← Them Before Us
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- [00:02]
A
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.
- [00:21]
B
Welcome to Them Before Us Radio. I am your host, Katie Foust, founder and president of Them Before Us, here with my executive director, Josh Wood. To break down some of the things that have caught our eye over the last week as it relates to marriage, family, parenthood and church. Church life. So we're going to get into that, but as always, we start off with a little bit of Bible time. And I'm going to go really general today. Last week, my husband and I were in Jamaica and it was great. We hadn't seen each other for almost four months. He's been deployed off and on for the last two years. So he. He got off at a port and I went down and I joined him and we spent some time there. And there was a lot of beauty there, but there's a lot of brokenness. You know, it is in so many ways a third world country where the population is really struggling. So our main way to interface was with our Uber drivers and had some really good conversations with a lot of them. And one young man, it was, I think it was by God's design. We were stuck in traffic for a long time. So we had probably an hour and 15 minutes in the car with him. And I always ask, hey, how's life in Jamaica? Do you feel like things are getting better? What are you hopeful about? What are you looking forward to? And he just said, I just am really trying to do my best to make a life for myself. And, you know, I always ask, like, are you dating somebody? Are you married? And, you know, all of the men were like, I am not dating anybody because the girls don't want to get married here. They want somebody that is going to fund their lifestyle and I want to get married. So, you know, we got into that whole thing. I said, well, can you talk to your parents about that? You know, maybe they know. And he goes, I never knew my father and my mother was cruel. And so he shared with us some of the terrible things that he had to live through as a really young child. And I said, you know, that's a really serious wound. What you've experienced, what your mother did to you, God weeps over it. He hates it. He hates what she did and he hates what your father did. He hates that your father left you. He hates that you had to fend for yourself. And he said, it's amazing to me because I'm 28 and sometimes I still feel like a weight on my chest. And I just wish I had a man. I wish I had a man I could ask questions to. I wish I had a man that says, good job. You've done 1,000 Uber drives. I wish I had a man that could say, don't, don't listen to them. They're going to scam you. I wish I had somebody guiding me so that there weren't people taking advantage of me. And I said, you want that because you're made for it. And then I said, have you considered going to church? And he said, well, I, I've always prayed, but I feel like I don't need church so that I can know God. And I'm like, you can know God apart from church, but you need more than that. You need community. You need spiritual fathers, you know, and by the way, that's where you're going to find the women that actually do want to build a family and build a home with you. And by the time we were done, we had already figured out what church he was going to on Sunday. And he was really emotional, really emotional because God had absolutely met him where he was in terms of putting the finger on his deep pain and all the other areas that affects that, the validation that he is not supposed to as a 28 year old. He's not supposed to be some free radical that doesn't, that's totally disconnected from everybody. He's supposed to have other people he can love and rely on. And so I prayed on Sunday when he, I prayed on Sunday that he actually went and that when he did, he was surrounded by spiritual fathers, strong men that were going to be able to pull him into their world. So this is just an admonition because maybe somebody else had a conversation with some other Uber driver here in the United States and convinced them to go to your church. So when you do see that young man or that young woman that walk in, that don't know anybody, and they're hungry for guidance, hungry for input, hung. Hungry for spiritual parents. Pull them, pull them under your wing, you know, like, this is our opportunity to be a spiritual family for children that were starved, starved of an earthly family. Josh, any, any thoughts want to jump in there?
- [04:29]
C
I was talking to someone today about poverty in our city. I live here in Charlotte, North Carolina. And he was attempting to correct me. He said, you know, they've come out, economists have come out with some new studies that actually show it never was family and two parent households that got people out of poverty. It's actually employment. They've really determined that if the cities just get better jobs, that's what gets people out of poverty. You know, part of me wanted to go, no kidding, okay, if I get a hundred thousand dollar tech job, I get out of poverty. Of course you do. I asked him, I said, what makes you a good employee? What makes you able to show up? Is it that your wife can cover the, the sick kid with pink eye? Is it you watching your dad work hard and get up at 5am and not complain and come home and go back to work on a side hustle at 7pm when you went to bed? Is it, is it getting up and seeing your dad reading the Bible? Is it watching your mom work out during nap times? Like what, what makes you a good employee? There's so much. I was like you. It just, it occurs to me, even the sad story of that guy driving the Uber, there's so much formation required of society to create people with a value system that they want to go to work, they want to innovate. The, the, the women want to build strong families, they want to settle down, they want to like the critical piece of our society. These raising fine children who work hard, care for others, serve their neighbors, deliver meals, cut the grass. Like there's just so much to that and we're so quick as a society to point to these. Like, I was like, man, I told him, I said, employment is so far downstream from the cultural sickness that if you go working on creating a generation of jobs, we will have no kids growing up to fill them because they won't know how to work hard, they won't know how to have conversations, they won't know how to be resilient through getting fired or laid off, retraining. I said, so go ahead, you focus on jobs. We're going to continue to focus on forming people who form families.
- [06:55]
B
It's a great segue to the first topic that you and I wanted to get to, which is this new study that came out from our friends at the Institute for Family Studies in partnership with another organization that we love called Communio. And they, they examined. You know, I think all of us that are Christians, Christian parents, we desperately want our children to follow the Lord, right? We want them to be faithful Christians all their life. We have been told or we have witnessed or we fear that they're going to fall away. You know, My husband and I had this fear once. Our oldest turned about 12. We had just thought, any day now, any day now, she's going to hate us. She's going to reject her faith, she's going to go crazy, she's going to rebel. And it didn't happen. And with each successive child, we thought, well, it's probably going to be them. Oh, I guess it'll be the next one. And now we've got 16, 18, 20, and 22. And obviously there's still a lot of growth and discovery to happen. But it never happened. There was never a rebellion. There was never. There was definitely genuine questions. There was definitely, what about this? There was definitely a sense of separation in terms of natural independence that maybe sometimes we didn't navigate as perfectly as we should. But all of them right now are serious about the Lord living great lives socially, vocationally, academically. It's great. They all are more. Sometimes they're more disciplined than I am with my quiet time, which kind of puts me to shame, which is pretty incredible. So all of us want to know, how do we do that? What is it that leads you to the place where your kids are going to hold on to the faith? So this new study came out and says, well, it's not necessarily socioeconomic. It is not the quality of your youth group. It's not even how often you take your kids to church. It is what is happening in the home, specifically the conversations at the dinner table and what the kids are watching the parents do. So, Josh, do you want to tell us a little more about this study and some of the findings as it relates to passing on your faith to your kids?
- [09:00]
C
Yep, we do love these two guys. Brad Wilcox, who. Who is one of the founders at the Institute of Family Studies, J.P. degan at Communio. This great study, and one part that stuck out to me says childhood religious practice, the quality of parent child relationships, the strength of the parent's marriage, and shared congregational involvement all independently boost the odds that faith survives the handoff. They're talking about generational transmission. The authors conclude that reversing Christianity's generational decline depends less on better church marketing and more on equipping parents to model faith and build it into daily life and make it a normal topic of conversation at home. So there's part of me, Katie, at being evangelicals and sending missionaries all over the world that go, wait a second. Our faith transmission and growth depends on, on our homes and just having kids and then being born into our family. Shouldn't we be out there Evangelizing the masses. Well, part of me says if. If I don't. Chicken or the egg. If the generation of Christians don't want to have kids, don't want to get married or do get married, decide halfway through that this marriage isn't worth sacrificing for, completely blow up their families to go get a girlfriend, to change jobs or to just go find themselves. And all our kids are a nightmare because the adults are selfish. They have no ethic of sacrifice, and God forbid they have to do something that is difficult or on behalf of some kids or that they would work on their marriage and reconcile so that the kids don't live in two separate homes. It occurs to me that if our cultural witness as Christians is that we don't like doing hard things and we'll very quickly choose ourselves over these children that we've had, or we'll choose our independence over forming families and going through the difficulty of marriage and raising kids, well, then, I mean, what kind of faith do we have then? Yes, we won't have kids that want to grow up and get what we had because they'll go, what good is that faith to me? But also our neighbors are going to look at us and go, what benefit was it for them? It's like that verse. Be prepared to give account for the joy that's within you. Well, if your family is depressed, your kids are a wreck, you're unhappy, and you, you know, because you blew everything up and you're lonely and you're. Well, yeah, there's no joy in that at all because we're not living out, you know, God's calling on our life. So this seems to make complete sense to me.
- [11:34]
B
I think it's interesting. You know, I. My husband and I had been in church ministry for a long time. I know you were a part of really big church, too, Josh. And we were doing ministry. I mean, we were busy. We've done junior high, senior high college ministry. I've done the welcome ministry. I've been on the worship team, and I've hosted all of the groups. I've done individual counselings. You know, like, I have been really involved in building up the church, and it's so, so important. But church attendance wasn't the thing primarily. The strength of the youth group wasn't the primary thing. Even their friends, even their peer group was not as important as the relationship they had with their mother and father. What their mother and father were telling them about Christ, about scripture, about salvation, about evangelism, about discipleship, about sharing their Faith about personal devotional time and not just telling, but witnessing. You know, did they see my. My second kid? You know, she reads the Bible with random people. Like, she didn't wonder where she got that. Yeah. Like, she reads the Bible with random people because she's watched me read the Bible with random people since she was a toddler. You know, I mean, she. There's probably no time she can look back and say, my mom didn't read the Bible with people at the park. And so part of it is what you say, but, I mean, like, there's really good news and there's really bad news about this study. And the bad news is you can't outsource it. Like, there's nothing. But the good news is you have everything you need within the sweet four walls of your home to pass the torch for a really strong culture influencing faith. Yeah, you have to be on. Like, you really need to be intentional. And part of that means not just talking about Christ, but, you know, a big part of this is a stable marriage. Like, people whose parents divorce very often will abandon the Lord. Like, there is something about a stable marriage that is a conduit for transmission of faith. It makes sense. Right. But when I say, you know, nobody else can do this for you. Okay, but that means that you really do have to do it. Not just in terms of what you're saying, but how you're conducting yourself as a Christian, as a mother, as a wife, as a husband.
- [14:03]
C
Yeah. If your passion is to see the kingdom get built here on Earth, I think this is just a reminder that if. If we do not start at square one with our own children who see us most intimately and the fruit of our life and our relationships doesn't want them to have the faith that we had, we are all doomed. This will go nowhere.
- [14:26]
B
The needs for the church to be salt and to be light. I don't. I don't want to say it's never been greater, but, man, I think it's never been greater in this country. You know, we have never needed more for Christians to be Christians, especially in the smallest matters, in the most intimate, not necessarily sending missionaries or in the job force or even a church in the home. This is where it starts, in the home. And you do this right, you're going to reap a hundred fold of what you guys have been sowing. Stay with us. We're going to be right back. We're going to talk about divorce and the transgender explosion in Oregon.
- [15:02]
A
Welcome back to them before us on American Family Radio.
- [15:06]
B
Welcome Back to Them Before Us Radio. I'm your host Katie Foust, founder and president of Them Before Us, here with executive director of Them Before Us, Josh Wood. And we wanted to turn our attention to the topic of divorce. Our friend Erica Komisar, who is in my opinion, the national expert on mothering, motherhood, the importance of moms in the life of children. She wrote a book called Being There the Importance of Mother in the First Three Years of a Child's Life. She talks an awful lot about how daycare can be really dangerous for children in terms of interrupting that primary attachment when children are so neurologically fragile. And she is coming out with a new book on divorce she's been doing she's a psychoanalyst, she's been doing counseling for 30 years and she's dealt with a lot of families that have gone through divorce and she's seen the drastically adverse effects on children. So she wrote a book on divorce specifically for the times when you're going through a divorce and you know, for better or worse, this is where you find yourself. What is it that you can do? What are the areas you need to pay attention to if you do go through a divorce? Now at them before us, we have a really strong stance against casual divorce, against no fault divorce because the fallout on children is so significant. But she was kind of identifying look, if a divorce is taking place, there's some things you can do to help children better handle it versus having it be utter destruction. Josh, you want to tell us a little bit about this new article that Erica Komisar wrote at the Institute for Family Studies?
- [16:40]
C
Yes. She points to these kind of two windows. It's the first three years of life and then early adolescence. So that's the spaces where divorce most disrupts a child's development. And she warns that during these kind of phases of life you will see repeated attachments and loss through a revolving door of partners inflicting, you know, bigger wounds essentially. And you know what? Something stuck out to me this is a maybe you said this initially, Katie, or if I read this somewhere but it talked about how you're actually when your divorced parent repartners that actually increases your risk personally of divorce. It's not just the divorce, it's when they re partner. And I'll be honest, I didn't understand that until my parents divorced and repartnered when you as a kid and I was thankfully through college when this happened but I watched my own siblings go through it. There is so much new negotiation and connection and just especially when you have your own family, you got your own kids, you're working it out with your siblings. It is just, I can't imagine when Eric is talking about these early adolescent stages, in these very young stages, having to negotiate that stuff as an adult, the new norms, expectations, safety, concern, communication, having to do that when I had no spiritual or emotional tools, felt no sense of security and safety. I mean as an adult, hopefully you're in a place where you go, if I don't like the situation, I'm going home, I got my own car, my own keys, I'm good. I can dictate my own terms for holidays.
- [18:33]
D
I can.
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C
You know, you set your own boundaries. When you're a kid packing your backpack to go between two homes. You're there for the weekend whether you like mom's new boyfriend or not. You're not safe, you're not, you're not able to articulate, I don't want to be here. You don't have any say in the custody arrangement. And so, gosh, there's so much them before us that we talk about that has to do with other issues from IVF to, you know, we obviously have greater than campaign which has taken on Obergefell and the same sex marriage ruling. But nothing gets a, probably a bigger response to the work that we do than when we write an article or share the experience of a child who's been through divorce. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong. They come through the woodwork, out of the woodwork, people going, I'm 52. That divorce wrecked me when I was 12. It's amazing that this single issue, more than any other, drives comments and feedback.
- [19:27]
B
It is an ace, an adverse childhood experience. We have measured it. It is one of the means through which children have shortened telomeres, the end caps of their chromosomes. Loss of a parent to death, incarceration or divorce literally shortens a child's lifespan. It contributes to early death and higher criminality rates. It contributes to higher teen pregnancy rates in girls because the deprivation is so significant. And then of course it's harder for them to believe that permanence is even possible in their own relationships. It is difficult for them to have healthy emotional boundaries. They can either be so aloof, they can be so detached out of sort of a self protection response, or they can be obsessively attached, they can smother, you know, because they are desperate for the love that they should have gotten from their mother and father every day. I mean it just, it just is very hard for a child to calibrate their life when they don't have mom and dad in the same place. Add to that additional partners coming in and out. I knew, you know, she's now a woman, but I met her when she was a young girl when her father was probably on girlfriend number five and she was kind of attached. But every time he got a new girlfriend, she just got more and more distant. Her mother had died early, and those first couple girlfriends she just grabbed and she clung to. And that relationship predictably lasted a year to 18 months. And then when the dad kind of that chemical in love feeling was over, he moved on to the next one. It like there's no other way to put it, like it killed her ability to be loved. It killed it. And because that's what she's talking about, like that attachment, that need, especially when you're so young, if you're going to adulterate it, if you're going to add, you know, adulteration means just adding parts that don't belong, right? And that's it. Like you're adding all these unnecessary adults to the child's life. It is going to actually throw off their emotional system in a way that will hamper them for life. So I think that we'd say, look, sometimes there are situations where divorce may be unavoidable. Maybe it's necessary. You don't want to add to that the complication of a new partner who might have new siblings that are coming into the home, new risks, new switching houses. I mean, if you have to. If the home where the child has experienced the love of both of their parents dissolves, let that be the only factor that changes. Unfortunately, that's not usually the case because very often it kicks off sort of this new dating season and the adults start acting like teenagers. And that just forces, you know, the teenagers in the home to act like adults.
- [22:16]
C
It strikes me though, that if. Man, it strikes me that there is. What this means is that there's a model. There is that kids need a specific thing, that it should it have mattered that if all those girlfriends were really kind and loving that. That they cycled. You know, it speaks to the fact that kids need stability. And then you're like, well, but just any adult. No. Why do donor conceive children have some hunger when they get told why do they feel cheated when they. They're told that their mother was a donor egg and then. Or that her mother donated her, that she's out there somewhere? Because it's not just two people. They actually hunger for their mother. So it kind of goes back to. It's just something built into children that they're not. We're not cut out to navigate this stuff. We're not cut out to have extra adults around or to have cycling partners or to be disconnected from our mother or to have two, you know, men in the home, not your mother and father. So it's interesting to me that. That kids just aren't resilient. They're just not. These. These individuals who will be able to handle multiple are fine with just, you know, a single. I mean, we. We kicked off a hornet's nest this week, you know, talking about single mothers by choice on our Instagram page, and all those women in on that page are cheering each other on that you don't need a man. You can do this by yourself. What actually matters is your peace. Hey, it's actually easier not to have to negotiate a husband when you're in the room because you can just worry about you and your birth plan and what you want. I was just like, gee whiz, no one is talking about what the kid needs. And the kid is not just this. This malleable thing that's gonna adapt to any environment you put them on. They're gonna hunger, they're gonna experience loss, and when they're 40, they're going to be writing on our page going, this wrecked me, and my mom and dad will never. You know, my mom and dad will never know because I can't tell.
- [24:23]
B
It is true that when it comes to divorce testimonies, they are endless. It's fascinating to me because people will say in the comments things that are kind of vague, you know, like you said, like, this devastated me. 40 years later, I'm still not over it. Sometimes I'll reach out to them and I'll say, hey, have you shared your story anywhere? I'd really like to hear about it. And they're like, oh, my gosh, it was so bad for so long. But no, I will never put one word in print because my stepfather still is completely in control of my mother. And I know that one wrong step from me and he is going to cut off access to me. You know, like, it's still affecting their lives, you know, now a lot of them are dealing with aging parents who are getting sick, and they're an only child. And so now it's like they're dealing with the wounds of the divorce, but now they're also caregiving for two parents that could have cared for each other but are living separately. And then many of these People also have kids in the home themselves. I mean, it's just an absolute offloading of the hard thing onto the shoulders of children. And it doesn't go away. It is, you know, like a life sentence. This is the kind of thing that stays with kids for life.
- [25:29]
C
And it occurs to me, who's not allowed to talk about it? The kids. Who has to negotiate, who can be at what gathering? The kids. Who has to do, like you mentioned, with caregiving between two places? The kids. I mean, you really do. I forget who it was. That said, divorce never erases the hard thing you're experiencing. It breaks it up into little pieces and gives everybody a piece to carry with them the rest of their life. That is so true. That is so true. And so we always say divorce is sometimes necessary. It is never anything to celebrate. And you, you go on Instagram for five seconds, you will see all these people celebrating their divorce. They have divorce parties now where they'll. They'll. People come to you. I mean, it's insane. We're not saying that you need to stay in an abusive relationship. We're not saying that divorce is never necessary. We're not saying you should stay in unsafe situations. What we are saying is that the vast majority of divorces are low conflict. They are divorces because things haven't gone well, or it's inconvenient, or it's difficult. And we're asking you to properly count the cost that this will not be a decision just between you and your husband or you and your wife. You're asking your children and properly take into account what the data says they're going to experience the rest of their life before you walk into that situation and make that choice.
- [26:53]
B
This is why them before us exists. Because kids can't share their stories. They generally don't have Instagram pages when they're eight. You know, and even then, they can't even articulate what it is that's going on. They just know that here's this new woman in my father's life, and I don't want her to not like me because, you know, I can tell that there's some level of control she's exert. I mean, like, kids can't even articulate this. You know, we're gonna break drop a video of a guy named Ross who had two moms, and we're gonna share that around Father's Day. And he's like, he didn't really put his finger on the pain he was experiencing until he was probably 14 or 15. He's like something just didn't seem right. I just knew I was always sad. I always felt so isolated. I always had the sense of rejection I could never feel. Tell you what it was when I was like 8 or 12, you know, and then even if you do like he's now in his 30s and he's only able to talk about this, but it has come at such a huge cost to him. Kids are punished if they're honest about it. So the point of them before us is we want to be able to speak when kids can't. We want to be able to name their pain when their parents don't allow them to. So that's one of the reasons why we major on stories. That's one of the reasons why we want to take this message into the culture and into the courts. Because kids are kids deserve this kind of representation. Because when adults make the wrong decision or when our government gets it wrong, they pay a lifelong price.
- [28:16]
C
Well, let me transition to the next one because it does talk also about us having to advocate for kids who are right now living through a lot of them having to pay a lifelong price. This was an insane, I will say insane article from Ben Ryan's substack that talked about 1 in 250 natal girls. This is the state of Oregon were taking testosterone by the age of 17 from the years 2016 to 2023. Let me just say that again. A new study analyzed insurance data for kids 8 to 17. These are girls. They found that prescribing gender transitions to drugs to minors climbed between that a nine fold increase between 2016 and 2023 biological girls placed on testosterone saw a 14 fold increase. So that about one in 250 girls were on it through that time period. That, that, I mean, right, it's that that meme. This isn't happening. Well, it might be happening but it's a good thing. You know, it's like that, that crazy like progression I feel like we're living through right now. That is an insane number of kids taking drugs. That who knows what it's going to do to their development.
- [29:38]
B
Let's talk about why that's so jaw dropping. So there have for about 100 years been observation that there are some young children that were genuinely distressed over their biological sex. They tended to be young and they tended to be boys and. But they were incredibly rare. Incredibly rare. I mean like there's a, there's a chance that, you know, you might have one or two in the entire state of Oregon because it was so so rare. But. And it was boys. We rarely saw this phenomenon in girl girls. So now you get to the point where you've got 1 in 250 girls in Oregon that have expressed some kind of discord with their physical body, and they are now on cross sex hormones for that. So not only is it unusual that there's so many, but that it's girls. So, like, what's the explanation for that? How do you go from the super rare condition that used to only affect boys to to now this condition that's overwhelmingly diagnosed for girls and the rates are astronomical? Well, the answer is that this has nothing to do with a genuine genetic condition. This has nothing to do with an actual diagnosis. This is a social contagion. This is girls who are opting into this identity because there's some kind of benefit, social benefit for them. I can guess what that is. I think a lot of these girls are white, and a lot of them are trying to figure out, how can I escape being part of the oppressor class. You know, I'm in Washington, and I'll tell you, the message to white kids in school is you are naturally an oppressor. You're part of the colonizing organization. If you are not a brown, a bipoc person of color or lgbtq, you are one of the baddies. And so this is a way for them to say, no, I'm not. And they get belonging, they get community. Maybe they get to escape discomfort with their pubescent bodies, which a lot of girls have. And what's the result? Their voices will probably be permanently male. They might lose their uterus because testosterone will destroy a woman's reproductive system. They'll have facial hair all their life. Even if they discontinue testosterone, or it could just totally destroy their ovaries. So even if they desist, they're going to have to be lifelong consumers of pharmaceuticals. People, it's time for us to to stand up for children. There's so many ways that needs to be done. Stay with us. We're going to hit a few of your questions in the next segment.
- [32:01]
A
If you'd like to comment on the show, email comments thembeforeus.com hey, everyone.
- [32:08]
D
Welcome to Here for the comments, a Them Before Us podcast series where we dive into the comments and questions that we get online and we unpack the children right rights perspective to answer those questions. I'm your host, Sam, and I'm joined by Jen, and we're here for the comments. So we're gonna dive in and we have Been on X all morning because we've been going back and forth with a fun post. So Becky Burke, for those who do not know her, I didn't know her before this. She is, I guess, the head women's basketball coach for the University of Arizona. She basically made an announcement on X. She said, burke family update, baby girl coming December 2026. Which sounds amazing. Everyone loves a baby. But if you look at the photo, you see that it's actually her with another woman. So what does that mean? It means that that baby is coming from somewhere else, not from those two people. And so we had a little bit to say about that. I'll just jump in with Katie's and then we can go from there. But Katie Faust, she went ahead and responded to that announcement. Again, we're not here to attack them. We're not here to call them names. We're just pointing out the obvious. Because when you look at that picture of them announcing a pregnancy, something's missing in the picture. And what's missing? A man, a dad, a father. You can't. Two women cannot produce a child. So when we see things like this from a child rights perspective, we immediately catch what's missing instead of just what they're trying to show us. So she said, I have spoken to more than 100 children with same sex parents. And these two children, because they have two children now, this will be the second, will likely hunger for paternal love, feel guilty for wanting a dad, struggle with questions of identity, wrestle with questions of self worth. She went way more into detail, but that's like the highlight of it. And she said, when these children are sad or angry or struggling, our culture and courts will tell them that the loss of their dad was the price of admission for a new adult, quote, unquote, civil right. And this is why we must overturn Obergefell, which is what made gay marriage legal. So what do you think about all of that, Jen? I know you've been having fun with it this morning.
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B
Yeah.
- [34:30]
E
And it was interesting. She got a bunch of news because she locked the original gal. Becky Burke locked her post. She only got 100 or so comments. I was noting to Sam as we were looking at this, but what Sam pointed out was people, quote, tweeting. So especially when you turn off your comments, if you still have, quote, tweets on people, just start answering it that way. And then the thing is that puts you in their feed. So it's actually kind of smarter. If you just want to keep it on your page, keep your comments open because People still might see it here and there, but you're forcing people to amplify it to their own feed, which, I mean, so Katie, quote, tweeted it. It means you take their post, you see it underneath it, and you write your text. So the original post only got 100 or so comments, but then Katie's post got about three times as many views. I think like 300,000 views, a couple hundred comments. A lot of interaction. And so between Katie responding and a number of people responding, some people's responses we do not condone. We don't want you to go call people names. We don't want you to say, you guys are so sick and disgusting. This is abuse and blah, blah. Try to really. I mean, when you're. If you're a them before us, advocate, we're keeping it about children's rights. We don't want anyone to look at her post and see. Look, you're making. Look, gay people are being victimized. Look, lesbians are being attacked. Look at the comments. Look how horrible people are being to her. We don't want. We don't want that a. Because don't treat people with disrespect. You don't need to do that. We have a better argument. We don't need to be disrespectful to anyone. But when we keep it about children's rights, when you do a comment that says, no, the reason I'm against it is not because of how you identify. It's because you just made a child to be fatherless. And they have a little boy in their picture, so they've already done that to one. So now they have a boy and a girl. I mean, it's kind of funny. It's like, oh, crazy. You have one boy and one girl. Yeah, because it goes back. They're using all the IVF processes that we talk about that are unethical as well. And, like, you're not even diving into that. We're just pointing out, man, you intentionally made a child to be fatherless to never know her father. And you know what's funny, too, is they probably chose the same sperm donor for both. I mean, we don't know. I don't think we know that. But a lot of times they'll prioritize. Let's make sure our siblings have that same connection. Maybe they use one woman's egg the first time, they use the other woman's egg the second time, but they're always using LGBT couples or even single parents by choice. Acknowledge biology matters all the time. And then they just decide when it doesn't matter and pretend it doesn't matter for their kids. So anyway, I mean, she got a lot of blowback, some that we don't condone. That's just gross or disrespectful for no reason. And a lot of people just pointing out our messaging, well, the child has a mother and a father. Why are you doing this? So then, of course, there's news stories about, oh, my gosh, they're getting attacked. And this is so crazy. And so she had to post this other. Do you have the other one pulled up? Or I can read it.
- [37:34]
D
I do. Yeah, I have it here. So she did another post, Becky Burke, she said, our happiness isn't yours to approve. And then she had this, like, written out, basically a statement saying. She said, yesterday my wife and I shared the news that we're expecting a baby. Just cutting in there real quick. They're not expecting a baby. That is not their baby. So anyway, unfortunately, the announcement also brought some of the most hateful comments we've ever seen. While we knew sharing our lives publicly would come with opinions, it's disappointing to see so much negativity directed at what is one of the happiest moments in our lives. She had a lot more to say about that. But, you know, I actually. I genuinely feel for people like Becky Burp and for that couple who recently just ended the life of their child because of down syndrome, because he made a similar comment where he said, you know, why. Why are people pushing back? Because we had an abortion. People have abortions all the time. Why is it all of a sudden big news? And they're getting confused because I feel like conservatism. Like, I feel like the Republican Party is moving more conservative. And now especially. I mean, I'm not trying to say that them before us gets all the credit, but I feel like we've given people a lot of good arguments and language where we're like, wait a minute, we need to think of the child first. And people are now starting to see it out in the wild, and they're starting to, like, push back more. And these people aren't used to pushback. They're usually in these communities where all they get is good feedback. I'm sure everyone in Becky Burke's life, her family, her friends, her community, you know, where she spends her time, when they announced that they were having a baby, to those people, they were, like, over the moon excited. No one mentioned a dad. No one mentioned, like, any negative, like, child perspective, opinion. And so when they post it online, like any normal couple usually does, they're not expecting so much negativity because their whole time they've only heard the positives. And again, it's Pride month, so, like, all they're hearing about being gay is all this positive, like, you know, more power to you. And, like, we want to protect you and we love gay people and gay people are the best. And like, they're just not used to, like, having any kind of pushback. And so I do feel for them just on a human level because, like, that would be jarring, you know, and it, and it's sad and embarrassing and like, it's one of those things where it's like, they're probably not even thinking to themselves, are we wrong? They're probably just thinking, like, why does everyone hate us? And we're here to say, like, we genuinely don't. I don't hate you as a person. I never even knew who you were. I don't, I don't claim to know your character. I don't claim to know if you're a good mom. You're probably a great mom. Your kid loves you, I'm sure of it. But what we're saying is, like, all we think of is the child's perspective, the child's rights, and we know that something is missing and it's important. You know, I'm a mom, I have two children. Their dad isn't just like, important to them because he's a random man that they've known since they were born. It's not that connection, that comfort level. It's because he is their father biologically and he has a role to play in their lives and they deserve that and they have a right to that. So we just want to make it clear this is not an attack. And like Jen said in the very beginning, we don't want people saying mean, derogatory things to you. We're just here to say, have you thought about this? Because this is important. What do you think, Jen?
- [40:54]
E
Yeah, and something else she says in her kind of second message, like, we don't need your approval and we're going to do what we want, basically. Let us be clear, our announcements about something much bigger than us. Representation matters. Visibility matters. As a public figure, I take great pride in representing my community and helping create visibility. And Katie talked about that. She responded to that quote, tweeted, again, you speak about the importance of representation. When will children with same sex parents get accurate representation? And then she quotes someone, you know, who shares an anonymous Message of, you have no idea how lonely and guilty I feel basically about my parents choices. I feel like a bad child. Especially when I look on tv, I see the good kids of gay parents. They say they have a perfect family and they don't need a mom or dad, but I want a dad. And so the kids, well, and people have joked too, like, representation matters. Where's the kid's father? Like, does the kid's father get to be represented? Does the kids. You were saying this too. It made me think, this is half of the human's identity. When you look in the mirror and you think about what do I look like? Where did I get this feature, that feature, or my ethnicity, my eye color. Even if you think about culture, you know, people who. People will go to a sperm bank. Let's say you're a woman, single woman by choice, and you're Filipino. And you're thinking, you know what? I'm very intentionally going to choose a Filipino sperm donor. And I want this height, that height, these interests, whatever, so I can kind of. So it's a kid that's going to be integrated well into the community, my ethnic and cultural community. Okay. So again, these things are important to people for themselves and the way they think. But then they don't think, man. What does it mean to be a man who's Filipino? I'm gonna have a son or I'm gonna have a daughter. Are there things within my culture that are important that would be transmitted and like communicated in a way that are important? But no, not really because I'm just going to use a sperm donor and you're not going to have any access to that person or, you know, you think about mixed race individuals, you're in essence telling your kid that half of who you are, that culture and ethnic piece of you doesn't matter as much. I decided it didn't matter. So it doesn't matter to you. And I think when we can talk like that, people can understand the argument and like get on board. But yeah, it's always framed by the other side as hatred.
- [43:22]
D
Always. And so you were talking about how Katie responded and she said like, again, you talk about the importance of representation. What about the representation for the child? And so basically she just gave like the basic rundown. It's important for a child to have their dad. So Lori Burkhart, which I'm actually not 100% sure who Lori is. I don't know if she is. I think she might be.
- [43:47]
E
She's a writer and a former coach. I'm Pretty sure.
- [43:50]
D
Okay. So, yeah, I wasn't sure if she was like, the wife of the original person or if it was just like, somebody who's, you know, a friend of that person. So I don't. I truly don't know who she is, but she had a lot to say. She responded to Katie's post and she said, oh, so apparently Katie is okay with a father who abuses and abandons his children, who won't support them or gives them no love or nurturing, which is, again, she wrote a lot, so I'm not going to read all of it, but just to cut her off right there, 1. If you have to lie about the other person's position to make your argument, you've already lost. Okay. Like anyone who follows Katie, she's written about it, she's public about it, and it's just basic common sense. No normal person supports abuse. So can we, like, not play this game? Like, why are you wasting our time? But also, it's funny that she says Katie is apparently okay with a father who won't support them, give them love or nurture them, which is funny because you're acting like those things are important coming from a father, yet you're supporting these two women, taking that away from their own child or not their own child, but taking that away from a child where if a father's nurturing and love and support is important, then you should also be against what this lesbian couple just did. And it's also funny because this lesbian couple, just to be very clear, they. They went into a room with a lawyer, signed papers, paid good money to specifically hire or pay a father who doesn't ever want to know that child. That's what they ordered. They ordered a father for their child who doesn't ever want to know them. He doesn't want to know what they look like. He doesn't want to speak to them. He never wants to protect them from basic things. He doesn't care to love them. That's the father they picked for their child before their child was even born and again, paid good money for that. So if you have a problem with that, you should also be against this lesbian couple. So I thought that was an interesting take from her.
- [45:55]
E
Yeah. And we don't care who the individuals are. We don't want single men doing it. We don't want single women doing it. We don't want two men doing it. Two women doing it. Six men, six women. Whatever. The point is, it doesn't matter what combination of adults we're talking about. When you're choosing practices that violate the rights of children, we're against it. A man and a woman and they're heterosexual and they're Christian and they voted for Trump and they have the perfect family and they have plenty of money and all this stuff, and then they want to use a surrogate. No, it violates the rights of children. So it doesn't. You know, they have the perfect picket fence and they wave the flag and they're white and they're Caucasian, whatever. And whatever are the people who attack hack us think that the criteria is that we're okay with. We're not okay with it. Anything that violates the rights of children, any adult who does that, we are against you doing that to children, you know, full stop. And so Katie talks about how this gives us a very consistent worldview and argument. Every adult is going to run up against these arguments, including so many of us that work for them before us and support the work we've all had to face. The things where I want something and I'm not going to go do it because that would violate the rights of children. All of us have been there. So every adult is going to come up against it. Any final thoughts before we wrap up this one?
- [47:15]
D
You know, again, I feel like you summed it up really well. That's a lot of the pushback we get is that it's like it's only because it's gay people, as if we hate gay people. And I think from the beginning of this video, we're trying to make it super clear I'm not here to attack anybody. We're not here here to hate on anyone. We just want to protect the child. And it's funny because whoever we debated never wanted to focus on that argument. None of them wanted to focus on, okay, what is best for children. So that's what we're here for.
- [47:41]
E
That's right. Well, guys, join us next time on here for the comments. And we just take you all the crazy stuff we see online, help you answer with a children's rights perspective. Until next time.
- [48:12]
B
The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast do not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.