‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Josh Wood, Ep. 38: This Viral Video Will Convince You Obergefell Was A Mistake

Summary

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Podcast Summary: ‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Josh Wood, Ep. 38

Episode Title: This Viral Video Will Convince You Obergefell Was A Mistake
Air Date: April 23, 2026
Host: Kylie Griswold (Managing Editor, The Federalist)
Guest: Josh Wood (Executive Director, Them Before Us)

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Overview

This episode delves into the viral video of country songwriter Shane McAnally with his child, commissioned via surrogacy with a same-sex partner. Host Kylie Griswold and guest Josh Wood discuss how this video illustrates the profound ethical, social, and legal issues surrounding surrogacy, children’s rights, gay marriage, and the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision. The episode critiques the commodification of children, explores the difference between adoption and surrogacy, and strongly advocates for the child’s natural right to a mother and father.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Viral Video Context and Initial Reactions

• [01:01-05:50]
  • Shane McAnally is seen holding his surrogate-born child, asking if the child wants “Dada or Pop,” but the child repeatedly asks for “Mama.” When told “there is no Mama,” the child cries.
  • Kylie’s reaction: “The rage never decreases with each watch. It is just heartbreaking and awful.” (05:50)
  • Josh: Society is more used to seeing children without fathers (“single mothers”), but the intentional denial of a mother is new and jarring, made possible by modern technology and the commercial surrogacy/egg industry.

    “So much of society, kids didn’t make it if they didn’t have a mom...This is a totally alternate construction made possible by technology.” (06:04)

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2. How Same-Sex Couples Acquire Babies Through Surrogacy

• [07:31-10:42]
  • Step-by-step explanation:
    • Egg Acquisition: Sourcing eggs from young, healthy women—often via significant financial incentives—sometimes as high as $300,000.

      “They’ll offer us $30,000 or $40,000 for our eggs...They don’t call them egg sellers, they call them egg donors, right? There’s nothing being donated here.” (07:31-08:25)

    • Surrogacy: Either “gestational” (using another woman to gestate an embryo she isn’t genetically related to) or “genetic” (the surrogate’s own egg), with costs upwards of $100,000.
    • Process: Strict controls placed on the surrogate, and newborn is handed to commissioning parents—sometimes without the surrogate even allowed to hold the baby.
  • Kylie points out the normalization of male involvement at the moment of birth, referencing public figures like Pete Buttigieg.

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3. Is Surrogacy Human Trafficking?

• [11:56-13:42]
  • Josh explains the legal and ethical definition, referencing a 2011 case in Delaware where a woman was charged with “dealing in children.”

    “It’s not receipts and reimbursements. It’s naming your price, handing over your own child. That’s buying children. That is absolutely the trafficking of a human being as a product to someone else.” (12:55)

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4. Surrogacy vs. Adoption – Key Differences

• [13:42-17:44]
  • Adoption is society’s “plan B,” a response to unavoidable tragedy (e.g., death, addiction, inability to parent)—and aims to restore, not intentionally sever, the child’s natural family ties.

    “In adoption, the tragedy is avoidable, and everyone agrees they wish it was. In third-party reproduction…The tragedy is intentional, it’s financed.” (14:06)

  • Adoption includes vetting, background checks, and focuses on the child’s needs; surrogacy is market-driven and lacks these safeguards.

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5. Children’s Rights and the Commodification of Children

• [19:24-21:18]
  • Even if surrogacy were free, it would still deprive the child of a mother and/or father, which research shows is harmful.

    “You came from one mother and one father. We have to protect that, whether it’s financed or not.” (19:29)

  • Referenced study—My Daddy’s Name Is Donor—shows children from donor conception have higher rates of loss, emotional issues, and resentment than even adopted children.

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6. No “Right” to a Child for Adults

• [21:18-23:58]
  • Children have rights to their parents; adults do not have a right to a child.

    “Nobody’s entitled to a child. No adult is required by everyone else to provide...if they have a right to a child, then they have a right to some woman’s womb, some woman’s egg, to make possible what biology would deny.” (21:55)

  • There is a societal (often unspoken) cost to prioritizing adults’ desires over children’s best interests.

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7. Role of Obergefell and the Legal Redefinition of Parenthood

• [25:35-28:22]
  • The Obergefell v. Hodges decision is critiqued for decoupling the laws of natural parentage (biology) from legal parentage, leading to same-sex couples being legally assigned as parents even when biology says otherwise.

    “That is how we've understood what it means to be a father and what it means to be a mother for centuries...is that a role that can be reassigned by the state?” (25:35)

  • Kylie: “It just goes back to so much of the leftist project of don’t believe your lying eyes. We are going to create things in our image, not in God’s image.” (28:22)

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8. The ‘Greater Than’ Campaign: Overturning Obergefell

• [29:35-33:20]
  • The campaign aims to overturn Obergefell, arguing it was never just about “private life” but had sweeping implications for children, family structure, and state authority over parenthood.

    “Adoption is not something that everyone’s just born with a desire to do...They want biological connection just like we do...That’s what’s kept the society going for generations.” (29:35)

  • Most same-sex couples prefer to commission children biologically rather than adopt.

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9. The Research: Why Married Biological Parents Matter

• [33:20-35:59]
  • Cites studies showing children thrive best with their married biological mother and father.

    “Children do best when raised by their mother and father...The most important thing is not your race, not your zip code, it’s not even your education level...the number one way [for upward mobility] would be to increase connections between married mothers and fathers and their kids.” (33:20)

  • Circling back, this is both a social and an economic policy solution.

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10. Risks of Non-Biological Adults and Hypersexualized Environments

• [35:59–41:16]
  • Referencing social media clips from the same family (McAnally’s), Kylie and Josh discuss the dangers of children being raised by two men, both in terms of hypersexualized content/exposure and increased statistical risk of abuse.

    “Biology is an incredibly protective force...We’ve never found another arrangement in human history that better protects a child from physical and sexual abuse and neglect.” (38:09)

  • Adoption vetting exists because society recognizes the risk of placing children with non-biological adults.

    “We have background checks...because we recognize putting a child somewhere where they're not biologically related to anyone is dangerous...But suddenly, because it would be discriminatory to background check these two men, we have children going into thousands of homes across the U.S. with completely unrelated men.” (39:14)

  • Cites example of convicted sex offenders able to access children via surrogacy, impossible through adoption.

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11. Policy Solutions: What Can States Do?

• [45:23–46:59]
  • Even under Obergefell, states can act to protect children:
    • Ban the sale of gametes (sperm and eggs) for both gay and straight couples.
    • Ban surrogacy (“renting wombs”).
    • Ensure any gamete donation is non-anonymous—children must have access to biological parents.

    “We don’t sell gametes...We don’t rent wombs...If you’re going to sell sperm and eggs, don’t allow them to do it anonymously...Even if you don’t recognize it, the kid gets access to you.” (45:23)

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12. Memorable Quotes and Moments

• On commodification/euphemisms:

  “They don’t call them egg sellers, they call them egg donors...There’s nothing being donated here.” —Josh Wood, 08:25

• On surrogacy as human trafficking:

  “That is absolutely the trafficking of a human being as a product to someone else.” —Josh Wood, 12:55

• On parental rights:

  “Nobody’s entitled to a child. No adult is required by everyone else to provide.” —Josh Wood, 21:55

• On natural law:

  “You came from one mother and one father. We have to protect that, whether it’s financed or not.” —Josh Wood, 19:29

• On Obergefell:

  “The Supreme Court is saying in this decision: you can't possibly really mean that...it's all animus, it's all homophobia. Well, we all know, every study...children do best when raised by their mother and father.” —Josh Wood, 33:20

• On science and the mother-child bond:

  “The relationship between embryo and mother...there’s such a connection and exchange of cells and even a protective element to make sure the mother’s okay...To say we know better and can just buy and sell that...is the hubris that defines our generation.” —Josh Wood, 47:33

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:50] Host & guest react to the viral video
• [07:31] How two men acquire a baby through surrogacy
• [11:56] Surrogacy as human trafficking explained
• [13:42] Surrogacy vs. adoption
• [19:24] Children’s rights and the harm of planned parental loss
• [21:55] No adult “right” to a child
• [25:35] Obergefell’s redefinition of parenthood
• [29:35] Campaign to overturn Obergefell
• [33:20] Research on optimal child outcomes
• [38:09] Dangers of unrelated adults in the home
• [45:23] Policy solutions: what red states can do

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Resources & Further Reading

• Them Before Us
• Greater Than Campaign
• Them Before Us Substack
• My Daddy's Name is Donor study

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Closing

Kylie encourages listeners to educate themselves and advocate for children’s rights, ending with:

“…This is a fight for every single one of us to understand the issues and know how to talk about them in an informed and compassionate, and yeah, thoughtful way.” (49:44)

Josh Wood provides resources and encourages listeners to join the conversation and advocacy.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

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[D]

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[B]

Hi everybody and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold, Managing Editor at the Federalist. Please like and subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a five star review. It's such an easy way for you to help out the show. And even better yet, if you're just listening to the show, go check out the full video version on my personal YouTube channel or the Federalist channel on Rumble. And then of course like and subscribe there too. If you'd like to email the show, you can do [e-mail] I would love to hear from you today. I'm welcoming to the show Josh Wood. He's the Executive director at Them Before Us, an organization that exists to protect and defend the natural rights of children to their mother and father. By now, maybe you've seen the viral video going around of singer songwriter Shane McKanley holding his quote unquote child, a child that he commissioned via surrogate for him and his quote unquote husband. And he's holding the child and when he asks the child whether he would like to go see Dada or Pop, the child responds, mama. To which Shane says, there is no Mama here. You gotta pick either dad or Pop. And the child begins to cry. And of course the child probably doesn't understand what's going on here, but out of the mouths of babes. So Josh Wood and I have a great conversation for you about this clip of About Obergefell, about surrogacy, about the rights of children to their mom and dad, and so much more. You won't want to miss it. Without further ado, please welcome to the show, Josh Wood. Josh, it's so great to have you on the Kylie cast. Thanks for joining me today, man.

[D]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

Such a pleasure. Why don't you start by just telling listeners who aren't familiar with you, who you are, where you come from, and how you got into the work you're doing now.

[D]

Yeah, well, I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, with my wife Corinne, our four kiddos. I was working at a church here and was doing a lot of the outreach, like the missions work, and I got really convicted that the way to attack poverty, the way to probably fix our country, was going to be to focus on family. I saw so many things coming from this one particular issue that kids are being disconnected through a million different ways from their mom and dad. I met Katie and the rest is history. Started working for them before us and have been trying ever since to help us really educate people on the just the importance of children being raised by their mother and father and how that fixes so many of society's issues.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Katie is great. She's a giant in this movement. And for people who have not already seen it, we do have an interview with Katie from a couple of months ago, Katie Foust. So if you haven't heard it, go back and listen to that episode of the Kylie cast because it's well worth the listen. She's a firebrand and she's just has a real, real gift for articulating these issues well and helping people understand how important they are. So. So, Josh, these topics that them before us tackles are once again in the news, as they are seemingly every week. But this week, it's because of a viral video of a baby that was commissioned by two gay dads, one of whom is a singer, songwriter, I believe his name, name is Shane McAneally, which is just really crazy that that's actually his name. But anyway, I digress. So, anyway, there's this clip of these dads, and I put that in air quotes, who are raising this child that is not biologically theirs, of course, because that is impossible. And the child is asking for its mother, in essence. And when the dads hear this, they laugh and say, no, mom is not an option, and the child begins to cry. I think I have this clip queued up, so I will just play it.

[D]

Hey, hey, who do you want?

[E]

Dada or Pop.

[D]

No. Mama. Do you want Dada or Pop? Who do you want? Dad, dad or pop? Nope. Do you want dad?

[B]

Dada?

[D]

You want pop? No way. Jose, I think. Oh, you. There is no mama. So sorry. You have dad. Dad.

[C]

You have pop.

[D]

Two choices.

[B]

No mama.

[D]

No. No mama. Dad, dad, or pop.

[B]

Okay, I've seen this video clip several times now, and the rage never decreases with each watch. Like it is on. Heartbreaking and awful. You wrote about this. But, Josh, I just want to get your, like, initial reaction to the clip

[D]

just watching that again. Yeah, I. We're just not used to it. I mean, I think society has coped with over the years seeing children without fathers. And it has empathy. I mean, we. We don't like it. It's totally shocking to our system to see children being denied mothers so much of society. Kids didn't make it if they didn't have a mom. There was no one there to care for them or feed them. This is a totally alternate construction made possible by technology and the facilitating of these payments and surrogates in this egg and buying industry. This is just shocking to our system because it's so incredibly new and novel to us.

[B]

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it in terms of the fact that we've always had single mothers, which is. Which is, you know, a denial of children's rights to their father. But. But it's. It's pretty ubiquitous. But I never thought about how this is the. Why this is so jarring, because we're used to that at least, even though it's still wrong. But we're not used to this. I think there are so many factors at play here. We have, you know, surrogacy and human trafficking, the commodification of children. Obergefell and gay marriage come into this. Children's natural right to their mom and dad. You know, I mean, there is so much wrapped up in this one clip. So. So let's take them one at a time and just kind of walk through the many, many factors at play here for people who aren't in the weeds of this stuff like you are. Can you just practically explain how two dads can acquire a baby like this?

[D]

Well, you're right. This is. This is good to just break down for people, because as that s. There was an SNL video, I don't know how many months ago, where these two gay men just show up with a kid and they're like, we just had him. Like, where? Where did you get him? And they're like, how dare you? How would you ask that question people don't understand until they're kind of faced with it that there's actually, like, an acquisition process here. And so, well, first, they need an egg, right? And I mean, we were looking. There was a Reddit thread that got popular the other day about a field hockey player at UCLA who said, oh, they come to our field all the time after practice. I'm a D1 field hockey player at a youth, you know, a prestigious institution. They'll offer us 30 or 40 thousand dollars for our eggs. Now, there's. There was another thread about selling motherhood that I did the other day that talked about Lucina Bank. I think it's an egg bank in. In San Diego that offered women up to $300,000 to do six rounds for their eggs. So, again, it's so funny. Language matters so incredibly much. They don't call them egg sellers, they call them egg donors, right? There's nothing being donated here. Anytime you hear a woman talk about that or say, well, I made a family possible, I donate eggs. Say, how much did you sell them for? I mean, get to the root of the issue. We hide behind these euphemisms, these kind of like, well, I'm just making a family. You got paid. You got paid 50, 60. Now, we can't deny there's some predatory aspects of it, right? They often will say, well, forgive your student loans in exchange. Or, hey, if you're scared about not finding a partner, how about you give me your eggs, I take half, and I'll freeze them for you with no fee? That's another strategy they use. But step one is acquisition. They will absolutely go after young, healthy women to purchase their eggs, which then these two men will buy from these egg sellers. Okay, so that's step one. Step two is, in some cases, you need to hire a surrogate. I say in some cases because there's a wave of. So gestational surrogacy is when you take an outside egg, put it in another woman who's not related to that egg. You create a child, right? Through ivf. You put the embryo inside the woman, and she carries it. That's. She's just gestating the embryo. I say just. But she's gestating the embryo. The other. The other version of this is called genetic surrogacy, not gestational. That's where the woman is. The egg comes from her. The. They use any means. Could be a. I mean, not to be crass, but a turkey baster. And they cut out the IVF process to lower the Cost either way you go. I mean, you're still kylie looking at $100,000, $80,000 to hire a surrogate. And then, yes, she carries the baby. They put all sorts of restrictions on her. What she can eat, what she can drink, she can't have sex. She needs to exercise. And then the day of the birth comes. Two men are in the operating room with her. Labor and delivery. They take the baby from her sometimes. I mean, there was a video the other day of a guy saying we were really nice. We let her hold the baby for a little bit, like we didn't have to do that. And they take.

[B]

Yeah. And we've seen more and more videos of men sort of like LARPing as women in delivery rooms. There's no woman even present. It's just these two men, you know, doing skin to skin contact with it with a newborn baby as if they have just gone through the labor and delivery process. I think we were even treated to like a glossy photo shoot of this with Pete Buttigieg and his partner. I mean, just, this is not a niche thing. This is becoming more and more ubiquitous and. But it's still, no, no less jarring. Can you maybe help people understand how this actually is human trafficking at its core? Because, you know, when we talk about adoption by gay couples, that still denies children a right to their mother and father. So there's. That's still problematic for many reasons. But when it comes to this surrogacy or, you know, ivf, like these questions where you actually have an exchange of money, then we get into the weeds of like, this is now human trafficking. This is buying and selling people. And I don't think, I think it's difficult for people who don't, who don't live and breathe in the weeds of this stuff to understand why this actually meets the definition of human trafficking. So can you maybe break that down even a little further?

[D]

Yeah, absolutely. So. So, you know, put simply, there was actually a case in 2011 in Delaware where a woman, and this is where that difference between genetic and gestational can be helpful too. There was a woman who had a baby. She met a guy in a parking lot. He gave her, I think, a $15,000 Western money order, Western Union money order, handed her child over to him and said, thank you, have a nice day. Well, she got arrested and charged with dealing in children again. Now they, this is where people try to play semantics. Well, that wasn't trafficking, that was buying children. It's like, you got to be kidding me. At some level if you are buying a child, or are we going to call that trafficking a child or what's he being sold for? I don't care. He got charged with dealing in children. Now, Delaware actually is seeking to change that law right now. So there's a big overhaul of parental law, trying to make children cheaper for a certain sect of people. And this law would say what she did was not wrong. She just didn't have the proper paperwork in place to transfer the child for this money. Not the sale, but the law. So they actually are shifting to say she can have a child, she can use a sperm donor, she can get pregnant on her own, she can find the guy, she can. As long as she gets that paperwork all signed, it doesn't matter what the payment is. There's no ceiling. It's not receipts and reimbursements. It's naming your price, handing over your own child. This is not some. You're not even buying an egg in this situation, which is also horrific. You're using your own egg, your own genetic child that you're related to and handing them over for a price. That's buying children. That's. That is absolutely the trafficking of a human being as a product to someone else.

[B]

Right, right. So I think I got into a good discussion with Katie about this when she was on the podcast. But for people who didn't see that episode, how is this different from adoption? Because I think maybe there's some misconceptions, you know, where people would say, well, isn't that exactly what you're doing with adoption? Aren't you? Don't you pay money and then you receive a child? So, so can you just explain how that is different? Because it is. So, so, so how?

[D]

Well, one thing I love is that this whole conversation has sparked the debate around adoption being this amazing gift to the child. And I think we're right to question that. To say, no doubt God's, you know, divine plan B, a redemptive situation where tragedy strikes. Maybe a woman can't through because of addiction or loss, can't raise her child, and she decides that she, you know, instead of putting them into foster care, even getting an abortion, she decides, I'm going to relinquish the rights to my child to another family to raise them. What's wrong is when we assume the child should just be unmitig. Just absolutely grateful for what just occurred. I think we can all agree. Wait a second. That's not ideal for anyone like that. That's a horrific situation. We wish the mom wasn't addicted. We wish there wasn't tragedy. We wish she was in a position economically or even just familially to raise her own child. Because every child deserves their mom and dad. The difference in these situations are in adoption, the tragedy. All adults agree, everybody agrees. They wish it was avoidable in third party reproduction, which is surrogacy. These two men acquiring a child, paying a woman, blah, blah, blah. The tragedy is intentional, it's financed. And in 15 years, when the kid turns to the mom and dad or the mom and mom or the dad and dad and says, I can't believe I was given up, one set of parents says, we can't either. We wish that had never happened to you. That's the adoptive parent. The other side says, aren't you just glad you're alive? Because they are the people that paid to make that loss happen. That's a fundamental difference.

[B]

Right, right, right. Well, and I think there are a couple of other differences as I see it, and maybe you can correct me here if I'm wrong, but you also have, in the case of adoption, you are paying not for the genetic material of the child, but for the rigorous background check that you are undergoing. There's, there's other things that you're paying for there that are not the human being, which is another thing that sets adoption apart from surrogacy because you actually do have those safeguards of the intensive background checks. You know, you go through an intense process to be approved as an adoptive, an adoptive parent. Whereas I don't think there's any real guardrails at all on who can commission a surrogate, on who can undergo ivf. Like who can buy and sell children in that market, correct?

[D]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we would in the adoption world be on the lookout for situations domestically or internationally where money would enter the equation. It would get to birth parents and potentially influence their decision to essentially incentivize them to give up their child. We would all condemn that. We would say, absolutely wrong. If money is the reason you're giving the child up, this is wrong. We need to condemn that. Yes. The flip side is in what we have with third party reproduction, it's not even hidden. They don't even make it about reimbursements. It can be compensation for gestating the child, it can be compensation for your egg, it can be compensation for handing over the child. And all that has to happen is you have to get the timing of your contracts right to make sure that the child is completely signed over in advance to make sure that there's no appearance after the fact that we're exchanging contract for baby.

[B]

Mm. Right?

[E]

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[B]

So let's say there was a world where. Because I did see you tweeting about this, like, if it's not about the money, then just stop paying. You know, like. Like, if there's no money changing hands, then there should be no problem with banning. With banning this practice. Okay. Let's say we could get past that. That we could. We could create a world where surrogacy is not actually involving the money changing hands, where it actually is an egg donor, somebody actually, you know, trying to help a couple conceive who. Who cannot naturally conceive. You know, say we get past all of those. Those dilemmas. I know that them before us does a lot of work with research on children's outcomes. So what do you say to people who. Who would respond to that and just say, like, who cares? This baby here say, the egg was donated for this child to be creative. That was. That was adopted or commissioned or whatever by this singer songwriter, Shane. If there were no other ethical problems, what would you say to someone who said, this is just two parents who love this baby. What's the big deal? What's the problem?

[D]

Yeah. Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

[B]

Right.

[D]

So one issue with it, if you're involving third parties, which. That's one version of this. Everything's free, but there's still a third party. That child is still being intentionally deprived, no matter if it was for payment or not, of their mother and father. Man. I actually wrote in the Federalist a couple months back that just like the transgender movement focused on the fact that sex couldn't be assigned at birth, that there's something fundamental down to your. You can take a blood test and find it out that you're male or female. The same is true of parents. You belong to a specific two people. We can find that out it's provable. You came from one mother and one father. We have to protect that, whether it's financed or paid or whatever, or. There's something so fundamental about a child belonging in a certain place with a certain two people that we cut and paste that sever that relationship at our peril. Children don't do well. My Daddy's Name Is Donor is the largest study of donor conceived children. And it did kind of show you donor conceived children versus adopted children versus children in. In biological families, the amount of deception, loss, father, mother hunger, emotional problems, distress, addictions that was. That were present not just in biological families, but also in adoptive families, because there's still loss there. But. But most of all in donor conceived families, where they felt betrayed, they felt a sense of loss being perpetrated by their parents, and they were the highest of any of those groups. I believe this is true in the study. To say that it was unethical to do that, that when the people who had been through it were the most likely to say, no one should have to go through that.

[B]

Right. So that gets to the question of rights. And I know, you know, especially as we get into LGBT issues and stuff, everything is framed in terms of rights, rights to children, whatever. But at them before us, you work with children's rights. Can you explain why this type of parenting of two men parenting a child that they commissioned is a denial of that child's rights? But on the flip side, that telling a couple that they cannot adopt a child or they cannot use a surrogate to commission a child is not a denial of any of their rights. Can you explain the difference there?

[D]

Yeah, well, take the second one first. Nobody's entitled to a child. No adult is required by everyone else to provide. I mean, think about these two men. If they have a right to a child, then they have a right to some woman's womb, some woman's egg, to make possible. What biology would deny not only that they then have the right to cost the child something so fundamental as to lose their mother? This is the. This is the issue. So much of this conversation around adult desires tends to completely. It fails to put up the other end of the equation and say you're not just dealing with one choice. If you choose to honor adult desires in this situation, you have to, on the other end of the equation, subtract the mother from that child's life. That's what society hasn't properly contended with, is that this is not a. A game where we just get to make adults happy. And there's Nothing else. The problem was, for so long, we didn't see the cost. We didn't hear the voices of the children growing up in these situations. We didn't have the videos like this. And I'll tell you, Kylie, this is my feeling about these videos. For so long, men were celebrated as progress for creating technically these artificial, artificially equal families. And everybody was all on board and how proud of you we are. Look at this family. Two amazing dads, blah, blah, blah. For so long, they were celebrated. They don't realize the sea tide, the tide is changing. And so they're posting these videos where children are being put on display for their mother loss, not realizing the culture does not like that. They're seeing now that it was not true that you were just two adults in your bedroom and wanted to be left alone. You required someone else. You wanted to procreate like everyone else. You wanted a biological connection with your child like everyone else. And that required you to take the child from their mother. And once society saw that, I'm glad their attitude's changing.

[B]

Yes. So, I mean, it really just fundamentally, our rights come from the laws of nature. And these types of arrangements just defy all the laws of nature. I mean, you know, our inalienable right that we are bestowed by our creator, you know, life, liberty, happiness. Well, that the pursuit of happiness has to be in accordance with the laws of nature. And as soon as it's not, we no longer have a right to it. Which is why, you know, a man and a woman have a right to marriage. That men and women, they can't just contrive this right to merit or that the man and a man and a woman, and a woman cannot just contrive this right because it's not a natural right. They cannot naturally bear families. You know, and the same goes with, like, I think people get confused because things get dicey when a couple then is infertile and they can't conceive. And so then it's like, well, then do they have a natural right to create a child through IVF or these other means? And it's like we create policy and we go based on what the laws of nature are, not what we wish they were. And it's just so important to get this, this question right. And so you wrote a piece for the Federalist about that Obergefell was never going to stay in the bedroom. And you got, you got to some of this with your last answer here. But I just want to talk about the role of Obergefell in all of this. How. How did we get to this point where you have men commissioning children? Because that is not what Obergefell purported to be about. So how do we get from Obergefell in 2015 to the point that we are now? And this denial of children's rights.

[D]

Well, it connects back to your last point about natural rights, that if I asked, you know, if you asked me what made you a father, if you pointed to Lincoln, who's probably sleeping somewhere above me right now in his room and said, what made you a father? I would, I would point to the fact that he came from me. I created him. I had a hand in creating him. That, that it would be biological. There would be. That's. That is how we've understood what it means to be a father and what it means to be a mother for centuries. That's the question that's at issue right now is will we redefine what it means to be the father or mother of a child? Is that a role that can be reassigned by the state? And that's the issue. And we take it for granted. It's just the water we swim in. That's my kid. Well, if the government came in on day one in the labor and delivery room and told me, I am assigning you this child, Josh, you are now the father, I would say BS I was the father. The moment of conception. That's not something that the government controls. What the government can proclaim, they can take away. This is a right that existed pre government. If there was a United States or not, Lincoln would be my child. Well, that is the core issue, because Obergefell said we must grant every benefit, all the constellation of benefits that come with marriage, to every same sex couple. So if a couple is married and there's a mother and father, we've always, in this country assumed that the father is the father of the child, the husband is the father of the child. We've always assumed that. And they said, well, of course we have to extend that to the mother. If we've got two moms, then the mother is the mother of that child. It's a complete denial of how we've always recognized, not assigned, recognized who the mother or father is, that there's. It's almost saying, no, no, no. It was the fact that they were married that made us assign them the fatherhood role. It had nothing to do with the fact that sex creates a child.

[B]

Right.

[D]

You can see it. It's a totally different divorced from reality idea that a Supreme Court judge thought we, the state, get to decide what makes you a father. And fundamentally, that has now been forced on the rest of the country where if they now seek to deny that and they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no. Marriage has always been something that is between a man and a woman. And through that, we assign parentage because sex creates kids. And that's our mechanism for making sure families. That's how we recognize families in this state. Well, if you do that, you are now in violation of a, of the, the new interpretation of the Constitution.

[B]

Right, well, and we see this in so many other avenues too. Like as you're talking about assigning children, we see the same thing with other areas of the lgbt, you know, Alphabet soup agenda of pretending that sex is something that's assigned at birth rather than something that is inherent in every, every part of your DNA. It's as if the government is making the decision about these things, or you are making the decision about these things completely divorced from the laws of nature created them in the first place. And, you know, it just goes back to so much of the leftist project of don't believe your lying eyes. We are going to create things in our image, not in God's image. It's, it's just a complete rejection of the natural order. And, and we have to, we have to get back to, to natural law. So in keeping with that, I know them before us has a campaign, the Greater Than campaign, which is working to overturn Obergefell. Do you, I would love to just hear about your outlook for that. Like, how is that going? And also, do you think that a child like this child in this video that's crying for his mother is the right victim, for lack of a better word, to get Obergefell ultimately overturned?

[D]

Well, see, they argued this right to marriage as entirely a private issue. It's, it's unbelievable that you would not allow two men to, to get married, to have a home, to be recognized by their community. And again, it was the. What I do in my bedroom is my business. The amount of times, Kylie, people tell me online, mind your business, what is your business of yours? Like that that line comes up so often. But what we, what we kind of denied and this, when it did come up, when family came up in 2015, the left was very quick to say, well, they adopt. Look at all these adoptive families. They just adopt kids. They are the heroes who are scooping up the heterosexual castoffs, the people that you irresponsibly put into foster care. We are adopting. That was the line. Just to push it away. It's not about kids. It's not about kids. It's about us. It's about adults. You're denying us equality of this central institution. Well, what we know now, and we should have known then. Adoption is not something that everyone's just born with a desire to do. It's difficult. You're talking about an institution that will take everything, all of your heart, soul. It's very, very difficult to step into a broken situation and try to be there for a child that's lost almost everything. To assume that that's a default setting for two men or two women is insane. They want. And there's studies about this. The ucla, the Williams center did a study about this that said the majority, I think it was 68%, something like that, maybe close to 70% of gay couples want to create, not adopt. They don't. Now, will they all choose that? No, because it's expensive. But they want biological connection just like we do. Just that's what's kept the society going for generations, is our desire to be biologically connected. And so that led them to do what we see now, which was to craft all of these intricate pathways to child acquisition through buying eggs, buying wombs, all these means to take home children with one adult or maybe two, completely unrelated to the child.

[B]

That all gets back to natural law as well. And just the natural desire of adults to have and bear children. And, you know, this gets away from the g. Dad's conversation into broader societal, societal questions, but just this biological urge that we have to create and sustain life and to do it with a. With a person that we love and to have children that look like us, that bear our likeness, that have our features that. That are going to carry on our legacy in. In every possible way. And it's just. We lie to ourselves. We lie to the next generation when we say that that is not a good thing. And that's not, you know. Yeah. That that's not a desirable thing. Like how many women now are pretending that that is not what they want or casting off these natural desires? So. So these are good things to desire for yourself and your spouse. The problem is when you deny nature in other ways, that makes that creation of life impossible. And you have to supplement it with. With denying a child's natural right to his mother and father. And yeah, I'm so happy about the work that them before us is doing with this greater than campaign, because I would. Obergefell. We need to stop mincing words about it. People need to stop dancing around the issue. Obergefell needs to go. And I mean, practically, what would that look like if Obergefell were overturned? What would happen to these, to these, you know, makeshift families, these contrived families? Like what? Where would we go from there?

[D]

Well, I think it's important to start with the Supreme Court asserting that a state can only want to preserve the natural family out of some sort of animus, that it's just homophobia that they would want to say. Again, go back to the civilizational question. The only reason you would preserve this antiquated definition of mothers and fathers being the people to whom a, you know, the people who created the child is, is some sort of homophobia. That's the only reason you'd have that. I mean, again, even in adoption, something critical. There are parental rights recognized of the birth of the parents that are then through a process with vetting and all these controls, they're. They're removed and transferred again. That's. It's a process. It's not like the child comes out belonging to no one. There's still a recognition of a natural order or with an institution designed child centric to help provide for the child what we all recognize they deserve in any situation possible. That's all being flipped. The Supreme Court is saying in this decision, you can't possibly really mean that. You don't need that. It's all animus, it's all homophobia. Well, we all know every study, this is not ambiguous. Children do best when raised by their mother and father. You want to talk about alleviating poverty, you want to get to upward mobility. Like the most important thing is not your race, it's not your zip code, it's not even your education level. Raj Chetty, Richard Reeves, Isabel Sawhill, all of them, this is across the political spectrum, all say the number one route to upper mobility, which is again, that's not the only metric in the books. But you want a kid to thrive and flourish. Married mothers and fathers, married mothers and fathers. So how do we protect that? We make sure they don't get disconnected from those two people. Of course, if the state wants to reduce welfare, they want to reduce what they spend on jails, they want to reduce the number of teachers they need, they want to reduce how much food packing programs they have to help support so kids have food on the weekends. Well, the number one way to do that would be to increase connections between married mothers and fathers and their kids. So to tell me, so how do we practically do it? I think we reassert that states have a fundamental interest in Preserving the one institution that ensures flourishing for children.

[B]

Right.

[D]

If we don't have an interest in children, if you tell me a state doesn't have an interest in a child flourishing, then what could a state possibly have an interest in?

[B]

Right. So, okay, you're speaking now to the positive outcome associated with children being being raised by their married moms and dads. But on the flip side of that, we also have research on the dangers of children being raised by adults that are not bioly biologically related to them, especially in the case of men. And so going back to the original couple that we talked with at the beginning, this Shane character and his partner and their baby, it gets worse because I saw you tweeting a clip of these two men with two of their other children who are older than this baby but still quite young, definitely elementary school aged. And they're playing this, you know, quaint little cringy social media, you know, game where the dads are asked or the, the children are standing behind the, the dads and they're asked a series of questions about which parent is more like this or which parent is this, who, who sleeps more, who's always on their phone, whatever. And then they're supposed to point to the parent that better embodies this, you know, whatever characteristic that they're doing. And one of the questions that these dads get asked in front of the, of the children is who's hornier? And the children, of course, have no idea. They're laughing. They're like, what does that mean? And the dads are laughing as well. First of all, disgusting. They posted this to their, their Instagram account. But then there was a good tweet from Katie Faust, from them before us that I wanted to, to throw up for people to see here when the, when the only adults in the home share the same unchecked instincts. Kids grow up in a hyper sexualized environment. Women, moderate. Take mom out of the equation and what should be filtered for children becomes normalized around them. Yes to all of that. But let's talk about that hypersexualized environment because I know them before us has a lot of research on outcomes of children being being raised by men who are not biologically related to them. So what happens when a child is in a home with two men? And course we're talking here about the research on a broad scale. You know, everybody can find a case study where, where it's, well, I know two dads who are great with, with children and you know, they, they've never, they would never Hurt a fly. Okay, but what does the research say?

[D]

Right? So them before us.substack.com we wrote an article that talked about. It's called Safe and Loved. And it's where a child is safest. And the truth is, whether we like it or not, whether it fits your agenda or not, biology is an incredibly protective force that married mothers and fathers raising their children. That is the statistically the safest place. We've never found another arrangement in human history that better protects a child from physical and sexual abuse and neglect than that period, full stop. So the problem with this whole situation where adoption does, see, that's a situation where a child is placed into a home with unrelated adults, which we know is dangerous. Well, we've recognized. Why. Why would we have vetting if we didn't know it was dangerous? Why would we have vetting? Why would we do home studies? Why would we look into the backgrounds? Why would we do background checks? Why would we interview people? Why would we have reference checks? It's built in. It's like, don't trust your eyes and ears. We have background checks and all these processes because we recognize putting a child somewhere where they're not biologically related to anyone is dangerous. But then suddenly, because it doesn't fit an agenda, because it would be discriminatory to background check these two men, we have children going into thousands of homes across the United States with completely unrelated men. Like the case in Pennsylvania where Tier 1 sexual predator who sent 12,000 text messages to an underage boy who went to jail, got out of jail, is on the sex offender registry. Could not possibly. There is not an adoption agency in the world that would trust this kid with a child. He said, well, it's pretty simple. I'll just go create. There's absolutely no regulations for surrogacy. I will pay. I'll pay for an egg. I'll rent a surrogate. I'll take a kid home. I can create my next victim. Now, there's. There's no, you know, no one has said he's abused the child. Nothing like that. We don't know. But the fact that someone on a sexual registry who could not adopt has access to a child through this other pathway seems incredibly tragic. And again, the statistics are pretty clear that when you have an unrelated male in the home, and this is not just two men, this is when you. When a tragically, a mother and a father divorce and there's a boyfriend living in the home. If you Google mother's boyfriend, you will find pages just mother's boyfriend. Pages of stabbings, shakings, beatings, molesting. It's terrible. Pages of it. Because we know you're going outside the structure, you're putting unrelated adults in the home. Now, again, in situations of divorce, we would say, boy, this isn't ideal. We hope that this is safe. In these other situations, we're all expected to clap and call it progress.

[B]

Right?

[D]

That's where it's wrong. In every situation, it's wrong. That's why we have to protect the ideal of married mothers and fathers.

[B]

Right? Right. Well, and in that instance, at least, you have the child's biological mother present. In these instances, there is no biological mother present. It's two unrelated men. Like it's even one step further than the case of a stepfather or something being in the child's home. So it's even worse. And going back to that Pennsylvania case, not only could that man not ever pass a background check for adoption, because that's obviously a pretty high bar. This is a man who would not be allowed within, you know, a certain number of feet from a school. This is somebody who would who, if he moved into a community, the neighbors would have to be notified by the way, there's a sexual predator in your. In your proximity. But this man can just go and buy a child, traffic a child with no checks and balances, no procedures, no questions asked. If he has the money, he can have a kid. And that is just. If you cannot see that that is a denial of a child's rights like that is so extreme. And I just fear for the future of a country that cannot identify the evil and the risks that are associated with something like that, because that is the logical conclusion of this regime that's been created.

[D]

Well, you go back to Obergefell. If what it fundamentally did pre Obergefell, states were at least free. Now, California, Massachusetts, they're going to do what they do. They're going to create. They're going to say, we get to decide what mothers and fathers are. It's whoever pays. It's whoever signs a check. You're a mother. If you want the kid bad enough. They're allowed to do that under our order. They say, hey, they make their own parental laws. But at least Alabama or Georgia or Tennessee was free to say, absolutely not. Children belong to their mother and father. They have a right, and children have a right to their mother and father. And that's not an assignable characteristic. That's not a purchasable commodity. What Obergefell did fundamentally was flip that and say, no, no, no. Now, for you to put up barriers, for you to restrict, for you to say a child can't go with two men because they're not biologically related, for you to say we only assign, we only, sorry, recognize mothers and fathers of children is actually discriminatory because these two men, these poor guys, they don't have access to the same biology. You and your husband do, you and your wife do. They don't have access to it. So biology, you recognizing that biology is actually discriminatory, and so you're not allowed to use it anymore. So when you look at this case with this. This guy in Pennsylvania, to put up guardrails, we may be able to stop predators from being able to acquire children, but to put up the real guardrails necessary to say kids do not go home with unrelated adults. They cannot be purchased whether they're on the registry or not, that's going to require us to privilege biology, to privilege the fundamental characteristic that we've always used to recognize who the mom and dad are. And it's unclear right now whether that would even be able to pass under the current regime created by Obergefell. And that's what we want to challenge. We want the Supreme Court to decide that, to have that case come up and have them have to say, well, you know what? I think it's actually worthwhile for the state to protect the interests of a child and what's best for them. And I think that's actually more important than men being able to marry, women being able to marry, period.

[B]

Right, right. So before we wrap here, Josh, let's get really practical, because the. The goal is for Obergefell to be overturned and then just have kind of a clean slate and be able to. To. To go back to what marriage really is, to what parenthood really is. But as long as the Obergefell regime is still in effect, let's get really practical. What can states do, specifically red states that want to protect children, that don't want to see surrogacy happen, that don't want to see, you know, anybody and everyone just have a right to adopt a child? Like, what are some guardrails that states maybe don't have an effect right now, but that they could actually actionably take to ban some of these practices and get rid of at least the worst cases that we've been talking about?

[D]

Well, so this is the nice thing is, and this is why a lot of people have an issue with them before us, which we're okay with, is it's not necessarily A same sex issue. Some of the roots of this problem that created Obergefell were also straight problems. The first step we could take is say we don't sell gametes and I don't care if you're a straight couple or a gay couple. We don't sell sperm, we don't sell eggs, period. We could also say, hey, we don't, we don't rent wombs. Like the, the process of gestation is a, is, is so complicated, complex, we don't understand it. There's so much to the bonding that acquire that, that happens between a mother and child even. I mean, you want to blow your mind, look up a term called microchimerism where the baby actually supports the mother with certain cells to make sure she's healthy through the birth and they actually exchange to where. There was a study that found a 94 year old woman with the cells of the boy she had birthed when she was 20, still in her brain because she had carried them with him. And it had played a fundamental role in protecting her by supporting her brain structure. We don't. And we're saying that that's something that can be rented and just a bun in the oven. These are some basic steps. Ban game gametes, ban sperm and egg, ban surrogacy. Another one would be don't allow, if you're going to have them be able to sell sperm and egg, don't allow them to do it anonymously. Say, hey, you are doing something fundamental and it's such an important relationship, even if you don't recognize it, that the kid gets access to you, whether you want access to the kid.

[B]

Right. That is so true. It's so interesting that you bring up that biological, the relationship between the mother and the child. I'm expecting right now and I had a thyroid issue before I got pregnant and the numbers on my labs were just consistently bad. And as soon as I got pregnant, it's like the child cured my thyroid issues. It's been completely, completely regulated without any other medical interventions. It's crazy. The relationship that mothers have with their babies and just the primal wound that is created when that is separated at birth with no recourse for the child.

[D]

There was actually Kylie, there was a crazy study. So there's a, there's a, there was a woman who had had a significant injury to. She had, I think she had hepatitis. She, she was an intravenous drug user. She had done damage to her organs. And they're basically, the doctors were saying, how could you possibly have lived this long and when they actually biopsied the organ, they found unrelated male cells in her organ that had. Had shifted from being stem cells into what was functioning, I believe it was kidney functioning as kidney tissue. And they said, have you ever had a kid? And she said, you know, no, I haven't. You know, I had. No, this is a boy. Did you have a boy? She said, no, I didn't. They said. She goes, well, I did abort my son 20 years ago. And he said, the doctor said to her, your aborted son saved your life. Whether you wanted your child or not, he protected you. That we don't understand this relationship between embryo and mother, that the fact that there's such a, a connection and exchange of cells and, and, and even a protective element to make sure the mother's okay. Now, to say that we know better and we can just buy and sell that and rent it and it's not going to affect anybody is, Is. Is the hubris that defines our generation

[B]

fearfully and wonderfully made. Indeed. That is remarkable. And science is, is incredible. And when we use it in the right way, it's, it's just. It's a wonderful thing. So, Josh, let's end on that high note. But before I let you go, can you just tell people where they can find you and the great work that them before us is doing?

[D]

Yeah. Go to them before us.com or greater than campaign.com if you want to find out more about that movement and join us. We write articles every week that are aimed at these specific issues on them before us.substack.com if you're looking to get equipped. How do I talk about this around the coffee table or at the boardroom or in my own home? We have articles that will help you navigate these discussions and equip you to defend kids.

[B]

Yeah. So important. Because this is not just a fight for an organization. This is a fight for every single one of us to understand the issues and know how to talk about them in an informed and compassionate and, yeah, thoughtful way. So, Josh, thanks so much for being here. And also, if you don't follow Josh on X, do give him a follow. He's always tweeting about these things and helping provide clarity to this difficult conversation. So, Josh, thanks so much for being here. I hope we can have you back again soon.

[D]

Thanks.

[B]

Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Kylie Cast. If you haven't done so already, please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. Leave us a five star review. It is truly such an easy way for you to help out the show. What's stopping you? As always, I will be back next week with more. So until then, just remember the truth hurts, but it won't kill you.

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