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Katy Faust recently delivered a powerful message on the devastating consequences of same-sex marriage, arguing that Western nations have sacrificed children’s rights, turning sons and daughters into commodities for adult fulfilment. She also provided a roadmap out of this mess.

“Children are not commodities,” declared Katy Faust at the recent National Conservatism Conference in Washington, CD.

On September 2, the founder of Them Before Us delivered a sobering address, warning that same-sex marriage has redefined family and sacrificed children’s rights on the altar of adult desire.

Faust argued that when Western nations detached marriage from its simple, God-given design — the union of a man and a woman, creating the potential for natural children — we opened the door to treating sons and daughters as items to be manufactured, bought, and sold.

Her message was urgent and unflinching: “Not your child. Not any child.”

A Decade of Legal and Cultural Upheaval

Faust traced the consequences of the 2015 US Supreme Court decision Obergefell v Hodges, which legalised same-sex marriage, whose equivalent in Australia was the 2017 Marriage Amendment Act, passed after a national postal survey.

She explained that Obergefell and its equivalents shifted the “centre of gravity” in family law from children’s rights to adult preferences.

“Make husbands and wives optional in marriage,” she explained — “and mothers and fathers become optional in parenthood. To the child, their mother and father are never optional.”

Faust described how legal systems, once grounded in the laws of God and nature, have replaced these safeguards with what she called “intent-based parenthood.”

Under this new model, any adult who assembles sperm, egg, and womb and intends to parent is granted legal rights — regardless of biology, background checks, or even safety.

Faust provided disturbing case studies: infants manufactured via surrogacy in California and trafficked across borders; children placed with woefully unsuitable guardians including sex offenders; and the erasure of mothers and fathers from birth certificates.

Her refrain was blunt and repeated: “Gay marriage did that.”

Redefining Parenthood and Infertility

Historically, Faust noted, a child’s rights were upheld through two pathways:

• Biology: recognising that children are safest and most connected when raised by their natural parents.
• Adoption: a justice-driven process designed to restore, through screening and safeguards, the loss of a child’s mother or father.

But these child-centred pathways, she said, have now been labelled discriminatory. In their place, intent-based parenthood allows almost anyone to claim children, even without biological ties or adoption vetting.

“Intent-based parenthood,” Faust warned, “is child trafficking disguised as constitutional rights.”

Faust further criticised how legal definitions have been rewritten. Words like “mother” and “father” have been stripped from documents, replaced with genderless labels such as “parent one” and “parent two.”

In some jurisdictions, infertility has been redefined to include same-sex couples, making taxpayers and insurance schemes subsidise surrogacy and donor conception.

“The very language of family has been hollowed out,” she said. “Observable truths about men and women erased in the name of human rights.”

Katy Faust’s Biblical Case for Protecting Children

While Faust made her case with legal and sociological evidence, she grounded her appeal in a moral vision shaped by Christian conviction.

Scripture calls believers to “defend the fatherless” (Isaiah 1:17) and to practise “pure and undefiled religion” by caring for vulnerable children (James 1:27).

Faust reminded the audience that for 2,000 years, wherever Christianity spread, the rights and welfare of children advanced — from opposing infanticide in the Roman Empire to ending child labour in the United Kingdom.

“This is the church’s inheritance,” she said. “We have always angered adults to protect children.”

Faust closed with a challenge to policymakers, pastors, and the wider public. She outlined three priorities for her organisation’s campaign:

• Reestablish parental rights in law, forcing courts to choose natural parenthood over state-assigned contracts.
• Change public opinion by focusing on the true victims — children deprived of their mother or father.
• Mobilise the church as a “child-centric fighting force” willing to speak the truth in love, even when it’s unpopular.

She insisted this movement is not about hostility toward those who identify as gay or lesbian. “They are our brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters,” Faust said. “But we must not sacrifice children to satisfy adult desires.”

In her closing words, Faust echoed a solemn warning: “For the sake of the least of these, we must either restore the heavens or answer for the hell that we’ve unleashed on children.”

Watch Katy Faust’s powerful speech here.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.