← 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 Faust.
- [00:21]
B
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Them Before Us Radio on American Family Radio. And if you were expecting to hear the lovely voice of Katie Foust, we're sorry to disappoint you, but it's still staff takeover day. I'm Jen Friesen. I'm our training director for Them Before Us. And we're joined, as usual, by our executive director, Josh Wood. Hi, Josh.
- [00:39]
A
Hey there.
- [00:41]
B
All right, so Katie's gone. We're taking over today. We have really interesting things to talk about because it's June, it's the start of Pride month for, you know, popular culture. But before we get into the news of the day, let's take a little time and talk about the Bible. What do you have for us today, Josh?
- [00:58]
A
So I was reminded of a verse in Genesis because of something I saw on X today. So we're going to start our devotional on X. Sorry for all of you who hate social media, but I think this is instructive and it kind of gets to something fundamental that a lot of Christians take for granted. There was a commentator on X who said this. Having children has made me a lot more pro choice. Taking care of children is hard. Part of the payoff is imagining them living full lives as adults. I don't know how anyone could find the motivation to take care of them if they knew that wasn't possible. That's why only religious people don't abort in these situations. So what this commentator was doing was he was quoting a or replying to another guy who had decided to abort a child who had trisomy 21. Okay, so what this guy is saying is, man, I think the only way I could raise kids because it's so hard is at least knowing I get to know them as adults. If I knew, they wouldn't grow up to be adults. What's the point? You know, this would be way too hard. That's why only those religious people end up keeping their kids, which there's so much to unpack there. But I want to go back to Genesis where we really see what is the foundation for all human rights. I mean, that's become a secular concept where people talk about it's a human right. It's a human right. We've piled so much onto that. But it's important to remember that for much of human history, none of that existed. We didn't have any concept of people being equal. Everyone was not even equal before the law. People were treated according to where they were born or what they looked like or what they could provide to society. What changed a lot of that? Well, the modern concept of human rights emerged from a verse in Genesis. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female. He created them. It shouldn't shock us that in the most basic truths we find something simple. It's also foundational. I often feel like, especially in the work we do, Jen, we encounter so many crazy, complicated issues. For example, like this with Trisomy 21, people who do pre genetic testing and sometimes of embryos, and sometimes the tests are wrong, or they'll freeze two or three dozen and go through IVF and then leave the children in there for decades. And we just. There's surrogacy like IVG maybe, which is this crazy new process where they might have a male be able to create an egg and sperm from his own skin cells. We have ectogenesis, which is external gestation, an artificial womb, essentially. You, like, find all these crazy ways human beings can harm people, commodify children, make them a product that we can buy and sell and end the life of anytime we want. What fixes so much of that? Because you can get overwhelmed by the complexity. What I love is that scripture gives us simple things to meet our complex world, which is if you hold everyone to the standard that they are made in God's image, the child with cognitive impairment, the child with a debilitating disease or condition, the child that doesn't have the iq, another child has that might have a different skin color, that might have. You go on and on down the list or that's inconvenient. I mean, honestly, 95% of abortions occur out of convenience. No reason listed elective procedures. We get down to the point where this. If pregnancy is just inconvenient, well, what fixes all of this? What would provide a just standard for society? Well, if every single one of them got treated like they were made in the image of God and they had to be treated like everyone else, they were not disposable, they were not purchasable, they were not transferable, they were not editable, well, that would fix so much. And it's not a complicated thing. We just have to treat all of them, value and defend all life on the same plane.
- [05:34]
B
Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, I saw that tweet as well, by, I guess he's a YouTuber or something, because I didn't know who the man was who was sharing this story. And he wrote, I don't think I'm exaggerating about 20 paragraphs on an X tweet. They're short paragraphs. And I've worked with people with special needs for a decade, and when I saw the word trisomy 21 or the thing, I thought he was going to say. It's one of those genetic diseases where the baby is born with the organs outside their body, or they're blind, mute, their skin's undone, that, you know, they're in so much pain. And he starts by saying, this week, my wife and I made the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy due to trisomy 21. It's five paragraphs before he calls it what it is, down syndrome. And what's fascinating about that to me is why is he using the medical term that probably most people, including someone who's worked with people with special needs for a decade, is not as familiar with? Why didn't he say, we decided to terminate our child with down syndrome in the first paragraph? It almost to me reveals that he knows I need to really set it up to get as much compassion as possible before I go into this. And to your point, when people start deciding, let's, let's have a lot of caveats to who's an actual person. Yes, it's a human with down syndrome in the womb, or yes, it's a human on ice or a human in the lab, but it's not a person, it's a potential person, or, well, this person's going to suffer, it's a human that's going to suffer. Or you can lose your personhood at the end of life. I think once you start separating out those definitions, people can justify a lot. And so I agree with what you're saying for a Christian, when you refuse to delve into all these different. Let's do all these definitions and caveats and I'm going to put all these modifiers. Well, it's just a fetus. It's a blastocyst. You know, it's an embryo. It's just in a lab. If we just keep coming back to it's human. All humans have value. All humans are people, because all humans are created in the image of God. We have one argument that takes us for everything. We always come back to it. It gives us the right answer every time Yeah.
- [07:59]
A
I mean, you think back to society before they tried to make it so that, gosh, these are subhuman, these are less than. Or, I mean, even in the language. I mean, we. It's funny, right? We look back on hundreds of years ago, we're like, how could they do that using this language to describe people? We do the same thing. We have our euphemisms. You just named one. Like, even trying to hide behind this diagnosis of trisomy so that people associate it with something else that might get them more compassion. Because truthfully, a lot of us know children who have down syndrome, and that conjures up oftentimes not an easy life for caregivers or for parents or for the child themselves. But we also know a lot of children like that who have a ton of joy. And we know that that will create a. He probably knew that if he. That off the bat, it would create some backlash because, again, he is doing something to dehumanize. If I try to make this child less than human, then I can live with the injustice of the choice that I want to make. I think that is a concept you could apply across so many things with children. When we talk about an embryo, never mind what embryo, the word actually means. People use that or clump of cells or whatever to dehumanize. Because we can't live with the consequences of full humanity for those children, because if they are, then, oh, my gosh, what have we done?
- [09:34]
B
Yeah, that's such a great point. Well, a little bit of a transition to our first story for radio this weekend that I just thought was so fascinating and would love to get your perspective and maybe just, you know, as Christians, as we're listening to this story, what are we. What should we be doing with the problems that we're going to talk about? So it's from the Institute for Family Studies that we love citing. They do so many great articles and research for family, and this article is talking about how Americans are lonelier than ever, and people are actually speaking fewer words, 1.7 million fewer words per year than two decades ago. People are more likely to be living alone. We talked last week, you and Katie talked about how the rise of chatbot AI friendships or romantic relationships are on the rise. And we know that there's been huge spikes in anxiety, depression, social media use. The study talked about communicating with people online is better than no communication. It's helped span the globe. You know, you can stay in touch with your family members that are on the other side of the country, but because it's replaced real deep human connection, touch, affection, living together, going to dinner. People are going to dinner out to eat less often. We're seeing a huge problem just in social isolation. And you know, we've talked about too, if people aren't dating, they're not getting married, they're not having kids. And so there's huge implications for this
- [11:08]
A
and that 1.7 million fewer words spoken per year. That's crazy. That right there sticks out, out to me. It does make you think that has to be the consequence of not going to the store, not seeing friends. I mean, that is one thing we've seen. There's far fewer teen pregnancies, for example, because kids don't date, they don't go to parties. I mean, not that this is a. They just don't socialize. Again, we don't want teen pregnancies. We want people to be married. But you do get the sense that are we not dating, not hanging out, not going to parties, not seeing friends, not. I mean, what are we replacing these things with? If it were all really great things, then maybe we would have to contend with the changes in society. But what we've seen is for young men, that often gets replaced with video games and addictions and sports betting and weed and porn. It's like, well, none of those things are. Those are pretty bad things. These kids are going to isolate, become depressed, get out of shape and unhealthy and as we've seen far too often, you know, die deaths of loneliness and despair. And for women, it can probably manifest in some of the relationships and scare quotes that are, again, toxic. It's the social media hive mind where it's constantly about filters and looks and a curated personal image that has nothing to do with reality. So that's not healthy either. Having to be your real self without pictures and mediators and digital mediators between you to just go, have fun, go on a hike or go on a walk or do. I mean, even after football games, we used to do bonfires where you just sit on your tailgate and hang out, talk to friends. Kids just don't have any of those experiences anymore.
- [13:10]
B
Yeah, and the research talked about how small acts of reaching out, so even if it's to a stranger, making yourself go to the grocery store instead of online shopping, shopping or intentionally talking to your neighbor when you're coming in from the car produce far better results than people expect. Like, people are very positively responding to those bids for connection. And so I was just thinking, especially as the church, the church facilitating the third place, you know, so you have a social night, maybe you have a family movie night or you have a teen hangout or things like that being very dancing places where young people can meet each other, I think will be a huge resurgence of the connection people are so desperate for. They want to. You can't just tell kids, get off your phone when there's nothing else. There's no other thing we're offering them.
- [14:00]
A
It's crazy that we're talking about like training wheels for social stimulation, you know, talking to your neighbor. We have a cul de sac neighborhood and we go on a walk every single day almost. So, yeah, you take that for granted how disconnected the average person is. And I like your idea of trying to get the church engaged to be a bit of a mediator because we know that we're supposed to live in community with family and friends and that's good for us.
- [14:27]
B
Yeah. Well, stay tuned everyone. We have a few more news stories to talk about Pride Month. So, you know, the culture went all rainbow flags a few days ago. You probably noticed this. And we're going to talk about some of the things that we're noticing. We actually have some good news for people who are promoting family and the well being of children and some things that you should really be watching, watching out for. So stay tuned. Them before us on American Family Radio.
- [15:02]
A
Welcome back to them before us on American Family Radio.
- [15:05]
B
Hey everyone, welcome back to Them before us radio on American Family Radio. You are here with, with Jen and Josh. It's the staff takeover because Katie is out of town and we're happy to be here. We're talking about Pride Month because it started a few days ago. If you're listening to this on the weekend. And I think ever since 2020, we've seen a bit of a decline in how prominent Pride had seemed. It seemed like every single company, every single politician just went full on in support. Rainbow flags, emojis and profile pictures changing. And I think Pride and BLM got into a bit of a scuffle in 2020 and they got a little bit mad at each other. Pride was mad that BLM was taking their month. BLM was mad. You're not giving us the summer to just talk about ourselves. And so it's been a little bit muted since then. We've just talked about on the radio and before us there's a bit been a bit of a vibe shift, it seems like with Trump being reelected and things like that. But this was really interesting because Gallup just dropped some new information, new poll numbers this week, and they said support in the US For LGBTQ issues is down from its peak. So it's down six points from its high in 2022 to 2023. So about three years ago, it peaked, and then it plateaued, and now a lot of it is declining. So 62% view gay and lesbian relations as moral, but that's the lowest since 2016. So that's way over half, but it's the lowest that it's been since 2016. And one really interesting thing is the morality of changing one's gender. So when asked that question, hey, is it moral to change your gender? That's down eight points. And that's actually down across the political spectrum. So Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all declined on the view of, quote, changing your gender. So we can dive more into the stats. But, Josh, what are your initial thoughts on this Gallup Poll?
- [17:14]
A
My biggest takeaway was, despite what it feels like every time you turn on the tv, right? It's everywhere. And we'll talk about that some in the next segment, but it's everywhere. It's in your face. Every movie, every show, every whatever it's in. Flags down the street. It seems like it's in your kids schools. Just literally, it's like propaganda. Despite that, the poll showed Republicans approve of this, of legalizing same sex marriage. Only 35% of Republicans approve of this. That does not track with what you would feel out in culture now. Again, culture would be 62%, like we said, approved. So it is more than half when you count everybody. But among Republicans and independents, it's tanked. I mean, this is significantly down. The last time it was this low, it was like 2011 for Republicans. And I think what we like to highlight here, we wanted to break down is, you know, why is that? What has changed? And there was this catalytic event where, you know, 2015, same sex marriage was legalized, and it was legalized when just a few years earlier, even California had rejected it. So they did a statewide ballot. Maybe you can look it up. I forget what the name of it was. Someone's gonna get on me for that.
- [18:40]
B
Prop 8, right?
- [18:41]
A
Prop 8, yeah.
- [18:42]
B
Yeah.
- [18:43]
A
So you're talking about a country that was not asking for this, that this whole idea was forced on them. And then the implications came. So, for one, the. I think the LGBTQ movement felt like, what's next? You began to see this movement into trans issues. You saw it become very visible in a way that affected a lot of our lives, where I might not be in a space that needs A locker room. Or my daughter might not be. I do have daughters playing girl sports. I have a daughter playing girl sports. And so they saw men invading those spaces. The Leah Thomas case was. Was very famous for that reason. This guy who was an average male swimmer is now a national champion. It's like, wait a second. That doesn't feel right. And then right, the. It's almost like the scales fall off and it's men going into locker rooms with women. It's men wanting to be transferred into women's prisons. Sometimes they're violent sexual offenders wanting to share cells, being locked in a cell with other women. Then you see these young kids having themselves chemically castrated by doctors who are, I mean, posting things like, yeet, the teats. Wasn't that. That was like a. Where she's talking about mastectomies. I mean, it really did. People go, this is where all this led. I mean, the slippery slope thing was so much worse than everybody thought. Then you move into. Now just the last. Jen, what has it been last, like month or two? How many videos and photos have we seen of children being acquired by unrelated adults, males and two men, two women taking these kids home away from their mother or father and it all being celebrated as progress. Like mother or father loss is something to celebrate. I think people are going, this went somewhere not private at all. Like, that was the whole lie it got sold on was this is just about what two men do in their bedroom. The government needs to stay out. Well, as soon as that case got legalized, it was very much out of the bedroom. It was, we want access to your locker room, access to that women's space. We want access to that child for medicalization. And actually we want to create our own kid. And we want to purchase the egg, purchase the sperm, rent a woman. We want insurance to pay for it because you need to declare us infertile. I think. I think people just woke up to this was very much not a private issue. How we form families, how we do marriage, is fundamental to how we do society.
- [21:22]
B
Yeah. And I'm just thinking about the connection between all of this and social media for the advent of the smartphone where every single person has a camera with them and a video camera with them 24 7. Now, basically, if you have one of the typical smartphone phones. So when you say we want just the right to be normal, we just want to live and let live. We just want just our rights. Just we want marriage. Leave us alone. Okay. And now, I mean, if you think about every major city in the United States probably has a gay pride parade. I've never been to one, but unfortunately, I've seen what happens at a gay pride parade because everybody's got a video camera, and everybody has a camera in their pocket. And Katie posted a photo of a man who was naked. You could see his private parts. And then you see little kids walking by, and she's like, see, the problem is you're going to be offended that I posted this picture more than you're going to be offended that this is what's happening on the streets of Seattle right now with no problem. There used to be a time a man exposing himself to children would get you. Like I was telling Josh, you know, if he shows up in the male in the women's locker room and tries to expose himself, you could ask a good man to go in there and drag him out and take care of it for you. But now we're expected to all just sit and watch someone be in your locker room or be on the street exposing themselves, and the police won't do anything about it. So the problem is when that's coming across your feed, even the people who are probably pretty libertarian, independent. I am live and let live. Oh, I also don't like it when someone's exposing their private parts to kids like you guys across the line. I'm not into that. And we talk about, you know, kind of the more political world, the concept of peak woke, like, when did things get the worst where just people couldn't look away anymore? And I think it's a number of things like you're talking about. We have people testifying. I think there was just a hearing this week of d transitioners testifying and saying, you know, as a minor, I went in struggling with my gender dysphoria and my identity. And I was very quickly pushed into medical interventions to cut off my healthy body parts. And we have the real people who are saying, this happened to me when I was a minor. And, you know, you have the two sides of the political spectrum arguing about it, but everyone can go watch that YouTube. So it's just not hidden anymore. It's all out in the open. And I think typical people are pretty uncomfortable with a lot of these just pretty basic violations of women's rights of protecting children. And that's the them before us perspective is it's all about kids. It's not about, I don't like it because it's icky, or I don't like it because of religion. We're saying it's a violation of the child's rights to have them be medicalized, have them be exposed to sexual content, et cetera. So we're always refocusing along that argument to try and make that case.
- [24:31]
A
I mean, it is just worth noting that there was that Washington Post article talking about Peak Woke that was like, kink belongs at Pride and I want my kid to see it. It was something like that. I mean, it is notable that so much of this revolves around open, blatant sexuality, pornographic material. And it occurs in public spaces and schools and libraries around kids. Like, why are these movements so intensely interested in other people's children? I think that's just a question worth asking. And you know, on that note, we wanted to highlight something else around Pride. There was a Sesame street post that talked about Pride the other day, which does make you think, what business does this have on talking about Pride on a kid's show, a child show? And I went through and I kind of looked what some of the major brands and how they message on this issue. And here's why it's important to push back on this. Because some will say it's just raising awareness that these people exist and they can be proud of them. But that isn't what they do. Oftentimes they are pushing. What is a lie? Every child has a mother and father. We have to start there. Just like the trans movement tried to lie to children to say, you don't have a sex, you can choose what your sex is. No, we can take a blood test. We can find out what your sex is. It's not something that a doctor just arbitrarily assigns at birth. It's something that a doctor recognizes you are born with. The same is true of parents. When you come out of the womb, the state, the doctor doesn't assign you parents, they recognize who created you. We can take a blood test for that too. This is your mother and this is your father. No child has ever been created without a mother and father. It takes two. Always has and hopefully always will. I mean, science is trying to make some crazy situations happen. But what these specific shows do for children who can't understand those biological realities yet they try to lie to them and tell them, some kids have two moms, some kids have two dads. So here's kind of the receipt. Sesame street specifically had a same sex couple on their Family Day episode. What are they trying to do there? That same family comes in all shapes and sizes. That if you see a kid with two moms, that that's just another form of family. Well, no, what we should be training kids to do, especially growing up in Christian homes, we should be training kids to know that when you see a kid with two moms, we should have compassion for that child because that child lost their father, period. Next was Peppa Pig having again a pride post where they introduced two moms, two mommies in one of their Family day episodes. Like, it's shocking to me, Jen, because it's like family or father loss in every other context is condemned. Like, I think it was Obama who had like a fatherhood initiative. It's like he knew fathers. Like, we need them. Every kid needs one. If a kid loses their dad, that's tragic. We need to have compassion for him. Except right here, when the kid's got two moms, then we need to celebrate that child, celebrate their arrangement and call that kid loved, cared for and call it progress. Like, no, I think we should probably condemn that and say father loss is not something to be celebrated. So there was a few others, Pixar, who had that famous light year video or a movie where they had a same sex kiss between two moms. Again, what is that presence, that same sex relationships? There are families with two moms. It being in a kids show, it's usually around, I think it was around a family environment where it happened like a restaurant. So it's trying to normalize that kids can have two moms, which is just a lie. That's biologically impossible. Again, the list goes on. There was one from Nickelodeon.
- [28:48]
B
I was gonna say, yeah, I hit Blue's Clues because that one to me is so just gratuitous because it shows Blue's Clues is the little blue dog with a pride parade. So they're in the pride parade. They have a man dressed as a woman. This is all cartoon. You just think about for cartoons, everything is intentional, right? A drag queen, a man dressed as a woman, doing this fun family song. Oh, the families are coming two by two, whatever. And then it features a. On the trans float, a little family of beavers. And one of the. So you know, you have the larger beavers, then you have the smaller beavers that are the children. And one of those beavers has scars under their breasts. Mastectomy scars on a minor beaver on the trans float of the Pride Parade in the Blue's Clues episode. This is marketed directly for children. It's so crazy. Well, and Josh, speak really quickly about why are they so focused on other people's children?
- [29:50]
A
Yeah, because they. I mean, at the end of the day they have to recruit. I know that sounds so rudimentary. But at a really a base level, this movement needs new people to enter it. And we saw through 2020-2024 both the rise of the transgender movement and the fall. What was the change? As culture shifted its opinion, people came and went in the movement. Which goes to show you, there's so much to the propaganda that actually recruits people into this harmful lifestyle. And harm is the correct term. It deprives children of their mother and father and in some cases medicalizes them by, you know, encouraging a double mastectomy.
- [30:38]
B
Yeah. And with our final minute or so here, it's just so fascinating to think about parents. I mean, we probably, you'd probably never recommend these days just letting your kid have free access to YouTube or the tablet or your cable TV because you don't know what they're going to see. It might be the ads that they see even if you've vetted the show. And so we just are trying to promote the vigilance of parents to, I mean, be watching things with your kids and be ready to, you know, we kind of did the little thought experiment for our article. So you can go read our article. We break a bunch of this down. The reasons that the Gallup poll is showing what it shows you can go find on them before us.substack.com but we're breaking all of this down and we just are trying to help parents have vigilance to keep track of what your kids are doing. So, hey, this is all the time we have for this segment, but if you stay tuned, Sam is going to join me and we're going to do a little here for the comments commentary on some of the things that popped up for us on social media this week.
- [32:01]
A
If you'd like to comment on the show, email commentshembeforeus.com hey everyone.
- [32:08]
C
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 child rights perspective. I'm your host, Sam, and I'm joined by Jen, and we are here for the comments. So Jen actually had something picked out for us today, so I am going to be live reacting to it because I haven't seen it yet. So I'm nervous and looking forward to it at the same time.
- [32:34]
B
You have to have really thought out everything you're going to say already ready to go, even though you're live reacting. But no, this is like what we enjoy about the going into the comments because that's kind of how it works. You see something crazy or an unhinged that someone writes and you're like, what? I have to respond to this? How am I supposed to. And I wouldn't say this guy's unhinged or anything. He's kind of coming off a little more libertarian. This is just a tweet that someone tagged them before us in. So someone else saw this and was like, hey, them before us. You should interact with this. So this guy's name is Jim. And I'll just read out his tweet and then get your reaction, Sam. And then we'll go back and forth with how I've been responding to him. So it's the start of Pride Month. That's why I think he's, he's starting this topic. But this guy Jim says, I feel like I just need to throw this out here once in a while. So folks following me know who they're following. I think gay men and women should be able to be married. And I don't have any issue with surrogacy or adoption for them either. If any folks want to have an actual discussion on that, I'm down. If you want to unfollow me because of it, do what you got to do. I don't hate you if you don't agree with my sentiments on the issue. But I do wish they were different. I watched a really amazing counter revolutionary movement from the right lose a lot of its direction over ancillary issues that affect no one. The trans stuff I get, I thought that stuff hard. No men and women's sports, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc, that's easy because there's a real impact to all women in places that's allowed a gay marriage. I don't get it. I really don't get the obsession and adoption surrogacy. Guys, we have a single parent parent problem in this country, not a gay parent's problem. What we need is more two parent households, not less. I mean, if we're going to beat up on anyone, let's at least start with single moms with multiple baby daddies and the baby daddies that just cut and run on some moms. So yeah, that's my two cents. I've said this multiple times over the years and got some new followers recently. So I figured I'd let some of them sort themselves out if they felt the need. And if anyone genuinely wants to talk about why they think I'm wrong, have at it. Unless you're a communist, basically. I enjoy having those talks. The communists. I'm done doing that, like, eight plus years, almost every day is enough for me about reaction. Okay, so your initial thoughts, too? It seems pretty genuine, you know, hey, this is what I think. It's not that bad. You know, if you disagree, let's talk about it.
- [34:54]
C
Yeah. My initial thought is that I like Jim. I like his attitude. I, as somebody who, like, has these hard conversations often, I just really appreciate the personality of. This is where I stand on things. But I really want to hear what you have to say, and I like having conversation about it. And as long as we're not, like, attacking each other, that actually means a lot to me personally, because I feel like that's what we need more of in this society. So I like his attitude. I definitely. I think he's missing one key thing. It was actually, I almost laughed a little bit because he was like, you know, I kind of understand the trans stuff because there's an actual victim and there's like, we can see that it's hurting women. And I'm like, you're this close, Jim. You're this close. Like, there's an actual victim to gay marriage. And the victim that we have shown, we have 10 years of receipts, almost 11 years of receipts of. Of children being victimized directly by gay marriage. And so I feel like if he would just follow along a little bit and listen to some of our podcasts and read some of our substacks, like, we could have him on our side any minute now. Like, I feel like he. He could be open to changing his mind because we. I feel like that's where Republicans stood for a while, where we were just, like, very more libertarian on the idea of gay marriage because we were told, we were promised that gay marriage isn't going to hurt anybody. It's what happens, you know, behind the doors in the bedroom. We don't need to know. No one's being harmed. And very quickly, obviously, Katie was like, wait a minute, someone's being harmed? And I know who it is. And so that's what we built our whole organization on. That's why Katie started them for us, is because children are the victims here and we can prove it. So, yeah, I, I like Jim. I'd love to have a conversation with Jim.
- [36:47]
B
Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. And he comes across genuinely like someone who has no clue what's going on. I mean, you know, and I mean that in the nicest way. I think a lot of people really are live and let live, and, oh, the trans stuff is too far, and they just haven't drawn those connections yet, and like we talked about, Josh and I in the earlier segments, they. The decline of approval for LGBT ideology around gender, changing your gender and those sorts of things is declining because of what people are seeing. Maybe this guy isn't perpetually online, so he's not seeing all this crazy stuff. So this is my first tweet back to him to kind of get the conversation going, and then I'll read his reply and then ask you to react to that. So I said, why would you oppose women Take. Why would you oppose men taking over women's spaces when you've already decided that men and women have no distinctions worth protecting for marriage and family? This is very fascinating to me. People want to disavow the T. LGB is fine. The T has taken it too far. And I was like, no, no, these are your chickens, and they're coming home to roost. LGB said, men and women don't matter. It doesn't matter if I'm with a man or woman. It doesn't matter if I identify as a man or woman. And you said it doesn't matter. In marriage, children don't care if they have a man and woman raising them. They don't care if they have the man and woman that created them raising them. It's love is love, love makes a family, et cetera. Oh, my gosh, this is crazy. Why is that boy taking over girls, sports? Well, you guys just told us for a decade, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're male or female. It doesn't matter to separate those distinctions. And now you're surprised because of the fallout that's happening?
- [38:24]
C
Right.
- [38:24]
B
Okay, so that's my first question to him. He has kind of a longer answer. I'll read, kind of summarize here. First, those two things aren't the same at all. Jim says one interferes with women directly, the other does not. Protecting women from predatory men and loopholes that not having that distinction brings about has nothing to do with marriage and family. He says trans ideology leads into child abuse, but gay marriage interferes with no one's rights. And I never said men and women have no distinctions worth protecting. I didn't even imply it. But actually, you did imply it, Jim. If gay marriage interferes with no one's rights, you're saying marriage doesn't require a male and female distinction. And he said, you lose no rights when gay men or women get married. Straight marriages do not go away. Straight families do not go away. Wrong, Jim. You don't gain more straight Families. By banning gay families, you gain nothing and achieve nothing. Straight families will always be dominant, et cetera. And just a point, too, before I hand it over to you. Gay families can only be created when, quote, straight families are broken. So when he says it doesn't impact it at all. It's like, that just logically doesn't make sense. A child biologically comes from one man and one woman. Thoughts on that, Sam?
- [39:40]
C
You know, I was thinking the same thing in a way, where I was like, where do they think gay people are getting all these kids? Because I guess a lot of them really do believe that the majority or all gay people just adopt. And so they have this mentality of, like, oh, well, they were just in the system and there wasn't enough, you know, straight couples who are willing to adopt. So this is actually a good thing. I don't think people realize that, like, there's a huge chunk of. Of, you know, gay parents who got their children by purchasing them by donor, conception, by surrogacy, and they're creating these children by breaking their homes before they've even come into existence. And they're paying good money for it. And so I think, again, you're. You were spot on when you said that. Like, you feel like he's blissfully ignorant to a lot of this stuff that we're talking about, and it's not even a hit at him. I get it. Like, these are things that aren't reported on. And again, that's. That's a big part of what we do is we have to tell people that this is happening, because so much of the time, it's. It's just like, all you see about gay parents is like, these sweet. Like, oh, look, these gay parents just announced that they have another child. And, like, they don't say the truth of how they got that child, which we know the background. And so, yeah, the kids have to come from somewhere. And two kids aren't created by, you know, kids are not created by two men. Kids are not created by two women. They're created by one woman and one man. Which means that if a gay couple has a child, there's inherent brokenness from where that child came from.
- [41:13]
B
Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I responded with his quote, gay marriage interferes with no one's rights. And I said, well, a child has a right to be raised by the mother and father that created them. And redefining marriage meant that children had to be bought and sold so they could be cut and pasted into other adult arrangements. Otherwise, that's A violation of equality. And that's what we talk about. You said we have the receipts for 10 years, live and let live. And we're just redefining marriage. Couldn't stop there. Because the point is, if you have all the benefits of marriage, like one of the Supreme Court justices said with Obergefell, one of the benefits of marriage is family and children. And so then a same sex couple says, well, you're denying me the benefit of children, even though they cannot naturally create children. So where did the children come from? Now, in the name of equality, they basically have to be provided children somehow access to them. Sperm and egg buying, renting a woman with surrogacy, and yes, adoption. But like you just said, and Josh wrote an article about this on our substack, overwhelmingly LGBT identified people choose biology because they want a biological connection and they'll pay thousands for it. And then they turn and deny it for the kid. Right. So one of the other things he really harps on, which I think was fascinating, that you can respond to, is that he's like, children do better in two parent households. He has a problem, single parents. But he says two parent households are great. That's what. That's all kids need, two parents. I said, if it's just about random adults, why not three or four parents? Because if it's just about caring adults, it would follow logically that 3, 4, 5, 6 parents, the kids would do better. And he's like, no, three and four don't make anything better, though. We don't have a lot of data on that situation. And he harps on two. And my thing is always it's only two because it's a male and a female. The mom and dad of that child. That's why it's two. If you don't want to just talk about commune. And I think we talked about recently a guy who wouldn't cap marriage at all. I was like, 10, 20. He said, I don't think the government should be involved in capping it at all. And it's like, you're not describing marriage, you're describing a commune free love situation. Why should the government have to endorse that? So why, why do you think people are so hung up on this two parent thing when they're denying that it makes a difference for, you know, a male and a female raising kids is different and valuable.
- [43:41]
C
I truly think it comes from, like, people don't sometimes appreciate that they were born into a society that was like, built on. On good principles in general. You know, where it's like we come from like this Christian based society where it's like we, you know, what, 15, 20 years ago, like we all acknowledged what marriage was. And like we knew that marriage was between a man and a woman. We knew that kids were better raised by their mom and their dad. So like you're raised up kind of like in that basis. So like there's when you start to twist it just a little bit, but you try to keep it close to the truth so you're still within your comfort zone. Like I feel like that's just leaving their comfort zone a little. They think they know two parents because I had two parents. So that worked for me. But yeah, his attack on, on single moms, it's just kind of like I, it, it does make me. It was a good question for him because it's like if it's just any parent and it doesn't really matter, like if marriage doesn't matter, if they don't need their mom and dad and you think that single moms are bad because a dad is missing, then how can two women be okay if a dad is still missing? You know? And so I also noticed here one of the things that he said, that children have no right to be raised by their mother and father. I was adopted at first birth. My b. Biological parents did not violate my rights by doing this. I always think that's interesting because adoption proves that children do have a right to their mother and father. So people think the opposite because they're just like, no, because if I had a right, then adoption wouldn't exist because then they wouldn't be allowed to give me away. But it literally proves the opposite because there, the minute that you are born to a mother and dad, like a mom and dad, that is like your inherent right to them. And like the only way that you can go off with another family at that point is this legal process called adoption, proving and severing that that specific right and those like, connection to those two people. Whereas like, if you didn't have a right to them, they could have just handed you off to somebody and what. There's no reason to do paperwork. You're. Who's. You're not anybody's, you're just whoever, you know. So like you're initially born to your parents and that right starts right when you're. Well, really right when you're created.
- [45:55]
B
But yeah, yeah, that's such a good point. You're right. I mean the default is that they have a right to you and you have a right to them. It has to be severed by the law. And it's pretty difficult to do that because I've had friends and acquaintances that have done foster care and adoption and different things. And you've got all sorts of crazy family situations where it's like half siblings and step parent who's trying to get access to you. And even with abuse and abandonment, different things. It's a long process to sever a parent's right. And I don't think it should be easy for the government to do that. But that's such a great point. And I ended with this. He hasn't replied now, but I said, no, two adults don't equal stability. That he's. He says he just thinks two adults equal stability. You're more stable if you have two adults. Well, then why do cohabitating households do worse? Why do kids have worse outcomes? Why is it worse outcomes? Okay, it's a single mom and then she has her boyfriend in the home. There you go. Two parents. Well, no. An unrelated man in the home increases the likelihood that you'll be abused. Physical abuse, sexual abuse. And we know step parents, even two parents in the home, why do they have worse outcomes? Step parents statistically care for their not biologically related children less. They don't have them buckle their seatbelt up as much, take their medication, and go to the doctor as much. So that's just the reality. Even if it's two parents, the who the two adults are really matters.
- [47:20]
C
Yes, 100%. Great point. I hope that. I hope that seed sticks with him and like, plants something, because I love that he's open to these conversations. I think that's really good, really healthy. And as somebody who didn't have either of his biological parents, maybe, maybe that's something that will brew in him a little bit, make him question things.
- [47:38]
B
Yeah. So good. Well, guys, that's all the time we have for. For today. Thanks for joining us. We enjoy hanging out in the comments with you, reacting with a children's rights perspective. And we will catch you next time.
- [47:48]
C
See ya.
- [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.