Putting Children First: A Case For Natural Marriage and Family

00:00 - Speaker 1 Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Speaker 2 Hey everybody you are definitely going to want to stay tuned for this next podcast. We are going to be hearing things that we've never heard before, with answers to questions we've never asked before You're in for a treat, so buckle up. Let's get into this before you're in for a treat, so buckle up. 00:25 - Speaker 1 Let's get into this. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com/podcast today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's Word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 00:55 - Speaker 2 Hey everybody, welcome to the Jack Hibbs Podcast. We have a first-time guest and a powerhouse. We have heard her speak at a conference and she just absolutely blew the walls off the place. She's a powerful testimony to the work of God. I actually have her bio and it's look at this. It would take me forever to read it and then we wouldn't have any time to go through the show with her. Katy Faust is making a difference and she has founded an organization titled them. Them no, I'm going to give you a few chances to get this right is making a difference and she has founded an organization titled them. Them. 01:26 - Speaker 3 Just now I'm going to give you a few chances to get this right, and after that I'm walking off the show. 01:30 - Speaker 2 Yes, them to us, them before us, them before us, it's true, them before us. I shouldn't have thrown it on the ground. 01:38 - Speaker 3 I shouldn't have hung into it. That's okay. You get three strikes. You've got two left three strikes. 01:46 - Speaker 2 You've got two left. That's exactly right. Okay, you have had an incredible background. People are going to hear in a moment how incredible. But before we get into the, the back background, your achievements. We read your uh bio earlier today and we wondered uh, where in the world have you ever found any free time to do anything? You have achieved so much, you've done so much and is this true, that you lived in Taiwan? 02:19 - Speaker 3 Oh, how long ago. 02:21 - Speaker 2 So this is how long you lived in Taiwan. So how did that happen? How did you learn? Was that Mandarin? That was Mandarin. 02:28 - Speaker 3 I got it. 02:30 - Speaker 2 I actually understood a little bit of that. Nice job 真得嗎, okay? 02:34 - Speaker 3 No, you did it. 日。 that's close, 日。 that's a different continent. But I got you. Yes, good, no, I love it. I love it. No, you know, what's funny is I love talking. I am a talker and it has served me very, very well in so many different aspects of my life. 02:51 But I've always loved languages. I did German in high school. The credits wouldn't carry over, so then I had to do something in college and if you did Chinese, you only had to do three semesters, versus all the other languages you had to do four. So I was like, well, let's see if they can teach me to read that chicken scratch. I didn't think that they could. And then I loved it. 03:12 And then I became an Asian Studies major and I took it all four years and I was like, well, we'll add some political science. And then I got a Fulbright scholarship and that's why we were in Taiwan. My husband and I got married and we did our first year. We like we took leave and cleave very seriously. We like left and moved to Taiwan, and so that was wonderful. And then we moved to Colorado where he got his Masters of Divinity at Denver Seminary and I worked at a Chinese adoption agency. So I had like 10 years of Chinese and then I got pregnant, had babies, and I can barely remember to say anything now oh you're not passing it on to them, though. 03:47 So our youngest actually is Chinese, and we adopted him, and so for the first year that he was with us, I spoke to Chinese. I spoke to him exclusively in Chinese, and then I was so tired I didn't talk to anybody for like five years. 03:59 - Speaker 2 That's an exaggeration because you have to use so many words to say a few things. 04:03 - Speaker 3 It was because adoption is very demanding and I had other little kids and I was maxed. I was absolutely maxed out and God had just called me into arguing online. So like we got home from adopting him and about six months later he kind of called me into this space of defending children on the topic of marriage. And that began as just an anonymous blog, because I'm a chicken and I know what these people will do to you. 04:33 - Speaker 2 When you say anonymous, like operating it under like a pseudonym or okay. 04:38 - Speaker 3 Yeah, like the blog was, so I was so angry. So I'm generally a total grace giver. I don't like confrontation, but what I saw taking place in the marriage debate was two things. Number one normalizing mother and father loss by promoting same-sex parenting In the name of gay marriage is going to be good for kids, right? 05:02 - Speaker 2 That's what we heard. 05:03 - Speaker 3 Yeah, and that made me very angry because I've been working with kids, for kids Right, that's what we heard. Yeah, and that made me very angry because I've been working with kids for a long time, like ever since college. We've been doing youth ministry and then we were the junior high directors at our church with I love junior hires, and then we did high school ministry, college ministry. We've done pre-marriage counseling. We've done mid-marriage. I've worked at an adoption agency. I've got children who have friends from broken homes that come here. 05:25 I'm like I got a lot of close contact with kids and I've never met a kid who lost their mother or father and were like I love this. Usually it leaves a lifelong wound that hampers them physically, academically, emotionally and relationally. So to me that was one thing where I said you are not going to weaponize some of the greatest wounds of children to advance your political aims. But then the other thing they said is right after, president Obama evolved on marriage. That's right, he sure did. He did right. He won in 2008 as a traditional marriage supporter, he won in 2012 as a supporter of traditional marriage and then he evolved right afterwards and to me I felt like there was a sea change in media right after that, where they were like okay, now that we've got the president, we can call anybody that supports traditional marriage a hater, homophobe, bigot. That's exactly what happened and I took issue with that, Jack. 06:17 - Speaker 2 No, I'm going to interrupt you. Yeah, for the audience. Yeah, I'll be sarcastic, please. Who do you think you are? What would you know about a different lifestyle? What gives you the qualifications you? You've traveled around the world, you're learning languages, you're being successful in your husband and you and all the things that you're doing. What could you possibly know about any other type of of structure of marriage outside of what what God has established? 06:45 - Speaker 3 Nothing, obviously nothing. I'm just a sheltered pastor's wife, yeah Right, who doesn't have any contact with the outside world. Yes, I know it's tough. No, my parents were married until I was 10. I wasn't raised in a Christian home. They divorced. Thank God I remained connected to both of them, which is pretty rare A lot of times. In about 40% of cases, children will lose contact altogether with their father within two years. So it's very often a cause of father loss. So my father dated and remarried. So I split time in his home with his whatever girlfriend he was with at the time, or a new wife. But immediately after the divorce my mom repartnered with a woman. So they've been together for 40 years. Like I was very close In a lesbian relationship. Yes, 40 years, right. Yeah, they actually kind of blow the statistics out of the water when it comes to longevity among female couples, but I was very close to my mom. I am still very close to my mom. Like I don't know your mom, Jack, but my mother is a better mother than your mom. Sorry, she's incredible. 07:46 - Speaker 2 I doubt it. My mom's in heaven, so it can't get any better than that. Well, that's pretty good, but anyway, I'm kidding. 07:51 - Speaker 3 No, you can believe your mom is the best I understand. No, imy mom, a lot of the things I do well as a mother, I do because that's how my mother mothered me. So I've got no qualms at all saying she is an incredible mom and I'm not. I don't consider her partner my mother, but I do consider her partner, my friend, and there's never been a time over the last 40 years where we've had major conflict or anything. They've always been welcome in my life, in my children's life. 08:20 I didn't become a Christian until my senior year, when I was about 17. So that was the world that I knew and then after that I felt very fierce about making sure that I could remain connected to them in any way possible. So they've always been a part of my children's lives, their upbringing, and I was telling I tell people all the time like these people come at me like, oh, you're a hateful, homophobic bigot. And I was like it's like, pull the string and it comes out, yeah. And I'm like, oh honey, I have been living with lesbians since before you were born. Like that just doesn't work on me. 08:54 So this whole idea that like you're a bigot if you disagree, I knew that that was a lie, but it was a very effective emotional tool to silence traditional marriage supporters. Yeah, because all of us love our gay family and friends. Okay, maybe one or two are genuinely ridiculous, but I've talked all across the country with people who are zealous for the Lord, who believe in traditional marriage, and they're the ones that were nursing their gay brother through the AIDS epidemic. You know, they're the ones that are trying to be connected to their sister who has a sperm donor conceived child, so that that kid can have a father in their life. 09:28 - Speaker 2 A male figure father. 09:28 - Speaker 3 Yeah. So anyway, my blog. I was really angry. It was born in an angry moment. The blog was called Ask the Bigot and I was like, if you think that only bigotry, that's a great title, thanks. 09:41 If only bigotry could motivate somebody to oppose gay marriage, then here I am, yeah, and my goal was to outline not just the biblical case for marriage but the sociological case for marriage. 09:52 So true, and it was the why behind what God says to interact with people in a way that was so unbigoted that they could only confess that the reason that they were clinging to this idea, not because it was science-based, not because it was natural law-based, but because somehow it gave them some kind of social advantage in the spheres where they were moving. So that was how it began. And then, after a couple years of having the anonymous blog, I was outed by a gay blogger who, like, searched the IP address of a picture that I had posted and it traced back to my husband's church so this is the quintessential person in the basement in their underwear, all day long searching to find who you are no, he actually was a gay blogger with a massive platform who did search engine optimization for a living, so he knew how to find this information and then, when he found out, he doxed the members of my church to get me to stop. 10:57 He took the names and addresses of the leaders of our church and put it on his blog and then immediately just told all of my his followers Like information terrorism. If he had been in the United States I he probably could have been prosecuted, but he was outside the United States. But he really did say stop blogging and I'll take down the names. And I just I was overcome. I was horrified that these innocent people at my church, who had no idea that I had a 2 am side hustle calling, were being made to pay for whatI knew that God wanted me to do. So it was, it was awful. 11:35 I went to yeah, I went to the elders of my church. One of them knew what I was doing, but the other ones didn't, cause I was like this, this is not church life. And I said I am so sorry because I mean our church was being flooded with negative Yelp reviews of people that had never been there. I mean they were like he. He said I will make sure that when everybody searches the name of your husband's church, they will only see what I've written about you first. They won't even make it to your website. They will only see what I've written about you first. They won't even make it to your website. And that was the case for a long time. So, anyway, I went to the elders and I said I am so sorry for what I've done. I'm so sorry for how I've brought this on you guys, if I am the Jonah that you need to throw overboard so the storm will stop. 12:18 I will stop everything, I'll take down the blog. I'll never write about this again. And they sat around and these are just ordinary guys, you know. One was like a Microsoftic deck and one was a bus driver and, um, a couple of them just kind of had management jobs. These were not like theologians and shiny polished. They talked about it and they were like, yeah, yeah, you could stop or you could go really big. Oh, okay, good, no, you scared me. No, they were like that's a possibility, I like the big part. Yeah, they're like or you could just keep going and maybe this guy doesn't determine what, what you do and what you're called to. And I was like, oh, I like these guys, they're good men, they're really good men. 12:58 So that's what happened. And then, once I was writing under my own name, I could lead workshops at the United Nations and submit amicus briefs to the Supreme Court and travel to Taiwan and South Korea and Albania and Australia and the US Capitol and advocate on behalf of children. 13:15 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you see, if your life is feeling kind of empty and like you're not achieving anything, this is what I'm talking about. You're amazing. It's awesome what God is doing with you. Let me ask you this question from the outside. Somebody's watching on the other side of this lens and I don't know. I'm making this up. Obviously she's 16 years old. She's in a homosexual parent relationship type thing here. What would you say to her? 13:45 - Speaker 3 That you don't need to feel bad for wanting your mom or your dad, like if you've got two dads. Children, naturally, and one of the things we do at them Before Us is we have a story bank of children who have lost their mother and father because adult desires were prioritized above their rights. Oh yes, so we've got a catalog of children with divorced parents, not because there was abuse or adultery, but because one adult decided they wanted to put themselves before the children. So we've got a story bank for those kids. We've got a story bank of children created through reproductive technologies who lost their mother or father because they were created and procured through a sperm catalog or an egg catalog or surrogacy. And we've got probably the largest catalog of stories of children with LGBT parents on our website. 14:30 And you see some commonalities among all three. In all three of these areas, it is an almost reversal of the parent-child relationship, where the parents so the way it's supposed to go is the parents are supposed to be understanding and supportive and accommodating because they are the more mature. But in all of these three sectors, what you see is children have to be understanding, supportive and accommodating of their parents. So you see the swap in roles. But for the LGBT kids specifically, what they're struggling with very often is mother hunger or father hunger. So children do not just want to be loved in the abstract, that's right. They don't just need caregivers, that's right. They crave maternal love and paternal love. So for the kids who have two moms, for example, very often they feel like they love both of their mothers, but they crave a dad. 15:25 - Speaker 2 That's right. 15:25 - Speaker 3 And they find themselves scooting over closer to men or hanging out with their coach more often or not wanting to leave their friend's house even after the lights are out, and the parents are like we're putting our kids to bed now and they're like can I just be with you guys a little longer? 15:42 Because, they want to be near the father because they're made for paternal love. So I would say to the kid, the girl, let's say with two moms that you're not crazy for wanting a dad. And a lot of the messages that especially some of these kids whose parents are a little more progressive will tell them is you don't need a dad, you have two moms. And the whole world is telling them not that. But inside they know you cannot legislate away a child's longing for their mother or father. It arises innately. It's natural law. That's it's natural law. So for those kids I say you don't have to turn on your parents. You don't have to say they're bad, they're terrible, they're abusive, but you do get to recognize that you were made for your father's love and if you feel sad that he is not there, it's not you that's wrong, it's the world that's wrong. 16:35 - Speaker 2 Yeah, right on, so good. How was your message from the days of being, um know, attacked by this guy, doxxed by this guy? Where are you now? What's the progress that your work is doing now, the ministry is doing now? How are things? 16:55 - Speaker 3 by God's grace, I think that we are probably the most influential nonprofit you've never heard of. I'm on the board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which is Jordan Peterson's new project. It is meant to be, in my colloquial terms, the righteous inverse of the World Economic Forum. 17:14 - Speaker 2 Wow. 17:15 - Speaker 3 We want and are getting the kind of global influence to impact economic policy, environmental policy, energy policy, but also social fabric, understanding how we understand relationships in education, in family, in our own citizenship, and I am so honored and humbled to be one of the people that has had a significant influence in how that conference and organization thinks about and addresses marriage and family. So this child-centric view is actually infusing a lot of the different this presupposes that they're open to another explanation for how things work. 17:57 - Speaker 2 Then they Right, they're open, they're willing to listen to you. 18:02 - Speaker 3 They're not just willing to listen, they understand that lifelong monogamous, heterosexual, child-centric marriage is ideal for society. 18:10 - Speaker 2 Wow, After what a 30, 40 year experiment. 18:13 - Speaker 3 Yes, Well, and that's what ARC you know. Arc has come to that conclusion that this must be a plank if we're going to move forward for a thriving society. My nonprofit is probably the most public-facing organization critiquing big fertility. So if you Google surrogacy from the child's perspective, or children's rights and third party reproduction, or even IVF, we probably are the people that are turned to one of them, that are informing people about how these technologies are victimizing children's right to life and right to their mother and father. We are also spearheading the first challenge to gay marriage in 10 years. 18:56 - Speaker 2 Meaning. 18:57 - Speaker 3 We are gonna overturn Obergefell. 18:58 - Speaker 2 Tell me how. 19:00 - Speaker 3 We are assembling all of the major players in the nation and they get to disclose. We're going to have a website up by the end of the year. Everyone can disclose their participation, but basically every major national organization that is pro-family, christian and conservative is already on board. That's right. We've got three different areas of emphasis. The first one is creating a judicial strategy that actually has the ability to win, which we do. The second one is we are changing public opinion. It's not enough to change laws. You have to change hearts. So we've got major influencers from every major conservative media platform that is working together to devise talking points to change public opinion on this topic. And then we're going to turn the church into a child-centric fighting force. 19:47 - Speaker 2 Amen. 19:48 - Speaker 3 I've got Protestant leaders and Catholic leaders who will be developing materials and curriculum to not just communicate to Christians what the Bible says about marriage or what the church teaches, but why it is their job to advance marriage for the sake of child protection. So it is nuts, the kind of opportunities that God is giving us. 20:08 - Speaker 2 It's so crazy because what you're saying is so refreshing. I feel as though there's waves going over my heart refreshment and yet all you're talking about is getting away from stupid and crazy and getting back to what God designed in the first place. That's right, Because it works. 20:23 - Speaker 3 That's right, it works. Yeah, it doesn't just work. There is no child protection, child thriving without it. You cannot forsake this institution that creates and nurtures new life. If you forsake that institution, you get child victimization, and child victimization is not an option for the church. 20:41 - Speaker 2 So good. How do people connect with you? What's the site or what's their connection? 20:46 - Speaker 3 Well, if you want all my opinions, I'm on X way too much. So that's advo underscore K-A-T-Y. Say it again slow. A-d-v-o like advocate Advocaty. Do you love it? Oh, that's good Thanks. 21:00 - Speaker 2 Clever. 21:00 - Speaker 3 Yeah, I didn't think of it. Obviously I'm just I don't think that way, but thankfully I have a friend that does Advo underscore Katy is X. But I think that you, what we'd love is for people to come subscribe to our sub stack. You can subscribe for free and just let us equip you, because I have found that when people know the facts on the ground about marriage and why they cannot flinch, they will become vocal about it. If they understand that big fertility victimizes more embryonic children than Planned Parenthood, by a magnitude of probably four, then it changes the way you think about it. If you understand that surrogacy is not about helping that infertile couple have children but it's about on-demand designer babies shipped worldwide, you think about it differently. So, like, come to the them Before Us sub stack and just subscribe. Let us equip you, because we are the ones that got us the church is God's plan A to be defenders of children and we are going to do everything we can to equip you to do that this is awesome. 22:02 - Speaker 2 This is awesome. The address one more time people, you need to go, you need to check her out, you need to see what she's doing at. 22:09 - Speaker 3 ThenBeforeUscom. That is the place to get all the information. We've got fact sheets If you're like. Well, why is same-sex parenting? What do the studies say about that? Or tell me about IVF, or I didn't think divorce was a big deal, like. We'll give you the fact sheets. The Substack is the place where we really will fuel you. I think that there's a place you can subscribe on our website, but we would just come and like let us turn you into people that will stand and create a firewall around children. 22:37 - Speaker 2 Wow, so beautifully, so needed everybody. I mean, we must agree that the American family, the global family, is in trouble because we've cut ties with God's moral standards and the anchor of what the family institution really means. It's designed by God to build not only a family, a loving family, but a culture, a society, a nation, and so maybe that's why so many countries, including our own, are in so much trouble. Because you look at the home and well, it goes without saying. So, God, have mercy on us. What an honor to have you. We've got to have you back whenever. Now I know that you are in the Pacific Northwest. You're up there in crazy, crazy land North. We're down here in the Pacific Southwest, just as crazy. But maybe we could do this again sometime because we love, I love, what you're doing. 23:26 - Speaker 3 Well, I love being here. A bazillion people have been like have you met Jack Hibbs yet? And I'm like, no, I follow him, I like it, but like we've never met. And so finally I was like now's my chance. 23:38 - Speaker 2 Now. 23:38 - Speaker 3 I get him. So thank you for the opportunity. I've been waiting a long time to just know you better and be able to see this incredible community that you've built and the fire in your people. Yeah, like God, please bring that fire to every church. Yeah, amen, thanks for being here. 23:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, great Thanks. 23:59 - Speaker 1 This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.