The Daily Signal - #380: The Price Children Pay for the Sexual Revolution

Episode Date: January 20, 2019

In this day and age of rights movements, we don't hear too much about children's rights. Our guest today, Katy Faust, heads up a children's rights organization called "Them Before Us." She says the sexual revolution and adult fulfillment have come at a steep price for children. She also points the way forward for healthy parenting in the 21st century.Enjoy the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, January 22nd. I'm Daniel Davis. In this day and age of rights movements, we don't hear that much about children's rights. Well, my guest today, Katie Faust, is a children's rights activist. She says children have paid a heavy price for the sexual revolution that we don't fully appreciate. She'll join us today in studio. Well, now we are joined by Katie Faust, who is founder and director of a new organization that advocates for the rights of children, them before us.

Katie, thanks for joining us in studio. I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So Katie, tell us a little bit about why you founded them before us. Just that title itself is interesting. What does it mean? Yeah. So the idea is them, the children, before us, the adults.

And when it comes to matters of marriage and parenthood, family, family structure, we pretty much flip that. We put adults before children, especially when it comes to adult desires. And the idea that kind of if the parents are happy, the kids will be happy. And we've taken that narrative all the way from no fault divorce, you know, through the definition of marriage and now into reproductive technologies to say that really adult desires what should be driving the conversation. But the reality is that children actually have nearly universally recognized rights to both their mother and father. And that when we respect those rights, when we recognize that children have a right to both parents, they need both of their parents. and they long to be in relationship with both of their parents.

Our policies would look a lot different, and our society would be more healthy. And our children's hearts and lives would be more intact. But instead, the narrative around marriage and family has been so driven by what adults want, and kids have paid the price for it. So the idea of them before us is that we put them, the children, before us, the adults.

So let me just ask you about some specific, examples of where this plays out in our society. You talked about children getting the short end of the stick. What are some ways that we've seen children really sort of getting the shaft because adults are pursuing their own interests? Yeah. I think that there's obviously kind of hot button things going on today with things like commercial surrogacy, but it started so much earlier and it really started with no-fault

divorce in terms of policy. You know, that was when we said, look, if the adults aren't in love anymore, you know, we will make this arrangement, this marriage temporary. And, you know, if the adults aren't in love, then we're going to break up this marriage. And a lot of the times that means that children definitely lose a daily relationship with both parents, but much of the time dad completely drops out of the scene altogether after a divorce, which is tragic. And the impact of divorce on kids is lifelong. I mean, you can look at, it's an ace, you know, an adverse childhood experience that is tied to all kinds of other long-term issues and struggles from finding and maintaining relationships of their own to holding down steady work, even to increase risks of major health issues. And so that's probably the area where most of us are the most familiar with adult desires being prioritized over the rights of children. moving into more current day policy issues would be the definition of marriage.

Marriage historically has been the most child-friendly institution in the world it's ever known because it's the one place where the rights of a child to both their mother and father find a common home. Instead of viewing it as this critical issue of justice for children, we've transformed marriage simply into another vehicle of adult fulfillment. And that's what happened when we redefined marriage. So as the people who follow our Facebook page and website know, redefining marriage redefines parenthood. When you make husbands and wives optional, mothers and fathers become legally optional as well.

And we're also seeing it when you're looking at reproductive technologies. You know, the United States is, as my friend Jennifer Loll says, it is a wild west when it comes to medical practice. There's very little regulation. And there's all kinds of crazy things happening, almost always, costing children of. right to their mother or father or both. So yeah, that's kind of a bit of a broad landscape picture of what it is that we're dealing with. So when it comes to something like IVF, which I think has gotten pretty universal acceptance in our culture, largely for, you know, because of ordinary married couples who would want to try to have a kid, but obviously IVF includes a lot of other situations.

how does that hurt kids? Right. Good question. So our simple response is don't make kids sacrifice for you. Whatever is going on in your life, adults face really hard things, whether it's infertility or divorce or like struggles in their marriage or maybe personal identity, sexuality questions. Those are very real issues, very real struggles.

But just because you're struggling, don't make a kid sacrifice for you. adults, you're supposed to do the hard thing so that kids can keep their fundamental rights and needs intact. So if you're making any kind of decision that means a child is going to lose something that they have a fundamental right to, it is the wrong decision. So if you can navigate those waters of IVF without forcing a child to sacrifice any child their right to life, you know, through using embryos as kind of disposable commodities or keeping them frozen, you know, for decades, if you can do it without finding a donor. You know, if there's a way for you to do this without a child losing, God bless you. But just because you can't have what you want does not mean that you should force a kid to sacrifice something they have a right to. So you've talked about how that's different from adoption. Can you flesh that out for us?

Yeah, this is a really important issue. First of all, you need to properly understand what adoption is. Adoption is not a means for adults to get kids. Adoption is a critical social institute. that provides parents to children who have lost them. And adoption is a last resort after we've tried everything that we can to keep kids with their biological parents whenever possible. But if for some reason they lose them through tragedy or negligence, then children have a

right to be adopted. Okay, so adoption and third-party reproduction are similar in that the children are being raised by non-biological adults. But they are different because adoption support. courts children's rights and third-party reproduction violates children's rights. And here's the difference. In adoption, the child is the client, right? Every child, if adoption is done right, every child in need will be placed with loving parents. When it comes to the fertility industry, the adults are the client. And the goal is to get that couple or that single a baby at whatever cost, regardless of what

it costs the child. And so the idea is to provide adults with a kid in every situation in the fertility world. In adoption, it's to find homes for every child. So in adoption, every adult that wants a kid doesn't get one. But in the fertility world, every adult that wants a kid will get it no matter what it costs the kid. It's like you might say adoption is supply driven and IVF and other methods are demand driven. Yeah. And there's adoptees who really do feel like adoption in the past has been somewhat of a marketplace if there has been kind of coercion that's taken place. And that is a reality that there is times where we should instead support the biological parent or single mother instead of, you know, but in the situations where a child has been

abandoned or orphaned, right? A just society cares for orphans. It doesn't create them. And that's really the two different things going on in the adoption world versus the third party reproduction world. And to be clear, because these kids who are created through sperm and egg donation are now old enough to speak for themselves, many of them deeply struggle with the fact that not only were they raised without one of their biological parents, but that was an intentional decision, right, as opposed to adopted kids who are being raised by non-biological parents, who, if adoption is done right, are doing their best to mend the wound that was created by the loss of their first family, as opposed to donor conception, which actually creates. creates the wound. Well, there's so much there that we could talk about. I want to ask you about legislative issues. You might, you know, you're a brand new organization. You're thinking about legislation that can affect the issue. Obviously, a lot of this problem is just cultural. We've accepted, you know, the idea that free consenting adults can do whatever they want to fulfill their own dreams and happiness. Obviously, that's got problems. What can the government do

to at least contain the issue that the culture is driving? Yeah, well, unfortunately, we lost big on marriage because we did not understand that marriage is a social justice issue for children. And because we did not tell that story properly, we are now going to see even more rapid erosion of children's rights as a result. So there's a lot coming down the pike. But right now, what can we do? Well, I would say number one is we can focus on truthfulness when it comes to birth certificates, that birth certificates actually exist to serve the child, that children, in one of the most universal human longings is to be known and loved by the two people responsible for your existence.

And birth certificates, especially when you're looking at documents like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which outlines that children have a right to know their biological identity. They have a right to factual birth certificates because the child needs it and they deserve it. These days we look more at birth certificates as something that communicates adult intent. And so we've seen that across the country with like two women wanting to be placed on a birth certificate. And that's an injustice. But it's also an injustice when a woman who uses a sperm donor puts the social father on the birth certificate as well because that doesn't serve the child either. And so we need to be fair and even-handed when we look at this and demand that all children have factual birth certificates.

So that's one area. I think the other area is adoption. And that is that adults often use the language of saying, I have a right to adopt or we have a right to adopt. And the answer is, no, you don't. Gay people don't have a right to adopt. You know what? Heterosexual people don't have a right to adopt either. Nobody has a right to a child that's not biologically theirs.

However, children have a right to be adopted. So what's going on right now in 2018, 2019? I'd say those are probably the top two kind of legislative issues that we're going to try to tackle. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting. I was just thinking there, when you have a child, we talk about the rights of the child being violated, that child then goes up to be an adult who then presumably could do the same thing to another child. there seems to be a real inconsistency there

where if we're a society that respects all individuals' rights equally, we're not going to have that kind of imbalance. Right. Well, and you know what we say is we think that every adult should conform to the rights of children. You know, no matter what kind of past you had, whatever you suffered as a child, whatever kind of pain there is there, we think that your parents should have done right by you so that you didn't have to suffer in that way. And now as you move into adulthood,

we're saying you should break the cycle, the cycle of divorce or the cycle of having intentionally alienating one parent. A lot of donor-conceived kids go on to donate sperm or eggs because even though they've experienced some pain and loss, it is somewhat normalized for them. So we are saying, look, you can create the family you wish you had as a kid. And you should, right? There should have been somebody in the ear of your parents saying, hey, this is bad for your kids, or this is going to bring them pain.

Or the divorce, you know, you think it's like a bad cold and the kids are just going to get over it. But the reality is that your divorce is the beginning of endless losses and transition for your kid. So stop it. You know, put your foot down and recreate, you know, create the family that you wish you had had as a child. Wow. Well, Katie Faust is founder and director of them before us. Where can they find you online? Then Before Us.com. We've got a pretty active Facebook page as well. And we're on Twitter and Instagram.

Fantastic. Katie, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Liberals have pretty much cornered the market on 101-style podcasts that break down tough policy issues in the news. Until now, did you know that every week Heritage Explains intermingles personal stories, news clips, and facts from heritage experts to help explain some of today's hardest issues from a conservative perspective? Look for Heritage Explains on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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