105 Feeling Loved Because Mom and Dad Love Each Other

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Them Before Us With Katy Faust
Episode: #105 — Feeling Loved Because Mom and Dad Love Each Other
Date: August 8, 2026
Host: Katy Faust (with Josh Wood, Sam, Jen)
Theme: Exploring the deep emotional and social impact of marriage, family structure, and cultural conflicts on children—focusing on why seeing their mother and father love each other uniquely affirms and protects children.

---

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode centers on the universal and often overlooked importance of children being raised by, and witnessing the loving relationship between, their own mother and father. Katy Faust and the Them Before Us team explore biblical stories, modern family structures, and current cultural debates to highlight how family dynamics—especially marriage—directly influence children’s sense of belonging, security, and well-being. The show also addresses objections from cultural critics and offers strategies for advocating for children’s rights.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Biblical Perspective and Dual Allegiance

Timestamps: [00:20] – [03:40]

• Katy Faust opens with a reflection on 1 Samuel, paralleling David’s loyalty to Saul with Christians’ stance on compassion and truth in current culture wars.
  • “The world would say…you cannot be compassionate to women who are dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and be robustly pro-life…In God's eyes, they not only can go together, they must go together.” — Katy Faust, [02:05]
• Christians are called to live by values that sometimes seem incompatible to outsiders: loving others deeply while also defending difficult truths.
• Josh Wood expands this, noting David’s patient confidence in God’s timing—a model for Christians living counter-culturally.

---

2. Children and Indirect Love: Why Marital Love Matters

Timestamps: [05:55] – [09:25]

• Katy shares a viral video of a three-year-old girl's emotional reaction to watching footage of her parents’ wedding:
  • “There’s really something special that children experience. When they see their mother loving their father, they feel like their mother is loving them…that is the only situation where you can be loved indirectly…” — Katy Faust, [07:10]
• This phenomenon is absent in blended families, stepfamilies, or families with new partners, often resulting in children feeling jealousy or competition.

---

3. Personal Experience: Divorce, Stepfamilies, and Adoption

Timestamps: [09:25] – [13:53]

• Drawing from their own backgrounds in divorced families, Josh and Katy discuss the emotional difference children feel when a parent has a new partner.
  • “It is interpreted almost as competition and threat when you’ve now got a new person entering the picture.” — Josh Wood, [10:00]
• Stepparents versus adoptive parents: The adoptive bond, while not without loss, is more symmetrical and less likely to trigger competitive feelings, compared to stepparents who children perceive as “tolerating” them only to get to the biological parent.

---

4. Biological Bonds in Literature: Lessons from The Odyssey

Timestamps: [15:05] – [23:02]

• The recent film adaptation of The Odyssey prompts a discussion about how foundational the search for/missing of a biological parent is in literature and culture.
  • “Children long to be known and loved by the two people who made them. Odysseus isn’t the only father in great art who is pursued by their child…” — Katy Faust, [19:02]
• The son Telemachus’ quest for his father exemplifies the universal child’s longing for connection with their biological parents.
• The story positively portrays marital love, fidelity, and the natural family as sources of strength for both individual children and the wider community.

---

5. Bonding Through Conflict and Cultural Threats

Timestamps: [23:02] – [27:58]

• Josh reflects on modern estrangement and how growth, especially in marriage or family, often comes through friction and resolving conflicts together.
  • “The brain isn’t primarily bonding…through easy, agreeable conversations, but actually through difficult friction.” — Josh Wood, [24:20]
• Katy warns that “cancel culture” and AI that flatters rather than challenges us are both threats to the kind of genuine, sometimes messy intimacy that’s vital for brain development and healthy relationships.

---

6. The Danger of Idea Polarization and ‘Cancelling’ Family

Timestamps: [27:58] – [31:18]

• Today’s culture increasingly regards mere disagreement as a threat to personal safety, leading to family estrangement—especially younger generations cutting off parents over value conflicts.

  • “Now any level of disagreement is received as, or maybe outside forces are messaging to you that this person hates you if they disagree.” — Katy Faust, [29:24]

• Arguing for a return to robust relationship skills and the ability to disagree without character assassination.

---

7. Online Opposition: Responding to Criticism of Advocacy for Children’s Rights

Timestamps: [32:18] – [47:43]

• “Here for the comments” segment with Sam and Jen responds to a roundtable debate among lesbian hosts analyzing the threat posed by Them Before Us’ coalition and campaigns (notably the “greater than” campaign targeting marriage policy).
  • The phrase “children have a mother and a father” is increasingly resonant online, striking a nerve because—according to Sam and Jen—it’s simply true and easy to remember.
    • “Children have a mother and a father isn’t propaganda…Everyone knows it’s true, whether you want to pretend it’s not. But it’s powerful because our message is easy to grab onto and it’s spreading.”—Jen, [38:19]
  • Critics claim the campaign is a “shield” masking anti-gay animus, but Sam and Jen insist their motivation is child protection, not hate.
    • “We don’t hate anybody…we are doing this for the kids…when you make an argument, you always bring it back to you.” — Sam, [42:15]
  • They confront dismissal and misrepresentation of Katy Faust’s story: she was not “raised by two moms,” but experienced a mom and her partner after divorce, illustrating why these family dynamics complicate children’s sense of security and self.

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “We need to…keep a toe on both sides [of the culture wars]…We will not forsake either loving people in the name of Christ, nor the truth that Christ insists that we defend.” — Katy Faust, [02:50]
• “David…waits to be called to it. Sometimes the way we conduct ourselves through [culture wars] matters a great deal.” — Josh Wood, [04:40]
• “When they see their mother loving their father, they feel like their mother is loving them.” — Katy Faust, [07:10]
• “It is interpreted almost as competition and threat when you’ve now got a new person entering the picture.” — Josh Wood, [10:00]
• “If you intentionally took a child from their mother or father…make the case for me that that is loving.” — Jen, [41:19]
• “We will be the organization that highlights the voices that get pushed down by you guys because they don’t match the cultural narrative.” — Jen, [47:18]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment Theme | Start Time | End Time | |----------------------------------------------------|------------|------------| | Biblical intro, dual allegiance (Saul/David) | 00:20 | 05:55 | | Viral video of child watching parents' wedding | 05:55 | 09:25 | | Children’s experience of divorce, adoption | 09:25 | 13:53 | | Lessons from The Odyssey & literature | 15:05 | 23:02 | | Bonding via conflict; threats to family unity | 23:02 | 27:58 | | Cancelling, disagreeing, polarization | 27:58 | 31:18 | | Responding to critics – “Here for the comments” | 32:18 | 47:43 |

---

Conclusion

This episode effectively intertwines biblical reflection, social science, and cultural commentary to argue that marriage between a child’s biological parents offers an irreplaceable foundation for children’s well-being. Through stories, viral moments, and rebuttals of critics, the hosts maintain a tone of conviction and child-centered advocacy, challenging listeners to question modern assumptions about family, love, and relational health.

---

Transcript

[Katie Foust]

Welcome to Them Before Us on American Family Radio, where we strive to put children before adults. Our goal is to educate the public on a child centric perspective of marriage and family and represent the rights of children on policy matters. Now here's the host and founder of Them Before Us, Katie Foust.

Welcome to Them Before Us Radio. I'm your host, Katie Foust, here with executive director of Them Before Us, Josh Wood, here to talk about a few of the news stories that have caught our eye this week as it relates to the intersection of marriage, family, parenthood, Christianity, faith, leading our own kids in the madness of this world. But before we do, we always start with a little bit of Bible time. And this time I'm going to wander. My 20 year old daughter is about to go back to college, so whenever I can, I align my Bible reading with when she finds herself on the couch reading her Bible. So today we were wrapping up the book of First Samuel, which she decided is her favorite book of the Old Testament. We love the story stories. And it was the death of Saul and they mention just briefly, the death of Jonathan. And she's like, man, that's all we get. Just one line about Jonathan's death and then how David, like goes bonkers, just absolutely postal on the guy that comes back and boasts that, you know, he was the one that killed Saul at the end and when that's not how it happened at all. And David just kills him, kills him because he's like, you touched the Lord's anointed. And she and I were talking about how the House of David series did a really good job of depicting his total allegiance to the house of Saul, like he was loyal to the house of Saul even when Saul was chasing him, trying to murder him, like taking his wife. And at the same time, David never doubted that he was God's anointed. Now the world would say there is no way that David could do both of these 100%. He could never be fully loyal to the house of Saul and fully confident that he actually was the rightful king of Israel. The world would say, incompatible. Pick one. You can't do both. But in this series, David does. He, full throated with confidence, unapologetically says, yes, I was anointed by Samuel to be the next king and that he would, he, he would go into battle. He would die for Saul's household, for the kingdom of Israel. So I said, this is a lot like how Christians today need to conduct themselves in the space of the culture wars. We need to a lot of People will say, you cannot be compassionate to women who are dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and be robustly pro life. You cannot oppose gay marriage. You cannot defend traditional marriage and love with all your heart. People that identify as gay and lesb in the world's eyes, those two things can never go together. But in God's eyes, they not only can go together, they must go together. So it was just such an illustration for us that in the kingdom of God that we are supposed to bring on earth as it is in heaven, that we just live by a different set of values, values that the world would say, you got to stand on one side of the fence or the other. And we say, nope, no, we're going to keep a toe on both sides, even though it's difficult, even though it's uncomfortable. We will not forsake either loving people in the name of Christ, nor the truth that Christ insists that we defend. Josh Wood, you are no stranger to challenging conversations and scenarios. What say you?

[Josh Wood]

Well, I think David's living throughout that whole time period in a reality that's not yet here. And I think that's a lot of what we encounter with culture. Our example, our witness is a total mix of he's, he's been anointed and he knows God's truth and he's trying to conduct his life in accordance with God's truth while also having to still participate in what is a broken system, a system that's going to take advantage of him. Saul takes advantage of his goodwill often and, and he's victimized by Saul. But I think the reason he's able to hold to this not yet kingdom is because he has confidence in God's. I think that's the big difference between Saul and David in general is David, where Saul chases that throne and chases the, the, the, the idea of power and recognition his whole life. David, who ends up getting all of that and more, is the one person who is content to wait till God calls him to it. And even in the cave we all remember that weird story where he cuts the tassel off, where he has the opportunity to win a victory, to put himself on the throne, to avenge the person who's been persecuting him. But it's going to be accomplished in a short term way. It's going to be accomplished in an ungodly way to achieve what is really a godly means right or a godly end. The end of Kim being inaugurated king. He doesn't allow his conduct to take a shortcut to get there. And I think that's, that's a brilliant thing. He waits to be called to it. And so I do think sometimes we have to be confident that our witness, the way we pursue. You mentioned the culture wars. I think it's even good to define that when you talk about our culture wars. You know, how do we live a godly life through it, even when it doesn't look like we're winning the war? Well, sometimes the way we conduct ourselves through it matters a great deal. I think we see that in the life of David.

[Katie Foust]

Well, I think that Christians living another way, Christians abiding in Christ and therefore manifesting a whole different disposition, different behaviors, different choices than the rest of the culture is our witness. It is our witness. I think there's fewer people, I often say, you know, there's fewer people that come up to me or my kids in public school saying, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and is he the only way to heaven? Like, not a lot of people are asking us that around here, but a lot of people are saying, why are you against abortion? Why are you against gay marriage? And that Christians, in the way we conduct ourselves, need to live in such a way that would invite those kinds of questions and then have really satisfying answers for it. And the answers exist because the nature of human hasn't changed. You know, we've seen all kinds of changes in our culture, our law, our technology as it relates to marriage and family issues at them before us. We talk a lot about IVF and surrogacy and no fault divorce and gay marriage. And yet there are some eternal truths about humans, specifically human children, that are absolutely immune to these kinds of unraveling of the social fabric. There's things that are going to be true about kids no matter what. One of those is this video that I shared on X this week. And it is a video of a 3 year old who's watching for the first time the video of her mother and father getting married. And for some reason her mother is filming her daughter's reaction to this. And it is just the sweetest thing. You see that her daughter's sitting on her lap and you've got dad just kind of smiling and watching the video behind it all. And the girl is like, oh, there's daddy. Oh mommy, that's you. Oh, you're getting married. And she turns into her mom's chest and she's just so moved by this beautiful picture of her mother and father joining their lives together and delighting in one another and saying, we're going to stay together for life. Why is that so important to this little three year old? Well, I noted in my retelling, my, my commentary about this is that there's really something special that children experience. When they see their mother loving their father, they feel like their mother is loving them. And when they see their father loving their mother, they feel like their father is loving them. And I quote this marriage researcher named Pat Fagan, who had also done 50 years of family counseling. And he said that is the only situation where you can be loved indirectly, where nobody's looking at you, talking at you, touching you, saying your name, but you feel loved and it's your mother and your father loving each other. And then I talked about how there's a contrast there because a lot of children with stepfathers or stepmothers or dad has a new girlfriend, or dad has a new boyfriend, or mom has a new girlfriend or mom has a new boyfriend. And children don't feel that same circuitous love, that same love coming to them indirectly when it's not their mom or dad being loved. In fact, oftentimes it provokes feelings of competition and jealousy in the child. So that has gone viral. I mean, at this point we're over a million views and over and over and over people saying this is true. I've experienced this. That was my story. I remember what that was like. There are some human universals that are going to be true whether or not we want them to be. And one of them is a child's own mother and father matter to them in ways that unrelated adults in the home don't.

[Josh Wood]

Well, sometimes you can prove something by its inverse. And so coming from a divorced family, myself and Katie, I know divorce is in your history. In fact, I looked across our team team there, we have multiple families who've experienced this. I, I found it fascinating that when a divorce, when your parents divorce and they begin to date and re even remarry, that that is an increased risk for your own life, that you may experience a divorce when you try to partner up with someone as well. And I can even say anecdotally, watching my siblings and other people I know you mentioned that the, watching your biological parents, the family you grow up in, when they love each other, how it kind of builds a protective shelter around you, the opposite is totally true, that it is interpreted almost as competition and threat when you've now got a new person entering the picture. And I think as you get older, you're able to kind of reconcile and you understand what's happening. Although I think there's complications with it even as you get older. But this young girl, she has no idea why she's feeling the emotions she's feeling. She's sobbing. I mean, she's sobbing in her mom's chest. Watching her parents love each other. It's all she knows. And she is just overwhelmed with good feelings. And it's almost like this is kind of a supernatural feeling. You don't even understand why you feel the way you do. This just shows how deeply ingrained this is. But just as true is when they watch someone new come in and compete for their dad's love, who is not their mother, who's now going to potentially be their stepmother or stepfather, there's a similar trigger, and it's competition. So in the same way they reflectively get love, this, even though it doesn't have to be a competition, the mother may still love their child the same as they try to go date and repartner. And look, it might not even be that mother's fault that there was a divorce force. This could be a situation of tragedy. This could be a situation of abandonment, that you name it. And. But when this mother is getting remarried, she has to recognize how this will be interpreted by her parent or her kids. And it often is tragically competition. It's pain. It's feeling like I am losing something in this process. And I don't know. I do find it just fascinating that these are feelings so deep within us that we can't even, especially when we're young, articulate what is occurring.

[Katie Foust]

There were, at this point, you know, hundreds of comments, and I like to see what people are saying after something like this. A lot of people saying this resonates with me. I totally understand. This was my experience. You've got step parents that are like, look, I got both. And it is different. It's different. It's a different feeling between my biological kids and my step kids. They're not saying I don't love them. They're just saying there is a different level of connection. But it was interesting. There was one lawmaker, state rep, I think, who said, this makes me sad because I'm not the biological parent of any of my children. And I looked him up and he's an adoptive father. And so I. I wrote him back and I said, what is going on in a step family situation is a situation of asymmetry. There is one adult that is in the relationship with the child from birth and wholly and completely belonging to that child. But then there is another person in that family in that home that is not aligned with the child in the same way. They're in a relationship with the child, usually because they're trying to get to the child's parent. The child is somebody they have to tolerate or somebody that they have to deal with if they're going to get what they want. It is different with adoptive parents. There is a symmetry when it comes to the adoptive parents and the relationship to the adopted child. Now, the adopted child still has experienced loss and often does long to know the identity of their birth parents. But the two adoptive parents are both wholly the child's. They didn't go into a relationship with the kid to tolerate them. They pursued that child specifically. So I don't necessarily know if adopted children have that same level of love, but there isn't the same level of, like, competition or gelatry or asymmetry that there is in situations of step parenting or a blended family.

[Josh Wood]

I watched a video the other day of a.

[Sam]

This was.

[Josh Wood]

Someone had rescued a beaver. I'm talking about the animal that builds a dam. And it had never been in the wild, ever. I don't know if you saw this. It was like, viral on Instagram. Never been in the wild. And it got to, like, three years old and it built a massive dam in their hallway with, like, toys and pillows. It. It could, like, it's wild. It had never seen this before. I honestly thought of that girl when I saw that, like, that, that connection between those two videos. She has no idea why she should be feeling this way. But it's something so deep inside us that we can't even sometimes describe that when our mother loves our father, it protects us and we feel love as a result.

[Katie Foust]

Welcome back to Them Before Us on American Family Radio.

We're back at Them Before Us Radio. I am your host, Katie Foust, here with executive director of Them Before Us, Josh Wood. And we're going to talk about the thing that everyone's been talking about, about for three weeks. We're a little late to the party. The Odyssey. Josh, did you see it?

[Josh Wood]

I have not.

[Katie Foust]

So you can't give us any of your hot takes. Have you read it?

[Josh Wood]

I mean, we covered it in high school. That's a long time ago, though.

[Katie Foust]

Well, the Odyssey has a lot to say about a lot of things we got to see with our whole family. Well, with the two kids that were home, my husband and I, we really enjoyed it. We really had a great time. All of the woke casting was not enough to make us hate it, but we wanted to talk.

[Josh Wood]

You can just go to the movie with your whole family. For us, it takes, like, a babysitter. Like, it's easier for you.

[Sam]

Okay.

[Josh Wood]

I'm just trying to give myself an out.

[Katie Foust]

Okay. So I am in liberation land. It is true. I can do anything that I want, whenever I want. And if I am with the kids, it lightens the load. It does not. It does not mean that I have extra work to do. And it's an amazing new season. And you are right, it might be a little while before you have that level of flexibility. So that just means I will talk about the Odyssey today.

[Josh Wood]

Well, I'm. It's like, when you get a babysitter, you. It better be awesome. And this movie has. I don't know. There's been a lot of hot takes on this. Is this worth getting a babysitter for my four children to go see so you can tell me whether it's worth it?

[Katie Foust]

Well, I don't go to movies very often because it's more of a budgetary thing for us these days. But when the kids want to do something, my answer is yes. Okay. They're like, hey, mom, you want to go to Marshalls with me and get some? Yes, mom, do you want to watch this crime show with me? Yes. Like, I stopped what I'm doing. If you want to hang out with me, the answer is yes. So they said they want to go to the Odyssey. We're like, we will go to the Odyssey with you. So they packed in all the different Odysseys of that are in the film. And Odysseus is. Wait, that's his name, right? Am I getting this right? Like, there's, like, Telemachus, member, hero. It's interesting because all the way through the movie, like, I'm not a big literary buff. I am certainly not a classic scholar, but they really did pull out a few timeless human themes. You know, we talked in the last segment about this little girl that was crying when she saw her mom and dad getting married because she knew there was something special about the two people she loved the most, loving each other, and it made her feel loved. So she had an emotional response. So the Odyssey here you've got, like, Telemachus, the son, the adult son at this point. It opens, you know, with Penelope, his wife, you know, who's not sure if she is a widow or not, waiting for the return of her husband. And what has happened in his absence. Dozens of hostile suitors are consuming, you know, their home, their food, their resources. And are they friendly to Telemachus they are not. They see Telemachus as competition. They want him out of the way. They are in pursuit of Telemachus mother because they want something. If Telemachus is involved at all, it is simply to try to get him to move them up to the front of the line. But it's very clear they will eliminate him if they can. And this also speaks to kind of a timeless truth that we talk about them before us, which is a biological parent. Genetic parents are the most connected to, invested in and protective of kids. So Telemachus sees that this is a big problem. Penelope is like, I am going to hold this off as long as I can. But she is like getting to the end of all of her tactics to try to keep these men at bay while she waits for her husband to return. So where does Telemachus go? He does not search for his missing uncle. He does not go hunt out for adventures. He goes out to find who his missing father.

[Sam]

Right.

[Katie Foust]

He is in search of his missing father. And there it's like we see another prominent theme in the lexicon of them before us, which is that children long to be known and loved by the two people who made them. And Odysseus isn't the only father of literature or father in great art who is pursued by their child. Telemachus is just one of dozens or hundreds of kids throughout great stories of our history who search for their missing mother or father. So I saw a lot of themes in there. Even though obviously we did have Ellen Page playing a soldier. That was made a little bit better because it was kind of clear that it was like a young boy in armor.

[Josh Wood]

That is something fascinating. I don't know if I knew that before or maybe I didn't think about it before I got connected to and started really reading a lot about what them before us was doing. But you really do see it everywhere after you begin to recognize that so many movies and stories are based around this longing from Lion King. There's, I think one of the Indiana Jones movies talks about that. Finding Nemo, pursuit of Happiness. There's all these movies where it is this person in search of their father. Or as you kind of see with like Star wars with Luke, I'm your father, but that a revelation about your father. Who they were, what they did, or who they currently are, it just like wrecks the person or it changes the course of their life forever. Kind of always speaking back to the people who create us, the people who bring us into this world. They're really not just two People, they have this deep meaning, kind of going back to the thing we talked about in the first segment. It's hard to explain why, but we know it does matter. It wouldn't have been such an experience, even back to the days of the Odyssey. It wouldn't have been such an experience that it needed to be retold through stories like this. If it didn't really matter to the kid, that it wasn't just any of the suitors around him, not any just male could have played that role. It mattered to him who his father was.

[Katie Foust]

There were a lot of human universals that I saw in this. One thing that I really appreciated is Penelope.

[Josh Wood]

And I don't.

[Katie Foust]

I mean, like, I'm not familiar with the original text. I don't know how much this showed up. I think it probably was accurate that she loved being married and she loved her husband and she wanted his return, and she waited faithfully for it. And she had techniques to discern whether or not somebody was coming to her to tell them stories about Odysseus and his appearance or his location or his fate, to know whether or not they were lying, because she so desperately wanted him back. And she didn't want the suitors and she didn't want power. She just wanted her husband to come home. So I also appreciated that it gave kind of a positive portrayal of marriage, too. Whereas a lot of times there is, especially in Hollywood, this narrative that marriage is a drudgery, marriage is a chain, marriage is a trap. Marriage is something that weighs down women. You know, marriage is something that, you know, you need to liberate yourself from. And, you know, you got glimpses of their relationship before he went off to war. And they were in love, and their love produced a child, and they had mutual love for that child. And he was so concerned that he wasn't going to be able to come back. And so, you know, they promised one another that he would. So I think that in that too, you saw a really sweet, positive picture of the natural family and the power of those three loving and supporting and working for one another for a good that honestly benefited the whole community.

[Josh Wood]

Well, I think it's interesting. It's what today's culture talk about, things that are countercultural, the estrangement phenomenon of kids from parents even of like, going totally online with your relationship so you don't have to really experience the messiness of online. It was interesting. There was a guy from UVA who gave his commencement speech, and it was this message that your brain needs other people. Not again we do this with the news, not like the curated. I agree with everything you're saying, people. But you need annoying people. You need inconvenient people. You need people with where there's friction that your community isn't just a bunch of people online who agree with you. It's. It's the people who, after seeing you for who you are, continue to show up day after day after day. It was an interesting piece. It kind of made the point that the brain isn't primarily bonding to people through easy, agreeable conversations, but actually through difficult friction. And I would say both of us got married young. I would say that you. You do. You know, sometimes you hear, well, we grew apart. We grew up and grew apart. I'd say my wife and I. It's definitely true. We grew up. And you go through different iterations of being a person. My wife. I am not who I. My wife married all those years ago. But it is through the bonding and the friction of having to fight and have conflict and raise kids together that I would say there are times where you're like, this is a difficult conversation, but you do find some resolution or you find forgiveness, and you totally feel more connected to that person. So it was interesting that he's bringing that up, that I. Some of the times I felt most connected to my wife or even my friends was right on the other side of having gone through something very difficult.

[Katie Foust]

When you think about the kind of things that bond. So my husband and I, when we. We do marriage counseling, and I'm not saying this is advice for other people. This is advice we had to apply to ourselves. There are conflicts that arise in any relationship. Any relationship will include a little bit of friction in some way. The challenge for married couples is to. Instead of being on opposite sides of that struggle, on opposite sides of the challenge, we, my husband and I would say, move over. So you're shoulder to shoulder. So you're both facing the problem or facing the conflict together, and then you're working through it side by side, not in opposition to one another. And what does that do? You still have a problem, but you're working through it. But when you do it shoulder to shoulder, you actually create emotional intimacy because of that. Now it's challenging. Sometimes it takes a lot of creativity to figure out what is this problem that we're having and how do we make sure that we're on the same side versus, like, looking at it as opponents. But that is a really important part of growth. Growth for everybody. That happens in friendships. That definitely happens in Relationships. It can happen, as I think we all know, with our own parents, our own children, as they grow. So I think that there's two phenomenons that are moving us to a place that are really threat. If it really is so critical for our brains to encourage. Sorry. To encounter interactions that are challenging or that don't always agree with us or that might produce a little bit of friction. There's two main threats to that. The first one, I think, is this trend towards canceling. Canceling people that disagree with you. I don't see a lot of parents doing it to their children for disagreeing, but I see a lot of sort of millennials and gen zers canceling their parents if the parents don't agree. Sometimes they're doing it in the name of mental health. Right. Or mental wellness. Well, it's just not okay for me if my parents are not validating all of my choices. So they cancel them and they cut them out of the lives of not just them, but their children. They're cutting their children's grandparents out of their life. And the second big threat to this is AI. You know, I'm on enough. You know, I use enough different AI apps to know the one that's gonna, like, absolutely flatter me into believing that I just wrote the most incredible post, which I re. I often use Chat GBT to just spell check and make sure I don't have any horrible typos, because after an hour, you cannot correct that on Twitter. And I know that if I go to Chat GPT, it's gonna say, oh, you know how to make a great point. I mean, your critics aren't going to be able to argue with this at all. I just want to say your word choice is exceptional. But then I know if I go over to, like, Claude, they'd be like, technically, I think that you could do this a little bit better. So the chat bots are going to reduce the friction if we want them to. And I just think overall, Josh, this is going to be a net loss for individuals in all of society.

[Josh Wood]

Well, I think we've missed, like, isn't it possible for us just to, like, really disagree with someone and then still be able to have a relationship? I think that is the part we lose, I think, personally, because maybe 30 years ago, who was around, you was your friend, right? Who you went to school with. Those are your friends. And you got the weird ones. You got the. The very conservative ones. You got, dude, that guy is so liberal. You've got all the different people, but you couldn't retreat to your little community to find friends you had who you had. I mean, my neighbors, that was who we hung out with growing up. Now, I think, because, man, maybe it's because we, we card our kids places more than we ever used to. And you don't run around the neighborhood. If you're going to a play date, it's because your parents dropped you off there and you're in a curated space. You're not out in the woods behind your house with, with just whatever neighbor kids were back there. I do think there's some of that where we, we just have lost and we're so much more selective that now it's. Maybe it's led us to grow up and say, hey, I, I don't think we need our parents. I don't think we. 1. I'm one disagreement away from completely cutting them off. I think that is probably a product of the Internet age and culture, and it feels to me like a really bad thing.

[Katie Foust]

To be fair. I'm, you know, I don't know, 70 years older than you or something.

[Jen]

Josh.

[Katie Foust]

So maybe I, maybe I grew up in a totally different era, but I think that when there were disagreements, you know, when I was in high school, even when I was in college, I had friends that were, I think, fell on all different sides of different religious and, and political questions. And you could disagree, but generally you didn't hate people because of it. You could really just say, I think you're wrong. Maybe even I think you're an idiot. But I don't think anybody was saying, you're evil. You're evil for believing what you believe. You're evil if you don't validate my choices. You're evil if you don't agree with my identity. You're evil if you don't vote for the person that I'm voting for. And unfortunately, there is a lot of that that now any level of disagreement is received as, or maybe outside forces are messaging to you that this person hates you if they disagree. So I understand why some people would say, well, I can't be in a relationship with somebody that hates me. I can't be in a relationship with somebody that thinks I'm evil or I'm not going to be in a relationship with them because I think they are evil. So I think a lot of the problem is that our current discourse, which is very algorithmically fueled, is leading us to take what used to be genuine honest disagreements and escalating it to the level of interpersonal war. So I think that's another reason why we're seeing this, this cancellation of people that disagree with us. What do you think?

[Josh Wood]

Well, I think one part of this is the whole speech being dangerous. I think people have never felt so threatened by other ideas. It's now not that you're just wrong. It's like actually what you're saying is a danger to myself, my identity, my family. I actually am irresponsible if I don't cut you off. And I do think that's one big thing that's changed is how dangerous people interpret other ideas.

[Katie Foust]

We are the kings and queens of dangerous ideas here at them before us. We are seeing it everywhere. And a lot of the time that's happening kind of in the comments section of our posts, our articles, our interviews. And so we tackle some of those popular objections, the ones that we hear over and over and over. And we're going to do that in the next segment with Jen and Sam, who have pulled out a few items that I think that you guys are going to be able to learn from because they're probably questions you've had or objections that you have heard, but they are going to walk you through how you would respond to that and answer not from the perspective of your knee jerk response, but child protection. So stay with us.

If you'd like to comment on the show, email [e-mail].

[Sam]

Hi everyone. Welcome to Here for the comments, a Them Before Us podcast series where we dig into the comment sections and we the questions that we get online and then we unpack them with the children's rights perspective. And I'm your host Sam and I'm joined by Jen and we're here for the comments. So Jen, tell us what we're getting into today.

[Jen]

Sorry, it glitched a little bit. I'll have to edit that out. Minute minute 28. Yeah. So we saw this video come across YouTube. I think I was just searching Katie Faust and then before us on YouTube because I try to track different articles and things that were mentioned in and this was a round table. It was kind of promoted as a lesbian roundtable. And I'm only pointing that out to say that the ladies in this chat very specifically only call themselves lgb. So as we've talked about a little bit before, there's definitely a movement within the sort of rainbow flag coalition. And we've joked about how ugly that flag is. They just keep adding more and more ideological things to the same flag. So it started as a rainbow, then they add the trans baby baby colors in a In like a triangle. Then they add either I've seen one with a brown fist in the middle or like a brown circle for Black Lives Matter. I don't remember if they've done something to add like Palestine specifically to the trans flag. Well, now they call it the progress flag. But anyway, there are especially women lesbians who are starting to try to walk back pretending gender doesn't matter because they have a bunch of predatory men who are like, yeah, we agree, gender doesn't matter. So now I'm a woman. I can be in a woman's sport, in a woman's locker room. You're a transphobe if you're not attracted to a woman with a penis. Birthing people. We have to say birthing people now. So this is the LGB movement that are like, we're the normal ones, we're diverging, divesting from trans ideology. These are men. This is the patriarchy. Etc, and we've talked about this before too, but we've, we kind of say, no, no, you guys, like, you own this, this is your snake, it's coming to eat you. But you, this is the monster, this is the zombie the LGB movement created. So we know that because we can follow a thread of logic to its natural conclusion. All that to say. This roundtable had a discussion called is greater than.org a legitimate threat to marriage equality? And we have some comments and just thoughts that we're going to share about that, that. But Sam, start us off with just saying kind of what was your initial take on the conversation that you saw?

[Sam]

I was so excited to see people like talking about greater than. And like that's the whole point of their discussion. Again, it's like, is greater than.org a legitimate threat to marriage equality? It's like, I hope so. That's our whole goal is to overturn Obergefell and make gay marriage illegal. So I hope so. And it was so fun to hear people talking about it out in the wild, you know, because you. We started this movement and watching it go from literally non existent to now. You know, I'm just randomly on YouTube one day and I'm scrolling and I see people talking about it. That's an exciting thing. I say things, we're doing our job. But honestly I thought it was exciting on our end because what a lot of what they've been saying, I have some quotes that I wrote down. It was like, I, I agree with them and, but it's a good thing for us. So like, you know, one thing I'd like to say, is they a comment that they made is. She said, I haven't been afraid of any of these campaigns before, but this one, this one has me stirred up. This one has me concerned because they have a really thought out complete plan. And it's like, yeah, yeah, we really do. It's very thought out. It's, you know, something we've been working on. Something that like when I say we, I mean Katie Faust has been working on for a lot longer. I came into it when we were ready to launch and it's like, this is a very good plan.

[Jen]

Pause you right there. Just comment on that. Yeah, we see when we put these billboards up and it, it generated some response and people got irritated and started fighting back. I saw a few comments, well, one on Reddit where a person said, you know, I was told this person was Katie Faust and them before us or greater than was no one to worry about. Oh, poo poo, you know, oh, you only have, we have people who are like, you only have 20 something thing thousand followers. Like no one's listening to you. No one's like, they think the Internet is where we're primarily doing our work. It's like, no, that's not our primary place. Right. And greater than. People haven't even really seen or understood how many people are behind this. Because you could throw a rock and land on a major conservative voice or organization or Christian voice organization in the United States States at this point, there's a decent chance they're probably part of our coalition. So she's right. And the thing that stood out to me that they were talking about is like she said, you know, I'm. Then I start keep seeing this message, children have a mother and a father. She's like, then I see someone else say it. Then I see someone else say it. And we're seeing it in our comments. The people who are picking up on this advocacy in the comments. So they're starting to see and she agreed. This is a very strong message that is working. It's easy to grab onto. She's saying it's propaganda. We propaganda is something you can't disagree with. Like love is love. It's so vague. It's like that doesn't make really any sense. It's saying something without saying anything. Children have a mother and a father isn't propaganda. But it is easy to grab onto and it's easy to stick in your brain, we would say, because it's just true. It's natural law. It's. You can't Deny it. Everyone knows it's true, whether you want to pretend it's not. But it's powerful because our message is easy to grab onto and it's spreading. And they are rightly worried about it.

[Katie Foust]

Yes.

[Sam]

Yeah. One of them described our message as on point. So I agree. I think our message is great. And I think it's the reason why our message is on point. I think the reason why it's great. I think a reason why a lot of people are repeating it and it's growing is because it's simply true. It just is. You know, children have a mom and they have a dad and that doesn't change based on, like, who adopts them or who takes care of them or what kind of family structure you want in your life. They all come from a mom and a dad. And so, yeah, and then another one they said, let's see here. In response to our statement of every child deserves their mom and their dad, their response is, every child deserves a loving and stable home. And she thinks that that like, trumps it. And it's like, first of all, like, those two things generally coincide. So in general, we. If you have your mom and your dad, that's the best chance you're going to have at a loving and stable home.

[Jen]

We should say you agree with us? Great.

[Sam]

You agree. Except that we're on the same page here. You know, we're not sitting here saying that, like, if they have their mom and their dad, then, like, nothing bad will ever happen to them or divorce doesn't exist or abuse doesn't exist. We're not saying that. We're saying statistically that's their best shot at life. And there's a reason for that. Because your mom and your dad have the most reason to keep you safe and protected, you know, versus a stranger.

[Jen]

Yeah, let's talk about stability for a second. So one of those women said there was four women on this call. One of them was married, I believe, and. Or maybe two were married and one had children. Only one had children. I don't know how. And so she's like every. The. The way to say this is what I'm going to say back. Every child deserves a loving and stable home. Okay? Stability. Lesbians have the least stable relationship of the four kinds, or three kinds if it's heterosexual. One man, one woman. Same sex men, same sex women. Of those three pairings, women have the most. The highest divorce rates, most volatile, and I've heard, highest domestic violence. So those are some things. We should actually write an article and Have Josh Wood, our executive director, loves doing the, like, deep dives with the studies. He'll break all that stuff down. I'm not as good at just reading it all with clarity and breaking it all down. But I have heard that lesbian couples have the highest domestic violence. And then people will say gay men have the lowest divorce. It's like, okay, but gay men have the open relationships. They have the most sexual partners. So think about men coming in and out of your house. Think about your dad exchanging sexual partners often. So you have two men in your house, one who's you're probably related to, one who you're not related to, but he's there all the time. And then you have two men that have multiple sexual partners. Again, these are statistical averages, but Josh broke the science down on this, and we talk about this on our substack. So how is that stable? And you want to say loving and stable. Okay, but what does loving mean? If you intentionally took a child from their mother or father, you intentionally conceived them to deny them one of the, the two most primary relationships to their identity. This is the way they understand their genetic identity, their medical history, who they are, their grandparents, their aunts, their uncles, their cousins. To intentionally inflict that on a child. Make the case for me that that is loving. To do something, you know, intentionally. To do something intentionally that, you know, harms a child. How is that loving? So where's the loving and the stable? That's what I'm not, I'm not connecting those dots.

[Sam]

No, 100%. And then one thing I did want to say before we get into some of the comments that I had here. They got a lot of things right in that video in the sense of, like, we do have a great plan, we do have a good message. We do have some, you know, a really thought out campaign strategy. But some things that they got wrong is, of course, and I, I can understand the urge, but they're. They make the jump from you want to ban gay marriage to must mean you hate, you know, gay people or LGBTQ people. And again, we say this in almost every video because we, we try to make this so clear. We, we don't want anyone question. We don't. We don't hate anybody. We don't hate gay people. We don't hate you just because you love somebody who's the same sex. We, we genuinely don't. We are doing this for the kids. They kind of scoffed at that idea during the podcast where they're like, oh, they're using kids as a shield. And it's like, like, or maybe it actually is about kids. Like, if you would listen to our arguments, like, we always bring it back to the kids, and when you make an argument, you always bring it back to you. And that's our whole issue is, you know, like, we're, we're doing it for the kids and we can tell you, like, exactly how, but you're not ready for that conversation. You just want to skip right to, you know, we have rights and you hate us. And it's like, that's not realistic. Did you want to say anything about that before I read some of the comments?

[Jen]

Yeah, I think a lot. There. One of the gals. Oh, supposedly you've done all the research and tell us about Katie Faust. And she immediately starts by saying things that aren't really accurate. And then they spend a few minutes completely boggled at to what motivated her to go from, it's so weird. She was raised by two moms, so why is she, like, against gay people now?

[Sam]

You did all the research. It's like, okay, so she went on Reddit and she read what people think Katie Fouse is like. Instead of like, like the million of interviews where Katie Fowles directly talks about how she was inspired to come to this idea, what her upbringing was like, how she has a good relationship with her mom and her mom's partner. You've done zero research. So it's like the one person on the team that was supposed to be prepped and ready to talk about Katie Faust and where this idea came from did zero research. Just to be clear.

[Jen]

Yeah, I cannot with the people who are like, But Katie had two moms. Because it's like, you haven't seen a single interview then. Because she very specifically says, I did not have two moms. I had a mom and my mom's partner. I care about my mom's partner. She's not my mother. I don't look at her that way. And I valued being. I valued the time with my mom and my dad. They made it work. So she got time with both. But divorce was still hard for her because, yeah, you have to see your parents re partnered with people who aren't your mom or dad. And we talked about, we've talked about this a lot in the last few days. Seeing your mom and dad love each other makes you feel loved. When they don't love each other anymore and they're loving other people, it's harder for you. We know this to be true. So even that alone, people should understand where someone might be Motivated to. Yeah. We shouldn't be doing this to children intentionally. Yeah. The fact that people can't even go look at one of her interviews and at least articulate her story the way she articulates it, they have to put their own lens on it. They need to massage her story to make sure it backs up what they want to be true. And in a world that talks about lived experience all the time, that's annoying. That's so annoying to me.

[Sam]

It's actually, it's funny that you said that. One of the comments that I stuck out and I wrote here, it says, please remember to center the voices of adults who were raised by same sex couples. Movements are most successful when they are led by and promote the stories of the people people most affected. Which is so funny because you literally just took somebody who was quote unquote raised by a same sex couple and twisted her story to what she's not saying to fit your like, narrative. And then on top of that, then before us, that's one of the main things we're known for, is promoting the stories of the victims and the children who grew up in these situations who are saying, yeah, this is wrong. This was not okay. What they did to me was not all right. I do have a mom and a, and a dad and I had a right to them and I it not having them negatively affected me a lot in my life. And so they're ready to just throw out those stories and not listen to those victims and just focus on their own. And so I thought that was funny.

[Jen]

Well, and we've had, there's at least two women who were raised by same sex couples. One with a very traumatic experience that she's wrote about for us. The other is Samantha Weising. So another Samantha, and she was in the Greater Than Video. She shared her story in a few different ways and we put it all in one big sub stack post. When they comment on our Facebook and affirm what we're saying and say, I agree with them. For us, I was raised this way. They are mocked and put down and condemned and harassed in the comments. So that again is just like you guys actually don't want to hear from anyone who's lived this out unless they agree with you.

[Katie Foust]

You.

[Jen]

That's Katie's entire point. We will be the organization that highlights the voices that get pushed down by you guys because they don't match the cultural narrative. And we're always going to highlight the kids that are impacted by these policies, even if it's not popular. And we're going to try to protect them. Yeah. I try to protect them in the comments as well because it's annoying. It makes them not it might make them not feel free to share.

[Sam]

Yep.

[Jen]

Well, that's all the time we have. Go to YouTube if you want to hear us talk a little bit more about more of the comments that we saw. But for those of you with us on them before us radio, thanks so much for being here. Join us next week with Katie, Josh, Sam and I as we talk about news. Go through the comments. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

[Sam]

See ya.

[Katie Foust]

The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast do not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.