Episode 248
KATY FAUST - Fighting for Kids: A Christian Mom Plans to Destroy Gay Marriage
Katie Faust is the founder and president of Them Before Us, a global movement defending children's right to their mother and father. In this conversation she reveals her bold plan to overturn gay marriage through the courts by focusing on children's rights rather than adult perspectives. The episode explores how marriage redefinition has created a legal framework that commodifies children through surrogacy, IVF, and intent-based parenthood. Katie also discusses her controversial "one tool" for evaluating family decisions and her surprising work as a Christian matchmaker.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Either adults do the hard thing or children do the hard thing in every family situation
- Gay marriage legally weakened every parent's claim to their own biological children
- No-fault divorce was the original redefinition of marriage that prioritized adult happiness over children
- IVF and surrogacy create mass production and commodification of children through intent-based parenthood
- Natural rights exist pre-government, require no provision, and everyone gets equal measure
- Christians historically protected children first, then dealt with adult comfort second
CONNECT WITH KATY FAUST
- https://thembeforeus.com/
- https://thembeforeus.substack.com/
- https://x.com/advo_katy
- https://x.com/ThemBeforeUs
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hello, and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker B:This is a weekly interview show where I sit down and talk with authors, thought leaders and influencers who have help us understand our changing world.
Speaker B:New episodes release every Friday.
Speaker B:My guest this week is Katie Foust.
Speaker B:Katie is the founder and president of Them Before Us, a global movement defending children's right to their mother and father.
Speaker B:She publishes, speaks and testifies widely on why marriage and family are matters of justice for children.
Speaker B:Her articles have appeared in Newsweek, USA Today, the Federalist, Public Discourse, World Magazine, the Daily Signal, the Washington examiner, the American Mind, and the American Conservative.
Speaker A:She.
Speaker B:She is on the advisory board for the alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
Speaker B:She helped design the teen edition of Canavox, which studies sex, marriage and relationships from a natural law perspective.
Speaker B:She and her husband are raising their four children in Seattle.
Speaker B:Katie Faust, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker A:Great to be with you.
Speaker A:I trust that we're going to have a lot of fun here today.
Speaker B:I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker B:I've been looking forward to this conversation because what I've seen of your work, the talk that you gave that you sent to me and your work with them before us is very bold and very inspiring and very needed, especially in regards to regard to the news coming out of Minneapolis today.
Speaker A:Oh, are you talking about the shooting?
Speaker B:Yes, I am.
Speaker A:Yeah, I have.
Speaker A:I have been in meetings all day, so I haven't seen but two dead, 17 injured, possible transgender identified shooter.
Speaker A:Is that all?
Speaker A:That's what I've seen.
Speaker A:Is that right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Not just possible identified, literally identified with the, with the shooter, having drawings in his manifesto of being demon possessed and all kinds of hateful speech towards every group that you can imagine.
Speaker B:So it's, it's quite shocking today.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's just awful.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But it gets back to the point of the need of them, them before us, which is the purpose of your organization, prioritizing children over parents.
Speaker B:And maybe you can talk a little bit about that organization, its mission and how it got started.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The idea is them, the children come before us, the adults, and there's a bit of education to be done on the front end of that.
Speaker A:You know, I'm not saying a child's preferred, like transgender pronouns come before the parental rights.
Speaker A:I'm not saying that.
Speaker A:I'm not saying that the child and their demand for another piece of chocolate cake comes first.
Speaker A:I'm saying children have fundamental rights, especially in the marriage and family space.
Speaker A:They have a right to life, and they also have a right to the two people responsible for their existence.
Speaker A:And unfortunately, those two fundamental natural rights are very often sidelined so that adult desires, adult identity, adult affirmation, adult priorities can take center stage.
Speaker A:And when we elevate adult desire to that place of highest status, it's always children's fundamental natural rights that suffer.
Speaker A:So when we're talking about this world of marriage and family, there's a lot of competing interests and sometimes claims of competing rights.
Speaker A:And in those kinds of cases, I say no.
Speaker A:The rights of the child, the objective, fundamental natural rights of the child, and have got to be prioritized because if they're not, children are victimized.
Speaker A:And that's simply not an option.
Speaker A:If you want to say that you live in a just society, say more.
Speaker B:About what the natural rights of a child are.
Speaker A:So we spell this out in our first book, then before Us why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement.
Speaker A:My co author, Stacey Manning and I, we're not natural lawyers.
Speaker A:We're moms from Seattle.
Speaker A:Neither of us have degrees that would lead us to the place where we would be considered natural lawyers.
Speaker A:But I did get the best, I think, natural lawy to write the foreword for that book.
Speaker A:Professor ROBERT GEORGE and so what we do is we kind of read and understood natural rights as a philosophy, and then we boiled it down into something that's a little more accessible to the normie mom and dad out there.
Speaker A:But one of the challenges that we have, not just in the marriage and family debate, but the entire cultural landscape, is sort of this rights talk, where anything an adult really wants is conveniently framed as a right.
Speaker A:You know, I have a right to housing, I have a right to government funded healthcare.
Speaker A:I have a right to birth control.
Speaker A:I have a right to choose.
Speaker A:I have a right to marry, I have a right to parenthood.
Speaker A:So a lot of those rights claims are not actually rights.
Speaker A:They might be important, they're probably commodities, but they're not natural rights.
Speaker A:So Stacy and I sort of created this formula to understand what is and is not a natural right.
Speaker A:I'll just give it to you real fast.
Speaker A:Number one, a natural right exists pre government.
Speaker A:It's not something the government provides, it's something the government protects.
Speaker A:Number two, nobody has to provide it to you.
Speaker A:If it has to be bottled, like dug up from the ground, bottled, labeled, shift and put on a shelf, it's not a natural right.
Speaker A:And a natural right is something that everyone has in equal measure.
Speaker A:So if it can vary in degrees, like a GED versus a PhD or a dorm room versus Mar a Lago, it's not a natural right.
Speaker A:So you can look at things like a right to life exists pre government, no one has to provide it for you.
Speaker A:Everyone gets the same amount.
Speaker A:One, you can look at your own relationship to your mother and father.
Speaker A:Nobody has to provide it for you.
Speaker A:If you exist, your mother and father exist.
Speaker A:Government doesn't create it.
Speaker A:And that's a really big problem we have now because government is now starting to create legal structures of parents that are outside of this fundamental natural right.
Speaker A:And we can talk more about that.
Speaker A:But if you exist, your mother and father also exist, you have a fundamental natural right to them.
Speaker A:And I have the same amount of parent as you do, Will.
Speaker A:And as your listeners, everybody has two parent.
Speaker A:You have a father and a mother.
Speaker A:You genetically come from a man and a woman.
Speaker A:And it is to those adults to which you have a fundamental natural right.
Speaker A:So I understand that the term children's rights can trigger especially some people on the right who understand that that label has been used to smuggle in an awful lot of child destroying ideologies.
Speaker A:They're using it improperly and I'm not.
Speaker B:Yes, and thank you for clarifying that.
Speaker B:I don't mean that children have a right to choose their gender.
Speaker B:That's not what I mean at all.
Speaker B:But downstream from this idea of parental rights to make choices for their own independent desires, you get the sexual revolution, you get abortion, you get single families.
Speaker B:Downstream from that, you get the kind of situations that we experience today.
Speaker B:So as you begin to bring this idea, or as you have taken this idea out into both liberal and conservative spaces, what has the reaction been?
Speaker A:Widespread hate, I'd say massive, triggering, total fallout, horrible meltdowns.
Speaker A:And generally the people in the Christian conservative world are like, oh, this is a helpful framing.
Speaker A:Oh, it's more easy for me to talk to my neighbor who disagrees when I'm appealing to a universal authority of natural law or social science, or the stories of kids that have been impacted by this versus trying to throw down a Bible verse.
Speaker A:So for the most part, like our first book, then before us, they wanted to put it under a religious imprint.
Speaker A:And I was like, nope, there's no Bible, there's no scripture, there's nothing in this verse that is religious.
Speaker A:This is simply a toolkit for anybody that wants to defend the fundamental rights of the child against all different kinds of family makeover scenarios, whether it's the redefinition of marriage, widespread divorce, reproductive technologies, the promotion of modern families, the normalizing of polygamy or cohabitation, adult centric Adoption, commercial surrogacy.
Speaker A:This is just a handbook for how to defend children in all of those different conversations.
Speaker A:But it is Christians, it is religious Americans and actually religious people worldwide that have found it to be really helpful because they already know what they believe about mothers and fathers and marriage and sex and gender.
Speaker A:It's been harder for them to explain why they believe it and why it is so good for kids.
Speaker A:So that is one reason why we sort of took that tact when it came to expressing this position of ours.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The average believer today will have a far better understand time understanding natural law arguments than they will presuppositionalist arguments.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So what's an example of some of the tools you provide to the readers via that book to believers?
Speaker A:One tool.
Speaker A:We give you one tool.
Speaker B:Okay, one tool.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker A:The one tool is.
Speaker A:Look at whatever question is before you examine the headlines coming across.
Speaker A:Think about the personal decision you're facing in your own marriage or the person that is seeking counsel from you and ask the question, who is doing the hard thing in this scenario?
Speaker A:Because in the world of marriage and family, somebody will do the hard thing.
Speaker A:In the case of a struggling marriage where there is some challenge between husband and wife, either the mother and father will do hard things, find accountability, get therapy, work it out, or the children will do hard things by growing up in split homes, having new partners and spouses, stepchildren, half siblings, coming in and out of their home, and then very often develop two different personalities from living in two completely different worlds.
Speaker A:Someone's going to do the hard thing there.
Speaker A:Is it the kids or is it the adult somebody that's struggling with infertility?
Speaker A:Who's going to do the hard thing there?
Speaker A:Is it going to be the husband and wife who figure out how to resolve the underlying fertility issues using things like restorative reproductive medicine?
Speaker A:Or is it going to be the children who are created en masse in a laboratory and 14 out of 16 are going to lose their right to life because they were the wrong sex, they were surplus, they didn't make it through the genetic screening process.
Speaker A:Someone will do the hard thing.
Speaker A:The adults or the kids in an unplanned pregnancy situation, who's going to do the hard thing?
Speaker A:Is it going to be the two people responsible for the creation of the child?
Speaker A:Or will the child do the hard thing by losing their right to life?
Speaker A:If somebody experiences same sex attraction, who's going to do the hard thing?
Speaker A:Is it going to be the child who loses their mother or father to join the family that meets the adult's romantic attractions?
Speaker A:Or will it be the same sex attracted adult who forms their family around the child's right to be known and loved by both their mother and father every day?
Speaker A:So that is, this is.
Speaker A:It's very simple.
Speaker A:In every marriage and family situation, either the adults will do the hard thing or the children will do the hard thing.
Speaker A:A just society will empathize with adults who are struggling.
Speaker A:But draw a far, draw a hard red line in the sand.
Speaker A:Saying, just because you have the feelings does not mean children should be victimized so you can have what you want.
Speaker B:I love it.
Speaker B:This is a scorcher.
Speaker B:I imagine that you light some hair on fire with ideas like this.
Speaker A:I am not popular with progressives, but I have Christians who get up and walk out of my talks, who yell from the crowd if I'm speaking in small groups.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And that's the problem with this child centric worldview.
Speaker A:The problem with putting them before us is no adult gets a pass.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Every adult at some point has to decide, is it them or is it us?
Speaker A:And saying it's us, it's we are the ones that are going to sacrifice.
Speaker A:That is such a countercultural message.
Speaker A:Not even we can always sort of find a carve out for ourselves.
Speaker A:You know, we can find a carve out.
Speaker A:Well, I'm not anti abortion.
Speaker A:I really want a baby.
Speaker A:My husband and I would be wonderful parents.
Speaker A:IVF is the only way that we can have a child.
Speaker A:And my doctor told me to make 12 embryos.
Speaker A:And now it's like, I've got three healthy children, I've got six in storage.
Speaker A:But it's like, I mean, I was meant to be a mom.
Speaker A:We can always find a carve out for ourselves.
Speaker A:And so this is a confronting message, to be honest.
Speaker A:And a lot of times when I am railing against children going home with gay parents who have not been vetted, who are not genetically related, who are trafficked across borders, most people on the right are like, hell yeah.
Speaker A:And then I say, and also the sweet Christian heterosexual couple that is perusing the egg donor catalog is also victimizing the child.
Speaker A:And they're like, screw you.
Speaker A:So that's the thing.
Speaker A:This is an indiscriminate message.
Speaker A:Everybody, single, married, gay, straight, fertile and infertile, atheist and Christian, has to say, is it them or is it us?
Speaker A:And a just society says, it's us.
Speaker A:We're the ones that are going to.
Speaker B:Sacrifice equal weights and measures.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And of course, Christianity was the world religion that spoke the most powerfully about the rights of children, particularly with regard to access to their Savior.
Speaker B:Suffer not the little children to come unto me.
Speaker B:That was a revolutionary, radical message in Rome of the day, and we seem to forget that it also applies to children today.
Speaker A:Let's have a little chat about the Christian's responsibility to the child.
Speaker B:Let's do it.
Speaker A:Because this idea that suffer the little children come to me, that we welcome children, is paired with this acknowledgment that our Savior came not as an infant, but as an embryo, grew gestationally in his mother's womb, was born, went through all the different stages of development.
Speaker A:He's the one that we worship and that dignified children in a way that most other cultures and most other religions did not.
Speaker A:The Roman world that the church was born into in many cases did not even consider children to be fully human until they could walk and talk.
Speaker A:Therefore, we could victimize them, we could expose them, we could assault them, we could objectify them, we could sell them.
Speaker A:And this humanizing perspective of children, that they are also the imago dei, regardless of their ability, regardless of their age, and then the stern warning that God himself would leverage extreme corporal punishment on us if we were to mistreat or cause one of these little ones to stumble meant that not just the first century Christians, but Christians all across the world, in every country where they set foot had a different kind of relationship with children.
Speaker A:You will not find Christian influence in any country in any century that did not do two piss off adults and protect children.
Speaker A:You had missionaries in pretty much every country starting orphanages for unwanted disabled children.
Speaker A:You have, in almost every country, Christians confronting both infanticide and abortion.
Speaker A:You've got Christian missionaries that played a critical role, the dominant role in ending foot binding.
Speaker A:In China, you've got Christian missionaries.
Speaker A:Mary Sesler in Ethiopia, I think it was, who rescued twins.
Speaker A:Because in that society there was a thought that if there were twins, one of them was demon possessed so they'd kill both of them.
Speaker A:You had Christians in the 18th century in the UK enacting child labor laws so that children, street children, poor children, were not, you know, making shoes or weaving in looms in factories for 14 hours a day.
Speaker A:There's a direct relationship between a genuine Christian faith and child protection.
Speaker A:And we have gotten to this bizarre place in our culture today where we think that the Christian's primary relationship with the culture is to be welcoming and affirming of adults.
Speaker A:False.
Speaker A:A Christian's relationship with the culture has got to begin with justice for children.
Speaker A:And in matters of Marriage, family and reproductive technologies.
Speaker A:This is where their rights are being violated.
Speaker A:And the church has got to stand up and speak up.
Speaker B:As you deliver this message, you speak to crowds, you write articles.
Speaker B:But as you deliver this message in person, particularly to women, what is the response in more intimate situations, less public spectators.
Speaker A:I'm actually very nice in private.
Speaker A:That's because there's two different roles here.
Speaker A:When you're talking about policy, policy is not concerned with empathy.
Speaker A:Policy is primarily a justice matter.
Speaker A:So when you're debating the definition of marriage, the goal is not national therapy for how gay people have suffered.
Speaker A:When you're discussing ivf, the goal is not, oh, I'm so sad that you have suffered three miscarriages.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:When you're talking policy, policy is about justice.
Speaker A:That is your primary aim.
Speaker A:And when you're talking.
Speaker A:So there's a different role to be played when it's your friend who is coming to you, who's dealing with a difficult marriage or getting through a divorce and then trying to figure out how to deal with her ex husband, who's a.
Speaker A:Who is a genuine narcissist, versus the variety of husbands who are just accused of being narcissists so that our wives can get alimony and an easy escape.
Speaker A:There's a difference between shouldering the load of a woman with an unplanned pregnancy.
Speaker A:What is your role as a friend there?
Speaker A:It is empathy.
Speaker A:It is compassion.
Speaker A:And you do want to be in my.
Speaker A:I would strive to be.
Speaker A:You tell me everything.
Speaker A:I am here to help you.
Speaker A:I'm going to bear your burden.
Speaker A:I am going to say, don't touch the kids, but I'm not there to adjudicate.
Speaker A:And this is a problem.
Speaker A:We have crosswired on these two roles.
Speaker A:We have taken the friend role and we've applied it to policy.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And we've said, we're going to make policy the vehicle of empathy and compassion wrong.
Speaker A:That just gets you injustice.
Speaker A:And we can also be wrong when we take justice and we apply it to our personal relationships and say, my job here is to adjudicate rather than compassion and empathy.
Speaker A:And so there is a place for both, but you can't get them mixed up with one another.
Speaker A:And the problem is we've had too much empathy and compassion for the wrong victims in policy matters.
Speaker A:Instead of properly identifying the victims, which are always children, and then advancing justice on their behalf.
Speaker B:What a great distinction about when to apply justice and when to apply empathy, in which sphere?
Speaker B:And of course, how we've misapplied them in the wrong spheres.
Speaker B:And I didn't mean to suggest that you weren't nice.
Speaker B:It was more along the lines of the impression.
Speaker A:Is there?
Speaker B:Oh, sure.
Speaker A:No, I just.
Speaker A:Everyone's like, oh, my gosh, you must be a truth teller.
Speaker A:I'm like, no.
Speaker A:I actually had a situation this morning where a friend, a dear friend, one of my oldest friend, misread something on my website and said, how dare you?
Speaker A:How could you lie about your childhood and your backstory?
Speaker A:And I had an absolute panic.
Speaker A:And I was like, oh, my gosh, what have I said?
Speaker A:Maybe somebody misconstrued or took my words out of context.
Speaker A:And I was.
Speaker A:I was like, the heart was elevated.
Speaker A:I'm like, I want to keep the peace.
Speaker A:I want the relationships.
Speaker A:I am.
Speaker A:I am a shepherdess at heart.
Speaker A:Thankfully, it was all a misunderstanding.
Speaker A:We got it cleared up really fast.
Speaker A:The whole truth teller thing had to grow into that.
Speaker B:Oh, sure.
Speaker A:The only reason I do is because very real children are being victimized, and there was nobody in these spaces speaking up on their behalf.
Speaker A:But it is a understandable misconception that I throw bombs for a living.
Speaker A:Well, I do it for a living.
Speaker A:I just don't do it in all of my personal relationships.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:And you said the word that I was going to use, which is a shepherd's heart.
Speaker B:And I think one of the challenges that all Christians who are engaged in politics experience today is the dual role between truth teller in the public square.
Speaker B:A prophet, let's say, versus a priest or a shepherd or a ministerial role to someone in person.
Speaker B:And so as you talk to women in person in a kind and genuine and loving way, but you show them the errors in their worldview that impact their lives directly.
Speaker B:I was wrong about this, this, this, and this.
Speaker B:What is that like?
Speaker B:Because that's a conversation that many male pastors won'.
Speaker B:Today.
Speaker A:Well, first of all, you have to tell the truth.
Speaker A:And a lot of the reasons why women come to me is because.
Speaker A:So let me.
Speaker A:Let me back up and talk about this a little bit differently.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:There's so much crookedness taking place in our relationships, whether it's our friendships, our dating relationships, our marriage relationships.
Speaker A:Then there's so many crooked ideas about parenting or our relationship to our children or what the role of sex is, the connection between sex, marriage, and babies.
Speaker A:I mean, there's just so much distortion happening on all of those different topics.
Speaker A:So the one thing that we try to do at them before us, and I would encourage pastors to do, is you have to show people the straight stick.
Speaker A:So this is DL Moody said, you don't know how crooked a stick is until you lay a straight stick next to it.
Speaker A:Sometimes people don't even know that IVF is a crooked stick.
Speaker A:That IVF is going to lead you to commodify, discard, and donate your children to research.
Speaker A:A lot of people don't know that there's harms when you divorce their father, not because he's being abusive, but because he's just not doing 50% of the housework.
Speaker A:And the kids would be happy if you are happy.
Speaker A:So a lot of this is you have got to lay down the straight stick and tell the truth because people don't even know what's straight and what's crooked anymore.
Speaker A:There's crookedness everywhere.
Speaker A:So lay down the straight stick.
Speaker A:And then very often the ones that are receptive to that message will go, you know, O, S H I T, like, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, sometimes it's the right word.
Speaker A:They'll go, I have victimized children.
Speaker A:I have hurt my children.
Speaker A:I'm about to make it difficult to sit.
Speaker A:I'm about to do something terrible to my children.
Speaker A:And they come to you.
Speaker A:And then you don't take that straight stick and hit them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You listen.
Speaker A:Because they've been impacted by.
Speaker A:They're, I would say, God awarded ability to recognize that they have put us before them and then walk with them through the process of seeing what does them before us look like in your life.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that, that's the question that I was getting at, is that moment of realization like, oh, wow, I have done, or I am about to do this.
Speaker B:And I imagine there's probably quite a bit of grief.
Speaker B:I imagine that women feel quite a bit of grief once they see the bad worldviews that they've inherited from the women, mothers, friends, society that they trusted.
Speaker B:It's like, no, it was completely wrong about all of this.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Incredible regret.
Speaker A:Incredible regret when you realize those six children that supposedly weren't viable, that they discarded or donated to research, that those were your full children and that a lot of times that testing is totally garbage and, you know, or guilt over breaking up your children's family because you were told, you know, kids are resilient, but now one of them is, you know, hooked on drugs and the other one has regressed so significantly that they're a 12 year old, but they're wetting their bed again.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:There is a lot of recognition of the pain that these decisions have caused and Actually, God blessed the people that recognize it because the only alternative is for them to never recognize it.
Speaker A:And then their child has to process and mourn in total isolation.
Speaker A:Isolation.
Speaker B:Do you find different reactions from men confronting with these ideas?
Speaker A:I don't interact as much with men.
Speaker A:We definitely have the stories.
Speaker A:One of the things we do at them before us is we have a story bank of children who have experienced mother or father loss.
Speaker A:Because that's our primary goal, is we want to be a voice piece for the kids because they, you know, any adult can go out and share their story of, you know, growing up gay and being closetive and desperately wanting a family.
Speaker A:And now, finally, he's been able to become a dad through surrogacy.
Speaker A:Everybody will listen to that story.
Speaker A:He'll get on the first front page of USA Today, you know, whatever.
Speaker A:Like the woman who desperately wants a baby, and she went through seven different rounds of ivf, and now she finally has a child.
Speaker A:I mean, these people can publish anywhere they want.
Speaker A:They garner all kinds of sympathy that they want the child who was acquired through surrogacy.
Speaker A:They're gonna have a really hard time telling their story without completely alienating the two people to whom they're totally dependent.
Speaker A:The child who was raised through ivf, whether a sperm donor or not, who then criticizes or feels loss or survivor's guilt around it.
Speaker A:They're gonna have a hard time sharing their story because all of these.
Speaker A:When the kids speak out, they're at risk of losing their primary relationships.
Speaker A:So one of the things that we do is we have a story bank of kids who can share from their perspective.
Speaker A:I verify their identity.
Speaker A:I often encourage them to write under a pseudonym so they can be totally honest.
Speaker A:So in there, we get lots of men and women because obviously, both men and women have suffered from family breakdown through divorce, abandonment, reproductive technologies, or because they have an LGBTQ parent.
Speaker A:But in terms of the parents that come to us with regret, I probably am connected to more women.
Speaker A:But there are some men too, and many of them do see the harm that it has brought on their children.
Speaker A:And when you do that, when you have the courage to see, can wreck you.
Speaker A:You know, it can wreck you.
Speaker A:Thankfully, there's sometimes pathway forward to seek to mitigate the loss and repair the relationship.
Speaker A:But it doesn't happen without a lot of humility and, I think a lot of pain, kind of recognizing I have brought this upon you.
Speaker B:So from your position, sort of maybe at or beyond the bleeding edge of this conversation, are you seeing signs of hope that maybe American might have the instinct to begin turning, or at least certain parts of American culture.
Speaker A:Not culture at large.
Speaker A:In terms of like, right now, the dominant messages are us before them in almost every sphere.
Speaker A:Entertainment, government, media, legislation, technology.
Speaker A:Most of it is driven by how can the adults get what they want at the expense of what children need.
Speaker A:However, there is definitely a growing awareness that IVF and surrogacy are processes that commodify and harm children.
Speaker A:That is something that's new.
Speaker A: ly started my organization in: Speaker A:Now almost all of them are.
Speaker A:And so at least the conservative pro life world has started to wake up to at least some of this being problematic.
Speaker A:On the topic of marriage, which from a them before us perspective is a matter of justice for children, a marriage might be a private relationship.
Speaker A:It might be something where you see adult romantic fulfillment.
Speaker A:But from a public interest perspective, marriage is the only relationship that unites the two people to whom children have a natural right.
Speaker A:It is plan A for child development, child protection and identity consolation and formation.
Speaker A:And so when we redefined marriage, we threw the entire solar system of marriage and family law into total chaos in a way that has realigned the legal conception of the parent child relationship into something that was pre political and untouchable and a natural right to now conceiving of that relationship not as something that is preeminent in law, but rather something that can be state constructed and state assigned.
Speaker A:And so on that topic.
Speaker A:And I think, because what was presented to us 10 years ago as well, this is just what happens in the privacy of our bedroom or how does my gay marriage affect anybody else kind of thing.
Speaker A:Now we're like, well, it seems to be affecting the children who are being acquired by predators through commercial surrogacy and then going home with them to other countries where we won't ever be able to track their whereabouts.
Speaker A:I mean, that kind of feels like it's affecting someone else.
Speaker A:So on the topic of marriage, on the topic of awareness of reproductive technologies, I think that we're seeing some engagement and some hope.
Speaker A:On the topic of marriage, I think that we've already seen a decline in support, especially among Republicans for gay marriage over the last couple years.
Speaker A:It's dropped from a high of 51% down to, I think we're at 44%.
Speaker A:And that's good.
Speaker A:That is good because gay marriage was one of the greatest injustices Leveraged against children, probably in the history of our nation, probably since Roe versus Wade.
Speaker B:One of my favorite speakers, influencers, authors on this topic is a man named Jeff Schaeffer of New St. Andrews, the Hale Institute.
Speaker B:And he talks about the downstream effects of Obergefell.
Speaker A:I'm laughing because I was on a call with him 15 minutes ago.
Speaker B:Were you really?
Speaker A:Yeah, he's my legal advisor.
Speaker A:And spearheading the legal portion of our effort to challenge Obergefell.
Speaker A:But keep going, because I love hearing other people try to say what Jeff Schaeffer says.
Speaker A:Go ahead.
Speaker B:Oh, no, I'm not gonna try.
Speaker A:No, I love it.
Speaker B:I wouldn't even begin to try.
Speaker B:However, he does speak on this topic so movingly.
Speaker B:And to talk about the downstream legal effects of the way Obergefell reframes marriage.
Speaker B:Maybe we could talk about that for a moment, because that's a message I would love to communicate from him, but I just can't do it justice the way that he does.
Speaker A:Yeah, nobody can do it justice the way he does.
Speaker A:I spend a lot of time listening to Jeff and then trying to figure out how can I translate that so that I can understand it and other people can understand it.
Speaker A:But so, spoiler, my nonprofit, then before us is spearheading a coalition to challenge gay marriage.
Speaker A:And it is going to have a three prong approach.
Speaker A:One of them is a legal strategy, a judicial strategy that actually has the possibility of success.
Speaker A:And so far, nobody, no organization has even tried this yet.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Because everybody does it wrong.
Speaker A:Not to say we're the only ones that get it, but everybody else does it wrong.
Speaker A:They all look at it from the adult's perspective.
Speaker A:No more.
Speaker A:We're looking at this from the child's perspective.
Speaker A:And so Jeff is heading up my legal team to create that judicial pathway for success.
Speaker A:But it's not enough to just change the law.
Speaker A:We have to change public opinion.
Speaker A:So I am going to let all the influencers decide.
Speaker A:Everybody in my coalition gets to decide what they say about their involvement and when.
Speaker A:But basically, I have personalities at every major conservative media outlet on board with this.
Speaker A:We are all going to change the way we talk about marriage.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:It's not a sacred institution.
Speaker A:It is, but we're not talking about it that way.
Speaker A:It's not a state's rights issue.
Speaker A:It's not a matter of adult bonds.
Speaker A:It is justice for children.
Speaker A:And we're gonna change the way everybody thinks and talks about this.
Speaker A:And then I also have a church team that is gonna develop curriculum so that Christians do Exactly what you and I were just talking about will understand that their heritage is child protection.
Speaker A:That if they want to join into the great cloud of witnesses of those who have gone before them, they have to stand up and protect kids in every way.
Speaker A:They're being victimized, but it's not foot binding and it's not female genital mutilation in the traditional sense here it is marriage and family and parenthood issues where they're being victimized.
Speaker A:So that's what we're doing.
Speaker A:Like we are going to retake marriage on behalf of children.
Speaker A:And no one has tried this for 10 years, but we're going to do.
Speaker B:It well, praise God.
Speaker B:I think that's a brilliant approach to it because justice for children is the sort of thing that you can say to somebody and they don't really have the option of going like, eh, I don't really care.
Speaker B:I mean, they can.
Speaker B:I mean, I don't recommend it.
Speaker B:I don't recommend it.
Speaker B:But there is particularly like Jeff Schaefer's breakdown of the Dave Rubin conversation with Jordan Peterson, you know, and all that that follows legally from, well, if we define marriage this way, then it means X and Y and Z and this for personhood and children and, and the devastation that that will continue to have on, on the family.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And that's something that I think touches everybody quite deeply these days.
Speaker A:Well, if it was only the children who were being raised and purchased and sold and made intentionally motherless or fatherless, I wish that that was enough to get people to engage on this issue.
Speaker A:But we're all driven by self interest and there is a temptation to say, well, it's not my kid.
Speaker A:But Jeff Schaeffer makes clear, and I'm going to talk about in my NATCON speech, which I think has already happened, if this airs when you say it's going to air, I make the connection that this is not just about other people's children.
Speaker A:It's not just about the kids who lose their mother or father.
Speaker A:Like Jeff Schaeffer points out, if gay marriage is legal reality, it requires the downgrading of the preeminence of the biological bond between parents and children.
Speaker A:And so that means that your own relationship, my relationship, I've got four kids.
Speaker A:One is adopted.
Speaker A:My relationship with the three biological kids is weaker now than it was 10 years ago.
Speaker A:My adopted relationship was sort of recognized through another pathway, but now that pathway is being obliterated in the name of adult interest, an adult right to acquire an unrelated child.
Speaker A:And so I hope that communicating gay Marriage actually weakened and is on its way complete to completely eroding your own claim to your own natural children.
Speaker A:I hope that will be enough for people to go, okay, maybe I wasn't going to engage because that child is made intentionally fatherless because they're being raised by a single woman or a double woman or triple women or a single man or a double man or triple couple.
Speaker A:You know, throuple.
Speaker A:But if they're coming for my kids, maybe I am going to say something about it now.
Speaker B:Well, especially because you live in Washington.
Speaker B:Isn't Washington one of the states where they can take your kid under a certain age if they claim some transgender identity?
Speaker B:And you don't want to know something like that.
Speaker A:Bonkers.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's absolutely nuts out here.
Speaker A:I've had friends who have kids with mental health crises or who were starting to dabble in or adopt LGBTQ identity, and they're like, thanks for letting us know.
Speaker A:And a month later, they're living in Idaho.
Speaker A:Because there is a really legitimate threat to your own claim to your own children, especially after the age of 13.
Speaker B:Was it Hillary Clinton who said, it takes a village to raise a child?
Speaker B:Which was sort of pointing in that direction long before anyone knew what she meant.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker A:Most of the cultural battles that we are facing today, the transgender stuff, the gay marriage stuff, the commercial surrogacy stuff, even the sex ed stuff, those are all manifestations of one foundational question.
Speaker A:And that question is, to whom do children belong?
Speaker A:To whom do they belong?
Speaker A:And the government's answer is, they belong to us.
Speaker A:They belong to teachers, they belong to activists, they belong to doctors.
Speaker A:They belong to whoever the surrogacy contract has assigned them to.
Speaker A:But that is not the right answer.
Speaker A:Children belong to their own mother and to their own father.
Speaker A:It's on that basis that we have parental rights.
Speaker A:But it's also on that basis that we say children can't be commodified, distributed, and sold like common objects.
Speaker A:So we have to get down to the question of is there something special about the natural parent child relationship?
Speaker A:If you answer that question, you get the right answer to whether or not a child can emancipate themselves at the age of 13 and head down to an LGBTQ safe house and get testosterone from Planned Parenthood.
Speaker B:Oh, frightening.
Speaker B:Frightening.
Speaker B:The idea that's coming up for me is that it's around the issue of no fault divorce.
Speaker B:I'm gonna sneeze in a second.
Speaker B:I'm gonna try not to do it.
Speaker B:But so around the issue of, like, that a Woman and I think this was from your natcon talk, was it perhaps last year?
Speaker B:I remember watching that talk.
Speaker B:I'm not sure if it was from natcon.
Speaker B:But the idea that a child has a right to their father and you can't just divorce, you know, dad for whatever reason, does this apply to that subject as well?
Speaker A:No fault divorce was the original redefinition of marriage that you've actually seen an overhaul of marriage and family in the cultural space, the legal space and the technological space.
Speaker A:And when you wanna talk about the unraveling of the family in the legal space, it was no fault divorce that did that first.
Speaker A:And so yes, no fault divorce totally undermines children's right to their mother and father.
Speaker A:And usually it's the non custodial parent that sees the most erosion in their acknowledgement relationship with access to the child.
Speaker A:And there's about 40% of cases will children won't see their non custodial parent, their father ever again after two years.
Speaker A:I mean oftentimes a no fault divorce doesn't mean splitting time between mom and dad's house.
Speaker A:50 50.
Speaker A:It often means losing a relationship with dad altogether.
Speaker A:So this is an egregious violation.
Speaker A:It hur children.
Speaker A:There was a just a huge study that came out a couple weeks ago that said that divorce is an increased risk of like 60% teen parenthood, which we knew about.
Speaker A:Like a 40% increased chance of criminality, which we knew about.
Speaker A:Like those two things are almost the predictable result of father loss or father absence, but a 45% more likely of early death when your parents divorce.
Speaker A:This is such a shock to a child's system, it actually shortens the telomeres, the end caps of their chromosomes.
Speaker A:Divorce impacts children at every cell of their body and it's harmful to them.
Speaker A:But it harmed our concept of marriage.
Speaker A:Because what is marriage?
Speaker A:Why is marriage so different from every other adult relationship?
Speaker A:Three things.
Speaker A:Number one, it is monogamous.
Speaker A:There's only supposed to be one of each and every.
Speaker A:Obviously we're kind of on the precipice of normalizing polygamous, right?
Speaker A:Polyamory group love that's making, you know, that's now moving into the marriage and family space.
Speaker A:But we already through gay marriage removed the complementarity that it should be a man and a woman, that there is a complement between the genders.
Speaker A:But the first one that was to go was the permanence.
Speaker A:The idea that I'm gonna commit to you all my life.
Speaker A:What man has joined together, let no one separate, okay?
Speaker A:Till death do us part, as the vows say.
Speaker A: So we'd stripped that in: Speaker A:And then every state in the union followed suit.
Speaker A:And that communicated that instead of there needing to be somebody at fault for breaking marriage through adultery, abandonment, addiction, abuse, now you could end the marriage for no reason.
Speaker A:Nobody needed to be at fault.
Speaker A:And what that did is it said, marriage is no longer an institution centered around creating and raising children.
Speaker A:Now it's a vehicle of adult fulfillment.
Speaker A:Now if you're unhappy, it can cease to be a marriage.
Speaker A:And then the gays were like, oh, well, if it's just about happiness, married to somebody else of the same sex makes me happy.
Speaker A:And the polygamists are like, oh, if it's just about happiness, married to four other people makes me happy.
Speaker A:So you actually don't get marriage as an institution centered around the well being of children until you address no fault divorce.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker B:I mean, you, you touched on it right there.
Speaker B:Like, I think that's an idea that lives inside so many different people's heads, that marriage is about personal fulfillment, adult happiness.
Speaker B:And the idea that marriage could be about something so much more and so different from that, about covenants, about commitments, you know, that is almost anathema to our culture today, that anything could be considered binding on the individual that transcends them.
Speaker A:It's a very us before them idea.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:This institution exists for me.
Speaker A:If I'm fulfilled, then I get it.
Speaker A:If I'm unfulfilled, I can toss it.
Speaker A:And that is the problem with redefining marriage in the divorce space or the same sex marriage space.
Speaker A:It exalts adult desire above everything else.
Speaker A:And when adult desire is king, children will always be the required sacrifice.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:That's literally the teaching of history.
Speaker B:Literally the teaching of history, whether it be Aztec temples or abortion clinics, as the meme goes.
Speaker B:So you mentioned your natcon talk coming up, which would be in about a week, I suppose.
Speaker B:So at the time when this airs, you will have given the speech.
Speaker B:I hear a rumor that you're gonna be throwing some bombs from the stage, lighting the room on fire.
Speaker B:Do you want to talk a little bit about that speech and let people know what at this point they would have missed?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:At this point, it's up on the then Before Us substack.
Speaker A:So if you want to go, you can read the speech at our Then Before Us substack.
Speaker A:Subscribe, because there will be more to come.
Speaker A:But what I'm doing is I'm connecting the dots for people that they're not sure that these things should be connected.
Speaker A:So the first thing I'm going to do in that speech is outlined a few headline grabbing stories that a lot of you guys are probably aware of.
Speaker A:For example, the 21 children who were removed from the California home where the two CCP Chinese Communist Party members were raising these children, 15 of which were under the age of three, all of which were created through surrogacy.
Speaker A:And they had some kind of like reception desk at the front of the house where people would come and go all through the day.
Speaker A:And the child, the children were removed from the home because one of the babies like a two month old was seen at the hospital because the nanny was like shaking the baby and they went in and they discovered this, this heron harem like situation of infants in this home.
Speaker A:So that was a story that, yes, this hit, that hit the headlines in July.
Speaker A:So I'm going to give that share that story.
Speaker A:And then I'm going to say gay marriage did that.
Speaker A:Then I'm going to share the story of the 74 year old man also in California who had created a cage like structure in his upstairs loft to contain his 2s 6 year old sons conceived through IVF born through a surrogate who had the children removed from his home.
Speaker A:And I'm going to say gay marriage did that.
Speaker A:And then I'm going to describe a situation in Arkansas where two women had a child through anonymous sperm donor and then demanded and got from the Supreme Court the ability to erase the child's biological father from the child's birth certificate.
Speaker A:In essence saying that this child doesn't have a father and the state endorsed that level of lying will say gay marriage did that.
Speaker A:And then I'm going to talk about the situation where a lot of people saw the two gay men kissing their surrogate born child every month of the child's first year as the child grew.
Speaker A:And then it came out that one of those men was a convicted sex offender.
Speaker A:And I am going to say gay marriage did that.
Speaker A:Now how can gay marriage be responsible for children created through a heterosexual foreign couple, a single retiree, two lesbian women and two gay men?
Speaker A:How can gay marriage have done all of that?
Speaker A:And it's because marriage, the definition of marriage historically, not just in our country, but all across most countries.
Speaker A:But certainly we got it through our common law tradition from England.
Speaker A:Like pre colonial times, marriage functions as the sun at the center of a constellation of marriage and family laws.
Speaker A:And when you swap out a procreative life giving understanding of marriage at the center of the universe.
Speaker A:And you put in a definition of the family that's non procreative, centered around the identity of the adults.
Speaker A:The entire cosmos has to realign and you can no longer have bigoted ideas like infertility simply being something that affects heterosexuals.
Speaker A:Now you have to have infertility that can affect single people or same sex couples so that insurance agencies have to pay for the manufacturing of motherless or fatherless children in the name of equality.
Speaker A:Now you can't have words like mother and father in parenthood laws because that feels like hate speech.
Speaker A:So you have to gender neutralize everything.
Speaker A:Now you can't have laws that recognize that there's only two legitimate pathways to acquire a vulnerable biology because they came from your body, or adoption because you proved that you weren't going to abuse the kid.
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:Biology is quite discriminatory when it comes to same sex adults.
Speaker A:And adoption feels like a real imposition because heterosexual couples don't have to adopt if they want to take their child home from the hospital.
Speaker A:So we've created new path for parenthood called intent based parenthood.
Speaker A:And that is if you can assemble sperm, egg and womb and you have a valid contract and you intend to parent the child, you get the baby.
Speaker A:So you put all of those things together and it's a free for all.
Speaker A:Anybody can get a baby, mass produce them, give them to foreign nationals, single, double, triple adults, sex offenders, non sex offenders, who cares?
Speaker A:Nobody looks, nobody scrutinizes.
Speaker A:That's not part of the process anymore.
Speaker A:The whole point of replacing the procreative son at the middle of marriage and family is to de demote all of these other understandings of marriage and family that we've had away from this natural family structure towards a state constructed family that completely disregards biology and the protectiveness of adoption.
Speaker A:And, and now it's anything an adult really, really wants, can pay for and has a valid contract for and they get the kid.
Speaker A:So this is just the beginning.
Speaker A:If we do not get marriage right, we're only going to see more terrible examples of children being acquired, designed, destroyed and commodified.
Speaker B:I cannot wait to hear this talk.
Speaker B:I'm fired up just listening to you.
Speaker B:I mean really like the clarity in that perspective is something that's going to be sitting with me throughout the day.
Speaker B:I'm curious.
Speaker B:This might be a bit of a diversion, but I think not.
Speaker B:I'm curious about your origin story.
Speaker B:The passion behind all of this is truly remarkable.
Speaker B:And I'm curious about the circumstances that led you to discover this passion and take up this cause.
Speaker A:Well, like I said, I'm actually very nice and I like to keep the peace and I don't like conflict.
Speaker A:I mean, even the thing that happened earlier today with the friend who misread something that I posted, like.
Speaker A:Like, it was like a half hour ago that I finally started to calm down.
Speaker A:So this is.
Speaker A:This is not something that I would have chosen for myself, but it was the.
Speaker A: e came to Washington State in: Speaker A: Then he ran in: Speaker A:And then after he got into office the second time, he decided actually gay marriage.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And then I felt like it was a full court press on behalf of the media pushing towards normalizing gay marriage and demonizing people that, you know, before that, before they had the president on their side, it was more like, here's a legitimate disagreement by two different camps.
Speaker A:Once they had the president, it was like, here's the good side, here's the evil Nazis on the other side.
Speaker A:So, you know, and obviously you're all gay hating, homophobic bigots, which, which, number one, is offensive to all of us because everybody.
Speaker A:I talk to a lot of Christians, I'm like, in even I'm an evangelical world central.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:I know the people that support traditional marriage.
Speaker A:All of us have gay family and friends.
Speaker A:All of us love those gay family and friends.
Speaker A:I have friends who cared for their dying brother who had AIDS in his home for eight years, and he supports traditional marriage.
Speaker A:Don't go telling me that we hate gay people, you absolute manipulative liars.
Speaker A:But the other thing is, is my mom is in a relationship with her partner.
Speaker A:They've been together for 40 years.
Speaker A:And I love them.
Speaker A:I'm very close to them.
Speaker A:So it was very, like, personal.
Speaker A:Like, please shut up.
Speaker A:But the other thing, this was the real thing to normalize gay marriage, to push this agenda, they had to promote the idea that kids with two moms or two dads fared no different, that they love it, that they're happy.
Speaker A:And I'm like, okay, I, obviously, my mom is in a gay relationship.
Speaker A:I love her.
Speaker A:She's.
Speaker A:She's the best mom.
Speaker A:She's.
Speaker A:Honestly, Will, I'm sorry, She's a better mom than your mom was.
Speaker A:Like, she's a great woman.
Speaker B:Probably.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I don't know your backstory, maybe.
Speaker A:I just like, touched on the sensitive Spot.
Speaker A:But like, the idea that, like, two random men could have acquired me as a baby and it would have zero impact on my identity and development and ability to.
Speaker A:To see myself as a wife and mother.
Speaker A:I mean, ridiculous.
Speaker A:So I.
Speaker A:And here's the other thing.
Speaker A:I had been working with kids for a couple decades in youth ministry, in adoption.
Speaker A:I had never met a kid who lost their mother or father, who, at minimum were not curious.
Speaker A:But most of the time it was this gaping wound that they could barely talk about without their chin quivering.
Speaker A:And so that was it.
Speaker A:Like, you're pushing a.
Speaker A:Kids don't care if they have two moms.
Speaker A:That means they've lost their father.
Speaker A:You're telling me kids have, except don't care if they've lost their father.
Speaker A:You absolute lying.
Speaker A:Like, you know, politicizing these, these.
Speaker A:The most intimate wounds that children experience.
Speaker A:So the short answer is I'm.
Speaker A:I'm doing this because of rage.
Speaker A:I just got really, really angry that nobody was formally defending children in conversations first about marriage, the definition of marriage.
Speaker A:But then I realized there's nobody articulating a child defense position in divorce conversations or reproductive technologies or questions about sperm and egg donation or even, even adult centric adoption.
Speaker A:Like, there's problems in the left and the right thinking that adoption is for adults rather than adoption being a child centric process.
Speaker A:So that was it.
Speaker A:I just thank God for the hundreds of organizations defending children's right to life in matters of abortion.
Speaker A:We're trying to do that same kind of thing on this side of the womb.
Speaker B:I imagine that it hits different coming from a woman than it would from a man as well.
Speaker B:I think men are concerned with their sets of issues.
Speaker B:Justice.
Speaker B:Not that you're not concerned with justice, but advocating for the position for children comes across different in the voice of woman than I think it would from a man.
Speaker B:And the passion and enthusiasm makes a lot of sense now to see the lie that, no, it doesn't affect children.
Speaker B:They're fine.
Speaker B:Like, that's been known.
Speaker B:That's not true.
Speaker B: Since the: Speaker B:Perhaps you're familiar with the work of Dr. Warren Farrell, who wrote the book.
Speaker B:Another friend of yours, I imagine.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're both actually on the advisory board for Jordan Peterson's new project, the alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
Speaker A:So we've had some good conversations.
Speaker A:I really appreciate Will and his work.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So he and I met.
Speaker A:Warren, Warren.
Speaker B:Warren Farrell.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, yeah, he.
Speaker B:He and I met as part of the documentary I was producing on this, the Rebirth of Masculinity movement, which has Gone off the rails since then, but the movement itself has.
Speaker B:But in his book the Boy Crisis, he talks about how he was on the national, the board of the National Organization of Women.
Speaker B:They were talking about no fault divorce.
Speaker B:He's like, look, it's having all of these effects on children.
Speaker B:We need to push back on no fault divorce because it's impacting the children.
Speaker B:And the feminists at the time were like, yeah, no, full speed ahead.
Speaker B:And that was when he decided to leave that board and go the direction he did.
Speaker B:So back in the 70s, it was known that divorce impacted kids negatively.
Speaker B:And so they're still saying, you know, with surrogacy and all these other things, there's no, there's no impact on children.
Speaker A:It's a sociological miracle.
Speaker A:I always tell people that, like anytime you're not studying, for example, same sex parenting.
Speaker A:Sociologists agree that biological parents advantage children in ways that unrelated adults do not.
Speaker A:That losing your mother or father to death, divorce, abandonment or reproductive technology has negative impacts.
Speaker A:That an unrelated adult sharing living spaces with children diminishes outcomes, and that mothers and fathers offer distinct and complementary benefits to children.
Speaker A:Those are things that sociologists all agree on and have for the last several decades.
Speaker A:But then, miraculously, when you study same sex parenting, none of that matters anymore.
Speaker A:So it's like we know what we know until the ideological capture comes along and spins it into something that's a little more politically palatable, but absolutely goes against kind of the fundamental natures of what is self evident about human children.
Speaker B:I think I saw a tweet or a retweet of yours.
Speaker B:Was it from Josh Moore, who's part of them before us?
Speaker A:Josh Wood.
Speaker B:Wood, yes.
Speaker B:About two parent privilege, something.
Speaker B:So talk a little bit about that tweet which I just saw today.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Melissa Kearney wrote a book, I think last year called the Two parent Privilege.
Speaker A:And the reason why it got a lot of attention is she's not on the right.
Speaker A:She's an economist.
Speaker A:I think she's more progressive.
Speaker A:But even she had to say the whole myth about single mothers is absolutely wrong.
Speaker A:There is a privilege to having two parent homes.
Speaker A:And I've read the book, it's right back there behind me.
Speaker A:But the problem with that is it's not a two parent home that advantages children.
Speaker A:She's looking at it from an economic perspective where she's saying, look to.
Speaker A:There's more resources, both in terms of financial and in terms of time for the child.
Speaker A:But what she's doing is sort of a subprime mortgage Switcheroo where she says two parent family and she's really relying on data that says no.
Speaker A:The married biological mother and father advantage children in those ways.
Speaker A:But she calls it two parent because if she were to say married biological mother and father, she'd be in.
Speaker A:She already has a hard time defending this position among her circles.
Speaker A:You know, when you're on talking to Bari Weiss at honestly about the two parent privilege, you're not really going to talk about the married biological mother and father framework.
Speaker A:But all of her data about the advantages, about the privilege comes from married biological mother and father.
Speaker A:But she's sort of smuggling in other two parent homes and saying that that's reflected in the data.
Speaker A:It's not because children, for example, who are raised by a mother and her new husband overall do not fare as well as children raised by their own mother and father.
Speaker A:There are heroic step parents out there.
Speaker A:There are men and women who are stepping into the gap to fill the space of a negligent biological mother or father.
Speaker A:They can be acknowledged, they should be encouraged, they should be championed.
Speaker A:But if you want to create a system wide society wide framework for a privilege, it's not going to come any two will not do.
Speaker A:It's only a child's married biological mother and father that on a population wide basis is going to create that kind of privilege.
Speaker B:I suppose you also know the work of Cary Gress.
Speaker B:You know, and there are a lot of women that are discovering things that have been known for a long time and they come across this information, the two parent privilege, like no, what you're actually looking at is married biological mothers and fathers.
Speaker B:Very controversial.
Speaker B:Carrie Gress encounters some of this information as well.
Speaker B:Perhaps you know her work.
Speaker B:Work.
Speaker A:Is she the one that wrote the Origins of Gender book?
Speaker B:She wrote the book the End of.
Speaker B:End of Women.
Speaker A:End of Women, End of Women.
Speaker A:Yes, I know of her.
Speaker B:Haven't read it, but yeah, I mean it's a very common thing where it's like you have these presuppositions about the way the world's supposed to work and then you go look at the data and you find, nope.
Speaker B:It is actually true that married biological parents who stay married and work it out through the challenges are the best environment for growing children, all things being equal.
Speaker B:And so I can understand why the author of the book that you mentioned, the two parent privileges privilege, would feel very controversial in her progressive circles to be talking about these ideas.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's unpopular, it's, you know, good for her because I, I do think that it was A she is taking some heat, especially from her social circle.
Speaker A:But honestly, saying children need two parents is a coward's way of talking about the family.
Speaker A:Like, name it.
Speaker A:Oh, you know, wow.
Speaker A:Yeah, it is.
Speaker A:Like, because then you can say, well, kids are, you know, just fine with two dads or two moms, and that's just not it.
Speaker A:Like, children will always lose something growing up in that household.
Speaker A:So, no, if you want to be clear, it is going to take a little more spine and tell the truth.
Speaker A:Say what marriage is.
Speaker A:It's not any two.
Speaker A:You know, the model of family that distinctly benefits children is the two people responsible for their existence, united for life, raising the child together.
Speaker B:All this helps me understand much better how I first encountered your work, which was through, I think, a singles matchmaking service.
Speaker B:I heard about that, like, a week or two before you and I started chatting on X.
Speaker B:Like, oh, perfect.
Speaker B:It's the same person.
Speaker B:Is that.
Speaker B:Is that still going?
Speaker B:Because I. I know a lot of men that are very interested in it.
Speaker A:Okay, you can send me the men, because I have a deep, deep bench of incredible women, especially in their 30s and early 40s, who are not, like, girl bossing it up and, like, like, I'm gonna totally bypass my reproductive years.
Speaker A:There's just women who thought, I really wanna be a wife and mom, and it's not happening, so I'll just apply myself while I wait.
Speaker A:And then they waited and waited and waited and waited.
Speaker A:So, yeah, the matchmaking service is still happening.
Speaker A:I'm learning a lot through it.
Speaker A:In terms of all these people, I mean, I say this is for the purpose of dating and marriage, and I will take you if you're very serious about.
Speaker A:You know, I always say character and worldview are the thing that we're going to lead with here.
Speaker A:Hotness.
Speaker A:We're just not leading with hotness.
Speaker A:But it's interesting because I'm learning a lot about why people are still single.
Speaker A:And some of that is because you kind of need to cast the net wide.
Speaker A:There are so many people that say, well, she's a dog person, and I'm not a dog person, so I don't think it's gonna work.
Speaker A:And I'm like, let me explain to you what's happening here.
Speaker A:Okay, you gave me a profile, and I delivered somebody to you who.
Speaker A:Who is an 8 out of 10 of everything that you're looking for.
Speaker A:But you're saying that you can't even go on three dates because that's my requirement.
Speaker A:If I match you, I'm asking for three Dates.
Speaker A:I say, I'm not asking you to get engaged or get married.
Speaker A:I'm asking, is there enough alignment here for you to go on three dates?
Speaker A:And it's interesting because some people will say, well, he likes to travel and I don't like to travel.
Speaker A:Or, he's an extrovert, and I don't think I can be with an extrovert.
Speaker A:And I'm like, think about the married couples that you know, how many of them have complete alignment in their hobbies or their personality styles?
Speaker A:Let me check.
Speaker A:None of them.
Speaker A:Because sometimes you don't know what you want.
Speaker A:Sometimes you're gonna put a wish list together.
Speaker A:And I think it should be high on the worldview, alignment and character.
Speaker A:But on all those other things, preferences, personalities, hobbies, the truth is, you might like it, or it's okay for you to not go on every hike with him.
Speaker A:It's okay.
Speaker A:But it's.
Speaker A:I think that probably the consumer mindset has gotten people to the point where they won't even say yes to a date unless it matches every single one of their criteria.
Speaker A:So I've found that some of what I'm doing is matchmaking, and a lot of what I'm doing is coaching, which I never kind of thought I would be in that.
Speaker A:I thought, you're desperate to get married.
Speaker A:You're desperate to get married.
Speaker A:He's wonderful.
Speaker A:She's wonderful.
Speaker A:And I'm still having to convince you to pick up the phone.
Speaker A:It's just crazy to me.
Speaker B:Listeners can't hear, but I'm nodding my head off right now because I was so wondering how that would go.
Speaker B:Because on the side of working with men, that's what I've discovered.
Speaker B:It's like, yes, I hear that you say that you want to be married and you're doing all these things, but as we start talking, I discover, well, these bad ideas and this perspective and this immaturity, and all this is like, you think that you're ready to be married, but I don't think that you actually are.
Speaker B:And the only conclusion that I've really, really come to is that, like, I think people say they want to be married, but deep down inside, they genuinely fear the commitment.
Speaker B:And so they'll look for any out.
Speaker B:And then they can say, but I'm trying.
Speaker B:It's just the environment.
Speaker B:It's like, well, I'm not so sure about that.
Speaker A:There are a lot of challenges.
Speaker A:Like, the dating landscape alone is crap.
Speaker A:But then, like, our vision of what dating should look like is crazy.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:Like, first of All a lot of people have said, well, I'm not gonna date until I know the person I'm gonna get married to or courting or whatever.
Speaker A:I'm like, garbage, garbage.
Speaker A:Go on lots of dates.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:Bring back casual dating.
Speaker A:Like, that's my thing is, like, I require three dates in my service because I'm like, number one, you don't know what you like.
Speaker A:And number two, you probably don't know who you are.
Speaker A:And number three, dating is a skill.
Speaker A:And none of y' all have been practicing.
Speaker A:Like, you don't just drop into that and you're automatically great at dating.
Speaker A:It's actually something that you need to practice.
Speaker A:And that's not the kind of thing where you're not using.
Speaker A:You're actually building a skill.
Speaker A:You're gonna be better at it.
Speaker A:When you do meet Mr.
Speaker A:Right or Mrs.
Speaker A:Right, they're going to benefit from learning about themselves in the dating process.
Speaker A:And I've had a couple people that have started dating, and they're like, I don't know.
Speaker A:But by the end, they're like, oh, my gosh.
Speaker A:I actually really like that.
Speaker A:He's super into, like, philosophy.
Speaker A:And I thought, well, I'm not a philosophy person, but it actually has given us a lot to talk about.
Speaker A:I'm like, yes, yes.
Speaker A:You don't know what you like until you practice.
Speaker A:So anyway, I. I feel bad for the people that are looking to be married.
Speaker A:And then here's the other big problem.
Speaker A:You do not have all the options out there.
Speaker A:You should not choose from the pool of people that you think you want to be with.
Speaker A:You need to choose from the pool of people you could actually get.
Speaker A:So I'm so.
Speaker A:I mean, like, I just want to be really blunt here.
Speaker A:Like, buddy, if you're a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, and you think that you're going to get a 10 who's 10 years younger than you, you know, with an hourglass figure and you're £250 and not from lifting.
Speaker A:I'm sorry.
Speaker A:So it's like, either get to be the person that can pull the person that you want, or you need to change how you think about who you're going to get.
Speaker A:I mean, like, a lot of it's just being really blunt with people.
Speaker A:I've told young women, you're beautiful.
Speaker A:You're beautiful in the sense of, like, incredible personality.
Speaker A:You love the Lord.
Speaker A:You need to lose £30.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker A:So anyway, I mean, like, it's that shepherdess side, but there's a lot of coaching.
Speaker A:I didn't think it was going to be coaching.
Speaker A:I thought it was like, here's somebody that's perfectly aligned with what you want.
Speaker A:Ding.
Speaker A:We're done here.
Speaker A:But it's just so much convincing going on, it's crazy.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:You know, Doug Wilson has a couple books.
Speaker B:Get the guy and get the girl.
Speaker B:Be the man.
Speaker B:The kind of woman that you would want to marry, would want to marry, and vice versa, Be the kind of woman that the kind of man you would want to marry would want to marry.
Speaker B:It's a convoluted phrase, but the idea is, picture the man that you want.
Speaker B:What would he want?
Speaker B:Become that person if you can.
Speaker B:And if you can't, then you can't get that guy or that girl.
Speaker B:It's pretty simple.
Speaker A:Yeah, but it's like in the world of, like, AI girlfriends and, you know, endless swiping, you can live in that fantasy until you're past your childbearing years, and that's a really big problem.
Speaker B:So it sounds like you've done quite a bit of coaching across everything that you do, whether it be worldview coaching or dating coaching.
Speaker B:Did you expect to get here?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Probably not.
Speaker A:Well, that's so much more my natural lane than culture warrioring.
Speaker A:Like, my husband was a pastor.
Speaker A:We've been in ministry for 30 years.
Speaker A:Like, I.
Speaker A:All I want to do is, like, bear your burden and read scripture with you and pray with you and if you allow me, let me give you some biblical direction on whatever you find yourself, that to me, I don't have to work at.
Speaker A:At all.
Speaker A:Going into hostile spaces and throwing bombs.
Speaker A:I had to grow into that.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:You had to put on the suit of armor and gear up for battle.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, praise God.
Speaker B:I'm very grateful for your work both on and off the field.
Speaker B:This has been an exciting, embracing and educational conversation.
Speaker B:I wanted to learn something.
Speaker B:I did.
Speaker B:You give me a lot to think about, particularly the empathy and justice distinction.
Speaker B:I'm going to be thinking about that for the day along with much else.
Speaker B:And I'm sure I speak for many of my listeners.
Speaker B:What can we do to support you?
Speaker B:Where can we go to find out more about you and what you do?
Speaker A:You should totally come to them before us and subscribe to our substack.
Speaker A:So if you go to substack, Google them or look, look at.
Speaker A:Search for them before us.
Speaker A:We are really working to equip people.
Speaker A:You will be able to stay updated on our campaign to challenge gay marriage.
Speaker A:We can use your support on that.
Speaker A:We are a small, you know, small outlet, very plucky, leading almost every major national organization and conservative platform on this topic.
Speaker A:And so we do need to scale up to meet the demand.
Speaker A:So if you are in a place to support us financially, I will war for children on your behalf.
Speaker A:And if you want my opinions about everything, you can go to X Advokaty and you'll get more opinions than you wanted to hear from me.
Speaker B:Well, that's what X is for.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, thank you so much for your time and for all your work.
Speaker B:Again, Katie, this has been wonderful.
Speaker B:May God bless your speech at NatClon.
Speaker B:I'm looking forward to listening.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Thanks for letting me speak to you and your audience today.
Speaker A:Sa.
