Latest / The Orange Report with Kira Davis / Ep.58 What are we doing to the children? with Katy Faust
Transcript
- speaker-0: Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today I'm your host, Kira Davis. And as you can see, I have a guest with me, a very special guest. I am so excited to introduce this woman to you. If you don't know who she is already, she is Katie Faust. She is the founder and president of Them Before Us. She is a leading voice for children's rights. And I just want to read you her bio a little bit just to set her up quick. ⁓ Katie Faust didn't set up to become set out to become an activist. She was a pastor's wife. We love pastors' wives here in the Davis household. And stay-at-home mother, we love those two. When cultural conversations around marriage and family began to shift dramatically as debates intensified, one question kept surface surfacing. Who is speaking for the children? That question led Katie to launch a blog defending the rights of children and marriage and family policy. What began as a small online voice quickly gained traction. Within a few years, she was writing for national publications. Speaking around the world and eventually founding the global children's rights movement then before us. And today Katie is a leading voice in the conversation about marriage, family, and child centered policy. Katie, thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the show. speaker-1: Too long, no podcast. ⁓ I have been waiting for this for way too long. It's really good to join you. I loved following you on Twitter, which is the place where I spend way too much time. Thanks. It's great to finally get to chat almost face to face. speaker-0: Yeah, no, it really is. I I and I wanna take this moment also to thank you and your team for readjusting our schedule. I had you scheduled earlier in the month, but I my beloved mother in law passed and so we had to deal with all of that. So you guys were accommodating and changing this, but I think it's I think it's appropriate for me to bring up my mother in law because she was a wonderful person and a beautiful mother. And ⁓ she taught me a lot about the value of being a mother. I I I'm gonna we're gonna get into a little bit of your ⁓ story here, but you know, same thing. I I broke I grew up in a what we would call a broken home and ⁓ didn't really have a very motherly figure. And ⁓ so my mother in law was really instrumental in me learning to value being a mom and parenthood. ⁓ and so this is sort of an honoring her. She gave her whole life to she was a teacher and a principal. And ⁓ gave her whole life to teaching kids. But ⁓ tell so in honor of Faith Davis, Katie Fowles. speaker-1: Well, let me just jump in there because you know, there's been a viral video that's gone around the last couple of days on X especially and it's this image of a black father with his three children and they're all standing by the front door and the mom is down at the end of the hallway, okay? And she says, Take a step forward if your father ever tucked you in at night, and all three kids take a step forward. Take a step forward if your father ever dropped you off at school and all kids take it and if he ever bought you a Christmas gift, if he ever like prayed with you, if he ever like were with you when you were sick and the kids just keep walking down the hall. And halfway through they're looking around and they're like, our dad hasn't taken a step at all yet. And then they get to the very end and sh you know, she just goes, Thank you, honey. Because the dad gave to his children what he never got himself. And then the kids all turn around and then they hug him and they love him. And ⁓ it's interesting because children who experience family breakdown, ⁓ the most likely option is for them to repeat the cycle. Right. And there's something at them before us where we often say you become what you behold. Whatever it is that you saw lived out in your own childhood, that is your default. You will become what you saw. Right. That's why people who have single mothers are more likely to become single mothers. That's why children of divorce are more likely to get divorced themselves. It's why children created through sperm and egg donation are more likely to sell their sperm and egg. I mean, it's like this is what normal is. This is what I do. And it takes something radical, something drastic. To break the cycle. When we say break the cycle, it is hard. It's violent. Sometimes you have to break those chains because the default is to slide into the pattern that was modeled for you. So what you had in your mother-in-law was you were allowed to behold something else. You got to behold her vision of mothering and ⁓ then grafting you into that family. And it allowed you to understand better who you should become. Because you can't just you can't just out of whole cloth, I'm gonna be somebody else. You have to see somebody else do what you want to do and pattern yourself. We're mimetic creatures, right? We imitate what we see. And you can't do that necessarily out of abstractions. You have to have embodiment, somebody in front of you living it out. And it sounds like your mother in law was that woman for you. speaker-0: Thank you for saying that. I'm gonna get a little misty eyed. ⁓ because she really was. She really was. And she taught me a lot about the value of children too, which is why I am I love your work and I'm so because I think she was saying what you're saying a lot earlier, but in different ways because we didn't have the political language for it. But I think ⁓ I think you're absolutely right. I mean, and for me, that changing force really was Jesus. You know, it really is is my faith and and choosing that break to choosing that path to break out of the cycle. There's no greater cycle breaker than the Lord. So I'm I'm grateful for that. And but thank you for saying that because yeah, we absolutely do need these things modeled. It's one of the things that she felt was very important in her life. They modeled it for the community, for the church, for their school, all the charity products. projects that she she did and that's how I would like to be. And it's funny you say that, Katie, because I was saying earlier, you know, we're I'm writing an article about Gary, Indiana. That's where we're from. And right now Gary's in week two of a power outage. It's a big disaster. Everyone's screaming racism, but it's an incompetently managed ⁓ town. And my husband grew up there and that's where his mom and dad lived. And ⁓ that when we left, we came to California for a better life for our children. And we live in this idyllic suburb now of California, the kind that people make fun of all the you know, funny enough, I moved out of the frying pan and into the fire because the suburb I live in now is also that suburb that's in the news right now because of the cancer clusters. That's my suburb too. So maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the problem. But ⁓ but I s was saying to somebody, because we went back to Gary and It's just a disaster like it was when we left. And I said, you know, I wonder who my children would be if we stayed, because what they see modeled as normal in our quiet California suburb is so different than what was normal there. The the challenges you described, that's what was normal. Single parenthood, domestic violence, gang violence. That was normal. Here, normal is a nuclear family, a mom and a dad and kids and baseball practice and walking to school and riding your bike. That's their to me, that is worth the effort and the cost and what it cost us to move the completely switch cultures to come here. So you're absolutely right about that. I speaker-1: Think that, you know, you and I, it sounds like both had conversion experiences. Like I wasn't raised in a Christian home. Either I'm I had a broken home, you know, my dad, my parents divorced when I was 10. My dad dated and remarried. My mom repartnered with a woman. You know, I was splitting time in those two households. Thankfully, I was still really connected to both my mom and my dad. They had a really amicable divorce. I was ⁓ I loved them both. But you know, there was there's instability. That's what happens after a divorce. And ⁓ I became a Christian. probably seven years after the divorce, like late in high school. And I did have like a emotional renewal, like a transformation inside. But that did not tell me how to be a wife. And that did not tell me how to have a healthy marriage. The way that I learned that is by watching people that had healthy marriages and by being invited over to people at church who were having family dinners afterwards and watching them be civil to one another and appropriate discipline and ⁓ conflict resolution and women, you know, the pastor's wife came up to me one time, you know, I'd probably been a Christian for two years and she said, Hi Katie, I'm really glad to see you at church today. Turn around and go change. I don't want my husband to stumble today. And I was like I mean, I didn't know how to be a woman at church. I needed very specific direction from people that loved me and were invested in me and who would tell me the truth. And you know, Katie, do you see how you just sort of like joked about Ryan in front of his friends? Don't ever do that again. If you have a problem with Ryan, especially if you're gonna get married, talk to him privately. But you don't ever shame him in front of his friends. Like I needed somebody to tell me that. And so it's like I it's good to have a spiritual transformation. It is good to be made new. It is good to be transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the sun that God loves. And we still need modeling. We still need embodiment. That is what discipleship is. It is following me as I follow Christ. You know, a lot of those people that did not walk with Jesus, they couldn't just be told, follow Jesus. They had to be told, follow Paul as Paul follows Jesus, right? You need somebody in your immediate world. You're gonna pattern yourself after them. Woe the children who only have brokenness to look around and pattern themselves after. You know, the culture that is going to not just do justice for children but be able to thrive is one where we give children lots and lots of examples of wholeness and health and sacrifice on their behalf. speaker-0: And putting them first too. They will learn so much when they see us put them first. And this is the thing that I really wanted, you know, I w I I've wanted to talk to you for so long because one of the things I wanted to say to you was thank you. You know, you've really changed my mind on a lot. Just because you have been bold enough to speak in clear terms, not because I didn't believe these things, but because the terms have not been clear. And there's been deliberate obscuse obfuscation of what. is happening to our children in our culture. And I think the thing that really changed how I feel about surrogacy, which I always had in, you know, a new a noodling about, but couldn't quite articulate why, or IVF even, and and gay marriage even. You know, when gay marriage came along, I thought, well, you know, I'm a Christian and I believe in God's plan for marriage, but this is the way the world says it. And okay, we're we're still going to hold the line on God's marriage. But I don't think I really applied what could happen to the family. And then it was when I heard you, and this is really the crux of your I guess I would call it a ministry, the crux of your ministry and your organization is is that we ⁓ we're talking about all of these things in terms of the comfort to adults, gay marriage, surrogacy, IVF, all of the stuff that surrounds divorce, You know, which is divorce is a big issue in the Christian church. You know, we look away from it way too much. And ⁓ but it made me realize, no, we're all having these conversations as like as it pertains to the grown-ups and who is talking about the kids and what it does to the kids. You know, Katie, I can remember being a young woman. I didn't meet my dad till I was eleven. And then he shortly after I got married, he re ⁓ I met him, he got remarried and started a family of his own. And I remember ⁓ crying to my mother and and not really understanding why I was feeling I liked his wife, like there was no issues there. But I I didn't understand why I was feeling so bad. And I was like, I guess I'm I'm upset that he gets to start with this new family. And I never got that. And I remember my mom saying, I don't understand what the problem is. He was never here for you anyway. Why do you even care? I'm here for you. Like just don't worry about it. Now, my mother grew up in a nuclear family, you know? So she didn't see the hole that was there. Your her experience was germane to her, and that's she projected that onto me. But when I hear you talk about children's rights and what they need and the loss that they experience no matter what the world tells us is going on for the adults, it makes me think of that Kira back then. speaker-1: You cried because his second family got what you wanted. That's why you cried. And they got what you deserved. You deserve to have your father married to your mother, being with you every single day of your life. You longed, you know, when you got to meet him, what was it like when you met him? Had you wondered who he was before that? Had you one like thought, does he want me? Where is he? Like what what did you think about before you met him? speaker-0: Yeah. Well, my situation was also exacerbated by the fact that my that I'm black and my mom's white, my dad was black, and we lived in ex we lived on a small Canadian island. I'm from Prince Edward Island originally in Canada. Oof. So I grew up on a small Canadian island, very isolated racially speaking. And so I looked very different from my mother as well. ⁓ but yeah, I always had questions. And then I guess one day she just thought, Well, he needs to come answer these questions. So he did. He came for a visit. He came up for a visit when I was about eleven. And what I remember being excited. I'd never I I remember not feeling resentment or, you know, anger, but just being really excited, nervous. The resentment came much later when I realized what a terrible father he was. But but ⁓ you know, I I remember being excited. speaker-1: Did you when you looked at him, did you think, Wow, somebody that looks like me? Was that meaningful to you? Why? speaker-0: Yes, yeah. Yes. ⁓ it was a connection. I guess I was I felt like maybe I was just really didn't belong anywhere. My mom had a partner as well who didn't who wasn't kind and didn't like me and wasn't good to me. And ⁓ and they had a child together too. And then they became a family in their own home. Like, but I was still on the outside. Like we didn't eat dinner together. They ate dinner and I would eat alone. Like that's how it was weird. It was a weird situation. So Seeing my dad, I think I was like, ⁓ there there is somebody that I actually belong to. I didn't look like my mom. Yeah, as I get older, I'm looking more like my mom, but you know, I didn't look like my mom. And yeah, so it made me feel like, ⁓ there's a connection to this world that's mine. speaker-1: Yeah, we again something else we say it then before us is it's hard for children to answer the question, who am I? if they can't answer the question, whose am I? And so that minute that you meet your father for the first time, you're like, okay, maybe he hasn't been here, but I'm his. Right? I came from him and it tells me something about myself. I belong. Like I have a connection. I know where I come from. I know why I look like this. Maybe even I like why I look like this now. A lot of kids don't like how they look until they know who they look like. And so it's it's so important because we try to pretend like you can just swap adults in and out of a child's life. They just need loving caregivers, you know, or maybe it's mom and then mom's new boyfriend. Well, they the adults are happy, the kids should be happy. But that biol biological piece is actually really important to kids. And If we acted like it was, it means a lot of adults would not get what they want sexually or romantically. That's why we diminished the importance of the biological connection, because it's a wrecking ball for adults that want some sexual agenda or appetite or ⁓ adventure. And if you knew that biology mattered to children, the answer to a lot of those ⁓ forays into the ⁓ romantic world would be no. You can't do that because that will be bad for your child. So we have to repeat these ideas that biology doesn't matter. And then Your experience as a stepchild, I don't know if they were married or not, but you were not the biological child of your mother's new partner. And we've got studies that show that that does not mean more love for you. That typically means less connection, right? You don't feel as connected. They don't feel like your parent, they don't feel like you are their child. There's less investment, right? They're in they're investing money and time. into their own biological child, not the unrelated child in their home. And hopefully this wasn't the case, but a lot of times that new partner or new spouse is less protective, where they're like, well, even if they're not outright abusive, which they're much more likely to be, you know, the answer to, well, where are the kids? Is, well, this kid is over here. The other one, I I don't I don't know. I haven't, who knows? Like they're just not as attentive to where the non-related child is. So it's just awful because In the name of adult desire, adult identity, we want to pretend like any two will do, any four will do, right? Love makes a family. But when you look at it from the child's perspective, there's only one man and one woman that grant them access to their biological identity that are going to give them maximized connection, investment, and protection. And then you need the male parent and the female parent to satisfy the child's longing. For male love and female love. I mean it's like unfortunately, the realities of the human child are inflexible. These are simply who children are and what they need. Adults are either gonna conform to those realities or ignore them and children are going to suffer. speaker-0: What about Katie? People who say so on the conservative side of media, we have a couple of personalities who are gay in gay marriages and have ⁓ cre created, bought their families through surrogacy. I'm not gonna mention the names because it's not I'm not trying to be controversial about them. I know them personally. ⁓ but I I I found it distasteful to be honest. It felt like when when I don't know how old are we around the same age, Katie. I feel like we are. I'm fifty-two. I'm fifty. Yeah, okay, there we go. Fifties unite. Let's go menopause. ⁓ but but so when gay marriage was first introduced, the idea of it the idea that I heard nonstop as a kid and teenager was Love is love and and look, these people, they just wanna be like the rest of us. And why can't gay couples adopt? You know, there's so many kids that need homes. If gay families want to take in adoptees, we should we should want that. But it didn't stop there. You know, it wasn't then they it now most gay marriage mi gay couples are creating the families. They're going and buying the kids the the uteruses. So what about the people as even on our side, Katie, who say, or the conservative side that say, ⁓ well, but these are good upstanding people and they're not abusive people and they're going to love these children. I mean, I have no doubt that that either of the men I'm thinking about are are going to love their children very deeply and even be good fathers. What about th those people who say that? speaker-1: Well, if this is just about the adults and how they feel and what they want, then everything's okay here. There's no problems. Right? I mean, those kids are probably gonna travel to more countries than I did by the time I was eighteen. I mean, they're gonna be able to go to private schools. I never went private schools. I mean, if this is just about providing material benefits or making sure that they have a home to grow up in, okay, no big deal. But every single one of those scenarios where it's two men that create a surrogate child, what they're doing is they are starving children of not just one mother But three mothers, three different there's three different facets of motherhood. Like when you think about your mother, you probably think, okay, this is the woman that I'm starting to resemble more and more as I age. You're thinking, this is the woman who was there, the only person that was there at times, you know, when I fell down and scraped my knee on the bike, or when I came home and I had to like talk through like this fight with a girlfriend in fourth grade, or ⁓ and you're probably thinking, This is the woman that gave birth to me. You know, this is the per w person in whose body I grew. So You didn't you have these three different facets of motherhood. The woman that contributes half of our biological identity, the woman with whom we form that critical bond. And my guess is that your mother you and your mother were probably pretty connected, even if you weren't as connected to her partner, ⁓ because she is your mother and you guys had a long from the moment of your creation bond that was uninterrupted, ⁓ reinforced by all kinds of oxytocin exchange during breastfeeding and Than the constant ⁓ presence of her meeting your needs as you were a young child and then moving on, you know, through that relationship into adulthood. Like, so you've got the she contributed half your genetic identity. She just dated you. She was the only person you were in contact with for the first nine and a half months of your life. And then she mothered you. She gave you the female specific love that satisfied your longing for maternal love. Now As nature designs it, all three of those women should be the same person. Okay, it is very, very hard for our species to separate those two. We have had situations of adoption where children would lose what was the birth and genetic mother and then be adopted by another social mother, an adoptive mother, but by the admission of adopted children and even adoptive parents, it is h that is a harder bond to build. ⁓ and those children, even though they are adopted. Like a lot of these kids that are created through surrogacy arrangements, even though the people raising them are wealthier, better educated, and adoptive parents statistically spend more time with their kids than the average biological parent. Adoptees struggle more than the run-of-the-mill child raised by their married biological parents. They have higher rates of externalizing disorders, ⁓ as in behavioral issues, they struggle more in school, they struggle more with substances. So there's something about that. That stripping children of their connection with their biological mother and reattaching them to biological strangers that hinders them long term. That something that money and wealth simply have not been able to fill the gap for. So what does surrogacy do? It maybe you land in a place that's lavish. You know, maybe it's maybe you've got a nice home and you're not it's not just a recording space in your crowded basement, you know? Maybe materially they're fine. But what are they gonna struggle with? They're gonna struggle with what you struggled with. Who am I? Who do I look like? Like some of these kids don't resemble the genetic parent that's in their home. Some of them maybe don't have a genetic parent at the home. Maybe they got a sperm donor and an egg donor, you know? So they're gonna struggle with identity issues. Second, when you sever a child from their birth mother, those children, like I said, tend to struggle more with trust and attachment in the future, even if they're raised by loving heterosexual parents. Right? We see that the adopte-e population generally suffers more as it relates to emotional struggles. ⁓ and then third, you're actually starving children of one critical developmental component, and that is the female presence. Like women do things for children that men don't do. Men offer something to children that's so wonderful. They're more tactile, they're more physical and aggressive with their play. They talk to children differently, they discipline them differently and all those benefit children, but they can't replace what a mother does, who's more emotionally in tune Who's more likely to nurture than encourage independence, the one that's gonna say be safe rather than go faster? You know, the one that is going to simplify simplify her language down to the child's level rather than talk to them like they talk to everybody else, like the dad does, you're actually starving children of a developmental staple in their diet. So what's the problem with these two men creating a child? Well, there's no problem as long as you don't mind identity struggles, attachment issues, and developmental challenges. There's no problem. speaker-0: They say there's not but they're but they're like, No, of course not. We're gonna love these kids. We're gonna love these kids. They're gonna be in a good home. They're wanted. Uh-huh. And they're not gonna I would like to point out that a lot of these people, almost all of them, grew up with a mom and a dad. So they don't like again, my mom asking me that question, why are you what's the big deal? You don't need him. Well, that's coming from a place of somebody who has grown up with a father in their life and th that that's baked in. It's baked into them they just assume that that's just ⁓ the default, as you said. That's just natural. speaker-1: Well and I you know, it's interesting, Guy Benson announced his second surrogate child in the last few weeks, and he's going gushing on and on about how much they love her and they're so happy. It was like a week before that that he was doing a tribute to his mother, who I think is struggling with Alzheimer's or something. ⁓ And he was talking about how devastated he was and how much she means to him, and she's his mother, and there's nobody like her in the w Yes. Now, do you think that you could have just swapped out that woman for a Chinese billionaire? And it would have zero impact on your development and your identity, your understanding of yourself as a man. No, that woman is special to you, and there's no other woman on the planet that could do for you what she did. And yet you turned around and you said, I'm gonna deny my children the very thing that I am mourning and celebrating. So it is it's very adult-centric, you know? It is very like my identity is going to determine the outcomes for this family. And that that's just not true. Like even when we look at donor conceived ch the largest study ever conducted on children created just through sperm donation. So they only lost their biological father. They always had their biological mother. They sometimes had a female partner and they sometimes had an opposite sex partner. All of those kids really struggled and they only lost their biological dad. They didn't lose the gestational mother. They didn't lose their their genetic mother. ⁓ they didn't grow up in a mother starved home. Some of them didn't, you know, some of them had fathers in the home and yet They all still struggled. So you think that that gets better when there's no mother around at all? And all of those children, I guarantee you, when you talk to a child born through surrogacy or born through sperm or egg donation, they will constantly, they've heard over and over all their life, two things. You're so lucky because you were loved and wanted. I mean, you're not like the kid who's next door whose parents just got pregnant in the backseat of a car. Oopsie, I guess we're having a kid now. You're lucky because you were so planned. You were so wanted. You know how much money we We spent so much money to have you. We went through I had to put so many needles in my belly. You're actually wanted more than everybody. I mean, okay, so you don't have your father in your life, but you're loved and wanted and wanted and loved and loved and wanted and wanted and loved. And that kind of messaging, it actually does not compensate for the identity struggles and the father hunger that a lot of these kids experience. The other thing that these kids hear over and over and over is you wouldn't be alive without this. I mean, are you saying you'd rather be dead? speaker-0: My gosh. What? speaker-1: It's just that well, it's like that's what they say about when I post about, hey, this is an injustice. These two men created a motherless child. Bazillion replies are, okay, the kid wouldn't be alive without this technology. So I guess you don't believe that children have a right to life. Hmm. Is that it? I'm like, no, actually, you can believe that children have a right to life, that they shouldn't be killed in utero, that they shouldn't be discarded because the embryo ⁓ mass production produced some suboptimal kids. I think that you can believe children have a right to life and believe. That they have a right to their mother and father, that both of those two things go together. And just because the child is born doesn't mean that we legitimize every way. I mean, children are born through rape. Do we think rape is a good idea? Children are born through adultery, and those children are they really struggle. I've met kids that are, you know, that were born and are in an adulterous relationship, growing up side by side with the children in the legitimate relationship. ⁓ Those are not good situations for the child. There's a lot of things that produce life that actually, because we love the child, we need to be critical of the circumstances of their conception. speaker-0: Scott, can you bring up the photo from Katie's timeline of the the photo of the two men and their baby? ⁓ you posted a photo and this was a viral photo, it went around, but the two gay men after ⁓ they had their surrogate gave birth in the hospital, and they are there on the ⁓ on the table or I on in the bed. ⁓ neither one of them delivered, but they're both there in the bed. Do you have this picture, Scott? Okay. ⁓ and they have their one is holding I guess they both did this. They took off their shirts and held their baby to their chest the way that a mom does when her baby comes. You know, that's the fur I had kids by C section, so the first thing they had to do is put the kids up to my face, but they made sure we had contact and ⁓ this picture is I found to be particularly disturbing and you have laid out a great case for for why this is not just A lot of people like, what a beautiful photo. No, but it's actually a great deception. It's a fake. It's a fake. Speak to this photo and why what is it that an infant is getting right out of the womb when we place that infant on their mother's chest? And can they get that from a father or a third party? Thank you, Scott. speaker-1: This is a picture of a child being forced to sacrifice for adults. That's what it is. It's not a beautiful picture. It's not love makes a family. It's not like, ⁓ look at these two loving parents. This is two grown men who, through contracts and money, are depriving a child of something that they will never be able to give the baby on so many levels. Obviously, biological identity. ⁓ number two, the maternal love that the baby's going to need to maximize their development all throughout their life. But right there at that moment, ⁓ there is something about the birth mother's body. That does something for babies that other skin to skin contact doesn't do. So you'll often see, you know, I ask everywhere if I go speak at like a medical conference or OBGYN conference, I'll be like, hey, tell me where the you put the baby right after the baby's born. And like in unison, they're like, on the mother's chest. Why? Why is that? Well, because they know that it regulates the baby's body temperature. ⁓ the breast milk, the colostrum in the mother's body smells exactly like. The amniotic fluid that the baby has been in. So the baby instinctually is going to turn towards the breast, like look towards it for the sake of feeding. Her presence, right, which is her voice that the baby recognizes, the heartbeat, especially the smell, ⁓ that actually drops the baby's cortisol level. So skin-to-skin contact will drop cortisol because it releases oxytocin. But on the mother's body, that is where you get the really potent effects of increased oxytocin. So when the baby is sad, tired, distressed, hungry, ⁓ it is the mother, the birth mother's body that regulates the cortisol, the stress hormones in ways that skin-to-skin contact with a hairy stranger or even the biological father will not do. So they've even measured this in terms of like pain response. If the baby is on the birth mother's chest when they prick the heel to get the blood test, the baby feels less pain. Than when the baby is on the father's chest or on a nurse's chest or sitting in the bassinet. Like it's it's so objectively measurable that these two people, the birth mother and the baby, are connected to one another in a way that the baby is not to anybody else. The baby will form a bond with the father later on as they grow through different play and responsiveness and the father meeting the child's needs, and but it's nothing like what the birth mother is doing, especially in those first days and weeks and years. There's something about her about the first three years, mother's presence is critical. She responds to the baby differently. She she meets the baby's needs in ways that no other adult can. ⁓ this is a real loss for children who are adopted, who are not having the presence of the birth mother. And this is why adoptive parents like me and so many others go through training and education so that they can understand. What the child has lost and the different levels of understanding and grieving that the baby child is gonna go through as they mature. So we recognize this everywhere. Unless it's two men that want a child, and then it's love makes a family. speaker-0: Yeah, it's ⁓ it's a counterfeit, isn't it? And and that's what a lot of this boils down to, people trying to create counterfeit create, you know, t to counterfeit God's creation. Yeah, I suppose even and even gay marriage, I think, you know, I I went from, well, you know, whatever the people decide to n I think now I'm permanent in in the camp of repealing this because it's had devastating consequences. I mean, I literally just read Katie yesterday, I think in the New York Post or California Post about a thruple that is, you know, applying w the third wants to be on the birth certificate. And when we went through the gay marriage debate, a lot of people on the right were like, well, if if two men can be a parent unit, then why can't three? Why can't four? And everyone was like, there's no such thing as a slippery slope. You guys are being ridiculous. And now Here we are, right smack dab in the middle of like we're at the end of the slippery slope, we're right at the bottom. And it happens so fast. It's a counterfeit. speaker-1: Yep. Let me explain exactly why polyamory is a hundred percent next. So what is marriage? Marriage does marriage has three specific characteristics that set it apart from other relationships. The relationship you have with your child, the relationship you have with your parents, the relationship you have with your friends, with your business partners, you know, with the person that sends sells you your cell phone. Like we have relationships with all kinds of people. Marriage has three characteristics that make it different from those relationships. The first one is it's permanent. It's supposed to be till death do us part. The second one is it's supposed to be complementary, as in both halves of the species are represented, male and female. And the third one is it's supposed to be monogamous, one flesh, right? It's supposed to be excluding all others. It's supposed to be forsaking all others. Okay. So that's typically what we have recognized both religiously and in our civil life. Okay. Permanence, monogamy, and complementarity. So the first thing on the chopping block. Those three things, they lay down serious constraints on adult behavior. I mean, if you get into a marriage, and those are the three characteristics, ⁓ it will govern your choices and your behavior. And once we hit that sexual revolution in the sixties where we're like, well, any kind of governing my behavior is oppression, we had to slowly deconstruct all three of those. So the first one to go was permanence, right? It was the heterosexuals that started to deconstruct marriage by passing no fault divorce. There are are legitimate reasons for a marriage to break down adultery, abuse, addiction, abandonment. But that's not the majority of reasons why marriages end these days. Marriages end today because some woman falls into the Instagram vortex of male hating divorce. content producers, you know, and they go, actually, I have all the my mental load and it's not being seen. And I actually understand me. And you know, actually like three days off without my kids, like that sounds great. And like, ⁓ I had the divorce glow up and now look how hot I am. And I mean like it's a social contagion for a lot of women, but it does allow you to sexually be free. And so they pass no fault divorced starting in the late sixties, all through the seventies, eighties and nineties. ⁓ And we removed permanence as an exploct so now marriage is just, well, this is a vehicle for adult fulfillment. And it is once you're an unfulfilled, it doesn't have to be a marriage anymore. Well then the gays were like, okay, well, if this doesn't have to do with the importance of children, which if you're divorcing, obviously you don't care about the kids. ⁓ and if this is just a vehicle of adult fulfillment, well then being married to another guy or another girl fulfills me. So if you're if permanence doesn't matter, why does compliment why does complementarity matter? And the answer is it doesn't. Like if this is An adult centric institution. Get rid of those. So obviously, if this is not about children, if this is just a vehicle of adult fulfillment, if permanence and complementarity don't matter, why on earth are we sticking with monogamy? Pfft. That doesn't make any sense because they also have a sexual identity, right? I'm I'm polyamorous, right? Right. I'm pansexual, like whatever it is. And ⁓ now we believe that a a child's own mother and father don't offer anything special. So Why not load up with two or three or seven more adults in the home? So a hundred percent, right? It's already happening in the world of parenting. Like Canada passed gay marriage in 2005. They immediately redefined parenthood to say biology is not the basis for parenthood. It's only legal parents, which by the way means the state gives and takes parental rights. But they also passed the All Families Are Equal Act to say that a child could have up to four parents, because once it's not about the kids. and it's just about the adults, then it's not just adults are permitted to do what they want. It is the state must endorse and promote whatever the adults want. So hell yes, we roll back gay marriage and then we go straight for divorce. speaker-0: Yeah, listen, the the church has to have a big conversation about divorce too. I mean, I'm I probably yeah, probably fifty percent of my church friends are divorced. I had one friend tell me she she was like she loved it because she got to send her kids away, you know, every other weekend or whatever. She was like, actually it's really nice. And I just remember thinking, For who? For your your kids have two two houses that they have to live in. Also, why do I have a real problem with the idea that when you divorce your kids have to s suddenly have two separate spaces and two dressers and two like why do they have to be inconvenienced? Y'all stay in the same house. How about that? Y'all move around and and let the kids stay in their home, but we've just completely flipped it on its head and now everybody's justifying everything. And I believe me, I know been married 27 years. I know all of the ups and downs. come with marriage and how lonely you can feel or abandoned or there's rejection, sometimes all kinds of adultery, like all kinds of issues. But, you know, I searched the scriptures for what the allowances are for divorce. And it's a very narrow, you know, and and now that we see we're living in a post-divorce society, we're really seeing, I think, you know, the, the, the results of really just even in the church accepting that and not c and I feel like we're very accepting of it. It's not like we're because sometimes in the church we're like, hey, we're Jesus is here to heal. We're here to offer you healing, repentance, we're here to walk with you. People take that to mean we are never to judge you or to offer you a word of judgment like that pastor's wife who told you, Katie, you are dressing appropriately for church. ⁓ You know, we need to be able to say that to our fellow Christians too. And I would want somebody to say that to me if I was in the situation too. And we we don't we seem to have pegged that as unloving because people are hurting, adults are hurt. speaker-1: And they are hurting, like a marriage is hard, experiencing same-sex attraction is hard, going through infertility is hard, unwanted singleness is hard. ⁓ adults everything I talk about is a heavy burden for adults. Yeah. None of it justifies burdening a child by making them do the work that you refuse to. That's just the bottom line. Like someone's gonna do the hard thing here. It is either gonna be adults who work on their marriage, who figure out a way to resolve their infertility without using a donor. The person with same-sex attraction who has to reconcile those feelings with their identity. And then if they want to have a family, create a family where the child does not lose their mother or father to be in it. I mean, like either the adults will do that hard thing or children will do the hard thing, lose their mother or father in the situation where your friends are shipping their kids between homes. You know, the kids have two different homes. Studies show that 50% of them will develop two different personalities in those two homes. I mean, psychologically it's such a strain on kids. So, like, don't pretend like there's no hard things. I will acknowledge that this is a hard thing for you. I will acknowledge that your marriage is hard, that the infertility is hard, that the same sex attraction is hard. I will acknowledge it. I will do my best to bear your burden. I will walk with you. But especially Christians will say none of that justifies burdening a child. Yeah. Like someone's shoulder is going to bear it needs to be the strong shoulders of the adults. You don't crush the children's shoulders as a result. speaker-0: We are cr we we just crush so many children so easily these days. Again, this is why I think your message has been so effective and it even was so effective in my life. It was it was the clarity of this is not about the adults. This is about the children, what they need first, them before us. I just want to read a couple of comments I'm getting here. Hi, Kira and Katie. Penultimate purple pen says, Hi Katie and Kira. Love you ladies. You're doing Great work. Hello. ⁓ girl on foot said, These two ladies, fire. Thank you both. You are welcome. And a little earlier I missed this comment, but D Kat said, Kira, thank you for stepping in for Tony Katz this morning. I subbed on India Indianapolis Radio this morning. At the last second, you're a blessing. You and Katie are talking about families whom we were never sure, ⁓ whom we are never sure how long they will be there. Right. We're we're never sure. how long our families are gonna be there or how long we're gonna have these connections. And so it's really important to to talk about these things. I do wanna, I do wanna talk since we really are talking about the value of children, this week, Katie, I've been talking a lot about the Lindsay Clancy case, which I have not been really keeping up with until this week, ⁓ this past five days or so. It's exploded. We're having a huge conversation about postpartum, depression, mental health, the medications, all of that. And ⁓ but I did a little weird episode. I called it my weird episode and I it's not really what I do, but I've been thinking a lot about the Epstein files and how they were released on us, but then nothing happened. And if you and I'm not talking about political wise, there's a lot of weird stuff in the Epstein Files. If you go look in there, it's child sacrifice, satanic rituals, a cult, a worldwide global satanic cult, like all of this crazy stuff is in there. And I remember the president saying, I don't think we should release these. It's really no point. You're not going to get what you want out of them and there's nothing to be prosecuted in there. And we had a big argument and we released them. And I felt like releasing the when you release something like that, when the whole population is part of almost like a ritual almost. And but w what when we see something like that, but we don't hold it accountable, either because we can't or we won't, we're bringing judgment on ourselves. And then the Lindsay Clan Clancy case broke. And it's occupying so much of our conversation and other cases are starting now to pop up in social media. It's making me feel like we've released something on our population that we were not ready for. And it's manifesting itself in the devaluation of of the children's lives. Even on the right, people are having this entire conversation about Lindsay Clancy and no one's mentioning the horrific death of her kids and what she did to The children, three children, it's very hard to strangle somebody, and she strangled her three kids, and that was the last face that they saw before they died, and that is the most horrific type of death to to see to be betrayed like that by your own biology. But I feel like even the discussion around the Lindsay Clancy case points to how we are devalu devaluing even on the right, whether we Recognize this or not, and we can even pair this with the surrogacy issue and IVF, that we are devaluing children and children's rights and their comfort ⁓ at the exp for the expense of the mental health or mental safety of adults. It's really getting to me this week, and I'm starting to see all these connections converge on one point. speaker-1: I look at the ⁓ hysteria of all these women that are out there in support of Lindsay. And ⁓ it's it's so me obsessed, right? And and it's so much of like I was thinking about this this morning that I hate the term. I feel so seen. I they see me, right? I hate that because it's that is a that is crumbs of what you deserve. You deserve to be known. Not seen. You deserve to be known, you need to be known. But because we are not known by the people that we do not have the deep bonds that we need. We do not have genuine friendships, not superficial gossipy friendships. It's not an online friend life. You deserve to be known by the pastor's wife who loves you, wants you, and then calls you out, you know, when you are stepping out of line because she loves you. And all of these women, because I really do think they have such superficial connections, because most of their life is online that. Some of them I think probably have really struggled. Honestly, anybody that's had a newborn understands what it means to be tired and maybe even a little psychotic. Like I know that when I'm not getting enough sleep, I am like, I am not well. Somebody, somebody take take this child. Please just let me take a nap. And so I think that, you know, what they're saying is like, ⁓ see, I need to be seen. I need to be seen. Because I don't have somebody that's in this with me going, Hey, you're doing a great job, but I think that you need a break. I am going to be there at your house tomorrow at one o'clock and you're gonna leave. You're gonna leave for three hours because you need a break. Okay, and your kid's gonna be fine. I'll take care of them, leave some bottles, it's okay. What people need is to be known. But we're not building a ⁓ environment, certainly not with single mothers who are really overburdened. I mean, I can see a lot of those women Being in genuine distress with a newborn and doing it alone. For them to go, sometimes I feel psychotic too. Like sometimes I think, I want to drive away and never come back, you know? So I think that like all the hysteria and the me-centric stuff that you're seeing, especially on behalf of women, is because they do not have the relationships that they need, especially in those early years of motherhood. When think about it, like we are designed to have a baby with our mother nearby, our sisters, our aunts. We're supposed to kind of have a tribe around us, you know? and a lot of women don't. They don't even have a husband. And so of course they're gonna go through these stressors of having a baby and being exhausted to the point of I don't want to say psychosis because it's a that's a really serious issue. But yeah, I think all of us have felt a little bit crazy when we're sleep deprived when we have very little kids. And so I just think like it is a people's genuine needs, relational needs. are unmet, and then they will grasp but whatever kind of connection that they can make, even if it's with a I understand Lindsay and what she's going through. Like I've been there myself. I'm like, I'm sorry that your lack of human connection leads you to the place where you say, I need to identify with that. You're so desperate for connection that you're identifying into her. Because what we really all of us need to be identifying primarily with the kids. You know, like if there is a empathy needs to be speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: expressed here, but it is a misapplication of empathy if the empathy is going to her and not to the children. But I think it's a I think it's a a lot of these women are starved of the human connections that they need. speaker-0: Yeah, it's kind of like I I watch a lot of a lot of ⁓ abolitionist videos, abortion abolitionist videos, and they those guys ⁓ you know, they confront very angry women all the time and a l ⁓ I mean, almost exclusively those women turn out to be women who have had abortions, right? It is and I think it's the same thing here where these are women who have either a lot of these women are probably post abortive, but also ⁓ a lot of these women have like you say, have not had connec ⁓ connections that they needed, but have indulged their rage in their life. And maybe this is a type of permission as well. I just think you're right when you say you have to be thinking of the children first. I'm even hear hearing conservatives say, we're not saying that what she we're not defending her. What we're saying is there's other factors here. You need to look at the type of medication. Like all that's true, right, by the way. The crazy way we're medicating ourselves and we don't know anything about the long-term effects of these things. Regard to me, regardless, you you have still left the children at the end of this equation instead of at the beginning. And I can tell you, and I'm sure you can tell me, Katie, as a mother, there's nothing I won't do to protect my children, including taking myself out of the equation. If I cannot guarantee their protection from me, even in my worst mental state, there is a biological imperative and a spiritual imperative, and it was broken with Lindsay Clancy and her kids suffered because of that. But yet the whole conversation is about the adult. speaker-1: Yeah. Because these women are like I have this I have this struggle. Nobody's n seeing me and helping me with it. So this is my chance to talk about me and how I've struggled. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. It's all be motherhood and every it's all become so self centered, hasn't it? Everything has become that's what social media has done. That's why we God doesn't give us mirrors. You know, mirrors are a man man made invention. We're not supposed to be looking at ourselves this much says as she stares into the camera, looking at herself for her job. But but we're not supposed to be navel gazing this much. And I think a lot of ⁓ the the and I see this, Katie, even just in my little speaker-1: Second. speaker-0: suburb where there's lots of great married couples, a lot of millennial couples. Can't tell you how many of my millennial mom friends are constantly complaining about how the workload with the kids is not divided exactly evenly between them and their husband. This 50-50 thing is a whole thing. It makes me think of my mother-in-law who was like, no, Kira, you have babies. When the kids get older, husband will be more, you know, he'll have more responsibility, but the babies are not. Husband doesn't get up with babies. He's gotta go to work. Husband doesn't but we're now in this, I think same thanks to social media and all the navel gazing, in this ⁓ in this timeline where women feel like, no, everything's supposed to be exactly 5050 and I'm not supposed to be stressed and my husband is supposed to be taking on a lot of the burden. We haven't trained our women very well. I guess I shouldn't talk because I had a great mother in law who taught taught me these things that I didn't know before. But there are women out there who are just very like it is self centered. I'm supposed to be totally comfortable in this marriage and my husband's not doing enough of the work with the kids. I'm I'm not seen. speaker-1: Like if you guys both have full-time jobs, or if neither of you have full-time jobs, it makes sense to split the duties. But if he is out the door at 6 30 and doesn't get home until six, yes, the household load is not going to be shared evenly. And what's ironic is that men's involvement with children, their time with kids and playing with kids has gone up drastically by like two hours on average a week, I think. in the last 20 years. So men are actually more involved than they've ever been before. And interestingly, black men spend more time with their kids than white fathers do if they're married to the mother. And so this whole myth of fathers are not involved and fathers don't do enough. Fathers are actually doing more than they've ever done in the past as it relates to being with kids and raising kids and helping with the kids. Now maybe that doesn't translate into a split in household duties, but there's a trade off here. speaker-0: Interesting. speaker-1: He's doing the lineman job for 12 hours. So maybe he's gonna come home and he's not gonna do all the vacuuming. You know, but it's it really is a training thing. And you're exactly right. There's God forbid these women turn to Instagram or TikTok to have to be seen, because all of those sources will just do exactly what you did. Look at yourself. What how are you suffering? What do you want? How are you uncomfortable? What do you need? Instead of turning it, turning it back and saying, How can I serve? How can I give? This is a challenging season. Who else is around me that I can connect with, that can support me, that I can talk to, that can empathize, that can give me some good direction? Like we are actually not supposed to live life in life in isolation. We especially need those people that we admire who are a few steps ahead of us, right? Because we're mimetic, because we become what we behold, because we need embodied direction from people who don't just tell us what to do, but love us enough to give us. Tailored advice right where we are. Like the advice that I need right now with three kids that are adults and out of the home and one teenager is very different than the advice I needed 10 years ago. But I still need advice from women who have adult children who can tell me, you know, here's how I navigate the relationship with my new son-in-law. I'm like, ⁓ my God, give me that information, please us. You know? We all need somebody that's a few steps ahead of us to, you know, we all need a Paula Barnabas and and a Timothy. We all need somebody who've like Paul, a few steps ahead of us that we can model ourselves after. We need a few barnabuses, people right where we are that we can empathize with. And what's it like when you walk into their room and they're gone because they're in college and you're like, ⁓ yes, my children have left me. And then you all need some Timothy's, you know, of people that are a few steps behind you that are like, okay, my kids just hit puberty and they got their driver's license. And how do I do do I check their phone every time they leave? I what do I do? You know, all of us need people that are at all three of those levels. And at all those levels, you need truth, you need vulnerability. And if you're a Christian, you need biblical principles. Right. That's actually like what that network of relationships should look like for all of us. That's the recipe for health. That's the recipe to not have people like outside of Lindsay Clancy's trial going, I'm her No, no, no, no. That you need a network of people at all those different levels, right? So that you can have health. and flourishing and get through the tr the struggles and the challenges that happen at every different phase of of your own life, let alone your kids' life. speaker-0: Well, isn't it interesting that we just came through a very unique period in the pandemic where our churches were shut down, we weren't allowed to see family, and now we're suffering a lonely a loneliness pandemic. and it's all connected. You know, and I'm just starting to see everything is converging on this on these same issues, but ultimately it is it's it's navel gazing, it's looking inward. It's it's putting yourself first. Again, why you guys are them before us. And I as a mother, as a Christian and as somebody who has very solid opinions about gay marriage and sexuality and transgenderism, all of these all of these things, I just think that there is this aspect of the modern young person, and young is relative because I'm 52, but the modern young person that is. I'm not supposed to be feeling any discomfort at any time. And if I'm feeling discomfort or sadness or depression, there must be something wrong rather than no, this is actually what life is. And you are not entitled to a comfortable life. And by the way, raising kids isn't comfortable. Do you want it to be? Do you know what happens when you when you take your hands off and you don't guide your child and at all? they you get a silver spoon, baby, or a serial killer, you know, you get something very twisted. Well, we have this I and I feel like this is what's going on with the TikTok moms. This idea that, ⁓ I'm so tired and I'm so hungry and I'm not supposed to be these things. No, you are supposed to be those things. That's literally motherhood. You are last. You're last. Like don't be a mother if you're not willing to come last for a long time. speaker-1: And honestly, it's a it's a meta principle that applies to everything that is meaningful in life. And that is you will have to choose short-term death with long-term gain or short-term gratification with long-term empty emptiness. Like that's the trade-off that you're making. Everything that matters, everything that's meaningful in life will require a short-term sacrifice or a short-term death. And then you get this long-term gain. You obviously see it when you're trying to like get fit and go to the gym. You're like, okay, I can go and have an hour of pain. And I can do that over and over every single day. But then long term, I get this body that's functional and healthy and fit and beautiful, you know, or I can do it in relation to relationships. You know, I can either go and tell that friend, it really hurt me when you invited everybody else out after church and you didn't invite me, and I feel like you're angry and you're avoiding me. You can either do that and then have have them say, ⁓ my gosh, I'm so sorry, I had no idea, or have them go, actually yes, you know, because When you said this last week, it really hurt me and I didn't know how to but thanks for coming to me and we can resolve it. Or you can bury and put under the you can just shovel under the carpet every c interpersonal conflict and find yourself completely isolated, shallow friendships, and sucked into influencers who say that they care about you and don't even know your name. I mean, like pick, pick your hard. You know, you can either get married, have babies, do the work of getting up in the middle of the night, enjoying like How adorable they are when they first learn to coup, you know, enjoy all of their first steps, but then also deal with the trips to the emergency room when they, you know, disconnect their elbow or whatever it is. Like you can deal with the short term, which is a short amount of time when your kids are young, and then the long-term harvest of like you and me having adult kids who are awesome and the best people to be with, and the ones that you think my life is better when they're at home, even though I love what they're doing in their life. And then we get to we get to just cash in on the dividends until we die with those kids. But yeah, for those first three years there wasn't speaker-0: I can remember my mother and father in law telling me my son was about three or four and he's you know, they used to keep him a lot and I went over one day and he was being a brat. He was in his terrible threes or whatever. He's being a brat and I spanked He knows. speaker-1: Are gonna put up with this Scott? Yeah, get in here. Cut off my feet, Scott. speaker-0: ⁓ No, he was being a brat. And so I whooped him there in front of his grandparents and grandma, granny especially, she didn't like to see that. Even she whooped her kids, but don't whoop her grandkids. And then, you know, my father in law is like, Yeah, that's how you do it. You gotta do it. And I I remember crying and saying, I feel like I'm disciplining. All the time right now, I feel like I'm doing something wrong and I I don't know where the joy is. Like I feel like it's just constant discipline. And they told me, just stay the course, Kira. Hang in there. You're doing hard work now, so you don't have to do it later. You don't want to do this on the other end. Stay the course. It's gonna even out. And they were right. They were right. And now Like you just said, my children are wonderful. They're great people to be around. They're productive members of society. And no one has a bad word to say about them. At least no one I know. ⁓ because I'd punch that person in the face. But no, they're great kids, but it it took sacrifice on that end. It's not like I don't like doing bedtime, like having a bedtime and sticking to it. I didn't like discipline. I didn't like those things, didn't like making my kids eat the vegetable they didn't want to eat. I didn't like that. A lot of people feel like a lot of moms feel like, well, I just don't like to do it. Like I don't either. It's not like I like it. I'm doing the thing you won't do. I'm doing the thing that's uncomfortable so I can have this later. But the idea that people people just don't want to put in the work, they it's not even that. They don't want the discomfort. That's the problem. They don't want the discomfort. speaker-1: They want the short term comfort with the long term disadvantage for both them and their children that go with it. So it's like, yeah, you can do the short term thing that's hard and reap the long term suffering, or vice versa. The short term death, the long term game. Like you have to pick your hard. Pick the thing in the short term that won't last very long, that's going to pay lifelong dividends. speaker-0: Yeah. Cause your kids are gonna be bigger and older and bigger than you someday. Like I remember thinking, like, my son's gonna be bigger than me. I need to make sure he knows, like, you don't ever step to your mama. Like you, you know, and that's the son I raise. He's a good boy. So but he's he could beat me up in a second if he really wanted to. Don't beat me up, Scott. Or your dad will get you. I know we have to get going, and I feel like I could do a whole other hour before I let you go, Katie. ⁓ and I would love to have you back. I'd love to explore more of these topics because there's there's so much to talk about here. ⁓ do you think that it should be illegal for ⁓ same-sex couples to use surrogacy or to adopt? speaker-1: Surrogacy should be banned for everybody. This is not a problem for gay men. This is a problem with adults buying, procuring, designing, discarding, and delivering children ⁓ in the name of family building. There's no way to regulate surrogacy to make it safe for children. It needs to be banned outright outright in terms of adoption. Adoption is for children. It's not for adults. We should never say, should gay couples be able to adopt? The question is. Who can adopt this child that will meet the child's needs? And whenever possible, that needs to be a married man and woman. Because all children need a mother and father. But children who have lost their mother or father especially need maternal and paternal love. ⁓ the child is the client in adoption, not adults. Not it's not a way for infertile couples to have a child. It's not a way for gay families, you know, to have a baby. It is for children. These children who have lost their mother or father are disadvantaged in a way that it's hard to put into words, and a just society is going to restore to them what they have lost as close as possible, which is a married mother and father that are parenting them. speaker-0: think we need look no further than our own good word, the Bible that tells us to come to him as little children. And the older I get, the more I appreciate that phrase, what it really means, the innocence with with which we're supposed to approach the kingdom, with which we were meant to remain in. But also in God's kingdom, you know, flipping the the child sacrifice thing and making them important. He has elevated children in his king it is such a special creative ability that we have is elevated children. We must do the same. So I really appreciate your work out there and your honesty. I know it's not easy. I know the internet can get super mean. Believe me, being a black conservative, you get you get a lot, you get a lot of complaints. ⁓ but I I just wanted you to know that for me, your message has made a real difference in how I look at all of this. And I appreciate the clarity. And that is why We need people who are going to be clear about what they believe as we move forward in this new version of America. Wherever we're going, God bless the the clear people, the clarity. People need to speak with clarity. ⁓ closing thoughts and tell people where they can find your stuff and go buy your books. speaker-1: Yeah, go to thembefore us dot com and subscribe to our Substack, like I will equip you all. speaker-0: But clunch He's a good boy. speaker-1: boy, he's a good boy. ⁓ there you can subscribe to our Semstack three days a week. We will just send you information on how to fight for kids, how to equip equip yourselves to defend kids. Answers about surrogacy, answers about divorce, answers about why gay marriage victimizes children, even if the gay couple down the street doesn't have kids. Like, come to me and I will set you on fire to be a defender of children. I mean, we have got to rise up on their behalf because they can't defend themselves and speak for themselves and You know, either we defend these individual children or we wreck the next generation. So I think that we all need to step up and and be their voice. speaker-0: And you'll tell stor you tell stories. I'm a subscriber to them before us. You guys share the stories of the children who that's what I find most effective too. So if you are thinking this is just an ethereal or an intellectual conversation, you can go to that website and you can read the actual stories from actual children. Some who come like you, Katie, from loving homes. You know, your mom and her partner loved you, your dad loved you, they were amicable, but even still the loss is. It's actually gut wrenching to read some of these things. And it feels like I'm reading my if I could have written at that age, that's what I would have said. And I wish that there were somebody to say it clearly so I knew that I wasn't crazy. And these feelings of loss and loneliness are normal because what happened to me was abnormal. That's speaker-1: That's exactly right. That's exactly the way to say it. speaker-0: Yeah. All right, Katie, you're the best. speaker-1: Thank you, thanks for letting me join you. speaker-0: All right. I'm gonna I wait before you go, just make sure that this show gets uploaded. So and everybody go find Katie then before us. Sign up for everything. ⁓ just Kira Davis.com or the Orange Report O C. Go go look for the Orange Report. Just go look for me. You'll see it everywhere and I'll be posting Katie's clips for the rest of the week. So thank you so much, Katie Fowls. God bless you all. Don't forget that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So go shine a light.