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Federalist Radio Hour
‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Katy Faust, Ep. 41: Legacy Media Doxxed Me For Opposing Obergefell
00:38:41
On this episode of “The Kylee Cast,” Katy Faust, a children’s rights advocate, author, and founder of Them Before Us, joins Federalist Managing Editor Kylee Griswold to talk about The Seattle Times’ front-page hit piece on her — on Mother’s Day — for...
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- [00:00]
Katie Faust
People can say whatever they want about me. You start targeting people that know me and I'm going to come in there with a flamethrower and I'm going to torch. And so that is what I've been doing for the last few days. Stay away from my kids, stay away from my church.
- [00:11]
Kylie Griswold
He writes the effort challenges a decade of established legal rights for same sex couples, rights that continue to enjoy broad public support. Oh, well, let's not get, you know, all of human history and natural law. Let's not let that get in the way of a decade of established legal rights. Like, what a load of funk, this
- [00:31]
Katie Faust
tapestry of human experience going back. Like, either, like if you want to go down the Adam and Eve route or the evolutionary biology route, okay, like, this is as pre as it comes, as it relates to human established bonds. But you're 10 years. You're 10 years of what? Five Supreme Court justices mandated for the country. That's what's established in your mind. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, I don't think so.
- [01:03]
Kylie Griswold
Foreign. 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 one of the easiest and best ways you can help out the show. So why wouldn't you do it? And if you're just listening to the show, go check out the full video version on my personal YouTube channel or the Federalist Channel channel on Rumble. And then of course like and subscribe there too. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at radio@the federalist.com we always love to hear from you. Today I am so happy to be joined once again by Katie Faust of them before us. You are familiar with her. If you have not already heard the episode from the Federalist Radio Hour or a Kylie cast episode with her, go back and listen to that as soon as you're done with this episode because there's such great stuff about her background and the work that she is doing. But Katie, welcome back to the Kylie cast.
- [01:59]
Katie Faust
We are very glad to be here with you. We being the magisterial Katie and team who is very thankful that the right has developed its own sources of accessing the public so that we do not have to bow and scrape and beg for fair representation in the legacy media. And when they pull one of the stunts, like what they did over the weekend where they create this hit piece that kind of posed as journalism, we don't just have to sit there and take it and hope that people like are going to be exposed to the arguments outlets like the Federalist means I can get my case to the public and we can actually use this as a means of exposing the audience to the real issues that huge outlets like the Seattle Times want to avoid.
- [02:46]
Kylie Griswold
That's right. That's right. So the reason we're having you back so soon, Katie, is that you are now in, in your own vicious news cycle, thanks to the Seattle Times coming out with a hit piece on you on Mother's Day of all days. I it and it's front page, front page, your face, your name, personal details about your life, but not any of the things that actually matter about the work that you're doing. Of course. So why don't we get into just the specifics of the Seattle Times piece. Can you just walk listeners through who maybe haven't read the piece in its entirety or what exactly the Seattle Times did in its hit piece on you?
- [03:21]
Katie Faust
Well, it was 2,000 words about every single thing that people in Seattle need to know about public offender number one. And what is my great offense? I think children need a mother and father. And marriage policy has been one of the most effective ways to secure those relationships for kids, not just within Christendom, but in the five major religions of the world and nearly every society throughout history. So I've got these wacky, wacky views that that children should be known and loved by the two people responsible for their existence and that they shouldn't be bought and sold. And I've made this dangerous case that's also the accurate case that gay marriage actually threatens both of those critical child needs to be known and loved by their mother and father and to be born free and not bought and sold. This is not a case that is baseless. It's a case with 11 years of receipts now. But the journalist Jim Brenner at the Seattle Times didn't bother to expose his readers to that case. Instead, he told them the neighborhood where I live, the church where I attend, my husband's former and current employer. You know, we don't talk a whole lot about my husband's job because he's transitioned to being an active duty Navy chaplain. But he decided to share that, you know, with the world anyway. He even reached out to my husband for comment when he was floating out during his deployment to see whether or not he had thoughts on his wife running a know hateful campaign. My husband didn't have time to get back to him because he's up at five, he goes to bed at nine, 30 or 10, seven days a week. And I just wonder if Mr. Bruner had he replied, if Mr. Bruner would have said, hey, thanks for leaving your family. Thanks for being, you know, away from them for the majority of the last two years, securing my right, my first amendment right that I am going to use to dox your wife's public location so that she has to have increased security at her events now. And just it was such a beta male move. Yes, the whole profile was just personal details, how much money my non profit made, little salacious bites of articles and interviews, but never linking to any of my core interviews or my core speeches that explain it to people. So anyway, it was quite frankly, dog whistle. Like it is a dog whistle in the classic sense, like, hey boys, look here, go get her. That's really what this hit piece was.
- [05:50]
Kylie Griswold
Yep. And not that you would have responded anyway, but did this so called reporter ever try to reach you for comment or just your husband?
- [05:57]
Katie Faust
Oh, he reached everybody. He contacted former employees at my nonprofit, current employees, he, my board chair. He did finally email to me. He called me. I mean, I'm like, I'm not going to call him back. He doesn't need my phone number. He emailed me, he said, I'm trying to, I've been trying to reach you, I'm doing a story on you, I want comment. And I wrote back and I said, no, thank you, because we know him not to be an honest player. My board chair has been in the nonprofit world here in Washington for the last 30 years. And he goes, it doesn't matter what you say, he will distort whatever you say. So see what he writes and when he gets it wrong, we will expose him. So that was the tactic that we went with.
- [06:34]
Kylie Griswold
Right. And of course he was not interested in telling your side of the story at all anyway, which. One of the most telling things, as you mentioned, was that not only did he not even just give a brief synopsis of your work, what you do, what you stand for, children have a right to their mother and father. Very basic. Would have taken only a couple more words, but he did not even link to any of your arguments, articles, podcast, interviews, he mentioned them. He quoted the tiniest little snippets you could ever find to paint you in the worst possible light, although they didn't. I mean, these are like very, very univers, universal truths, even that he quoted, but still not even linking to your natcon speech. I mean, truly an egregious example of journalistic malpractice on every level. I loved how you wrote. So you wrote a piece for us in the Federalist. Everybody should go read the entire piece because it's excellent. I somehow closed my tab here, but it's like, in its hit piece on me, the Seattle Times proved I'm right about Obergefell. Excellent, excellent piece. So compelling. But you wrote in the piece that he had to engage with the dissenter because he can't engage with the dissent. He can't actually argue. And the dissent, of course, being that Obergefell has indeed victimized children. So you detail in your piece at the Federalist a number of the gross rhetorical tactics, some of which you've already mentioned. But maybe just walk us through some more of these, because one of them that you haven't mentioned yet was fudging the poll numbers. Can you just explain how he totally. He's totally playing both sides here to show that, you know, Obergefell has broad support, even though he's ignoring other poll numbers that say that it doesn't. Can you just walk us through, through that?
- [08:10]
Katie Faust
Poor man couldn't make up his mind. I mean, whole story, he's like the grave threat to gay marriage. But also, everybody loves gay marriage. It's totally accepted. We have 10, 10 big fat years of precedent. And look. Look at the high approval rate, even among Republicans. And he stated that, you know, at the top. And if you had clicked on the L, it actually shows that support for gay marriage among Republicans as of a year ago was down to 41%. That's a drop of 16% just in two years. I mean, it. It is. It is like a meteor drop, okay? Like, it has been so such a rapid decline. And then later on, when he actually wanted to cite a specific number for Republican support, he went with a much lesser known citizen statistic that put it at about 56% instead. And so it's like, he wanted to say there's so much support for this, but then later, like, he quotes voices that are like, nothing secure. Anything could happen. They did this with Roe, you know, all of these different. Like, is she a major threat or is there no threat at all? And he did that. The piece, you know, like, he would say, and she's had increased funding. She had, like, 50 under $50,000 worth of income, you know, for the first couple of years of her nonprofit, but last year they raised $1 million. Like. Like, have you been in the nonprofit world? Like, that's actually not a whole lot of money. But by the Way, I will say on a million dollar budget, our six employees and probably nine contractors, absolutely do as much as their Lambda Legal, quote, you know, the people, the voices they pulled in from Lambda Legal, right, where they didn't care to expose their publicly reported Numbers, which their CEO makes $800,000. They pulled in 56 million last year. They've got a $250 million capital campaign. They're in the middle. But transparency, people, transparency. Make sure that you report on the salary and the $1 million income of the little nonprofit, you know, that you say is such a big. So it's like just both sides of his mouth. And it just proved like the whole point was not clarity for your readers. The point is let me create a backdrop so that I can just litter this with personal identifying details. You can harass her church, her friends, find her children, I mean, in the local online forums. That is all the conversation that's happening. Where does she go to the gym? Where do her kid, her kids go to school? How do we find them? How do we organize to target the event where she is going to be speaking this Saturday night? That was the point. The point was personal intimidation, not reporting.
- [10:52]
Kylie Griswold
Right. Well, and we don't need to tell our listeners how effective this is and how dangerous it is to do this to figures on the right. You know, for all of the left's talk of stochastic terrorism and dog whistling and all of these other things, I mean, that is exactly what this is. This is like assassination prep esque. It's what they do constantly. They deploy it against their enemies. And as you write in the piece, you know, ask Donald Trump about what kind of a threat this is. Ask Erica Kirk. Like, this is no, no small thing. This isn't a petty, vindictive piece, you know, hit piece journalism that's been going on for a very long time. It's not unique to write something nasty, you know, about your enemies, no matter how much it lacks journalistic integrity or what sorry excuse of reporting it is. But this is about sicking people who are violent, who are desperate on the people who disagree with them. And that's the entire point of this. And that's why it's so, so, so dangerous.
- [11:47]
Katie Faust
I sent the article. My kids didn't know that. It came out for a couple days. And then they would hear me saying, you know, blah, blah, blah, Seattle Times, blah, blah, blah, Seattle Times. Kind of like in the other room on my phone, they're like, what's going on with the Seattle Times? Like, they wrote a little Thing, it's fine. And they're like, send it to me, I want to read it. And so I sent it to my 16 year old son and I hear him in the room and he gets like, within minutes, just a few seconds of reading, he starts laughing and I'm like, okay, what's so funny? He goes, oh, like I get one paragraph in and I get a pop up that says sign up for inclusive news reporting. And I'm like, that's your, that's your pop up Seattle Times. Like it is so obvious who your base is. And you should know, you know, your own readers, you know that based on recent repeated polling that people that identify as very liberal, 25% of them think that political violence is justified if it achieves their political ends.
- [12:46]
Kylie Griswold
Right.
- [12:46]
Katie Faust
I'll tell you what, very liberal is definitely characteristic of the vast majority of the Seattle Times readers. And so they knew exactly what they were doing. They did it on purpose. Right. They created a piece that did not examine the argument. They created a piece that just honeycombed with personal identifying information for an audience that lives very close to where I live. And they did it because the whole purpose is to intimidate me into silence.
- [13:14]
Kylie Griswold
Right, Right. Yeah. One in four Seattle Times readers thinks it's okay to be violent against your political opponents. So let's talk a little bit about the science that Brunner includes in his piece as well, because I know them before us has nuked these studies from orbit. Can you just walk us through? I think he cites the ucla, UCLA study about like, oh no, everything is all hunky dory with, with children of same sex couples that there's no, nothing showing any harms to the, to these kids. Can you just kind of briefly walk us through why that is complete bunk?
- [13:48]
Katie Faust
Yeah, well, what he did is, you know, this is very, very common, like 94 studies say. And it's meant to create this impression that there is uniformity.
- [14:00]
Kylie Griswold
Right.
- [14:00]
Katie Faust
Among sociologists. So what did those 94 studies actually say? Well, some of them were these sort of junk science measurements about children with same sex parents. Some of it, a lot of it was just measuring the impact or how adults perceive their status in society or the benefits that they receive as a result of having gay marriage legalized. It really did not take an in depth look at the well being of children raised by same sex parents in any way that is statistically applicable to the broader public. So he was, you know, he pulled in something from a left leaning source that said, hey, gay marriage has been overall a net Positive for adults when you actually dig into the numbers about kids. First of all, he did not look at anything that had to do with the redefinition of parentage on children, which is the real issue with gay marriage. The real issue, as we can address and that I talked about in detail in the Federalist piece, is that redefining marriage redefined parenthood. Gay marriage requires detaching children from their biological parents and reattaching them to biological strangers without any background checks. It is an absolute reorientation of the universe of marriage and parenthood law so that he wasn't looking at any of that. And the studies that he lumped in about children that fared just as well as kids raised by heterosexual parents suffer from such serious methodological flaws that we see that all of those studies that did not use random samples, they found favorable outcomes for kids, but any study that did use random samples found diminished outcomes for kids. I mean, that really is all that you need to know about the reliability of these studies. And most of these studies are not actually examining how did the kids fare in school? Do they have IEPs? Did they suffer any kind of sexual abuse? Were they on welfare? Did they have, what was their emotional status like? Did they end up getting involved in criminal activity? Later, most of the surveys that, so that the kids fare no different simply went to the parents and said, hey, do your kids like having gay parents? They do. Oh, looks like they fare no different. So this is what, you know, the left does on any of their kind of popular causes. They will create this veneer of social consensus using weak or non existent data, and they'll create, you know, this consensus that says, hey, it looks like there's no harm. That's what he did. He pulled from one of those, those surveys of all this data where if you crack under the surface, the data doesn't say what it says and the actual data says the opposite. So we did put a link in our Federalist piece. If you really want to understand the science, the real science that we know behind same sex parenting studies, we examined all of them. We broke it down for you. I think that you should actually know how to respond to this question because it's such a common objection that runs directly counter to actual outcomes of kids. America's debt crisis just hit a dangerous milestone. The Watchdog on Wall street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. The US Debt has topped the entire gdp. That number was once considered inconceivable we simply don't have the money. We're spending it on interest. Whether it's happening in D.C. or down on Wall street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdog on Wall street podcast with Chr Tarkowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [17:30]
Kylie Griswold
Well, just like they did that with the studies, they also do it with the poll numbers, like we already talked about. But that's the entire rhetorical gambit here is just creating a narrative. It's not about what the actual science or research says. It's not about what natural law says. It's all about just kind of the aura of this. It's, it's, it's like a pseudo. What am I trying to say? Like the facade that this is all all good. And I laughed at this paragraph from the opening of the Seattle Times piece. He writes, the effort challenges a decade of established legal rights for same sex couples, rights that continue to enjoy broad public support. Oh, well, let's not get, you know, all of human history and natural law, let's not let that get in the way of a decade of established legal rights. And then, you know, using fake poll numbers to pretend that this still enjoys broad public support. Like, what a load of bunk. I mean, this is just a complete facade. They're clearly grasping at straws here.
- [18:31]
Katie Faust
I, as always, is the case when there's sort of a local flare up. I've spent a lot of time in the last few days responding to local online forums where they are targeting. I mean, people can say whatever they want about me. You start targeting people that know me and I'm going to come in there with a flame thrower, I'm going to torch. And so that is what I've been doing for the last few days is just like, get the F away from my friends. Right? Excuse me, but that's kind of where it's been. Like, stay away from my kids, Stay away from my church. And it's just amazing to me because someone's like, well, this is. You're a hateful monster. I'm like, oh, hateful monster for saying that children have a natural pre political claim to their own parents and vice versa, and that that is testified to by not just natural law, but the best social science that we have, judicial precedent and 400 years of common law, like pre colonial times, we have this established judicial understanding that the natural parent child relationship is something that is recognized, not assigned. And he wrote back and he's like, you sound like a hateful bigot to me. And I'm like, you got hateful bigot out of that. I just came at you with four different sources of authority, none of which are religious, but you simply cannot comprehend that all of this, this tapestry of human experience going back like, either, like if you want to go down the Adam and Eve route or the evolutionary biology route, okay, like this is as pre as it comes as it relates to human established bonds. But your 10 years, your 10 years of what five Supreme Court justices mandated for the country, that's what's established in your mind. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, I don't think so.
- [20:09]
Kylie Griswold
Right, right. Yeah. So on that same note, I wanted to circle back to the parentage question because Bruner was not going to represent this argument in his piece. So I want to let you have plenty of time to do it here. Just to explain more how Obergefell, how redefining marriage, which does have a real definition that's rooted in natural law, how redefining that does also redefine parentage. And then specifically also you, you detail some of this in your federalist piece. But how we've, how parentage laws have then flown flowed out of that.
- [20:42]
Katie Faust
Yep, exactly. This is the whole argument. This is the whole argument. And I will say, unfortunately, it's an argument that conservatives arguing for traditional marriage 11 years ago did not make strong enough. And it is, it is the area that deserves our focus today because the real victims are children, not just the children who are made intentionally motherless and fatherless. It has implications for every parent, child relations. So let me explain. If you are going to elevate same sex couples to the status of opposite sex couples, and that is what Obergefell requires. Obergefell says any distinction between same sex and opposite sex couples is unconstitutional discrimination. They have to be treated exactly the same, in Obergefell, in Kennedy's words, they have to have the full constellation of benefits. Right now, a huge benefit of marriage is the presumption of parentage. The whole reason government has an interest in marriage is because it has an interest in children. That's not my words. That is DOMA 1996, passed by a bipartisan Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. Government's interest in marriage is children. So when you redefine marriage, you redefine parenthood. A hundred percent of the time. 38 countries around the world have legalized gay marriage, and zero of them have reinforced children's right to their mother and father. All of them have eliminated or undermined this fundamental natural relationship that children have with their own mom. And dad, so what happens when you say same sex and opposite sex couples need to be treated exactly the same in law? That means same sex couples need to have equal access to children that heterosexual couples do. Now you can see the problem here. Same sex couples don't make babies, right? So they have to have pathways to acquire other people's children easily and sometimes subsidized by tax dollars or insurance benefits.
- [22:31]
Kylie Griswold
And so what we've seen, because they're infertile, Katie, because they're infertile, because they can't have children naturally.
- [22:37]
Katie Faust
So that, that actually is one demonstrable measurable evidence of redefining marriage. We have seen several jurisdictions redefine infertility. So now it's not six to 12 months of unprotected heterosexual sex that doesn't result in a pregnancy or live birth. Now, single people, same sex couples, throuples, can be infertile because if they cannot have subsidized access to IVF and donors and surrogacy, that constitutes discrimination. So do you see what happened here? We have made children unequal in the name of adult equality. And all of parenthood has shifted. Now, the interesting thing about this is one of the first states to make this evident was Washington, my state, in 2018. Jamie Peterson, who is a Democrat, darling father, father of four, surrogate born children, gay, married, he was one of the authors that rewrote the Uniform Parentage Act. This is one of the ways that states will define who gets to be a parent. And he literally said during the committee hearings that they had to update the Uniform Parentage act because it would be considered discriminatory. After Obergefell, if they did not scrub the words mother and father from parentage, if they did not create new pathways for adults to acquire children without background checks, if they did not codify the purchasing of children, the exchange of money from intended parents to birth parents or genetic parents. Now, as the former assistant director of the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world, paying birth parents or genetic parents to relinquish their parental rights is a form of trafficking. But that's exactly what we did in 2018 when Peterson's bill passed Washington State. It was state sanctioned trafficking. And now about 11 states have passed that updated UPA that functionally means that children have to be assigned a stranger by the government. That's really what it is, right? We're not recognizing parentage, we are assigning it in the name of adult equality. So when I say that Obergefell commodifies children, exhibit A happened right here. In Washington state. And reporter Jim Brenner just didn't seem to feel like that was relevant enough to share with his readers.
- [25:02]
Kylie Griswold
Yeah, it's clearly irrelevant. Katie has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. Jamie Peterson, by the way, who purchased four of his own children via surrogate. So of course this issue is very near and dear to his heart. I, I know you filed an amicus brief or you plus a group of people in Obergefell, so over a decade ago. Are these the same arguments you made in that amicus brief or was there more to it than this?
- [25:27]
Katie Faust
There were five kids with LGBT parents who filed briefs. I'm sorry, six of us, me and five others that filed briefs in support of traditional marriage. I co authored a brief with a woman named Heather Barwick. The other. The other four authored briefs with different focuses, but Heather and I specifically focused on the voices of children with same sex parents. What did. We probably shared 30 stories of kids with same sex parents, which can I just say, those stories are hard to find A, because a lot of them aren't old enough to speak for themselves. B, the political pressure to affirm their parents relationship status is so strong. And see, there's huge, huge, huge backlash if they choose to speak out. Any kid that, any kid that defies that political love makes a family narrative will be crushed. I mean, I know, because they pretty much have to resign themselves to having no connection to any of their family of origin if they were to dissent from their upbringing. So we found 30 voices of kids that we included in that brief and we said, we want you to look at the impact of legalizing gay marriage. You are going to not regard mother and father loss as a tragedy. You're. I want you to read the stories of kids with identity struggles who had mother hunger or father hunger, who struggled with their own gender or sexual identity because they didn't have a male or a female parent, the one who was subjected to increased risk of abuse and neglect, which always goes along with having more unrelated adults in your home. Look at them and say, this is something that we should codify, endorse and promote. So yes, our entire brief was just about the loss that children were going to experience if we legalized gay marriage. But instead the justices said, no, kids need this, right? They need the. They need their families to have the same dignity, right? They need the stability that comes from this. Very, very Interestingly, since Obergefell, Dr. Paul Sullins re examined some data from one of the flagship studies that supposedly showed no difference between kids raised by opposite Sex and same sex parents. And he found that that original Wainwright and Patterson study misidentified some of the kids. So when he properly contextualized the kids who were raised by heterosexual versus homosexual couples, he found that this one data set showed that children, big surprise, children fared worse with same sex parents. But he also was able to parse out the difference between cohabiting same sex parents and married same sex parents. And the children of married same sex parents had much higher rates of daily fearfulness and crying and emotional problems. So marriage did not solve their problem. It compounded it something about locking children in to that relationship that will always exclude their mother or father. It compounded their emotional struggles.
- [28:31]
Kylie Griswold
Well, and I mean of course we're talking about this in the context of same sex relationships here, but this is the lie that we hear about all forms of marriage that are not or like they use the same arguments for divorce. You know, if, if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy. And that's just not true. And it's a, it's a lie we tell ourselves to soothe our adult desires and to, to, you know, use as a license to live however we want. But it's just a lie and it applies as strongly to same sex marriage as it does to divorce and other forms of unions and relationships that are not part of the natural order. It's, it's just a complete lie. And also, I mean I, your point is well taken, Katie, about just being difficult to find people who are willing to talk about this because of, of relationship breakdown. But even you yourself are an example. You know, I think people who support same sex marriage would love nothing more than for the masses to believe that it's impossible to speak what is true and have a relationship with someone who disagrees with you or who, who does favor, you know, same sex relationships. You know, my husband and I have relationships with people who, who are same sex married and we are able to have a good functioning relationship with them even though they know we disagree with them, we know they disagree with us. You of course have this even in your own family and you have a good relationship with your mom. And so, you know, I do think it's worth, worth saying that not to believe that lie either that like it's impossible to say what is true and still be able to maintain a faithful witness, have good close relationships, love people in your life who, who disagree even if you think they're completely wrong on this issue. Just, just something worth, worth noting.
- [30:10]
Katie Faust
I totally, totally want to jump in and say that's 100% correct. The reason we are where we are today with gay marriage is because the other side so successfully framed this as if you actually love your gay family and friends, you will support gay marriage.
- [30:23]
Kylie Griswold
Yes.
- [30:24]
Katie Faust
Yeah. If you don't support gay marriage, that means you hate your gay family and friends. And the truth is that worked for conservatives because we actually do love our gay family and friends. We would like to sacrifice for them, serve them, keep them in our lives. We won't bend our convictions for them. But in any way that our lives can bend for them, we do. And I'm saying that not just as somebody who is working to live that way, but I know a few too many hardcore like Christian conservatives who are also doing the same thing. So a big part of the campaign, the greater than campaign, is we are going to change the way people think about gay marriage. This is not a litmus test of whether or not you think gay people have dignity. They obviously do. This is not a way to say I love my gay family and friends. Marriage is about justice for children. The definition of marriage fundamentally has to do with the rights, well being and protection of children. And unfortunately, due to the now almost every week case of children who are raised especially by two men who are subjected to abuse or commercial mother loss, they're hitting our news feeds over and over and over. The real victims of marriage are going to be harder of gay marriage are going to be harder to conceal. And sooner rather than later, Americans, the charitable ones that think this is the way to love my gay family and friends are going to have to choose. Am I going to continue to in essence appease that relationship or am I going to say child protection matters more than that?
- [31:52]
Kylie Griswold
Absolutely. Katie and I talk a lot more about all of these themes in our previous episode of the Kylie cast. So make sure you go check it out. We talk there not only about gay marriage, but about divorce, about ivf, about surrogacy. There's so much more there. Katie, we're just about out of time here, but before I let you go, I do just want to encourage Christians who are listening to this because you're the hit piece in the Seattle Times is a great example of this. But I think you're absolutely right, you know, that we need to make the parentage argument stronger. We need to make so many of these other arguments stronger and not less lovingly, but we need to identify where we have allowed lies to, to redefine what love even means for us and to back away from the truth. And so I just want to encourage Christians like it's time to suit up. You need to put your armor on. Because as we make these arguments more strongly, as we come out in fuller force and unapologetically fight for the rights of children, the opposition will become even more strong. The attacks will come, the violence will come. And so we need to be prepared. We need to be rooted and grounded in love, informed by scripture and like living in step with the Spirit so that we are, are able and willing and ready to weather those attacks. And that means every day putting on the armor of God. You know, truth, salvation, peace, all of it just girding up or we are not going to be ready and we will back down. And we really can't afford to let
- [33:15]
Katie Faust
me throw one more thing in there. If you are a parent and you choose to step into the war, you're going to be showing your kids a picture of something that they long for and that is somebody that was forged to live in a specific time, in a specific place and bring their faith and their convictions into the public sphere. Not because it's self serving, but because it is others sacrificing. We are sacrificing for others. We're not here, we're not doing this to defend ourselves and make sure that our 501C3 status is secure. We, we are doing this because the least of these are being victimized. Because we are the demographic charged with defending the fatherless and marriage redefinition. All these reproductive technologies manufacture the fatherless and the motherless. And it's like I know all of us grew up like revering these stories of Corey Tam Boom and Lord, what's the woman's name who is rescued? The kids in India.
- [34:14]
Kylie Griswold
Oh yeah, what is her name? I know what you're talking about all
- [34:18]
Katie Faust
the time, I'll think. But like we look at all of these great Christian heroes who charged up against the culture, William Wilberforce, you know, and they refused to bend and they took so much crap for it. You know, they took they just the whole. But we revere them as heroes. And your kids are looking around going where are those people right now? And the answer is it needs to be you. They need to be able to look at you, their mom and dad who are refusing to bend. Who. Yeah, maybe they're losing some relationships, maybe they're going against their HR department. But I will tell you, it's so inspiring for kids to say I'm looking at somebody and they're in my own house and they're doing the thing that is Hard. And when I think, when I read the Psalms, when I look at Psalm 18, when I look at Psalm 82, my dad looks like that. That's the kind of guy that my dad is like, you want to talk about, like, any Carmichael?
- [35:14]
Kylie Griswold
Yes. My mind kept going, Elizabeth Elliott. And I'm like, that's not it. Who is it? Yeah, okay.
- [35:19]
Katie Faust
Also totally based, but, yeah, like, that's it. Like, this is an opportunity for you to step into the great cloud of witnesses of the Christians who have stood against culture for the sake of protecting the most vulnerable. And it's not necessarily happening these days, but on the question of, is Jesus fully God, fully man? It is happening. On the question of, what is the nature of man and who makes life and who takes life? What is male, what is female? And therefore, what is marriage? And therefore to whom do children have a natural right and vice versa? Like, all of these image of God questions are the place where you have to just go so hard and you have to fight against culture. And the incredible beauty of that is it's probably going to drive your own children's faith, rooting them to the ground in a way that isn't when you play it safe or decide that, you know, my job is to love God, love people, and that means never telling the truth, never paying a price, never speaking up. Like, I just have seen the fortification in the life of my own children because, you know, their father and I are living out a faith that. That costs us something.
- [36:27]
Kylie Griswold
Right, right. Well. And someday you are not going to be around anymore. I'm not going to be around anymore, but our children and their children will be around. And we need the next generation to be even bolder than our generation. And so that's another reason why it's so important, not only to give them examples and to just, yeah, be good testimonies to them, but to prepare them to jump into the same fight, you know, because they're our replacements. Like, they are the next. The next generation that's going to need to fight these same exact fights. Maybe they'll look different, maybe Obergefell will be overturned, you know, but. But children are still going to need to be defended in one way or another, and we're going to need them as well. So, Katie, thank you so much for joining me on the Kylie cast. And everybody should go listen to our previous episode about ivf, surrogacy, Obergefell, all the rest, and definitely go read Katie's piece on the Federalist today about this hit piece from the Seattle Times. You can read the real story there instead of the garbage journalism. From James Brenner at the at the Seattle Times. So Katie, thanks again. We'll have you back soon.
- [37:22]
Katie Faust
Thanks Kylie.
- [37:28]
Kylie Griswold
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 podcasts. We have a channel specifically for the Kylie cast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. So if you're only subscribed to the Federalist Radio Hour or you're wrong with Molly Hemingway and David Harsanyi, two of our other great Federalist podcasts, be sure you're subscribed to the Kylie Cast as well so you never miss an episode. Leave us a five star review. It is such an easy way for you to help out the show. And go read Katie Faust piece at the Federalists today. It's called in its hit piece on me, the Seattle Times Proves I'm Right about Obergefell. Excellent piece. Don't even bother reading the Seattle Times hit piece. It's a complete garbage waste of time. But go read Katie's piece for sure and go listen to our previous episode that we recorded about all things ivf, surrogacy, gay marriage, divorce and the rest. As always, I will be back next week with more. So until then, just remember the truth hurts, but it won't kill you. Sam.