Katy Faust is an advocate for children’s rights, and she says that our society would improve if adults would start putting children’s needs before the wants and desires of adults

Paul Valencia
Clark County Today

A woman who proudly says she “triggers everybody for a living” brought her message of Them Before Us to Southwest Washington, defending the rights of children before the desires of adults.

Katy Faust, founder of Them Before Us, spoke at the Clark County Republican Women’s dinner in Battle Ground on Thursday, advocating for the rights and interests of children.

“Specifically, their right to life and their right to their mother and father,” Faust said.

“All adults — single, married, gay, straight, fertile, and infertile — must recognize the fundamental rights of children and conform to their rights rather than insisting that the child conform to what the adults want. And that usually (ticks) people off.”

Faust, who grew up in Portland and spent a lot of time in Washougal, where her father moved to years ago, described herself as a grace giver rather than a truth teller. At least for much of her life. But she was inspired to speak out when the argument over gay marriage transitioned from two sides arguing about the definition to one side becoming “evil” and “homophobic.”

Faust is not homophobic. In fact, her mother is in the LBGT community, and they are very close. But Faust does believe a loving marriage between a man and woman is best for children. From that point of view, Them Before Us became a reality in 2016. 

“The idea is that anything that has to do with marriage or family, we have to put them, the children, before the adults. And right now, the way that it’s going and all the conversations about the American family, it’s the exact opposite,” Faust said.

She is disturbed that so many in society think that children do not care if they have two dads or two moms. 

“What they are saying is kids don’t care if they lost their mom or dad,” Faust said. “When you are looking at a child with two moms, you’re looking at a child who has lost their dad. When you are looking at a child with two dads, you are looking at a child who has lost their mom.”

Faust has worked with children for years. 

“I will tell you there is something kids care about. They care whether or not their mother and father loves them, and whether or not their mother and father love each other,” Faust said. “If there was a 7-year-old standing in front of us today, that’s what they would say.”

Then she got a laugh, telling the audience: “They wouldn’t say, ‘If only there was some way to reduce our carbon footprint.’”

Them Before Us also criticizes heterosesexual couples, too, the ones who think of themselves before their children. Some walk away from their marriages because they are unfulfilled, or need to find themselves — adults taking actions with no consideration of their children. 

Yes, she noted, there are tragic situations. There are abusive relationships. Divorce is necessary in some cases. But society has changed so much, and there is peer pressure from some, trying to convince women to leave their marriages if everything is not perfect.

Children are losing parents due to the selfishness of adults, Faust said.

“Very few wounds that run deeper and last longer than mother or father absence,” Faust said. “We have a catalog of stories of kids who lost their mom or dad because an adult prioritized what they wanted above what a child needed. Abandonment. Casual divorce. Or same-sex parents. In all of those situations, you’ve got a kid who lost a mother or a father.”

Throughout human history, Faust noted, children have lost parents. War took their fathers. Mothers lost their lives at an early age, too. But through medical advancements, our society loses less parents to tragedies, Faust said.

“Yet we have more children than ever growing up without their mother or father living in the same home. It’s not because of tragedy. It’s because of adult intentionality,” Faust said. “More and more, it’s being endorsed, promoted, normalized, and treated as a new level of progress in our society.”

Many in America have been promoting the normalization of motherlessness and fatherlessness, Faust said. 

She said “many of us” warned that “if you make husbands and wives optional in marriage, you will make mothers and fathers optional in parenthood. That has 100 percent come to be.”

Faust also gave her opinion on in vitro fertilization, and why Them Before Us is against it. She said conservatives should do more research on the subject, calling IVF methods “exploitative.”

She also touched on parents bringing in an unrelated adult into the home, a mother’s boyfriend, for example.

“An unrelated adult in the home is statistically the most dangerous person in a child’s life,” Faust said.

There are exceptions to all of these stances. There are incredible stepfathers and stepmothers, Faust said. 

“On the whole, you will find no other family structure that statistically sets children up to thrive like the natural family — a child’s own mother and father married and loving each other permanently,” Faust said.

For children, society must change its ways.

“A just society insists that the strong sacrifice for the weak, not the other way around. But in our culture, our law, and our technology today, everything that the adults want is being validated, subsidized, encouraged and entrenched in law. And the fundamental rights and needs of children are being erased. It needs to be flipped.”