Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 695 | Why Children's Rights Trump Adults' Feelings | Guest: Katy Faust

Starting point is 00:00:00 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.

Starting point is 00:00:19 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. What is the answer to the growing movement to sexualize children to steal their innocence through things like drag queen story hour, inappropriate sex education, introducing them to the confusion of gender ideology, using them as political pawns and objects of validation for the sexual expression. of adults. How do we combat the reconfiguration of the family, commercialized surrogacy, and the cultural and technological changes that ignore the rights and well-being of children? Our guest, one of my favorite guests, Katie Faust, has the answers to these questions for us.

Starting point is 00:01:14 She is the founder and director of them before us. It is described as a global movement defending children's right to their mother and father. She is also the daughter of two gay women. She has a biological mother who is married to a woman and was raised by two women. And that is part of the foundation for why she does what she does. She knows what father hunger looks like. She knows what it means to need a mother and a father present in children's lives to protect their well-being, to protect their innocence. There is an assault on these things today.

Starting point is 00:01:56 and Katie is a fighter for the rights and security of children. You are going to love this conversation. It's going to educate you, empower you, and fire you up. That is what Katie does. As always, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com slash All right. That's good ranchers.com slash All right. Without further ado, here is our friend Katie.

Starting point is 00:02:30 Katie, thank you so much for joining us. There are a million things I want to talk to you about. So first, I just kind of want to ask you to set us up because people are looking at the landscape right now. And we're seeing a lot of things that scare us when it comes to kids. It's getting a lot harder, I think, for progressives to hide the fact that sexualization of children is on the table. When we're looking at Drag Queen Story Hour, when we're looking at in some cases, child

Starting point is 00:03:01 drag shows that are being glorified and normalized in some places when we're looking at the pornography that is being read in schools towards young children, the so-called sex education. Like, give us a lay of the land. Tell us about the seriousness of this moment when it comes to the rights and the protection of kids. Yep. Well, obviously, sexual desire, adult sexual identification has become God. And because sex is connected to babies, that means that children have become the acceptable and necessary sacrifice on the altar of adult sexual desire. And so my organization deals with that primarily in the theater of marriage and family

Starting point is 00:03:45 issues. But what you're starting to see is that children are also the necessary sacrifice in many of these other areas, especially when it comes to, for example, validating adult sexual expression through early sexualization of children who are. brought to these drag queen story hours or used in the context of a school setting to validate adult sexual expression. And for some reason, these adults see that it is necessary to have these innocent children who don't have the critical thinking abilities to be able to push back and filter out what is being presented to them. They are seeing these children, they're functioning

Starting point is 00:04:22 as accessories to validate adult sexual desire, sexual expression because adult sexuality has become God. And so, of course, children are going to be brought into that. And this is harmful because children are not miniature adults, right? They don't have the same kind of reasoning capacity. They are not just smaller versions of adults that are able to process through and reason through all of this. We violate their innocence. We harm their minds. We harm their bodies when we then incorporate them into this larger conversation about adult sexual expressionism, whereas there should be a firewall, a protective boundary around children's right to innocence, children's right to, for example, an intact, unmedicalized body, and children's right to life,

Starting point is 00:05:08 which we're all familiar with. And, of course, what we do at them before us is children's right to their mother and father, regardless of adult sexual feeling, sexual expression, or sexual identity. A really good example of what you're talking about. I saw you comment on it on Twitter. I commented on it, too. It was a screenshot of a pregnancy announcement by, a very elite private school in D.C. And it is sent from what's called Manatee teachers. I guess that's the name of the preschool to Manatee families. And here is part of this email that would not have been even understood 10 years ago.

Starting point is 00:05:45 It says, we wanted to take an opportunity to share some exciting news with you, though you may have already noted Mr. Powell's growing belly. Tristan is expecting a kiddo mid-January goes on to kind of detail what, the parental leave will look like. And then this part, I thought, was really interesting and especially sad. When we do chat as a class, this email says, we will prepare the kids for Tristan's absence and explain the reason in age appropriate ways. For kids who may have associations with pregnancy and a certain gender, only girls or moms can have babies. Tristan uses the language of some boys have bodies that can have babies. And I have the kind of body that can have a baby.

Starting point is 00:06:25 isn't that cool. And then talks about how this person is going to describe being transgender and basically just says, look, this is how it is. This is what we're going to teach your kids. You can repeat our language at home. And as you said, takes down that firewall of innocence, that basic understanding that kids have, that, oh, women have babies. Women can become moms.

Starting point is 00:06:51 There's a difference between male and female. And replaces that innate. clarity that they have with confusion. You said that this is kind of the sexualization of children. What do you say to someone who says, this has nothing to do with sex? This is just about acceptance. Oh my gosh. You know, that was such an example of using children as pawns to validate not just adult sexual expressionism, but to validate this massive child loss that this baby is going to experience because a single woman who has been surgically, and or chemically altered to appear like a man has created an intentionally fatherless child

Starting point is 00:07:32 whose Abba is how this woman wants to be referred to is not even going to reflect, right, the beauty of femininity. So there's tragedy for this child. And then the school is coaching parents to condition children to validate the adult sexual expression at the experience. of a child who is going to be intentionally fatherless. And so it's amazing how aggressive the other side is being in terms of messaging to young kids. And they're doing it at these young, young grades because children have this, you know, the trivium approach, the classical model of education recognizes that there's these sort of developmental benchmarks when it comes to a child's mental reasoning.

Starting point is 00:08:22 And up until about age 10 or 11, they are in that grand. phase where they naturally kind of sponge in and accept in an unquestioning way, whatever a trusted adult tells them. That is why you've got these aggressive educators who are seeking to introduce gender confusion and these adult ideologies into elementary school ages. And so you look at this text sent out from the school district and how aggressive it is in terms of promoting this distorted worldview to preschoolers. And so my response to that is yes, we absolutely need to message.

Starting point is 00:08:55 two children about what is happening here and it needs to align with what you said, right? What they know instinctually and that is that men and women are different. Mommies have babies. Children need moms and dads. Isn't it sad if a child is going to intentionally lose their dad? It's sad, right, that the mommy thinks that she has to alter her body to be her true self, right? Like if they're going to go after our kids, we need to go after our kids even harder with truth and beauty because the other side of isn't waiting for them to mature into those older stages, the middle school stage where they can process through competing world views and the high school stage where they are then able to confidently articulate their views. We have to get to kids as early as they are. And unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:09:40 it has to do with these distorted messages around sex and gender. Yes, I love that point. Someone is always disciplining your children. And secular progressives take discipleship very seriously. I think in some cases more seriously than the church, more seriously than some Christian parents. And I don't think that this means, like I have a three-year-old and an 18-month-old, they don't need to know right now that there are people, there are women who think that they're men. They don't need to know that confusion. What they need right now is a foundation of what is true, a validation of what they already observed. Because as we just said, they already innately can tell the difference.

Starting point is 00:10:21 Well, there's mommy, there's daddy, there's Grammy, there's Papa. that's a man, that's a woman, that's a mommy. I mean, they make these observations all of the time. And to simply validate what is true, to lay the foundation of what is true. And as you were saying eventually, you do kind of have to give them the tools to combat then the perversion of that that they see. But you're absolutely right. It's happening at younger and younger levels.

Starting point is 00:10:46 And there does seem to be this perverse motivation of needing child's affirmation of adult sexuality, but why do they need? Like from from your perspective, why would an adult need the validation of a four-year-old? I mean, that's really sick. Yeah, well, obviously, it's our self-obsession, right? This idea that the most important thing in the world is self or sex or maybe safety, as we saw in COVID, right? And so when that becomes your ultimate good, right, when that is the ultimate thing, then everything else must bow down to that ultimate thing. And so we're worshipping the wrong God. And the world is telling these adults to worship that God. We just have to make sure that our children are not participants willing or unwilling in their

Starting point is 00:11:31 worship. So I love what you're saying about sheltering your kids. I'm actually in the middle of book number two called Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City because I'm passionate about two things. I'm passionate about protecting the rights and well-being of children of the world. And I'm passionate about my children. I am passionate about making sure that my children are not consumed by the woke machine. And the reality is that you can do that as parents, even when everything is against you, your neighbors, your school district, right? So maybe your extended family, maybe even the church community you go to is being infected by wokeism. And what you're saying about those early years is exactly right. Your job in those early years is to saturate your

Starting point is 00:12:12 children in truth and beauty. Right. They're already seeing the world as it is. You name it. And then you explain why moms and dads are different and why it's so good, like why mommy has a baby in her belly and how incredible it is that mommy's bodies can do that, but daddy's bodies can't, you know, how moms and dads, they go to the same bedroom at night. But, you know, when the cousin comes over with her boyfriend, they go to two different rooms at night. I mean, you're just narrating their world to bring out the beauty of the world and also the truth, right? In those early years, in the elementary school years, part of their world is going to involve, situations that are broken, situations that aren't ideal. And then you explain that to them in the

Starting point is 00:12:55 context of truth and beauty. But one of our rules is in those early years, in those elementary school years, we filter out aggressive adults. We filter out worldviews that seek to evangelize our children into that brokenness. But then when they get to middle school, that is when we begin what we call the great equipping, where we introduce them to those competing worldviews, because we want them to know that there are answers, and they can get those answers from us. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie,

Starting point is 00:13:29 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.

Starting point is 00:13:44 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:14:06 I hope you'll join us. I have so many thoughts about what you just said. I want to get first your thoughts on what the long-term consequence is of parents replacing that kind of natural clarity and curiosity. that children have about the world around them with confusion and chaos. Because I notice in my kids as they are differentiating between genders, really without any instruction from us, that is, that's just observations that they made out in the world, that that is kind of their way of making their world smaller.

Starting point is 00:14:48 They're constantly putting things in categories, not just people, but also objects. They're constantly trying to make sense of where things go, what category, it and what purpose it has when they see people then out in the out in public and they say, you know, that's a, that's a family or those are friends or that's a boy, that's a girl. I can tell they're trying to make sense of a world that is new to them. It is novel to them. Make sense. They're trying to fit it into context that make it smaller and make it more chewable for them.

Starting point is 00:15:20 And that seems to me like it would be a really important part of child development. And that if you rob that from a child and you put them, even if it's just in a mental situation in which nothing really makes sense, there's no categories. You can't assume people's gender. You can't assume the categories that people go. You can't assume what a family looks like, that that would be disorienting for a child. And I just want to know, like, what is the consequence of that for a child long term? What do you think? It's a massive destabilization, right?

Starting point is 00:15:54 that you are destabilizing all of the things that they should be able to anchor themselves to when it comes to finding, meaning, belonging, rationality, that we are supposed to be able to look at the natural world and then anchor ourselves to it. But if you cannot even trust what you see with your own eyes, you are not going to be able to rely on yourself, the people around you, that kind of thing. And honestly, ultimately, what it means is you are going to detach from these primary relationships in your life and you are going to reattach to people that don't have the same level of commitment, trustworthiness and investment in your life, especially when it comes to the parent-child relationship. So what you're saying is, you know, what I'm saying is it's very,

Starting point is 00:16:40 very important for parents to not only be the primary educators, but in those early years to give children the foundations to connect themselves to the real world. And you as the parent are one of the main ways that that is going to happen. That happens a lot through what you direct their attention towards. That happens a lot in terms of helping them to properly contextualize when they see brokenness in the world. And ultimately, it is going to serve the purpose of reinforcing their relationship and their trust in you, which is exactly where it belongs.

Starting point is 00:17:11 You mentioned a couple minutes ago filtering out to those aggressive adults and aggressive influences that are either seeking sexual validation and children in the name of inclusion and tolerance. That's typically how it goes or those who are trying to indoctrinate your children with things that are wrong. And then equipping them and it just reminded me of something

Starting point is 00:17:34 that I read on Twitter a while ago. I don't remember who initially said it. Maybe it was you. It sounds like something that you would say is that groomers look for gaps. Grumers don't just look for who is the weak child, who is the vulnerable child, who is prey. But where is the vulnerable?

Starting point is 00:17:52 pray. Where is the fatherless child? Where is the child with absentee parents? Where is the child whose parents are more concerned about fitting in with the mainstream culture or being called the bigot than they are protecting a child from predation? Groomers look for gaps. And so what I'm hearing you say is that from an early age, parents are to be standing in the gap. And if you're not willing to do that, come what may, then you have abdicated really your God, giving you. You're afticated really your God role as a parent? I didn't say it, but I'm going to start. Yeah, it's great.

Starting point is 00:18:28 Absolutely. It's so true. And I think that, you know, in our world, like when I grew up, you know, I'm a Gen Xer, and so the big panic was like strangers on the street abducting your kids. That is not generally where the battleground is today. The battleground is an information battle. It is a battle of authorities. Like, who is your authority?

Starting point is 00:18:45 You know, where do you get your information from? And the gaps, right, have got to be addressed when it comes to worldview, when it comes to what you think, you know, when it comes to my kids, maybe they can't refute everything that a woke teacher says. But we have filled in the gaps enough for them to be able to spot a lie, right? They know enough that when a woke teacher says something about, you know, the evils of capitalism, they know enough to say something's not right there. And where do they go to me and their father? And they say, you know, my teacher said something about capitalism, you know, and that being the instrument for poverty.

Starting point is 00:19:22 But that doesn't sound right, because I think that you mentioned that, you know, we have, like, decimated poverty in the last 40 years, and I thought you said something about the connection between, but what is that, right? So, like, we have got to fill in the gaps for our kids so that they are not prey for adults that are going to lie to them in all of these different areas

Starting point is 00:19:42 because there are distortions abundant, unfortunately, today when it comes to biological reality, economic reality, historical reality. You parent fill in the gaps so that they are not vulnerable to adults who would seek to prey on them, whether it's for just ideological indoctrination or something even more nefarious. You're telling your kids, yes, what to think in a lot of cases, but also how to think so that maybe you haven't covered every single possibly potential, you know, talking point from the left. But like you said, when they encounter one, they at least have the ability to say, Hmm, you know what? She said this, but what about this? That's really, you at least want the gap. You want the pause to where they don't just automatically take it in because someone in authority suggested it. But they are willing to ask you. They're willing to read. They're at least willing to dissect it. Giving them that tool of discernment after laying the foundation of clarity is what sets them up, as you said, to be able to combat those lines.

Starting point is 00:20:48 lies. And we hear, you know, I remember there was an article a couple years back from this Harvard professor saying that parenting or homeschooling is authoritarian. It's authoritarian because parents are telling their kids what to think. Look, everyone is telling kids what to think. Everyone is telling kids what to think. The only question is what. There is no neutral institution. The question is, who has the right to tell a child what to think and how to think? Secular Progressives apparently think that it's them that the parent doesn't have a right. And that example that you just gave of a son coming back to you and saying, hang on, mom and dad, didn't you say that? That's exactly what they're trying to prevent, especially when it comes to something like gender ideology.

Starting point is 00:21:34 So ultimately, all of this comes down to the question, to whom do children belong? To whom do they belong? You can talk about curriculum. You can talk about medical decisions, but first you have to answer the question. To whom do children? belong. And our answer to that question is, children belong to parents. And from a children's rights perspective, that's really important because we have studied family structure for decades. And we know that parents, children's own parents, are statistically the most invested in, protective of, and connected to their kids. That is why they have a right to direct their education. That is why they have the right to make medical decisions. Quick story. My question. My kids are all very different. I've got four kids. They're all awesome. They're all teenagers right now.

Starting point is 00:22:22 Teenagers are awesome. Don't let anybody tell you that they're not. But, you know, we, I live in Washington. Washington is nuts. Washington is insane. And Washington says that at 13, your child can direct their own medical care. And there is a requirement for the parent to leave the physical exam when your kid is in the room with the doctor. And so I told my daughter ahead of time, we were going in a year ago for her physical exam, her sports exam so that she could play sports. And I said, FYI, the doctor is going to ask me to leave, but that is your decision. Do you want me to stay or do you want me to go? And she said, I got this, mom. And so we get to the medical, like the doctor's appointment, we kind of go through the height, wait, all of this medical history. And then he goes, I'm going to have

Starting point is 00:23:05 to have you step out now, mom. And I said, that's my daughter's decision. Honey, what do you think? And she goes, oh, it's okay, mom, no problem. So I step out a minute later. He lets me back in, right? And in the car, I was like, well, what happened there? And she said, well, he shut the door and he looked at me. And he goes, so how many sexual partners I had in the last year? And she goes, I haven't had any. And he's like, oh, you know, kind of like, well, it's, you know, too bad. You can really be honest with me.

Starting point is 00:23:34 And he goes, well, have you done any drugs or are you drinking alcohol? And she goes, no, I'm not. And he goes, okay. And then she said, let me. me ask you a question. If I were having sex or if I was using drugs, would you tell me to stop? And he goes, well, only if it's a problem. And she goes, isn't it always risky for teenagers to be having sex and doing drugs? And he said, well, sometimes there's something that we can do to help them. And she said, don't you think it's the parents' responsibility to help them since

Starting point is 00:24:10 they're the ones that are going to be around next year if there is a problem, not you? And he just said, I think we're done here. And he opened the door and he let me come back in. Right. So that is an example of a parent. I mean, I've had plenty of parent fails. I have had times where my kids feel unequipped. But she was exactly right. It is parents who are the most invested.

Starting point is 00:24:31 It's parents who should know that information. It's parents who should be having those conversations because it is parents who actually care. And we've never met this doctor before. He didn't know her name an hour before we got to that appointment. I am the one that is invested. I'm the one that has been there forever, right? I am the one that cares about where she's going to be two years from now, 12 years from now, 20 years from now, right? So ultimately, all these questions come back to whom two children belong.

Starting point is 00:24:56 It is not doctors. It is not schools. It is not educators. It is not the government. Yeah. It is the parent. And so first we have to get that question straight. And then honestly, all of the rest and all the right answers and all of the training are going to flow from that.

Starting point is 00:25:21 There was, I don't know if you saw it and I don't know if I have it. Oh, I do. Okay, this reminds me. Everything that you're saying is exactly correct and so good. And I think about it all the time with pushing gender ideology. And there was this delegate for Virginia, Elizabeth Guzman, who said that she is introducing legislation or has introduced legislation to expand the definition of child abuse in the state of Virginia to include parents who are not affirming of a child's gender identity, meaning that those parents can lose custody, as has happened already in multiple places. places in the United States if they say, okay, you know what, I don't want my 13-year-old to go on cross-ex hormones. They can actually have their child taken away that child can be placed into the hands of the state. We've already seen the consequences of that. I don't know if you know who Yaley Martinez is, a young child that was in California who was taken out of her mother's custody because of the recommendation of school psychologists bounced around to different group homes because her mom wouldn't affirm her male identity ended up throwing herself on the train

Starting point is 00:26:26 tracks and committed suicide because she was taken away from the only person who cared about her. And so, like, and I guarantee you, none of the teachers or psychologists or the doctors or the CPS workers showed up at that little girl's funeral because at the end of the day, they didn't care. That's the consequence of separating a child from their parent for the sake of ideology. And ultimately, again, that comes back to whom do children belong. And the school is saying, they belong to us. We can craft. We can hide.

Starting point is 00:26:58 We can cultivate this alternative identity without parents' knowledge, without their consent, right? Because children actually belong to us. So first we ask that question and answer that question to whom do children belong. And if we get that right, and that is they belong to parents, then you can look at that situation in California where Gavin Newson is, saying we will be a sanctuary state, you know, for children who want to gender transition and emancipate themselves from parents or put our finger on the scale of a custody battle between two parents whose child identifies as the opposite sex. And we're going to side with the parent that wants to chemically and surgically castrate them. Ultimately, you know, you get down to the

Starting point is 00:27:40 question of whom do children belong. And most of these issues are going to go away. So that is where the battle needs to be. It is a parental rights. battle in a lot of these conversations. But then in the marriage and family debate, it's also a children's rights battle. Yep. And unfortunately, as you know, and we'll kind of talk more about what this is and how we kind of approach this. There are obviously biological parents who do a bad job. Like I'm thinking of that family that was highlighted by Fox News just a couple months ago, this little girl whose parents said, oh yeah, from the time that she or they said he was 18 months old, like he knew that. he was a boy and transitioned him into a boy. And Fox News highlighted this. It's like awesome and great and wonderful. I mean, these are biological parents obviously doing, abdicating their responsibility. Then there was, I don't know, an even more disturbing story. If you can imagine it,

Starting point is 00:28:35 I saw it on Twitter. It was originally highlighted by lips of TikTok this, this pub in Eugene Oregon called Old Nick's Pub. They were having a church. child drag show and this little girl, she's 11 years old. Her name is Vanelope. I will link the thread so people can look at it. She has a drag queen, a parent who is, I guess, a man who dances around like a drag queen. And this little girl has been dressing up in these scantily clad dresses and performing for adults who are giving her money for years since she was a little girl, this thread chronicles the history of her family and how she has been raised from a very young age to kind of perform in a sexual way for people. And this pub is defending themselves saying,

Starting point is 00:29:27 it's weird that you guys are sexualizing her. We don't see it sexually. Everyone else who is saying that they have a problem with this, this pub is saying is sexualizing her. This mother isn't sexualizing her. The people giving her dollar bills aren't sexualizing her. It's the people who have a problem with it. This is just about acceptance and love. And I'm looking at this. I'm like, well, this girl is actually being sex trafficked. She's being sex trafficked from a young age. That's what's happening. And there are people who are actually applauding it. Who knows how much this goes on? I mean, what in the world do we do in the face of an evil like this? Yeah, well, we have to get very serious about who children are. First, we figure out who children are, what they need, what they deserve, what they

Starting point is 00:30:07 have a right to. And yes, there are negligent biological parents out there. They deserve condemnation. But when it comes to child thriving, we don't have to guess at what it takes for children to thrive. And that is whenever possible, their own mother and father married and raising them together for life. We have to get that right. First, we have to understand kind of the concrete, what does it mean to be a human child, what do human children need? They need that mom and dad in their life. They need protection from sexualization. They need protection. from adults who would seek to exploit them. Children are vulnerable.

Starting point is 00:30:48 And part of the role of adults is to be an umbrella against all of the different ways that the world would seek to victimize them. And unfortunately, we have messages going to parents these days that says, no, actually that kind of exploitation is liberating for kids. So there is a huge role to play here, not just for thinking adults,

Starting point is 00:31:11 but especially for Christian adults, Christian adults who are mandated with child protection, Christian adults who are warned against participation in anything that would cause little ones to stumble. And so there really is a place, especially for Christian adults, to step into this public debate and start to advocate on behalf of children,

Starting point is 00:31:32 even if their own parents get it wrong. I'm sure that you saw a couple days ago, everyone was reacting to this clip by a person, person or the person in it is named Dylan Mulvaney. This is a guy who says that he is not just a woman, but a girl, even though he is a grown man. And he plays kind of like a caricature of what he thinks, I guess, like a 12-year-old girl is, but has tens of millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. And Ulta platformed him as well as another guy who thinks that he is a girl to talk about girlhood. And one of the things that he said, I reacted to it on Monday, is that he wants to be

Starting point is 00:32:19 a mom one day and that he totally can. Now, people know my thoughts on this. Give us your unfiltered reaction to not just that statement, but what it would actually look like and mean for a child if this person does become a parent believing that he is a woman. So I always begin answering these questions with first we get down to what does the child need? What do they have a right to? Because once you understand that, once you can begin with the child, most of these their questions answer themselves. So children are made from a man and a woman, right? It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. Those two adults are statistically the adults who are most likely to ensure that they are safe and loved. Like I already said, you know, those two adults statistically are the

Starting point is 00:33:07 most connected to, invested in, and protective of them. So if we really believe that children deserve to be safe and loved, we will advocate for both biological parents raising them whenever are possible. Those two adults also grant something to children that they crave, and that is their biological identity, whether it's an adoptee or whether it's a child created through sperm or egg donation. Many of those kids go on to have protracted searches to find their birth mother or their birth father because it's very hard to answer the question, who am I? If you don't know who's am I? And so when it comes to the children created through these third party reproductions, scenarios, it greatly impacts their identity. The largest study that we have on children created

Starting point is 00:33:52 through sperm donation shows that they suffer disproportionate levels of identity issues and struggles because being intentionally separated from a biological parent creates distress and confusion to the point where they then are more likely to battle substance abuse and delinquency in several areas. And then finally, defending this fundamental child right to both biological parents will grant children the perfect gender balance in the home, which maximizes child development because moms do things that dads don't do and dads do things that moms don't do and kids need both, that when you have a mom and a dad in the home, kids will have this well-rounded development. They will have their fine motor skills honed by mom. They'll have their gross motor

Starting point is 00:34:41 skills emphasized by dad. They will have a mom who tends to focus on their immediate emotional well-being and equality. They will have a dad who tends to push them to their limits and teach them abstract standards of right and wrong. So it is this amazing design. So what happens when a single man, whether or not he pretends to be an adolescent girl, what happens when a single man decides that he can have a child on his own? Well, he is always going to to separate a child from a biological parent. So they are going to be absent one adult who statistically is going to be the most connected to,

Starting point is 00:35:19 invested in and protective of them. That child will have gaps that can be exploited because we have removed one of the greatest safeguards for child protection. Number two, that child is going to suffer the identity struggles of not knowing who their biological mother is. Presumably, this man would also rent the womb. of another woman to gestate the child,

Starting point is 00:35:44 because no matter how much you identify as a woman, you cannot identify yourself into having female reproductive organs necessary to create a child. So the child created through a surrogacy arrangement is also going to have the loss of the only relationship that they know on the day that they are born,

Starting point is 00:36:01 something many adoptees refer to as a primal wound. And third, this child is going to suffer mother loss. They're not going to have a woman in their home, raising them. And then in the case of this transgender man, they are going to have a distorted picture of femininity because even though he calls himself a woman, even though he identifies as a woman, even though he, I don't want to say dresses like a woman because I don't know women that dress like he does. I don't walk around in the little tube top and a pleaded skirt in my house. And I don't know a woman who acts like that either. I mean, again, maybe some six-year-old girls, but anyway.

Starting point is 00:36:39 Right. And so he has the brain and the body of a man. He will interact with his child like all men do, because men interact with children not based on how they dress, but based on their brain chemistry, based on their body structure. Their physical bodies actually drive the way that they interact with children. And if he were to have a child, they would have the picture of a woman in their life, but they are going to be interacting with that woman the way that men interact. with children. And so one of the main, one of the most incredible things about having a male parent and a female parent is children have the opportunity to interact with both halves of humanity. And, you know, I quote in my book, Children's Rights Champion Bobby Lopez, who was raised by two women. And he said, you know, gay, he also identified as gay for many years. And he said, you know, kids that grow up with a mom and dad, especially even gay kids that grow up with mom and dad, they don't understand how lucky they are because you learn so much. You're socialized so much by having a female parent to interact with and a male parent to interact with. Because I did not

Starting point is 00:37:48 have a male parent. I did not know how to interact with other boys, other men in my life. I was just the social pariah. I had no markers. I had no way to engage. I was so awkward around men because I never got the practice of interacting with a man in my home. And so if this guy has a child, They're not even going to have a male parent that they can identify with and say, this is what it's like to interface with half of humanity because he's not even properly representing one half of humanity. And biologically, he will be absent a female representation of half of humanity too. So what this is is a massive trade, right?

Starting point is 00:38:29 This guy, Dylan, gets his validation and this kid loses nearly everything that they have a natural right to and that they need for proper development. Yeah. And in some cases, I do think that having a child is an attempt to affirm their so-called gender identity. I saw, I follow this account. You might follow them too. It's called males of Reddit. And it takes screenshots of the, like, the subreddits of like male to female transgender people and just the different things that they think femininity is and wanting affirmation and one post that I saw, which is a pretty common theme basically saying that when they have a child or when their partner has a child, they are going to do everything they can to induce lactation so that they can attempt to breastfeed their child.

Starting point is 00:39:20 And one of the comment said, this could be one of the most affirming things I will ever do. So, I mean, that just breaks my heart thinking about that. But again, we have another example of adults seeking the validation of children in order to affirm their sexual expression. And I just can't imagine what the long-term consequences for society as a whole will be. I mean, those chickens have not come home to roost fully yet. No, we have we already have such robust data on other forms of not. as extreme child deprivation when it comes to family structure, even just no fault divorce, where the child probably still has contact with both mom and dad, where they probably have

Starting point is 00:40:12 representations of both halves of humanity in their life, even though it's not every day. Even no fault divorce has devastated children when it comes to their physical health, their mental health, their emotional health, their academic health, their future relational health. And that is mild compared to the total destruction of an alienation of a child from one biological parent and then the distortion of the parent in the home when it comes to representing the half of humanity that the child needs to engage with if they're going to be able to develop those healthy social interactions later in life. So this is 100 percent, the experimentation on children, the use of children as accessories or tools for adult validation. You can also see those kinds

Starting point is 00:40:56 responses when you look at men who have transitioned to women who are seeking to have wounds implanted in them, womb donation. And they're not doing it necessarily because they want to have a child. That's secondary to the experience, right, and the validation that they would get from having this female experience, right? It's not primarily about the baby. It's about their own validation for their sexual expression. And of course, of course, it's kids who have to pay the price.

Starting point is 00:41:41 Just a reminder to people is that this is all, in addition to just kind of being a sign of the times and the evil spirit of the age that we're in, this is also a huge money-making industry. And it's really hard to create these lifelong slaves to the medical industry from, you know, childhood on if you have a parent who is interfering. So it really all does kind of just work together. To end the conversation, there's a million other things I could talk to you about. Let's wade into even more, perhaps, a controversial territory because we haven't had an opportunity to discuss this yet. And that is my colleague, Dave Rubin, and his announcement that with his partner that they are welcoming have welcomed, I'm not really sure, to children. now I have to, you know, I have to caveat this. I've talked to Dave. He is, I've met him multiple times. Greatest interviewer in the business. Kind person. Husband is so kind. I mean, from everything I know,

Starting point is 00:42:47 great people. That to me, my response to this saying that, you know, this is not something I can congratulate or celebrate has nothing to do with that. But everything to do with part of what we talked about today, the belief that children have a right to a mom and a dad. And what I think is the exploitation that is inherent in this surrogacy process. And what I want to get your response to is that, but also a lot of conservative organizations saying, you know what, we're happy. Let's celebrate, let's accept. We love life. Life has already been reproduced in this case. What's the point of not, you know, saying yay to this. I mean, what is your response to that kind of response to Christian conservatives who are like,

Starting point is 00:43:34 let's just go ahead and congratulate? Well, I agree. I've been a Dave Rubin fan for a long time. He is a great interviewer. And it sounds like he and his husband are both great people. Obviously, I haven't met them personally. I don't have any questions about whether or not they will be good fathers. I think that they're going to be stellar fathers.

Starting point is 00:43:57 They cannot be a mother. Neither of them can be a mother. They, to his credit, acknowledge that, you know, in that long interview that he did with Jordan Peterson, he acknowledged. We can't be a mother. But what fascinates me is that they actually have had to have an army of women to make up for the rules and the missing gaps when it comes to the women that they have excluded from this process. So they have purchased the eggs of a couple different women throughout their different surrogacy attempts. They are renting the womb of two different women. And there has been previous attempts as well.

Starting point is 00:44:33 So they have paid several different women for their wounds. They've purchased the breast milk of several women so that they can have their two industrial freezers of breast milk so that the baby can benefit from not being formula fed. They are going to have night nurses. They're going to have grandmothers. They are, you know, obviously Rubin is very close to his. sister who he asked if she would be the surrogate and the genetic mother, or at least the genetic mother of the child, their endeavor to create intentionally motherless children has to borrow

Starting point is 00:45:04 from the parts, from the female specific parts of several different women, eggs, womb, breasts, and even the physical presence. Biology has made it very difficult to create motherless children and only our modern technologies and a lot of money are able to make it possible. It's fascinating to me that Rubin, in that conversation with Jordan Peterson, had a discussion about why they didn't adopt. And he said, well, there's just something so special about a genetic connection. And Peterson absolutely validated that, right? When you look at your kids and you can see not just your spouse or yourself, but your own parents or your siblings, you look at that and you that is so precious. And that's why Dave and his husband David decided to each have a genetic

Starting point is 00:45:53 child because there was something they acknowledged that was very special about seeing themselves reflected in their child. Now, the amazing thing about this is all of this makes plenty of sense if all that matters is what adults want. But all of this is a very obvious violation of children's rights and well-being when you look at it from the child's perspective. Children long to know the biological identity of the woman whose eggs they purchased, they are going to bond and have bonded with the woman that is gestating them. It is her body. It's her milk.

Starting point is 00:46:27 It's her voice. It's her smell that will soothe the child after she's born. In fact, I've read testimonies of gay men who have procured children through surrogacy who cannot get the baby to calm down, even though, you know, they are the genetic fathers. And only when the surrogate comes over and holds the baby,

Starting point is 00:46:43 does the child calm? because they have an existing relationship. That just puts a lump in my throat. Yeah, like babies know their birth mothers, even though they may not be genetically related to them. Babies long to be loved by a woman. Part of the things that we do at them before us is we catalog the stories of children who had two moms or two dads.

Starting point is 00:47:05 They don't just want generic love. They want maternal love and paternal love. And you can see this in what we call father hunger and mother hunger. children who are well loved by two dads very often experience mother hunger where they will go around to the women in their life, their aunts or their grandmothers or the nice women at the daycare and say, will you be my mother? How about you? Will you be my mother? And sometimes, you know, I follow these chats of gay men who have children and they'll say, gosh, it's so weird. My kid has hit that stage where she's starting to call every woman mommy. And it's like, there's no mommies in our world. Like most of the kids that we have around us are kids with the gay dads too. But something in the side of them longs to be loved by a woman. And so all of these arrangements, right, when you look at it from the perspective of a child, they're losing the genetic connection, right, where the adults say, well, biology matters for me, but it cannot matter for thee. They're losing the connection to their birth mother, right, the person they're bonding to. They're losing the maternal presence

Starting point is 00:48:03 in the home that they will probably long for every day. And it's an injustice. And we can celebrate that these two babies that are born, that their life is good and wonderful and valuable, but we cannot endorse and we cannot promote and we cannot validate and we cannot legitimize processes that create intentionally motherless or fatherless children, children who will likely go through the rest of their life with a lifelong mother wound or father wound. So that genetic component, as you said, matters when a parent is looking in the face of their child, but they're saying in this case that that genetic connection does not matter if the child is trying to look into a face of a woman and find themselves. And I had never really thought about it

Starting point is 00:49:01 exactly like that. But as you said, we don't often look at these situations from the perspective of the child. And I have Christians, Christians every time I talk about surrogacy or every time I talk about this say that I am wrong, that I am. mean for being against us. Why can't I just be happy? Well, aren't you pro-life? Isn't this just bringing gay people and gay conservatives into like the pro-family movement? Don't you want them to experience that? Why can't you just celebrate this? Why are you so hateful? And they are never thinking about it from the rights and the well-being of a child. And they've also sometimes bought into, I talked about with Dr. Brad Wilcox, the family diversity myth.

Starting point is 00:49:49 that the more people, as long as you're loved, you're fine. Or, hey, and polyamorous relationships where you've got three or four parents, whatever, that's just more people to love you. And so they just kind of delude themselves into what we've been indoctrinated to think that love is love. And so the love of two dads is the same thing as the love of your biological mom. And the science just says otherwise. Well, in the stories of kids say otherwise. You know, chapter seven in our book is all about third-party reproduction.

Starting point is 00:50:20 It's all about children created through somebody else's sperm and somebody else's egg. And we put about 30 stories in there. Read it. I dare you. I dare you to read in their own words how these technologies, how the intentional separation from a genetic parent impacted their sense of identity, their feelings of commodification, the discomfort that money changed hands over their conception, the eerieness that they were treated like a build a bear, a human build a bear, right?

Starting point is 00:50:51 Like read their stories. This is not a case of, you know, love does not make a family when it comes to these kids and what it is that they're thinking about when they're looking at their own life, that we know what children need to be safe and love. We know the major components needed for a stable identity when it comes to their development. And it is whenever possible their own biological. mom and dad raising them. And on the topic of surrogacy, you are right that what we need to be as conservatives is we need to be the pro-child party. That is what we need to be. We need to be

Starting point is 00:51:27 the party that not only defends children's right to life, but children's right to their mother and father. And on the topic of surrogacy, that violates both. Surrogacy always involves IVF. IVF is not child-friendly technology, only about 7% of lab-created babies. babies created in vitro in glass will be born alive. The majority of them are going to be discarded, spend their life in a freezer deemed non-viable. They won't make the grade the wrong sex. They won't survive the implantation. If they do survive the implantation, and there's too many of them or those wrong sex,

Starting point is 00:52:02 they will be selectively reduced. That is abortion. That is standard language in surrogacy contracts. Surrogacy is not child-friendly. IVF is not child-friendly out on top of that surrogacy. Surrogacy is not about babies. Surrogacy is about on-demand designer babies shipped worldwide. It is the commodification of children and any conservative and especially any Christian

Starting point is 00:52:24 has to stand against this. We have all of chapter 8 in our book about surrogacy. Read it, become an expert and start to fight against it. Yep. And most people simply have not thought about it. They just haven't thought about it. That was true of me. A few years ago, I didn't thought about this.

Starting point is 00:52:38 If you had asked me what I thought about it, I was like, yeah, I don't know. Sure. I just, and it's funny, a lot of people, just because I haven't thought about something, they assume that people who care about it are wrong or making a big deal of it. But I just encourage you. If that's where you are, I understand because I've been there, just take some time to educate yourself, especially through Katie. I've also had, if that comment about IVF shocked you because I find that it does shock a lot of a lot of people, a lot of Christian conservatives, go back and listen to, of course, my episode that I did with Katie last year, but also I've done a couple episodes with Jennifer Law.

Starting point is 00:53:13 She talks about some of the ethical problems with IVF. And of course, this is not to say that you who have used IVF aren't a wonderful mom or a wonderful dad or that your kids are not valuable made in the image of God. That's not about that at all. It's asking the questions that Katie asks so. well, what is the right of a child? What is best for the child, not just what does mom and dad want or what do two people want? So thank you, Katie. How can they find you and support you and learn more about this subject that maybe they had never really thought about? Well, my nonprofit

Starting point is 00:53:45 is Them Before Us. So you can go to them before us. So you can go to them before us.com. Go to the bottom, subscribe, stay up on everything that we've got going on there. This absolutely is the battle. We have to get this right. There are so much. moral confusion, even among the right, even among Christians when it comes to alternative family structures. I think that we have in many ways the alarm has gone off in terms of the sexualization of children. Thank God. And we are willing to speak up and stand up and advocate on their behalf. We also need to bring that kind of fire into the debate about marriage and family because children are being victimized in these conversations often under the name of love and

Starting point is 00:54:25 tolerance and acceptance. And it's just unacceptable. Children are precious. They have rights and they need and deserve adults who are willing to stand up and speak on their behalf. Yes, definitely support them before us. Go check out their resources. They've got a lot on their website, but also make sure that you read their book. Katie is an awesome follow. I love Katie, just what a fighter you are and how you have helped me and educated me so much and inspired me on this topic over the last couple of years. I'm just so thankful. So thanks for your courage and thanks for your clarity in continuing to equip people to stand for the things that matter. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues

Starting point is 00:55:12 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.

Starting point is 00:55:33 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,

Starting point is 00:55:42 you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 695 | Why Children's Rights Trump Adults' Feelings | Guest: Katy Faust

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