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May 19, 2023By Charlie Camosy, OSV News
Katy Faust is founder and president of "Them Before Us," a global movement that works toward "giving children a voice in the debate over family structure." She publishes, speaks and testifies widely on why marriage and family are matters of justice for children, and her articles have appeared in Newsweek, USA Today, The Federalist, Public Discourse and elsewhere. Faust helped design the teen edition of CanaVox which studies sex, marriage and relationships from a natural law perspective, and whose resources have been promoted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. An evangelical Christian, Faust and her pastor husband are raising their four children in Seattle. She spent some time explaining her passionate engagement on these issues with "Camosy at Large" for OSV News.
Charlie Camosy: You have another take on the familiar mantra that pro-lifers often hear from our opponents: "What about the rights of the child after they are born?" Could you say more about this?
Katy Faust: Pro-lifers are correct that we need to protect the rights of the child in the womb. Children have a right to life. It is their primary natural right and we must fight to protect that right even when our laws deny it. But the other side is correct that children have rights on this side of the womb as well. They are just wrong about what those rights constitute.
Children don't have a right to sexual pleasure, or a right to have a trans identity hidden from their parents at school, or the right to obtain testosterone from Planned Parenthood. Those are left-wing priorities cloaked in the language of children's rights. When we look at natural law, or when we look to the most widely ratified treaty in the world, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, we see that following close on the heels of children's right to life is the right to be known, loved, and raised by their own mother and father whenever possible.
I believe most on the left genuinely care about children escaping poverty, graduating high school, avoiding teen pregnancy and homelessness, going to college rather than to prison, and being physically, mentally and emotionally healthy. By the numbers, and by their own stories, children are most likely to succeed in all those areas when their right to be known, loved, and raised by both mother and father is respected and protected. Historically, we have achieved that through the institution of marriage. And yet, that is the very institution the left has relentlessly sought to dismantle. There will be no thriving children without a thriving marriage culture.
Camosy: What kind of our cultural ideas and practices do these insights call into question? Among other things, I'm interested in the growing interest in a supposed right to procreate.
Faust: An easier question would be, 'what kind of cultural ideas and practices are not called into question' if children do indeed have a right to their own mother and father?
Children are not items to be cut and pasted into any and every adult arrangement. The onus is on adults to conform to their natural rights, rather than insisting that children sacrifice their rights so adults can live as they please. How does that work itself out in the real world? It means that, in the case of an unplanned pregnancy, couples who are hooking up or shacking up reorient their lives around the child's rights, committing to one another and the baby.
It means that except in extreme cases of abuse, adultery or addiction, the couple in the struggling marriage does the hard work of resolving their differences, so their children are not condemned to a split home and split lives.
It means we ban all third-party reproduction which intentionally and commercially separates a child from their biological father, biological mother and/or birth mother regardless of whether the commissioning parents are single, married, gay, straight, fertile or infertile.
It means the adults who experience same-sex attraction create families that align with children's right to be known and loved by both mother and father every day rather than insisting children lose their father or mother to join the household.
It means mothers and fathers in stable marriages open their homes and their hearts to orphan and foster kids who desperately need a mom and dad.
In the world of children's rights, adults often don't get what they want, but children always get what they need. Adults have a "right" to procreate only if it doesn't violate a child's right in the process.
Camosy: You and others who make these kinds of arguments are often criticized as being homophobic because this means that same-sex couples would not be able to raise children. But I find it interesting that in your book "Them Before Us" you note that the problem began among heterosexuals with no-fault divorce.
Faust: Right. LGBTQ adults are not responsible for the abysmal state of the American family. That distinction belongs to heterosexual couples who began to dismantle the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known by passing no-fault divorce legislation, and being the first to fall for the lie that "if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy." Spoiler alert: They're not.
Via no-fault divorce policy and practice, heterosexuals were the first to consider marriage as primarily a vehicle for adult fulfillment. Same-sex couples (and soon polygamists) are simply following through on that adult-centric vision.
Camosy: So you write a book that gets all kinds of attention, start an important nonprofit with the same name, and get invited all over the world to speak on this stuff. What's next for you?
Katy Faust: Well, I'm honored to be on the advisory board for Jordan Peterson's new project, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Think of it as the righteous inversion of the World Economic Forum. So I get to take this child-centric message into that work through a position paper, a speech at the inaugural conference in London, and our many networks across the globe.
We are working on a video curriculum for church-involved small groups because there's very little that ruffles my feathers more than Christians who apologize or compromise on God's design for sex and marriage. Those Christians end up encouraging the creation of the very fatherless children we are mandated to protect. Remember the millston
e around the neck, people?
We are also going to look for ways to fortify the natural family in law. As far as I know, no one else is working to legally undermine the disastrous impact of Obergfell. Next year "Them Before Us" hopes to hire a legal team which can begin to do exactly that.
And finally, my second book -- "Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City" -- comes out in September. Basically, I am passionate about two things -- defending the rights of the children of the world, and making sure that my own children can stand up and push back against the lies of our current culture. Now I'll have a book on both.
