with the actual farmers that raise the livestock to ensure their craft beef and better than organic chicken they are sending to your table is the very best. Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE to get $20 off & free express shipping! Or if you subscribe today, you'll save 20% on each box of mouth-watering meals. Gabi uses your current policy to compare your current coverage with 40 of the top insurance providers like: Progressive, Nationwide and Travelers. They'll only show you policies that are the same or better than your current coverage. Go to Gabi.com/RELATABLE to start saving today! --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Man, oh, man, I've got an amazing conversation for you with Katie Faust. She started the organization then before us. She is a children's rights advocate. And guys, like, she is bold. She is brave. She is so clear on the things that matter when it comes to protecting kids and protecting the family. We are going to wade into what is now considered

very controversial and to some people's scandalous territory and talking about the importance of the formation of the family, sociologically, psychologically, psychologically for kids, also spiritually, theologically as well. I am so excited. for you to listen to her and to get behind her as she is fighting for the things that matter in such a courageous way. So excited to introduce all of you to Katie Faust. So without further ado, here she is. Katie, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Yeah. My name is Katie. I run a children's rights organization and a lot of conservatives are like children's rights, what do you mean? And what I'm talking about when I'm talking about

children's rights is children's fundamental right to be known and loved by both their mother and father. And some people are like, I didn't even know kids had that right. Well, they do. It's recognized by the most widely ratified a treaty in the world, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. And it's ratified by everything that we know about family structure and the benefits that kids gain from having both their mother and father in the home. So that is what we do. We take those children's rights and we apply it to every conversation

about marriage and family, whether you're talking about the definition of marriage, the impact of divorce, the harms of sperm donation, egg donation and surrogacy, you know, who has a right to adopt, the rise of cohabitation. So it's actually a pretty easy template

when it comes to addressing all marriage and family issues because when we center the conversation around the rights of the child, we come up with good personal decisions and good policy decisions. Yes, and I want to hear from you what it looks like ideally for those rights to be honored in a society versus what those rights look like today in the United States. Right. Well, you know, we just came out with a book in February that outlines all of this, you know, applies this to all different questions of marriage and family. But chapter one, we talk about children's rights. Why do they have rights? How do we know that these rights exist? And then we spend chapter two talking about the importance of biological

connection in the parent-child relationship. Chapter three, we talk all about why gender matters in the parent-child relationship. And chapter four is why marriage matters in a child's life. So when you are looking at natural law, when you are looking at the decades of social science research that we've done on family structure, what we see is all three of these are critical to kids, biological connection, having both a mother and a father, and the importance that stability brings and protection that marriage brings to a child's life. So if you're looking at it in terms of reality, data, research, and even just common sense, we see that kids need all of those. They need their married mother and father, loving them and loving each other. And that stacks the deck in favor of kids. Now, that's going to be true, regardless of what our laws say, regardless of what our culture holds in terms of what kids need. This is what the data says, and it's absolutely irrefutable.

The only way that you are going to be able to make a case that children don't need this, that this isn't ideal for kids, is when you're living solely in a world of ideology, which unfortunately is where much of the country is today. But when you actually confront the data and when you confront the real life stories of kids, what you find is none of these three things are optional. Biology matters, gender matters, and marriage matters in a child's life. And I want to go through those two things and get down to some specifics. Obviously, we want people to buy your book where you flesh this out in a lot more detail.

But just so people kind of understand where you're coming from and what you're talking about, first, when you talk about biology, why that is so important in the family makeup and in a child's life, what do you mean by that? Yeah. And so first of all, I'll say, I'd love to tackle the subject of adoption with you. We spend an entire chapter on adoption. I'm an adoptive mom. I believe adoption is a critical social institution for children.

But you can believe all of that and also recognize the statistical reality that biology matters in the parent-child relationship. So why? For two primary reasons. Number one, biology furnishes children with statistically the adults who are the most likely to be connected to, invested in, and protective of them, right? That, yeah, there are horrible biological parents out there. but they are a fraction of the kind of risk that kids face when it comes to households.

Conversely, a non-biologically related adult, especially an unrelated man, sharing a living space with a child is the most dangerous person in a child's life. And if you want a fact-check me on that, feel free to just pause this video and Google the words mother's boyfriend. And what you're going to find is pages and pages of the most horrific abuse and phylliside that would be child homicide that you're going to see on the internet, that biology matters. It doesn't just matter that somebody's in a relationship with a kid's parent. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to treat the child the way they would treat their own biological child.

So first of all, biology matters because statistically those are the people that are most likely to ensure the child is safe and loved. That's one reason why adoptive parents like me have to go through months of screening and vetting, and background checks, home studies, references, all of that, because social workers aren't fools. They know that it's risky to place a child in the home of unrelated adults. The other reason why biology matters in the parent-child relationship is because biological parents offer something to kids that no other adults can give them, and that's biological identity. Maybe you're like, well, who cares? Why does that matter?

Well, ask an adopted child. Ask a child conceived through sperm or egg donation whether or not it matters. 50% of kids created through sperm donation would say, my sperm donor is half of who I am. We've got decades of adopted kids searching for their first family because something about knowing from whom we came tells us who we are. And it seems to matter to kids who were separated from their mother or father. So that's the reason mainly why biology matters. It provides them with statistically the best odds for love and safety. And it tells them something about who they are, something that seems to really matter to kids. Right.

And I know people might have the tendency. Of course, I'm sure you run across this a lot to get defensive about something like, well, the mother's boyfriend is likely, unfortunately, statistically, to inflict some kind of abuse or negligence on kids that are not his, even more so than, say, a stepmother or girlfriend of a dad. And that is obviously not to say that that is the case all of the time. There are wonderful stories of women who find men who come into their home and become their husband and their stepfather who are a wonderful father and provider and protector of those kids who loves those kids like they are his own.

And those are wonderful stories. Just like you said with adoption, that can be a wonderful redemptive. story, but it is important for us to kind of remove ourselves even from our personal positive experiences with that and look at the statistics and just accept the fact, as you have said, that biology matters when it comes to a person's drive to really love and take care of that child. That's something that God placed in all of us. And even if you're not a Christian, even if you don't have the same, you know, biblical outlook on it that I do, even if you tried to look at this from an evolutionary standpoint, you could see why biology is so important in the

perpetuation of humanity and that instinct that especially mothers, I would say, have to protect their own, right? Yeah, absolutely. And we do recognize that there are heroic step-parents out there. People who are filling in the gap for a negligent or absent biological parent. And those situations absolutely exist. You know them. I know them. But I I don't know many of step parents who would say there weren't additional hurdles involved in forging this relationship, right? The main baseline in our movement of them before us is to put them, the children, before us, the adults. And what does that mean? That functionally means the adults need to do hard things.

So the rights of children are protected. I know step parents who are doing hard things to try to fill the space left by a biological parent. who refuse to do the hard thing, they deserve recognition. But when you look statistically, children raised by a stepfather, statistically don't fare any better than kids raised by a lone mother. And so it's really important to recognize these realities. When we are talking about the meta story of what's going on in our society and our desire to diminish the importance of biology in the parent-child relationship, that makes for bad policy.

And unfortunately, sometimes that makes for reckless decision-making in the individual home of kids. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they are. even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I'm wondering where we kind of got off rails with this. I think at some point, you know, we didn't need all of the sociological, psychological studies of the importance of the formation of the traditional and natural family to tell us that, okay, kids fare better when they're with their biological mom and dad.

Even better, say you come from a poor family. Maybe you don't have great parents, but they're your biological parents and they live together. You fare better with them than you would. A rich family who gives you everything and who gives you all the attention in the world who is not your biological. biological family. And that seems like it would have been common sense a long time ago, but somewhere along the way, we decided that the natural formation of the family is completely arbitrary, and that kids who are thrown into a completely different situation are going to fare just fine. I think you see that sometimes when you have things like we've heard of, you know, the corruption CPS and in the foster care system. You certainly see this in the reformation socially of the family.

where did all of this happen? When did we lose our common sense when it comes to this? Yeah, well, two places specifically. The first one is no fault divorce, right? We used to have this idea that, well, marriage has been the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known, right? That when we have healthy marriages, we have healthy children. There's minor exceptions. But when you do not have marriage, you are going to have deck. And that's what we've got. We've got generations of children who have been damaged. broken, and that's not to say that they are irredeemable. It means that they have significant hurdles ahead of them if they are going to reach the same level of thriving as kids whose needs were met in

their intact family. But when we want to talk about where the demise really began from a legal perspective, it was no-fault divorce. Because previous, prior to no-fault divorce, what we had was at-fault divorce, which was, you can get out of this marriage, but only in cases of abuse, abandonment, addiction. And then the court would side with the innocent spouse, right? The court would say, hey, the parent that is trying to keep the marriage together, upholding their marital vows, not being abusive, the one that is seeking to do the best for the kids, they would be rewarded both legally and socially.

But what happened when we passed no-fault divorce laws is, in essence, what we communicated is the marriage exists to make adults happy. And when adults cease to be happy, the marriage can cease to exist. And so then we transformed this critical institution for child justice and child thriving into simply a vehicle of adult fulfillment. And so then you take that mentality into everything else about marriage, right? Whether it's gay marriage or polygamy or whatever it is, if marriage is simply a vehicle of adult fulfillment, then there's all kinds of things romantically that can fulfill adults.

But if you're talking about marriage as an institution that protects and provides children with everything that they need, well, that's quite rigid, right? That means that it needs to be their own mother and their own father committed to one another for life. So that's legally where things started to change. But then the advent of reproductive technologies is another place where we really start to see the minimizing of the importance of things like biological connection with family, right? And a lot of those kinds of sentiments came along with phrases like, well, if I'm happy, the kids will be happy.

And I have a right to happiness or I have a right to parenthood, even if that means denying children, their fundamental, universally recognized rights to their own parents. So we kind of have this rise in two separate venues of the legal redefinition of family, but then the absolute breaking of the biological norms through sperm, egg donation, and now, surrogacy, where in essence, anything goes, right? If you can put together sperm, egg, and womb, you can walk out of the hospital with a baby that's not genetically related to you if you've got the cash. So we had kind of two forces working together at one time. And now we're at the place culturally where there really is no expectation that children have a claim or deserve a mother

and father. And also, I think a milestone was Obergefell, the official redefinition of what marriage is, this idea, again, that marriage is just something for happiness and that kids really did not, as far as I know, come into play in this decision at all, and thinking about, okay, what actually is a marriage? How do we define it? And where does that definition come from? Why has it traditionally been defined as, you know, naturally as a man and a woman? Why has parenthood exclusively been defined throughout human history as a mother and a father? And then all of a sudden in 2015, we think we're going to change that and kids are going to be able to adapt without any negative repercussions. I think it shows the hubris of human beings. It shows the misunderstanding

of human nature of progressivism and the weakness on the part of, I think, a lot of people who consider themselves Christians and conservatives to say anything about it. Even Christians and conservatives to say, or today are too scared to say that, hey, kids need a mom and a dad, even though literally all of human history everywhere in the world tells us that that's, tells us that that's true, right? Absolutely. We missed the boat on a Bergerfeld. Justice Kennedy did cite the needs of children with same-sex parents in his decision.

But, you know, I was one of six kids with LGBT parents to submit an amicus brief to a Bergerfell in that case. You know, I was raised by my mom and dad until I was 10, and then they divorced. and then I split time in the home of my father and then in my mother's home with her partner. And my mom was an incredible mom. I don't consider myself to be a woman with two moms, but I love her partner. She's my friend. And I can tell you confidently that a lesbian can be an incredible mother because I had one.

But I'll tell you what, a lesbian can never be a father. Two women can never be. Ten women can't be a father. And so what we did in our brief that we submitted to Aburgafel is we just filled it with the quotes of kids who are raised by two moms or two dads, who talked about their incredible father hunger or mother hunger. Because I'll tell you what, regardless of what the law says, you will never legislate away a child's longing for their mom or dad.

And that's what we do in chapter six of our book. We just fill it with dozens of stories of kids who were starved of that intentionally. And here's a really interesting aspect of the Obergefell decision. We made it so much, unfortunately, on the way. right about the cake baker and the photographer and the florist. Right. And yeah, there was a cost to them. But there is a cost to children because I'll tell you what happened.

When we legislated away husbands and wives, we legislated away mothers and fathers. Now, I don't think you'll be able to find an institution either legal or political in the United States that would even say that children should have a mother and father. Even some Christian adoption agencies. Even some Christian adoption agencies won't say that anymore. That's exactly right. And I'll tell you what, Christians, you've got a mandate to defend the fatherless, right? That is one of the four demographics in the Old Testament that deserves special protection and recognition from the people of God.

You are there to protect the fatherless, to prevent them. Like God's laws are actually there to prevent fatherlessness. When you compromise on marriage and God's design for sexual relationships, functionally, you are endorsing fatherlessness. When you mix in kind of moral weakness on the topics of reproductive technologies, now you are manufacturing fatherlessness. And you're manufacturing motherless children, something that the world has really never seen before.

Intentionally motherless children. Do you know how hard that is to create an intentionally motherless? child. And yet that's what we're doing when we fail to stand firm on the rights of children and when Christians especially compromise on God's design for marriage and sex. So I don't have a lot of patience for Christians who get this wrong. Because what you're doing is in essence you're saying, I desire my social acceptability more than I desire protecting the most vulnerable. You're so right. We say on this podcast, that's a Genesis one issue. God made them male and female. Being male and female, we're talking biologically. There's no biblical

category of so-called gender identity that's independent from biological sex. So God makes us male and female. Biology matters. There is a teleological aspect to us, meaning our bodies actually have a purpose as male and female. We see the formation of marriage, sex, and the family in the first chapter of the Bible. It's the first chapter of the Bible, which tells us it is foundational. And then we see that marriage really is a foretaste of the marriage between you know, between Christ and his church. And so it's not just, yes, of course, it's biological. Yes, it's social. Yes, it's foundational. All those things are so important. But for the Christian, it's spiritual because the formation of the family in Genesis 1 is talked about in a way as a metaphor

for the formation of the family of God. The formation of the church, the gospel itself, Ephesians 5 says, wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Paul explains that this is actually a picture of Christ in the church, that a wife submitting to her husband, a husband leading sacrificially his wife, is a picture of Christ in the church. Therefore, the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman has gospel significance. It has eternal significance. It has spiritual significance. So the Christians saying, well, you know, there are just a couple of verses about sex and stuff.

it's really not that important. I'm like, dude, if you can't defend Genesis 1, there's no way you're going to be defending the gospel, which is far more controversial than God made the male and female, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I'm not doing children's rights activism, I'm a pastor's wife. And so, like, this is my world, right? And you can make a case, and we do in our book, completely secular, right? It's just all research and all stories of kids.

But once you get into that world of the Christian worldview, there's no excuse. No amount of textual gymnastics is going to be able to justify compromising on the topic of marriage. Number one, this is the object lesson that God gave to express his commitment to the church. And if you want to adulterate that, like literally adulterate that picture, you are going to distort people's ability to understand the gospel. This is how God chose to reveal himself, right, to the world is through the physical picture of husband and wife devoting themselves to one another for life and creating new life through that union, right? So you're going to miss out on that. But the more practical, and I think the more

damning consequence of compromising on this is what I would like to know is a child who's raised by two women created through sperm donation, for example, who desperately longs for a father, which can I just say is the norm among children with two moms. We categorize the stories and catalog those stories on our website. We fill our book with them. I run a secret group chat of kids with two moms who don't feel like they can talk to this about anybody else. And I'll tell you what, longing to know your missing parent, desperately wanting the love of a man, the love of a father, those are not the outliers. That is the majority of kids. So this is what I would like to know. I would like to know what some tolerant, progressive pastor would say to the son, to the boy who said,

I desperately wanted a father. In fact, the first commandment with a promise is for me to honor both my mother and my father. So true. But you officiated a wedding that officially denied that I would ever be able to follow that command. What would they say to that kid? Right. What would they say? Well, you are the acceptable sacrifice on the altar of progressivism.

Would you say that to a kid? I really would like to know. Right. We use that exact phraseology here is that kids very often, are the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments, or really just secular social experiments. And again, now there are even conservatives and Christians who are too nervous to even say that, which is so obvious throughout the Bible.

I don't even think people think about the definition of marriage being in something like that. The first commandment with a promise, honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land. that's repeated in the New Testament as well. That right there, again, is the definition of the family. I want to hear you talk a little bit more about maybe the science behind the importance of gender. So I think that it goes hand in hand with the importance of biology, obviously. You need a man and a woman to make a baby. I've actually had people try to argue about that with me, but you do. Right now, you still need a sperm in an egg. You need a mom and a dad. That's how God made it. But talk about the importance of the actual role.

that mom and dad play that are different than what two men or two women can play in a child's life. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. That's the other incredible thing about biology is it gets the gender balance exactly right every time. You know, it's so fascinating to me that people on the progressive left desperately want female representation in the boardroom, right? Desperately want, you know, celebrate when we've got a female justice on the Supreme Court if they are of the right political persuasion. And yet they have relentlessly spent the last couple decades.

destroying the one institution that gets the gender balance perfect every single time. And that's the natural family, right? And why is that so important? Well, because it maximizes child development. So different are the ways that men and women interact with children that many sociologists would say there's no such thing as parenting. There's only mothering and fathering. Men don't mother.

Women don't father. And kids need both. Right. This has to do with our biological wiring, right? We spend all of chapter three of our book talking about why gender is not a social construct, why you can see gender differences both in the preborn when you do scans of their brain, and you can see differences in gender in the most egalitarian societies, the place where women have the most choices where they have the most educational and job opportunities.

Those societies, they create the most female typical women and the most masculine men. So this is not a social construct. There are naturally ingrained biological differences between men and women. And I think the place where those differences are demonstrated most critically is in the home. Men tend to be a little more physical, more aggressive, more competitive. They push kids to go faster, bigger, higher, stronger, right? They tend to orient kids towards the world in a different way. Like, think about the last time you saw a woman throwing a baby in the air.

And you're all going, have I ever seen that? I don't know. When was the last time you saw a dad throw a baby in the air? You're like, yesterday, yeah, at the park, at church, whatever, right? So men just tend to bring the fun, the adventure, they push boundaries, they encourage competitiveness, risk-taking. Kids really need that. Moms tend to focus on fairness, equity, what we call mundane caregiving. Have you eaten your broccoli?

Did you go to bed on time? Are you packed for school in the morning? They tend to be more focused on the immediate emotional well-being of their own kids. And these differences manifest themselves in the way that women and men talk to their kids, discipline their kids, read books to their kids. I mean, the differences are stark. And it's manifest in every way that men and women interact with kids. And how incredible for kids to have representatives of both halves of humanity in their own home every day of their life. Not only do they learn about who they're going to become from their same sex parent, but they learn about what kind of spouse they should pursue with their opposite sex parents.

Boys have a chance to interact with both halves of humanity when it comes to their moms. Girls have a chance to practice being around boys when it comes to their dads. Either one of these parents are optional in a child's life. Right. And what you gave obviously are particular examples that there's always going to be someone who says, well, you know, I'm a woman I threw my baby up yesterday. And, you know, even I can think about like throwing my baby up in the air. And that's not obviously your point that that never happened or that that's necessarily always what makes a mom and a dad.

even if you have a dad who maybe he is very artistic and he is someone who likes to cook and clean the house and things like that, that doesn't make him any less of a dad. And the same way with the mom who maybe she does have a more aggressive personality, that just because gender isn't a social construct, which both you and I agree on, there, of course, are particular norms that may be socially constructed and may vary. doesn't change the fact that it's still a mom, it's still a dad, what they offer, no matter what their personalities are in how traditionally masculine or feminine they may be, they bring something unique to the table. You know, my oldest, my daughter, she is, she just turned two.

And long before she was two, I knew that she could tell a difference between not just me and her dad obviously, but just between men and women in general. Like as much as she loves, both of my parents and all of her grandparents and all of her cousins and aunts and uncles, I noticed she would gravitate towards like her girl cousins and her aunts and her grandmother more than she would, her uncles and her grandfather. She could just tell there was an innate difference there. They were a little bit more nurturing. But, you know, when she's in a particular mood, She wants to run around the house and be chased and, you know, be picked up. Then she's going to say, Daddy run.

Daddy run. That's her thing right now. Daddy run. But when she needs comfort, when she's tired, you know, when she just wants to hang out, like she wants, she wants mom. There are different things we bring to the table. Even just, you know, my husband's presence, just the knowledge, okay, that there's security there. There's no question between my husband and me that if someone tries to hurt our kids or someone tries to break our space and security in some way, who's going to go down so that the rest of us go free?

Like, who is going to be the one that's on the front line making sure that we're safe? Who's going to fight the bad guy? Who's going to run after our kid if it looks like they are, like, riding their bike into the punt? Like, it's going to be him. And so I think even just that innate knowledge that our kids have that, okay, you know, this is, this is what daddy does. and like I know that I can trust him for that and this is what mommy does. I just imagine that that without any kind of sociological, you know, statistical knowledge of that.

I just imagine that that offers a lot of security for kids and a sense of belonging and peace and identity too. Yeah, totally. And, you know, no couple is going to fit the stereotypes and shouldn't fit the stereotypes every single time. We just took our oldest to college and either her. father or I cried a lot of the time and it wasn't me. So like he's just honestly a very, very tender-hearted guy. And I do tend to kind of, I'm the one that jostles my kids in the hallway when I pass them, right? But yeah, I am the one that is tends to be more concerned about their immediate emotional well-being. And he's always like, can you take more classes? Can you hit that

goal a little harder? Come on. I really think that you could serve a little bit stronger. So he's pushing them in ways that I'm not pushing them. That protectiveness, that dad protectiveness, that also comes in really handy when your daughter start dating. Because when guys come around and they see a father who's protective, they know that they've got to up their game a little bit. When the dad has a conversation with them and says, I expect you to treat my daughter as well as I treat her, which is very well. And you're going to have to deal with me if that doesn't happen. I'll tell you what, that keeps guys in checks. the first couple times my daughter started to have an interest. My father or my husband said,

you're welcome to text them. I will be in the group chat. Oh my goodness. Everything that you say to her, you say to me. And that's a great way for guys to know that there is a protective parent that's that's standing there. Right.

You know, I often get the objection from people who say, well, two moms, they can offer that kind of love and protection and nurturing. In fact, I've noticed that a lot of lesbians, there's like a more masculine and there's more. a feminine, right? There's like, you know, some of the kids that I'm whose stories I share, they say, yeah, I had a butch mom. And then I had a really feminine mom. I have not yet heard any of them say, yeah, that butch mom totally satisfied my longing and desire for a father. It's just not the same. Kids genuinely long for a male parent, male love, paternal love,

and they crave maternal love as well. It's as if both of these are critical to their development and well-being. Right. Let's talk a little bit. more about how reproductive technology has interrupted that. I see this a lot when you have, you know, a gay couple who, like you said, I think I can think of several gay couples that I'm like, yeah, they're awesome people. Like, they're going to make wonderful dads or wonderful moms. But it makes me sad. One, the process, I didn't realize this about surrogacy, that you're actually taking an egg from one woman. implanting it in another woman and the sperm from, you know, one of the male partners, if it's a

male gay couple, and then delivering that baby and then obviously taking that baby to be taken by perhaps one of the actual biological dads. I mean, I just imagine, I just, what does that do to a child's sense of identity and belonging when that was your conception and gestation and adoption process? Yeah, so first let's talk about sperm and egg donation because that was that was already quite a violation of children's rights. So what these kids are experiencing is genealogical bewilderment, right? A lot of times deep, deep identity struggles. Even if they're not told that they were created through sperm and egg donation, a lot of them have a sense that something is off.

They have to ask, am I adopted? Like, why don't I look like anybody else? So serious identity struggles. The next thing they struggle with when they do find out or if they had known all along is feeling like they were commodified, that they were purchased, that they were bought and sold because they were bought and sold. Like you can go online and look at egg donor catalogs or sperm donor catalogs. These kids are like, my parents literally picked me out of a catalog. Many of them struggle with household instability. So they are brought into homes that don't have the same level of stability, probably because that biological connection.

really does have an impact on whether or not the people raising them are going to stay committed and connected to them. The research bears that out. So if you're just talking sperm and egg donation, even if you're being raised by a heterosexual couple, a lot of these kids struggle deeply. So now let's talk about surrogacy. What surrogacy does, in essence, is it splits one woman, somebody that should be all one woman, the mother, into three, in essence, optional women, right? So you've got the genetic mother who is the egg donor, the birth mother, who is the surrogate, and then the social mother, the woman whose presence is going to be in the child's life every day. Surrogacy says, which of these mothers do you need?

Which ones do you not want? Because if you need one of them, write the check, we can figure it out for you, right? But the thing is that none of these three women are optional in the life of a child. If a child's raised without their genetic mother, they're going to struggle with all the same things that the donor conceived kids struggled with. the genealogical bewilderment, the feeling of commodification. For kids who are created through surrogacy and have to lose a relationship with their birth mother, we call that a primal wound in the book.

It's something that adoptees have actually been speaking out about four decades. There is a book called the primal wound, and it's considered the adoptees Bible. What happens when we intentionally separate children or separate them, even if it's a tragic situation from their birth mother? these kids, because they lose their relationship with their very first and only person that they know, their mother at birth, they report having a difficulty, trusting and attaching, forming relationships in the future. And again, the research bears this out, that that separation from the birth mother can have long-term detrimental effects on kids. So sometimes it is necessary in adoption, but to inflict it intentionally is an injustice. Right. And then many of these kids created through surrogacy

will never have a social mother. They won't even have the presence of a woman in their everyday life. And so when you are losing any one of these three, it's going to harm kids. Surrogacy inflicts the loss of one or all in the name of progress. And so surrogacy is never a child-friendly process. The child always has to lose something when those processes take place. Yeah. And I just think of a lot of the arguments that you hear that, well, children don't remember. They don't remember being taken away from their mother. And look, this child with same-sex parents or this child who is conceived through IVF is happy. They're a totally happy child.

But, yeah, children can undergo trauma that they don't remember. And they can be affected in a way that is very profound that might not manifest itself. number one, in the same way across the board. And number two, until later in life, they can still have that father or mother hunger that shows up in different ways. And so simply to point to a situation and say, well, look, that child is clothed and happy,

has two parents that are happy. That's really all they need. Well, not really. Not if there is this, not when you interrupt the natural process in all of the innate longings and feelings and needs that really come with that. And so I just find the argument that I hear a lot of times, well, as long as the kid seems happy and as long as the kid doesn't remember the trauma at birth or that separation,

it's not a big deal. I mean, we're told, like when we have, if you have babies yourself, we're told, like, okay, as soon as you have that baby, they need that skin to skin. Like you put that baby on your chest. Like you're told that's important. Why would we be told that if those first few moments in that attachment from a young age, we're told constantly to smile at our kids, to look into our kids' eyes when they're babies, to connect with them.

And not that everyone has to breastfeed, but breastfeeding is also a very bonding experience and necessary experience for the security of that child. So we're told all these things, sometimes by the fairy same people who say that none of that matters if you just want to have this kind of artificial process and give the child to, you know, two dads or two moms. Yeah, exactly. You know, we don't put a baby on a mom's chest so they can create a bond. We put a baby on a mom's chest because they have an existing bond, right?

That is the only person that the baby knows. Her smell, her milk, her body, her heartbeat, right? This is the child's only relationship at that point. I know that when my second daughter was born after a very rushed and somewhat traumatic birth, she was crying, she was wailing, and then they put her on my chest, and I started humming to her. She was quiet in an instant because she said, this is the only thing that I know. This is the only thing I'm familiar with, right? It's so amazing to me that the families belong together crowd is also largely the people that endorse reproductive technologies

where you are violating, you are intentionally separating a child from their mother and father. Do these primal wounds have an impact on kids? Well, adoptive parents tend to be more highly educated. They tend to be more wealthy. And they tend to spend more time with their adopted children compared to the rest of the population. And yet, adopted children struggle more in school, struggle more emotionally, and do have increased obstacles they need to overcome. And so you really can't make the case that these connections at birth are negotiable,

but not. Like we actually have the data and the stories to say that they really, really matter to kids. Right. And like you said, there's obviously a difference between adoption by necessity and adoption, you know, sheerly for the pleasure and in accordance to the whims of parents to intentionally create a child for the purpose of surrogacy and adoption. Obviously, we see in scripture that adoption, again, is a picture of God's redemption of Gentiles through Christ. Like, we were adopted, we were grafted in.

So obviously, in the same way that a natural child-parent relationship is also a picture of God, loving his children through Christ. So adoption is a picture of the gospel, God adopting us. So obviously, we know that it is redemptive, but I think that most adoptive parents would also say, but the ideal situation for my beloved adopted child would have been that their natural mom and dad stayed together and loved them, right? Yeah, exactly. I say, my adopted son is a Faust through and through. I'm so grateful he's with us. He completes our family, and I will never fully compensate for what he's lost. But he does have increased obstacles because he wasn't able to remain with his birth mother and father. And so we can recognize adoption as a redemptive and critical

institution for the well-being of children in need and not play that game of minimizing the kind of loss that they experience. A lot of people are like, well, reproductive technologies are just another form of adoption. And when you look at it, it's actually the total opposite of adoption. You know, in adoption, the adults are seeking to mend the wound that the child has suffered. Adoption done right, I should say, which is most adoptions these days. Adoptive parents are hammered about adoption being a lifelong process and the morning and the grieving that the child will go through. Most of us go through training and post-placement to make sure that we are able to navigate those challenging waters with our adopted child.

So very few adoptive parents these days are going into this as, oh, this is going to fix all the problems. That's not the way adoption is discussed with foster parents or adoptive parents these days. So adoption done properly is adults seeking to mend the wound the child has experienced. reproductive technologies is adults creating the wound. They're saying, I'm going to inflict this parental wound on you because I want it that way. In adoption, the child is the client, right? When I used to work at the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world, and my boss would say, the parents are paying us, the child is the client.

When adoption is done right, every child that needs a family is going to be placed in the loving home, but not every adult who wants a child is going to get one. that's exactly the opposite in reproductive technologies. Any adult that can pay will get a kid, even if they have a criminal record, even if they would never pass an adoption background checked. There's no background checks in reproductive technologies. The only check that has to clear is your check at the bank. And so we've got kids going home with unrelated adults who have no business, having kids that are not related to them. So we spend a lot of time in Chapter 9 of our book.

contrasting adoption and reproductive technologies because one supports children's rights and the other one is a flagrant violation of children's rights. Yeah. We really see the absurd conclusion that all of this leads to, just the redefining of gender, the redefining of marriage, the redefining of the family. When we see stories, there was, you know, Courtney Cox, she apparently does this show that she talks about, you know, different people's pregnancy journeys. and it was devastating.

We talked about it on here. An example of or a story of this woman who identified as a man and a man who identified as a woman, you know, coming together and creating a baby how you typically do, although, you know, of course, they think that there's some special case. And the biological woman who identifies as a man having this child, but the biological man who identifies as a woman still wanting to breastfeed the child and obviously not being able to lactate and still try to get this child to latch. And like that in and of itself is abusive because you are forcing a child to hunger and to try to seek something that it innately is going

to seek. That's what children do. They root around to try to, you know, naturally nourish themselves. and you're doing it, you know, on the altar of your delusions. And again, that goes back to this whole idea that really started back maybe at even no-fault divorce, that the definition of marriage and the definition of sexuality and gender and all these things is really about what makes us happy. And kids, well, they can't really speak for themselves. And so they can just kind of come along for the ride. What repercussions is all of this craziness going to happen on future generations?

Yeah. Yeah, the case you just talked about, it's children as accessories, right? This kid exists to validate me. My happiness is primary. The kids need to fall in line so that I can be happy. And we really do see that in all of these conversations about marriage and family, right? In essence, like what should be happening is the adults should be sacrificing, understanding, and accommodating when it comes to what children need. Anytime you are talking about a modern family and let the reader understand, modern family. just means child loss. The child had to lose something to be in that home. There are some justifiable situations for divorce. That's not the majority of divorces today. And then same-sex parenting, third-party reproduction. All of these modern families means the child has to lose something they have a right to, something they need, something that is developmentally optimal for them to be in the home.

So what's going to be the repercussion? What's going to be the fallout? We have decades of emotionally malnourished children. We talk in the book about how there's three staples of a child's social emotional diet, mothers love, father's love, stability. All those three things will be found in the natural family, the intact home. Anytime you're working outside of that, you're going to have emotionally malnourished children, children that have a hard time governing themselves and therefore are going to have more run-ins with police, children who can't thrive in school, which we're seeing today. children who are more likely to seek that parental affection, mother's love or father's love, in the context of a boyfriend or a girlfriend. That's why we see drastically increased numbers of teen pregnancy in kids who are fatherless. I mean, every social ill that we are facing today, 90% of homeless youth are fatherless, right?

67% of kids who attempt suicide are fatherless. When we starve children of their fundamental rights, we are going to see it manifest in behavioral disorders, in poverty rates. in incarceration rates. And so you can't mess with the child's life and childhood and expect that there's going to be no fallout in their adulthood. There will be.

So, you know, I know that the recent study survey that came out said that conservatives don't really care about the gay marriage issue anymore, right? They don't really care about marriage as an issue. Well, guess what? You're never going to get anything you want conservatives unless you major on marriage. marriage as a social justice institute for children because you can't have small government without big marriage. That's the bottom line.

You won't get anything you want unless you can restore the natural family. And the left understands that in a way that conservatives don't, I think, because they understand that, as I've heard it said before, that the family is the incubator of liberty. It's where you get your values. It's where you get your sense of belonging and security. if you don't get that from the family, which is what happens when you start to redefine the family and you tear apart the family and you even come after parental rights, when you start to break that down, then like you said, kids start to look for their values in other places.

So you look for it, you know, government runs schools. You look for it on social media. You look for it ultimately from the state. Everyone wants to belong somewhere. Everyone wants to feel that they're taking care of. If you're not getting that from your mom and your dad, you're going to get that from something else. And that is what progressivism bets on, that it can get, especially an impressionable child to find their meaning and find their belonging and find

their sense of care from the state, from activism, from, you know, the political, social movement of progressivism. That is why you see so often government-run schools and teachers trying to insert themselves between the parent and the child, especially when it comes to things like gender identity. That is why you get these corrupt judges and corrupt agencies and organizations and bureaucrats trying to usurp the role of the parent in the name of liberating a child. What that ends up with is vulnerable kids who are at risk for so much. And I just remind people all the time, the state does not care about your kid. They don't care about your kid.

they don't care about their well-being, progressivism, and all these social movements in general, even, you know, conservatism, whatever it is, they don't love your kid and care about your kid and want the well-being of your kid the way that you do. So you're absolutely right. This is something conservatives and Christians, especially those who say they're inclined towards social justice, have to care about. That's exactly right. There will be no social justice until we can secure individual justice for every kid. There just won't be. And you're exactly right. Kids tend to, You know, we used to answer that. Every, every adolescence is asking the question, who am I?

And the answer used to be, well, I am Italian, you know, my family is Italian, or I am the daughter of my father, or I, you know, who emigrated from Mexico and then, you know, made his life here. Well, when you have the breakdown of the family, kids are still asking that question and the world is happy to give them an answer. The world, unfortunately, especially the LGBT crowd, says, we're happy to tell you who you are. right and who you are is whatever sexual feelings you're having at that moment. Right. Very fleeting. But I'll tell you what, they're going to give kids the community, the belonging, the connection, the identity that they are made to have answered with their family.

The government is happy to offer the protection that fathers should be giving. They're happy to offer the care and the nurturing that mothers should be giving. These are primary needs that when the family breaks down, it's not like those needs go away. kids are going to just find it in less stable, less trustworthy, less connected sources. I just went to the doctor yesterday with my kids for a physical exam. I posted the picture on Twitter. And the doctor said, you know, I want you to step out of the room, Mom. And I said, I will if my kid's okay with it.

But we were going through the form of like all the different things. Like, are you doing this? Are you involved in drugs? Are you wearing a seatbelt? And my daughter and I talked about, why are they asking these questions? Who's really responsible for that when it comes to the kids? and my daughter said, well, what these forms are saying is parents really aren't responsible. Like the question is to whom do children belong? The answer should be parents. But when you're talking

about like primary care and safety, like and the doctor's asking that, what the form is really saying is kids belong to doctors, kids belong to the government. And when schools are offering these kinds of curriculums and answers and separating them from their parents through LGBT questions, what they're really saying is kids belong to schools. Right. And that's wrong, right? Kids belong to parents because parents are the ones ultimately who offer the protection and provision that kids need. And I know it's often done under the guise of, you know, for example, a teacher saying, you know what, if you want to change your pronouns, or if you're a little girl, if you want to act like a little boy and we won't tell your parents, it's you, it's done under the guise of, you know, protection from

abusive parents or something like that. Really, what it is, I mean, it's no, I mean, it is different, but it is the same essential thing as when some kind of abuser says, this is going to be our little secret. You don't need to tell your parents about that. I mean, that's a telltale sign of abusing a child. And I don't think that's the intention of some of these teachers and administrators doing that to these kids, not all of them. But anytime you try to insert yourself between a parent who loves their child,

and the child, you are creating, you are creating an abusive environment. Whether or not you intend that, the most well-meaning progressive teacher, you're not going to, that teacher is not going to care if that child ends up mutilating their body at 15 through hormones and surgery and then is suicidal because it didn't fix the problems that they really had. That teacher's not going to lose a wink of sleep over that. The parent will. The parent will never overcome it because they actually love that child. I hate to wrap this up.

The teachers, the doctors, they're not going to be raising the kid, you know, created through an unplanned pregnancy because they were validating this child's, you know, sexual identity or encouraging them to be sexually, you know, explore themselves sexually, right? They're not the ones that are going to face the consequences with the child. That's why parental rights actually are parental rights, because they have a duty to care for the child. That duty entails responsibility, and those responsibilities extend to rights.

Government doesn't have a right to kids. Teachers don't have a right to kids. The doctor doesn't have a right to kids because they don't have the same duty and obligation to kids. If anybody has more questions about this, I did a video on it for what would you say.org with the Colson Center on do parental rights conflict with children's rights. The short answer, Cliff Notes version is, nope, they don't. They work hand in hand. Okay, tell us some more. I know that people are going to be just, they're going to love this conversation. How can they support you? How can they support your organization? Tell us a little bit about what you guys. do so they know what they are supporting if they choose to donate or follow along? Yeah. So we've got the very modest goal of a global takeover. We want every conversation about

marriage and family everywhere, whether it's a conversation you're having with your friend, who's thinking about sperm donation, or whether it's talking with the Czech Republic about the pushes in their country to redefine the family. We want every conversation to begin with, what about the kid? So we aim to change hearts. and we aim to change laws because right now there are very few organizations that will speak up when Virginia wants to strip the words mother and father from their parenthood laws. There's very few organizations that even talk about the harms of surrogacy when New York slips that provision in in the midst of a government shutdown. So nobody is standing up for the legal rights of children when it comes. I mean, we've got, thank God, hundreds of organizations defending children's right to life. We need to start defending the rights of children on this side of the.

the womb as well. So we're aiming for cultural change, heart change, mind change. But I want kids to have a presence in the courtroom and in the legislature. So we're working on that as well. And threats to children are global. So this is a global children's rights movement. You can go to our website, subscribe to our newsletter. If you've got a story of missing out on what you needed in terms of not knowing your mother or father, if you were raised by two moms or two dads, we're the safe space for you. This is the place where you can be honest and share your story with us because the world needs to know.

And I'll do everything I can to change the world with your story. And I love that. You're not using these people as some kind of political football. You really are providing a safe space. Obviously, if they want to share their story publicly, I'm sure that you help with that. But I'm sure that there are also people who just want to come to you and to say, hey, I had a similar experience that you did. I want to feel validated because they're hearing from the world that if you were raised

by same-sex parents that your feelings of longing for a mom or a dad are not valid, that maybe they're homophobic, maybe you hate the people that raise you, that actually those kids probably love, I guarantee, they love both the parents that raised them and they don't know what to do with these feelings of wanting to know where they really come from because now there's not even a word for it within polite society that father hunger in mother hunger. That's just seen as bigoted in some way. So I'm thankful that you provide a refuge for that. Yeah. It's gaslighting. And that's what these kids have experienced is, you know, the whole world is telling them, you're so lucky to have two moms. And yet they're like,

but I desperately want a dad. And so that just means they feel guilty for wanting what every kid in human history has wanted. And yeah, about 25% of the stories that people share with us make it to the website. Most people just need a place to share. Yeah. So, we can be that. Yeah. Thank you so much. I love the work that you guys are doing. I loved this conversation. I was actually like typing to my team while you were talking. I was like, oh my gosh, I love her. You are so clear. And that is what I appreciate so much about you. Gosh, the church needs clarity. We need clarity. So many people are so vague on this subject because we're just so afraid. And, you know, maybe rightfully so we're afraid of hurting feelings. And I don't ever want to intentionally hurt anyone.

one's feelings because everyone is made in the image of God and these are sensitive identity-laden topics. But man, we need clarity and to speak the truth in love. And it is in love when we are talking about the rights of children and being a voice for the voiceless because children are so marginalized universally and really don't have a voice. So thank you. Thank you so much. Can you remind me again, what's your, what's the website? How can they follow you? Them Before Us.com. There's a subscription place at the bottom where you can get our newsletters. I'm on Twitter at Advocat.

Advo underscore Katie, kind of like advocate, but kind of activist-y. We're on Instagram, Them underscore Before underscore us. So there's a lot of places you can find us on social media. We'd love to connect with you. Perfect. Thank you so much, Katie. I appreciate it. Great.

Thanks so much for having me. Of course. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

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