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Walker Wildmon We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions, no matter where they are.
Jeff Chamblee We equip sacred honor is the courage to speak truth, to live out your free speech.
Walker Wildmon We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character.
Jeff Chamblee This is at the core on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon Welcome to the Core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you on this edition of the program. It's good to be with you live here on American Family Radio. If you would like to. We would appreciate it if you would subscribe to the podcast. If you would do so, that would be excellent. Here's why. Not only does it help our numbers and our algorithm to reach more people through the podcast platforms, but it also helps you get the content right to your mobile device each and every day. So if you go to your podcast library, whether you're on an Apple device, Android device or otherwise, even on Spotify, you can type in at the core and this show will queue up and you can type, you can click the subscribe button and then the show will be loaded in your library each and every day.
We're in Proverbs chapter 7 this week discussing temptation and sin
Let's turn our attention to the scripture. We're in Proverbs chapter 7 this week. Proverbs chapter 7 is about a son, a man who, A young man who falls for an adulterous woman who commits, adultery. Her husband is away from the home, the passage describes here. And, the young man falls for her ways. but what you notice as you read the passage is that he put himself in a not so good position. He put himself in a vulnerable position to not only be tempted, but to also sin. And there's a lot of wisdom that we can draw from this proverb. But, the main thing that I want to pull away from it, as I did on Monday, is that as believers, there's times where temptation, or sin comes around us. And it's completely unexpected. And it's not because of an action of our own. But there's also other times in life where we actually put ourselves in positions that we shouldn't have, put ourselves in. And that's the specific area that I'm talking about today in this proverb, addresses Proverbs Chapter seven is that we don't need to be like the man who put himself in the path of the adulteress, but instead, we should, turn away from situations, and opportunities to be tempted and to sin instead. We should turn the other Direction, and flee. The scripture says we should flee sin, we should flee temptation and never look back. So as believers we have to be diligent and we have a responsibility to not, put ourselves in situations where we are tempted or where we sin and disobey. That's Proverbs, chapter seven, the entire chapter there. We have some, events coming up this year. I've been talking about a lot of them. We're going to actually highlight the, AFA at the Ark here coming up pretty soon. And there's a few other that I want to mention. The Activate Summit is the most pressing one. This is coming up in June and we still have registration open. It's not at the discounted price that we had it at, but the, Summit is still available for registration. You can go over to activate activate afa.net that summit is June 12th through the 14th. And we will leave a registration open, let's say for a few more weeks. Let's just say that I don't know the exact date, but for a few more weeks and then we'll close it out for the summit this summer. That's the Activate Summit that's come up come June. Todd Herman is going to be there. Dr. Alex McFarland is going to be there. Dr. Frank Turek is going to be there. Ed Vitagliano, Abraham Hamilton iii. Those are some of your main session speakers. And then we'll have our Kids Track, our Activate Kids Track. And we will have some panel discussions as well. We'll have worship time. It's going to be a great time of fellowship and encouragement, Biblical worldview training. That's our Activate Summit coming up in June. And then the other events that I want to mention, coming up in October, which will be here before you know it. We're taking our first ever trip to Boston. So we're going to tour much of America's early historical sites in the Boston area. So we're going to do the Freedom Trail. We're going to go to Plymouth Rock. We're going to go to John Adams Home. We're going to look at the Mayflower replica. And there's just, over a dozen or more close, to two dozen sites that we're going to visit in Boston. It's going to be a great trip. It's going to be in October. So Lord willing, we'll have some pretty weather there that time of year. And then in 2026, early in the year in 2026, about 11 months from now, we're going to be going to Greece and Israel. Back to back, technically, Israel first, Greece second. That's going to be in March of 2026. And the Greece one's a brand new tour as well. That's Footsteps of Paul. So this is our first time to go to Greece. We're going to actually travel the Footsteps of Paul, some of his writings there. We're going to go to Corinth, Thessalonica, Athens. That's in Greece. And then of course, Israel is the tour that my parents, have been doing for over 25 years. So we're going to go back to Israel, and show pilgrims the land of the Bible. All of that is available [email protected] you can check that out. Wildmangroup.com check out those various tours that we have upcoming later this year and early 2026.
Biden: The Trump administration disregarded everything regarding due process
All right, into some of the news stories I want to get to in the few minutes we have left. This Abrego Garcia, this El Salvadoran man that was deported, illegal immigrant, by the way, that was, had deportation, order, I believe, two deportation orders, that were ruled on in two separate courts. And he did have a, a do not deport ruling based on claimed asylum privileges, which is, is very much disputable as far as the veracity of that. And, but nonetheless, he's a non citizen, so he's a non citizen. Thus the Trump administration deported him and he's in El Salvador now, which, that's his home country. So what better place to be than where you were born, where you're from, instead of us having to use taxpayer dollars to house you here in America. But nonetheless, we're not going to get too far in the weeds there. But I did want to play this clip noting that, there's this whole talk about due process. Due process. And Representative Darrell Issa from California, Congressman Darrell Issa, he notes that this, this illegal immigrant had multiple, experiences and multiple opportunities at due process that, that, that were carried out. So it's not as if this was the wild, wild West. You know, the Trump administration just disregarded everything. That's not true. There was a lot of due process that went on here for over a decade, by the way. Let's listen to clip two.
Katy Faust Well, I think it's complex because there was, some question about whether he should have been deported based on how he was deported, but there's no question that he had due process repeatedly. So one of the questions that's bigger, that's going to be decided partially here and partially in later Court rulings is how many retries, how many opportunities do people get to depart? And particularly the millions who were falsely given this unique status by the previous administration. You know, if the previous administration could say to millions of people, carte blanche, come here, and we'll, we'll let you in and we'll parole you and we'll give you work permits, then does this president have those rights, or does he have to go through a protracted process, which basically hampers the ability to get rid of those millions who were brought in without a process? So the court's got several big decisions. This is a relatively small one. all facts considered, because this man is where he belongs. Based on his citizenship and based on previous due process. Over 17 judges. He was in front of 17 judges.
Walker Wildmon Why on earth. What judge would give this guy asylum claim, would grant him an asylum claim? Which is basically what the dispute is about, is one Judge out of 17 said, oh, this guy didn't need to go back to El Salvador. He's going to be a political prisoner in El Salvador. Well, I don't know any. I don't know any truth behind that claim, but you're here illegally, all right? And technically, according to the law, you're supposed to claim asylum at the nearest safe country. Right. And how many countries are between here and El Salvador? Plenty, with one of the largest being Mexico. All right. Our southern partner, where you can claim asylum at the US Embassy. All right, so there's multiple layers to this, which I would argue make this gentleman eligible for deportation. But nonetheless, the point I want to raise is something that a lot of people aren't raising, and I actually haven't heard anybody talk about it. And that's the fact that lawlessness seems to be easy. Lawlessness seems to be streamlined. Lawlessness seems to be uninterrupted, unimpeded. But when law enforcement comes and when the law enforcer shows up, all of a sudden, we gotta halt everything. We need due process. Well, what about, like, the reverse due process of people not entering our country illegally? What about that? And so Biden and the courts don't. The courts don't weigh in on this. Right. How many courts told Biden that he had to send his folks to the border and they had to stop the invasion? Where were the courts then? Oh, well, you've got to have standing. There has to be harm. Oh, oh, there has to be harm. Okay, well, how about the 100,000Americans dying every year, more than that, actually dying from fentanyl overdoses? Well, there has to be harm, has to be damages. Oh, okay, what about the little girls being raped by Ms. 13 members? Well, there has to be a specific case. Oh, okay. We can come up with plenty of cases of harm, we can come up with plenty of cases of damages. We can come up with plenty of victims. But Biden and his corrupt crew, at the behest of the globalists and those who want to literally bring our country to its knees, they allowed, they look the other way. And, the Department of Homeland Security actually facilitated this. So they actively participated. There was no looking the other way. They were driving the buses, they were flying the planes. The Biden administration facilitated the largest human smuggling operation in world history. In such a short period of time, millions, million in a four year window, tens of millions were imported into our country illegally. The federal government helped it, they helped the situation. They drove the buses, they did the processing, they released them into our streets. And I don't remember one judge that said, no, you can't do that. Turn the bus around, turn the plane around, you can't do that. This is against federal statute. And so we've streamlined lawlessness, but we've got to pump the brakes on law enforcers. It's upside down. It's so upside down. And this is why the Trump administration is, is it seems like they're being kind of rebellious and, and, and careless about how they're going about this. But folks, do you understand how much work would have to be done to patch up the damage that Biden did? Do you realize like right now with all of these ridiculous court orders, there's no way that Trump is going to be able to reset us back to where we were before Biden. The numbers just don't line up. When you look at the deportation numbers between Clinton, between Bush, between Obama and between Biden, these guys deported tens of millions of people. I think Clinton's numbers were over 10 million, over 10 million deportations in an eight year window. And here Trump wants to send a plane of 30 Ms. 13 members that are non citizens back to their home country. And the, and the courts are going, no, no, no, bring them back. We want Ms. 13 in our streets. It's just patently absurd and it's unjust, it's not right, it's evil, it's a harm to our country. And the good guy shows up to the White House and all these judges with U.S. marshals protecting them, say, no, no, no, Mr. President, you can't enforce the law. Bring Ms. 13 back. We want him in our streets. Oh, no.
We want him in Chicago streets and New York City streets. But if they show up at Nancy Pelosi's house
We want him in Chicago streets and New York City streets. But if they show up at, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi's house or Obama's house or one of these judges houses, we don't want them there. We have to allow President Trump to do his job.
Jeff Chamblee This Easter season, we're offering a special downloadable resource that will inspire you and deepen your faith. He Is Risen is a digital booklet featuring powerful articles from the Stand and AFA Journal that explore the life changing truth of the resurrection, the significance of Easter, and how to share these foundational truths with others for a limited time only. It's our gift to you. For any donation of $5 or more, help us continue to share biblical truth, defend Christian value values, and equip our families. Visit afr.net Offers at the Core podcast are available at afr.net now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon: Second segment focuses on LGBTQ victims and targeting of children
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you. Second segment underway. And you know, I talked about in the last segment about people in our country being victimized, American citizens being victimized by illegal immigration, by fentanyl and by human trafficking and otherwise. and, the evil is just rampant and we have a president who's trying to do something about it. And these black robed judges who think they know better are just so eager to step in and prevent the law from being enforced. And there's another area, that there's a similar situation as far as victims goes, and that's children, and this whole LGBTQ insanity and the targeting of children, which is, you know, 10 years ago, the argument before the Supreme Court, the media narrative, rather, in 2015, was, well, two adults ought to be able to, you know, get quote, unquote, married. And this doesn't affect Christians, this doesn't affect people of faith, and definitely has nothing to do with children. Right? That's what they said. And, six months later, we were over in North Carolina trying to keep men out of girls bathrooms, and that's how quickly they pivoted. And now we have the surgeries and the cross hormone treatments. It's just kind of become the wild, wild West. Katy Faust is on with us. She's founder president of Them Before Us. She also hosts a weekend show here on American Family Radio. Katy, welcome back to the program.
Katy Faust Always a joy to be with the AFA family. Thanks for having me back.
Walker Wildmon Yes, absolutely. Well, we've got you on two segments just because this topic is, deserves it. And I know you've done much more time on this subject with other hosts, but, let's talk fundamentals, and then we can kind of get into maybe the weeds a little bit. President Trump supports IVF because he wants more babies
But let's just talk, explain to our audience who maybe haven't heard this argument or it's rather new to them, the focus on children and what children suffer with when mom and dad aren't there and when it's two daddies or one mommy or surrogacy IVF. There's 100 different scenarios we could talk about, but just focus on the viewpoint of the child and what their needs are.
Katy Faust Yeah, I think there's that old saying that says there's one way to stand up straight and there's a million ways you can fall down. And that's definitely the story with marriage and family. we've been studying family structure for decades. There are things that we know that leads to child thriving and stacks the deck in their favor when it comes to their physical, mental, emotional, academic, and relational health. And those factors are their mother and their father married to one another, loving them and loving each other every day of their life. And, that means that marriage is a matter of justice for children. But that also means that we have to be very skeptical of modern reproductive technologies that sever a child's connection with their mother or father at the moment of conception, or allow you to rent their mother's womb and then ship the child off to unrelated adults who could live across the world. It means that we need to, re examine the way that we think and talk about divorce, because that has been one of the most catastrophic evolutions in the area of marriage and family when it comes to, child well being that we've seen in our country over the past several decades. And it means that we need to think about adoption not as a means where adults get kids, but where we seek to restore something that was lost to the child. So we kind of go everywhere in the them before us world because we are serious about putting them, the children before us, the adults, on matters of marriage and family.
Walker Wildmon If someone from the White House were listening and we needed to speak to the IVF issue because President Trump and, I'll, grant him a little bit of grace here because he can't be an expert in everything. And I think his hunch towards IVF and talking positively about it, he just views it as another way to have kids. now I think he's been briefed more on this since he kind of came out after the Alabama State Supreme Court ruling and started speaking to this. And I know the White House has tried to get Christians in his ear to explain the moral and ethical concerns with IVF, but explain the problems with it because the benefits are. You can easily describe the benefits very narrowly, but the, how this stuff can go wrong is like, it's massive. How the IVF, technology can be abused terribly.
Katy Faust Yeah, Well, I agree with you that I think his motivations are largely good. I mean, he said straight up, we support IVF because we want more babies. More babies. And I'm like, I also want more babies. but the goal cannot be Allah. Ah, Elon Musk style of, I'm going to have babies with whatever baby mama happens to be in my orbit. because babies don't just need their life, they need their mother and father. Right. It's not just anyone way of getting more children into the world that we need to be concerned about. We need to do that in ways that respect children's fundamental rights, their right to life, their right to be known and loved by the two people responsible for their existence in a lifelong married home. So the problem with IVF overwhelmingly is that it violates both, even though it's hard to get the numbers, because the world of big fertility does not track or share what they do with these little lives. It's a very safe estimate that big fertility destroys more embryonic life every year than Planned Parenthood does by a magnitude of 2, 3, 4, maybe more. And so, unfortunately, while we do see blessed, wonderful, precious 90,000 children born through IVF every year, that is a fraction of the number of children created in laboratories, the vast majority who are going to lose their right to life because they are genetically screened out of existence, sex selected out of existence, they will not make the grade. They will be frozen forever. They will be thawed and then discarded, or they'll be donated to research. So our objection to IVF at them before us is not because we don't love these children. It's because we love the 93 to 97% who will never be born alive, even after they're made in glass, in vitro, in IVF.
Walker Wildmon The, I think adoption is biblical when the circumstances properly line up
Let's talk a little bit about adoption, because the. Obviously, adoption is a reality for a lot of people around the country. And to a degree, I think adoption is biblical when the circumstances properly line up. Because after all, we were grafted in, we were adopted into the household of God. So it's indicative of how God deals with us as lost people that come into the Household of faith. But that doesn't mean that it's perfect or ideal or how it was supposed to be. So talk about that kind of moral dilemma where we understand adoption is going to happen, right? It's a necessity. It's needed. There are children who don't have a mom or a dad for a variety of reasons, but we shouldn't aim for that. For people to be fatherless or motherless, that shouldn't be a goal. That should be an unfortunate situation that we're trying to repair. Right?
Katy Faust Yeah, that's really well stated. And repair is the right word there, because there is loss. Adoption begins with loss. Certainly for the birth mother, definitely. I think for the birth father, too, but absolutely for the child. When children lose their mother, even if it's just on the first day of their life, they very often suffer what many adoptees have called a primal wound and subsequent struggles to trust and attach. Even though adoptees are largely raised by parents who have more stable marriages, who are wealthier, and statistically spend more time with them, they still tend to struggle more in school and more with things like externalizing disorders, anxiety and things like that. And that's because these children are having to do something that no child should have to do, which is detach from the only person they know the day that they are born and reattach to biological strangers. Now, you can acknowledge that, and you should acknowledge that, and you can still say that adoption is redemptive. I mean, I'm an adoptive mom myself, but I will also tell you that I can't fully compensate for everything that my son has lost. We need to seek adoption as a just society's response to children who have suffered the loss of the two people to whom they have a fundamental natural right. And that is what adoption is all about. It is seeking to mend that wound. And sometimes you can, but sometimes with adoptees, it's never fully healed on this side of heaven. So, we want to minimize the amount of situations where a child is going to need to be adopted. And spoiler. The place where children are the least likely to be taken into foster care or relinquished is when they are conceived and born into the home of their own married mother and father. If we did that, there would be virtually no foster children in this country left, because those adults are the most connected to, invested in, and protective of children. And very, very seldom are kids taken from their married biological mother and father and placed up for adoption.
The Trump administration is looking into ways to incentivize having children
Walker Wildmon Let's talk about government intervention here, because my instinct is, no, I don't want the government getting involved. And probably 80% of the time, that's probably a good answer, a good instinct. But a recent headline is that the Trump administration is looking into how to basically incentivize, having children. And it didn't. The article didn't really go into the policy wonkishness of like, how are we going to do this? It was just an overarching. This is a goal that Trump is looking into. but. And it talked about like a $5,000, basically, baby bonus. But what would you say to that, number one? Do you think that the government really needs to get into this business of incentivizing having, children, or maybe it does with guardrails. What's your reaction to that?
Katy Faust So I know that Trump, even though he, let's be honest, Trump does not have a stellar personal record in this regard when it comes to staying faithfully married to one woman. and he is not a social conservative. I think that he has very good instincts. I think that he understands, what the people at the grassroots want. And that's all really, really important. But I don't think that he's operating at a convictional level here. But I will say that probably the people in his orbit are, and many of them also recognize that we are just on the precipice and sliding very quickly into a population winter. I mean, if you still believe that we are dealing with an overpopulation problem in this country or across the world, the 1990s called and they want their talking point back. That is absolutely not where we are today. Right now, we are in a place where our total fertility rate is below replacement rate. We're at, 2.1 is what you need to have on average if you're going to simply sustain your population. We're at 1.7. About 70% of the world today lives in countries below total fertility replacement rate. It is actually the biggest catastrophic situation that nobody is talking about. So the instincts of Trump and his administration is correct. We need to incentive. And the way that. Let's be clear, the left knows this, but the way that they've been wanting to deal with it is to import people. They have, flooded the border. Because part of that is because they understand that we're in a demographic crisis. That's not the solution. The solution is encourage people to have more children. The main way that you do that is by encouraging more people to marry sooner. A lot of the reason why we're seeing this population decline is because people are delaying marriage. And then Delaying childbearing. And then many women are missing out on their peak fertility years and then turning to things like IVF or surrogates or sperm or egg donors because they're trying to become a mother at 41. When they were, their bodies were ready to do it at 21. So these movements by the government, it's very important in terms of encouraging people to form families to do it sooner and to see children as something that should be welcomed, not a burden or something that is going to stifle your freedom or whatever. But I will offer this caveat. There are a lot of countries around the world, Scandinavia, South Korea, Japan, China, who are facing devastating birth deaths. All of them have tried to give people money to try to get them to have more children, and it has largely been ineffective.
Walker Wildmon Yeah.
Katy Faust Does it take a bit of the sting off of staying home with your third child? Yes, it can. But it does not tend to change things at a population level. The only thing that does that is religion. You have to tell a better story about men, women, marriage and children and the materialist world and the secular humanist world and the utopia Marxist world. Nobody has the story that leads people to embrace the short term sacrifice of marriage and children for the sake of the long term personal gain and social gain. Only religion does that. So that is why we're seeing higher rates of fertility in Catholic populations, evangelicals, Mormons and Muslims.
I could see this baby bonus going south very quickly if it's not structured properly
Walker Wildmon To your point about the, you know, whether your kind of comments about how much the government should get involved here made me think of how actually this could go south very quickly. And here's what I mean by that. Now that I'm, I'm basically thinking through this as we're talking, which is kind of dangerous on live radio. But, but the welfare programs, the welfare system, it operates somewhat similar where it incentivizes behavior, but it's not described that way. It's viewed as aid. It's viewed as being charitable and compassionate. Right. Where you incentivize out of wedlock births because you tell the mom they can't have the money unless they're not married. And if you get married and have a husband and increase your income, well, you're not eligible anymore. And you can go back to the original writings of these policies and go, well, that makes sense. You know, we're trying to help only those who need it. Well, okay, but now the end result is that people are intentionally not getting married because it's disincentivized according to the programs. I could see something happening very quickly with this where you say, all right moms, you know, you're, you get 5,000 bucks for having a child. Well, okay, so there's no stipulation on marriage. And they might even have a qualifier where it says, well, you can't be married because then your income levels up or something. I could just see this going south very quickly where it's just an expansion of the welfare state because to your point, if it's just about having children, but then we're having the children out of wedlock and then the crime rates are up, the dropout rates are up and the poverty rates are up, that's only going to be more of a drain on our systems. As opposed to being a blessing, which is where you have citizens, that are contributing to society. They're paying into the programs, they're paying taxes, et cetera, they're contributing in the workforce. I could see this, this $5,000 baby bonus going south really quickly if it's not structured properly.
Katy Faust I think that you're exactly right and you hit on a critical principle that government should know by now, but that every parent knows 100%. And that is what you incentivize, you get more of.
Walker Wildmon Yeah.
Katy Faust And so like if you incentivize, if you say if your homework is done, then you get an extra, extra scoop of ice cream, you're gonna get more homework done. Right. You are going to incentivize what you're incentivizing, you get more. Everybody in Seattle knows this. We have incentivized people to live on the street in the name of like caring for the homeless. And you know what, our homeless population has exploded. We've incentivized people living on the street. We're getting more homelessness. So that's what happened in welfare. We thought in the name of helping poor single mothers, that we were going to help them alleviate, you know, concerns about poverty or get their child into a Head Start program. What we did is we incentivized single motherhood. And so you're exactly right that you need to structure these kinds of financial rewards carefully. I don't, I now at that. Before us, we actually have a pretty breakthrough policy recommendations that we've been talking through with different state level lawmakers on how to incentivize not just, just more children, but more children born to their own married mother and father. And we've been able to work with several lawmakers around the country to look at possibly presenting this.
Walker Wildmon Let's talk about that when we get back. Sorry, we got A hard break. Katy. We'll be back in two.
Last year Preborn helped rescue over 67,000 babies from abortion
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Walker Wildmon Will you take a moment and celebrate life with me? Last year preborn helped rescue over 67,000 babies from abortion. Hi, this is Walker Wildmon and I want to thank you for your partnership. Think about what you did. 67,000 babies are taking their first breath now because of you. Your $28 sponsored one ultrasound that was given to a woman as she was deciding about the future of her child. Once she saw her precious baby for the first time and heard their sweet heartbeat m her baby's chance at life doubled. But Preborn's mission is not only to rescue babies lives, but also lead women to Christ. Last year preborn network Clinic saw over 8,900 women receive salvation. Your help is crucial to continue their life saving work.
Jeff Chamblee Your caring tax deductible donation saves lives. So please be generous. To donate go to preborn.com afr that's preborn.com afr or dial 250 and say the keyword baby. That's 250B A by you'll love can save a life. This is at the core on American Family Radio with your host Walker Wildmon.
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. We're talking to Katy Faust with them before us organization and I had to be rude like a radio host and cut her off towards the end of the last segment. But Katy, that's probably not the first time you've been cut off. Right?
Katy Faust Well, and now that I'm hosting a show on American Family Radio, I also am rude to the people that are on with me. and a lot of that is not over video. So I've like started to have these like wild gestures being like, cut it off, wrap it off. and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, yeah, you just, when, when, when a guest is talking, there's just something, especially when you're from the south, you just don't want to start talking over him. But you got to do what you got to do. You were talking about how there are some ways to, to properly structure the incentivizing of married mom and dad having children in wedlock. Talk about that, that finish that Subject up.
There is a role that only a revival can fill when it comes to population challenges
Katy Faust Well then before us has some policy recommendations that we have, you know, coached some state level lawmakers on. And government cannot do everything. Like I said in the previous segment, there are some things that only God can do. And telling us what marriage and family is and the value of having children, that is something that religious Americans tend to take more seriously. And so we are outbreeding our secular counterparts in a lot of ways. And there is a role that really only a revival is going to be able to fill when it comes to the population challenges that we have. But that's not to say that government has nothing to offer right now. There's actually some financial barriers to having children or having large children. I mean, they certainly could do things in the big cities like make there be housing more available. there are some ways that they can incentivize through taxes or credits or things like that. People to feel like it's not as much of an economic barrier. they can't do everything, but they can do something. And I appreciate Trump administration trying to do something.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, absolutely. let's pivot to. We've talked about a lot of different things. We've talked about adoption, ivf, we talked about what the Trump administration is doing.
Children raised by same sex couples face increased risks of abuse and neglect
Let's pivot to these children that are being fostered or adopted or you know, through surrogacy into homes where there's two dudes is how I like to describe it. two women. there's definitely not biological mom and dad, that's for sure. And there's so much wrong about it. But just talk about the fundamentals before we get into some of these horror stories. The fundamentals of what children miss out on when mommy and daddy are not there, there.
Katy Faust Yep. So we talk about this in terms of like, there's three critical areas that those children raised by same sex couples are going to be missing. Number one, they're always missing a biological parent and subsequently they're always raised by a non biological parent. And while we know wonderful heroic step parents out there, on the whole, an unrelated adult is less invested, less connected to and less protective of children. So those are the scenarios where an unrelated adult in the home, especially an unrelated man, that is where you see drastic increased risks of abuse and neglect. So number one, the home is not as safe. Number two, the child is not going to benefit from the gender complementarity of having a male and female parent. Men and women are drastically different. But especially that is demonstrated in the home that mothers, women tend to simplify their language when you know, oh, little baby, did you get an owie? And the dads, they use the same size of words and amount of words with their kids that they use with everybody else, which is like, you wouldn't believe the workday that I had today, but I nailed that spreadsheet. I'll tell you, Daddy is up for promotion, you know, so like, they've always got, yeah, kids always have an adult, a parent, who is. They understand 100% of what they're saying. And then dad walks in the door and he's constantly expanding their cognitive development because he's not dumbing down his language, you know, Mom. Through their natural interactions, their caregiving with children are honing kids fine motor skills. Like they're, they're cutting bananas with the butter and knife and they're tying their shoes and they're taping in there, they're coloring, they're using their little fingers. Dads, through their natural interactive play, are developing children's gross motor skills. They're wrestling, they're climbing, they're swinging a hammer. Sometimes they're setting things on fire. Like, women don't light things on fire with their children. Men do. And so when kids are being raised by two men or two women, they are always missing out on this critical developmental aspect of either mothering or fathering. And then finally, when children are raised by two men or two women, they guaranteed are missing out on 50% of their biological identity. And it is very, very hard for kids to answer the question, who am I? If they can't answer the question, whose am I? And so a lot of these kids are more likely to struggle with identity issues because they've been cut off from at least 50% of the transcendent information that has historically allowed adults or even adolescents to answer that question accurately.
Walker Wildmon M. I've read horror stories, and your organization has reported on them and highlighted them. And your website actually has testimonies of people who've been victimized, children who've been victimized, through this, you know, wild, wild west of so called parenting and acquiring children is how you guys describe it, which is very accurate.
Georgia case raises concerns about homosexuals adopting children and then committing child abuse
And let me ask you this. And a lot of hosts wouldn't touch on this because they don't want to get canceled, but I don't really care, because we own the microphone. But I do want to get your honest opinion on this. So when I read stories, horror stories like the one out of Georgia of two guys that adopt little kids and then they molest them, I think, wow, I mean, who Could. Did somebody not see that coming? is there any truth to my inclination or assumption that this type of abuse between two homosexual men that are already publicly engaging in deviant behavior, self professed deviant behavior, by going outside of the one man, one woman relationship. is. Is there. Is the data. Is that true that. That these relationships of homosexuals and transgenders and lesbians is more prone to children being victimized, or is that just kind of, an inkling that isn't proven by the data? What's your. What's your organization's thoughts on that?
Katy Faust So if you want to just talk data, the data that we have speaks to the danger and increased risk of having an unrelated adult in the home. That is exactly why adoptive parents, like me and like a lot of your listeners, had to go through months of screening and vetting and background checks and home studies and references. And even then, adoptees are at increased risk of abuse. because it seems that we have not yet found a formula that is able to replicate the protective standards that God automatically built into the married biological mother and father household, even with the screening and vetting, which is the closest that we can get. The situation you're talking about the two guys that I, actually think that their adoption was fast tracked in some ways, because why? Because, oh, my gosh, we're so tolerant and, you know, we are here to serve the LGBT community. So I bet that there's a possibility that they overlook some serious red flags in that case. But if you just look at, you know, I often, as sort of a thought experiment when I'm speaking or interviewing, I tell people, like, if you just intend to parent, or if love makes a family, or if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy, or all the different things that we say in every essence to say that mothers and fathers are optional in a child's life. If all of that is true, then children living with her, their mother and her cohabiting live in boyfriend would be doing great. But if you Google the words mother's boyfriend, you're going to see tens of thousands of pages of the most horrific child abuse and filicide that you're going to find anywhere on the World Wide Web. That's because the most dangerous place a child can find themselves in America today is in the home of an unrelated man left to care for the child himself. So what do you have, in a situation where it's two men raising a child, well, now you have not one, but two of the statistically most dangerous people that a child can find themselves with. We pray that things like adoption screening would mitigate some of that. But obviously in this case, the predatory inclinations of these men, were somehow able to, skirt around those protections. Yeah, then it's a major concern because we have things like surrogacy now that will allow anybody that is willing to cut a check to walk home with an unrelated adult. And we have scenarios of single, double, triple men acquiring children through these technologies. And unlike adoption, there's no screening or vetting or background checks for these guys. So then before us has already documented, several cases of verified predators or child abusers who acquired children through surrogacy.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, these stories are horrific and some people can't even read them. Like, and I just read the, news articles about, and half the stuff was blanked out about what happened in that Georgia situation. And, those stories are all over the place. That's not a one off, you know, oddity. That stuff happens pretty often. and anybody who works in law enforcement, especially in the child pornography arena, a lot of these detectives, they have to go through counseling. They have a really hard time doing their job effectively because of the sheer number and horror level of some of these stories of child abuse that have to do with sexual crimes.
Putting children first solves all of these problems, Katy says
Let me ask you one more question, Katy, on, how do we, where do we go from here? Because this is a daunting task that your organization's working on, but it's a noble one and it has to be done for the well being of children and families. But we've got, I mean, we've got transgenderism, we've got homosexuality, and all of these are kind of in their own category to a degree with their own effects. We have, ah, unrestricted IVF largely. we've got the foster system, we've got out of wedlock births between a man and a woman. where do you go first? If you have to do triage, which basically we're doing triage here, where do you go first?
Katy Faust What you need to do is recognize that children come from a man and woman. They distinctly benefit from that man and woman. They get their identity from that man and woman. They are statistically the most likely to be safe and loved when they are raised by that man and woman. And they have a fundamental natural right to that man and woman, if you understood that and believed it, which you should, because it's not just validated by the Bible and scripture, but it is, substantiated by the best social science that we have and the Testimonies of children throughout the world. What you get then is the answer to everything. If children have a right to their mother and father, you get the right answer to marriage. Marriage is no longer a vehicle of adult fulfillment. It is a matter of justice for children because it is the only relationship that unites the two people to whom children have a natural right. What about divorce? Well, then you greenlight divorce only in cases where children's right to safety or one parent's right to safety is being threatened. Otherwise, the parents need to work it out. What do you do in a situation of an unplanned pregnancy? Well, the child has a right to life. And to their mother and father? The answer is for both the dad and the mom to reorient their lives around each other and the child. So both the right to life and right to the mother and father are protected. What do you do in matters of ivf? Well, you only conduct that in ways where no child loses their right to life, which is pretty much zero cases of ivf. What do you do in cases where you're dealing with infertility and you want to get a sperm or egg donor or a surrogate? The answer is no. The answer is you do the hard things because the alternative is forcing children to lose their fundamental rights. Or if you are in a stable, loving marriage and you're burdened by the plight of children, then you do the hard thing by bringing in a forsaken, abandoned or orphaned child into your home so that you're bearing the brunt of their loss and they don't have to shoulder it alone. Looking at everything through the lens of what if we put children first solves all of these problems?
Walker Wildmon Yeah, if we do that, and I think that sums it up, Katie. I mean, if we look at this, and I will say, I'll admit our movement, the evangelical Christian movement and the conservative movement, has really done a poor job articulating this. And during the whole Obergefell battle And in the late 90s, early 2000s, a lot of it was focused on religious freedom. A lot of it was focused on conscience protections, and some of it was focused on what God's definition is, which is important. But that's not the whole picture. And to me, the most compelling case is when we look at taking care of the most vulnerable amongst our society, which is the children and the elderly. that, to me, morally, that's the most compelling argument for the public. And I think that's what gets people to the table. And then while we're at the table we can talk about. Well, number one, this is how God designed it. This is why it works, is because this is how he designed it. And the children matter. They ought to be protected. They ought to be taken care of. Their rights ought to be at the forefront of our policy. And this is more than just about two consenting adults and whatever they want to do on their own personal time. This is way broader, than just that dumbed down version that we were told that this was all, all about.
Katy, tell our, audience, ah, before we let you go where they can read more about your work.
Katy Faust Well, first of all, you should listen to the American Family Radio show every Saturday and Sunday. We cover your questions and we hit some trending news. But come to them before us.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Let us equip you to be warriors on behalf of children.
Walker Wildmon Amen. Hey, thanks so much, Katie. Appreciate the work!
Katy Faust Great to be with you.
American Family Radio welcomes Katy Faust to its podcast lineup
Walker Wildmon All right, glad to have you on. That's Katy Faust. Her show does air on Saturday and Sunday, as she mentioned, 3 to 4 Central, 3pm to 4pm Central on American Family Radio. Each Saturday and Sunday, the podcast is queued up every week right there on afr.net on the AFR app. And wherever you listen to podcasts, I'll tell you what, those who have just heard Katie for the first time, that are impressed, this is why I wanted to bring her and her organization on board on the podcast lineup, on the weekend lineup, because the focus that they have on protecting the rights of children is, is an angle and a focus and a vigor that I haven't heard from any other organization or any other thought leader of our time. And so platforming them before us, getting this message out there is a big, big deal. And they're doing excellent work. And, we appreciate Katy and her whole team, Josh and, others there at them before us. Well, excellent interview. Powerful content folks. We got a lot of, lot of room to go, a lot of way to go when it comes to protecting the rights of children, restoring marriage and family as God designed it, as he intended it it. We'll see you next time.
Jeff Chamblee The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
American Family Radio would appreciate it if you would subscribe to our podcast
Walker Wildmon We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions, no matter where they are.
Jeff Chamblee We equip sacred honor is the courage to speak truth, to live out your free speech.
Walker Wildmon We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character.
Jeff Chamblee This is at the core on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon Welcome to the Core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you on this edition of the program. It's good to be with you live here on American Family Radio. If you would like to. We would appreciate it if you would subscribe to the podcast. If you would do so, that would be excellent. Here's why. Not only does it help our numbers and our algorithm to reach more people through the podcast platforms, but it also helps you get the content right to your mobile device each and every day. So if you go to your podcast library, whether you're on an Apple device, Android device or otherwise, even on Spotify, you can type in at the core and this show will queue up and you can type, you can click the subscribe button and then the show will be loaded in your library each and every day.
We're in Proverbs chapter 7 this week discussing temptation and sin
Let's turn our attention to the scripture. We're in Proverbs chapter 7 this week. Proverbs chapter 7 is about a son, a man who, A young man who falls for an adulterous woman who commits, adultery. Her husband is away from the home, the passage describes here. And, the young man falls for her ways. but what you notice as you read the passage is that he put himself in a not so good position. He put himself in a vulnerable position to not only be tempted, but to also sin. And there's a lot of wisdom that we can draw from this proverb. But, the main thing that I want to pull away from it, as I did on Monday, is that as believers, there's times where temptation, or sin comes around us. And it's completely unexpected. And it's not because of an action of our own. But there's also other times in life where we actually put ourselves in positions that we shouldn't have, put ourselves in. And that's the specific area that I'm talking about today in this proverb, addresses Proverbs Chapter seven is that we don't need to be like the man who put himself in the path of the adulteress, but instead, we should, turn away from situations, and opportunities to be tempted and to sin instead. We should turn the other Direction, and flee. The scripture says we should flee sin, we should flee temptation and never look back. So as believers we have to be diligent and we have a responsibility to not, put ourselves in situations where we are tempted or where we sin and disobey. That's Proverbs, chapter seven, the entire chapter there. We have some, events coming up this year. I've been talking about a lot of them. We're going to actually highlight the, AFA at the Ark here coming up pretty soon. And there's a few other that I want to mention. The Activate Summit is the most pressing one. This is coming up in June and we still have registration open. It's not at the discounted price that we had it at, but the, Summit is still available for registration. You can go over to activate activate afa.net that summit is June 12th through the 14th. And we will leave a registration open, let's say for a few more weeks. Let's just say that I don't know the exact date, but for a few more weeks and then we'll close it out for the summit this summer. That's the Activate Summit that's come up come June. Todd Herman is going to be there. Dr. Alex McFarland is going to be there. Dr. Frank Turek is going to be there. Ed Vitagliano, Abraham Hamilton iii. Those are some of your main session speakers. And then we'll have our Kids Track, our Activate Kids Track. And we will have some panel discussions as well. We'll have worship time. It's going to be a great time of fellowship and encouragement, Biblical worldview training. That's our Activate Summit coming up in June. And then the other events that I want to mention, coming up in October, which will be here before you know it. We're taking our first ever trip to Boston. So we're going to tour much of America's early historical sites in the Boston area. So we're going to do the Freedom Trail. We're going to go to Plymouth Rock. We're going to go to John Adams Home. We're going to look at the Mayflower replica. And there's just, over a dozen or more close, to two dozen sites that we're going to visit in Boston. It's going to be a great trip. It's going to be in October. So Lord willing, we'll have some pretty weather there that time of year. And then in 2026, early in the year in 2026, about 11 months from now, we're going to be going to Greece and Israel. Back to back, technically, Israel first, Greece second. That's going to be in March of 2026. And the Greece one's a brand new tour as well. That's Footsteps of Paul. So this is our first time to go to Greece. We're going to actually travel the Footsteps of Paul, some of his writings there. We're going to go to Corinth, Thessalonica, Athens. That's in Greece. And then of course, Israel is the tour that my parents, have been doing for over 25 years. So we're going to go back to Israel, and show pilgrims the land of the Bible. All of that is available [email protected] you can check that out. Wildmangroup.com check out those various tours that we have upcoming later this year and early 2026.
Biden: The Trump administration disregarded everything regarding due process
All right, into some of the news stories I want to get to in the few minutes we have left. This Abrego Garcia, this El Salvadoran man that was deported, illegal immigrant, by the way, that was, had deportation, order, I believe, two deportation orders, that were ruled on in two separate courts. And he did have a, a do not deport ruling based on claimed asylum privileges, which is, is very much disputable as far as the veracity of that. And, but nonetheless, he's a non citizen, so he's a non citizen. Thus the Trump administration deported him and he's in El Salvador now, which, that's his home country. So what better place to be than where you were born, where you're from, instead of us having to use taxpayer dollars to house you here in America. But nonetheless, we're not going to get too far in the weeds there. But I did want to play this clip noting that, there's this whole talk about due process. Due process. And Representative Darrell Issa from California, Congressman Darrell Issa, he notes that this, this illegal immigrant had multiple, experiences and multiple opportunities at due process that, that, that were carried out. So it's not as if this was the wild, wild West. You know, the Trump administration just disregarded everything. That's not true. There was a lot of due process that went on here for over a decade, by the way. Let's listen to clip two.
Katy Faust Well, I think it's complex because there was, some question about whether he should have been deported based on how he was deported, but there's no question that he had due process repeatedly. So one of the questions that's bigger, that's going to be decided partially here and partially in later Court rulings is how many retries, how many opportunities do people get to depart? And particularly the millions who were falsely given this unique status by the previous administration. You know, if the previous administration could say to millions of people, carte blanche, come here, and we'll, we'll let you in and we'll parole you and we'll give you work permits, then does this president have those rights, or does he have to go through a protracted process, which basically hampers the ability to get rid of those millions who were brought in without a process? So the court's got several big decisions. This is a relatively small one. all facts considered, because this man is where he belongs. Based on his citizenship and based on previous due process. Over 17 judges. He was in front of 17 judges.
Walker Wildmon Why on earth. What judge would give this guy asylum claim, would grant him an asylum claim? Which is basically what the dispute is about, is one Judge out of 17 said, oh, this guy didn't need to go back to El Salvador. He's going to be a political prisoner in El Salvador. Well, I don't know any. I don't know any truth behind that claim, but you're here illegally, all right? And technically, according to the law, you're supposed to claim asylum at the nearest safe country. Right. And how many countries are between here and El Salvador? Plenty, with one of the largest being Mexico. All right. Our southern partner, where you can claim asylum at the US Embassy. All right, so there's multiple layers to this, which I would argue make this gentleman eligible for deportation. But nonetheless, the point I want to raise is something that a lot of people aren't raising, and I actually haven't heard anybody talk about it. And that's the fact that lawlessness seems to be easy. Lawlessness seems to be streamlined. Lawlessness seems to be uninterrupted, unimpeded. But when law enforcement comes and when the law enforcer shows up, all of a sudden, we gotta halt everything. We need due process. Well, what about, like, the reverse due process of people not entering our country illegally? What about that? And so Biden and the courts don't. The courts don't weigh in on this. Right. How many courts told Biden that he had to send his folks to the border and they had to stop the invasion? Where were the courts then? Oh, well, you've got to have standing. There has to be harm. Oh, oh, there has to be harm. Okay, well, how about the 100,000Americans dying every year, more than that, actually dying from fentanyl overdoses? Well, there has to be harm, has to be damages. Oh, okay, what about the little girls being raped by Ms. 13 members? Well, there has to be a specific case. Oh, okay. We can come up with plenty of cases of harm, we can come up with plenty of cases of damages. We can come up with plenty of victims. But Biden and his corrupt crew, at the behest of the globalists and those who want to literally bring our country to its knees, they allowed, they look the other way. And, the Department of Homeland Security actually facilitated this. So they actively participated. There was no looking the other way. They were driving the buses, they were flying the planes. The Biden administration facilitated the largest human smuggling operation in world history. In such a short period of time, millions, million in a four year window, tens of millions were imported into our country illegally. The federal government helped it, they helped the situation. They drove the buses, they did the processing, they released them into our streets. And I don't remember one judge that said, no, you can't do that. Turn the bus around, turn the plane around, you can't do that. This is against federal statute. And so we've streamlined lawlessness, but we've got to pump the brakes on law enforcers. It's upside down. It's so upside down. And this is why the Trump administration is, is it seems like they're being kind of rebellious and, and, and careless about how they're going about this. But folks, do you understand how much work would have to be done to patch up the damage that Biden did? Do you realize like right now with all of these ridiculous court orders, there's no way that Trump is going to be able to reset us back to where we were before Biden. The numbers just don't line up. When you look at the deportation numbers between Clinton, between Bush, between Obama and between Biden, these guys deported tens of millions of people. I think Clinton's numbers were over 10 million, over 10 million deportations in an eight year window. And here Trump wants to send a plane of 30 Ms. 13 members that are non citizens back to their home country. And the, and the courts are going, no, no, no, bring them back. We want Ms. 13 in our streets. It's just patently absurd and it's unjust, it's not right, it's evil, it's a harm to our country. And the good guy shows up to the White House and all these judges with U.S. marshals protecting them, say, no, no, no, Mr. President, you can't enforce the law. Bring Ms. 13 back. We want him in our streets. Oh, no.
We want him in Chicago streets and New York City streets. But if they show up at Nancy Pelosi's house
We want him in Chicago streets and New York City streets. But if they show up at, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi's house or Obama's house or one of these judges houses, we don't want them there. We have to allow President Trump to do his job.
Jeff Chamblee This Easter season, we're offering a special downloadable resource that will inspire you and deepen your faith. He Is Risen is a digital booklet featuring powerful articles from the Stand and AFA Journal that explore the life changing truth of the resurrection, the significance of Easter, and how to share these foundational truths with others for a limited time only. It's our gift to you. For any donation of $5 or more, help us continue to share biblical truth, defend Christian value values, and equip our families. Visit afr.net Offers at the Core podcast are available at afr.net now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon: Second segment focuses on LGBTQ victims and targeting of children
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you. Second segment underway. And you know, I talked about in the last segment about people in our country being victimized, American citizens being victimized by illegal immigration, by fentanyl and by human trafficking and otherwise. and, the evil is just rampant and we have a president who's trying to do something about it. And these black robed judges who think they know better are just so eager to step in and prevent the law from being enforced. And there's another area, that there's a similar situation as far as victims goes, and that's children, and this whole LGBTQ insanity and the targeting of children, which is, you know, 10 years ago, the argument before the Supreme Court, the media narrative, rather, in 2015, was, well, two adults ought to be able to, you know, get quote, unquote, married. And this doesn't affect Christians, this doesn't affect people of faith, and definitely has nothing to do with children. Right? That's what they said. And, six months later, we were over in North Carolina trying to keep men out of girls bathrooms, and that's how quickly they pivoted. And now we have the surgeries and the cross hormone treatments. It's just kind of become the wild, wild West. Katy Faust is on with us. She's founder president of Them Before Us. She also hosts a weekend show here on American Family Radio. Katy, welcome back to the program.
Katy Faust Always a joy to be with the AFA family. Thanks for having me back.
Walker Wildmon Yes, absolutely. Well, we've got you on two segments just because this topic is, deserves it. And I know you've done much more time on this subject with other hosts, but, let's talk fundamentals, and then we can kind of get into maybe the weeds a little bit. President Trump supports IVF because he wants more babies
But let's just talk, explain to our audience who maybe haven't heard this argument or it's rather new to them, the focus on children and what children suffer with when mom and dad aren't there and when it's two daddies or one mommy or surrogacy IVF. There's 100 different scenarios we could talk about, but just focus on the viewpoint of the child and what their needs are.
Katy Faust Yeah, I think there's that old saying that says there's one way to stand up straight and there's a million ways you can fall down. And that's definitely the story with marriage and family. we've been studying family structure for decades. There are things that we know that leads to child thriving and stacks the deck in their favor when it comes to their physical, mental, emotional, academic, and relational health. And those factors are their mother and their father married to one another, loving them and loving each other every day of their life. And, that means that marriage is a matter of justice for children. But that also means that we have to be very skeptical of modern reproductive technologies that sever a child's connection with their mother or father at the moment of conception, or allow you to rent their mother's womb and then ship the child off to unrelated adults who could live across the world. It means that we need to, re examine the way that we think and talk about divorce, because that has been one of the most catastrophic evolutions in the area of marriage and family when it comes to, child well being that we've seen in our country over the past several decades. And it means that we need to think about adoption not as a means where adults get kids, but where we seek to restore something that was lost to the child. So we kind of go everywhere in the them before us world because we are serious about putting them, the children before us, the adults, on matters of marriage and family.
Walker Wildmon If someone from the White House were listening and we needed to speak to the IVF issue because President Trump and, I'll, grant him a little bit of grace here because he can't be an expert in everything. And I think his hunch towards IVF and talking positively about it, he just views it as another way to have kids. now I think he's been briefed more on this since he kind of came out after the Alabama State Supreme Court ruling and started speaking to this. And I know the White House has tried to get Christians in his ear to explain the moral and ethical concerns with IVF, but explain the problems with it because the benefits are. You can easily describe the benefits very narrowly, but the, how this stuff can go wrong is like, it's massive. How the IVF, technology can be abused terribly.
Katy Faust Yeah, Well, I agree with you that I think his motivations are largely good. I mean, he said straight up, we support IVF because we want more babies. More babies. And I'm like, I also want more babies. but the goal cannot be Allah. Ah, Elon Musk style of, I'm going to have babies with whatever baby mama happens to be in my orbit. because babies don't just need their life, they need their mother and father. Right. It's not just anyone way of getting more children into the world that we need to be concerned about. We need to do that in ways that respect children's fundamental rights, their right to life, their right to be known and loved by the two people responsible for their existence in a lifelong married home. So the problem with IVF overwhelmingly is that it violates both, even though it's hard to get the numbers, because the world of big fertility does not track or share what they do with these little lives. It's a very safe estimate that big fertility destroys more embryonic life every year than Planned Parenthood does by a magnitude of 2, 3, 4, maybe more. And so, unfortunately, while we do see blessed, wonderful, precious 90,000 children born through IVF every year, that is a fraction of the number of children created in laboratories, the vast majority who are going to lose their right to life because they are genetically screened out of existence, sex selected out of existence, they will not make the grade. They will be frozen forever. They will be thawed and then discarded, or they'll be donated to research. So our objection to IVF at them before us is not because we don't love these children. It's because we love the 93 to 97% who will never be born alive, even after they're made in glass, in vitro, in IVF.
Walker Wildmon The, I think adoption is biblical when the circumstances properly line up
Let's talk a little bit about adoption, because the. Obviously, adoption is a reality for a lot of people around the country. And to a degree, I think adoption is biblical when the circumstances properly line up. Because after all, we were grafted in, we were adopted into the household of God. So it's indicative of how God deals with us as lost people that come into the Household of faith. But that doesn't mean that it's perfect or ideal or how it was supposed to be. So talk about that kind of moral dilemma where we understand adoption is going to happen, right? It's a necessity. It's needed. There are children who don't have a mom or a dad for a variety of reasons, but we shouldn't aim for that. For people to be fatherless or motherless, that shouldn't be a goal. That should be an unfortunate situation that we're trying to repair. Right?
Katy Faust Yeah, that's really well stated. And repair is the right word there, because there is loss. Adoption begins with loss. Certainly for the birth mother, definitely. I think for the birth father, too, but absolutely for the child. When children lose their mother, even if it's just on the first day of their life, they very often suffer what many adoptees have called a primal wound and subsequent struggles to trust and attach. Even though adoptees are largely raised by parents who have more stable marriages, who are wealthier, and statistically spend more time with them, they still tend to struggle more in school and more with things like externalizing disorders, anxiety and things like that. And that's because these children are having to do something that no child should have to do, which is detach from the only person they know the day that they are born and reattach to biological strangers. Now, you can acknowledge that, and you should acknowledge that, and you can still say that adoption is redemptive. I mean, I'm an adoptive mom myself, but I will also tell you that I can't fully compensate for everything that my son has lost. We need to seek adoption as a just society's response to children who have suffered the loss of the two people to whom they have a fundamental natural right. And that is what adoption is all about. It is seeking to mend that wound. And sometimes you can, but sometimes with adoptees, it's never fully healed on this side of heaven. So, we want to minimize the amount of situations where a child is going to need to be adopted. And spoiler. The place where children are the least likely to be taken into foster care or relinquished is when they are conceived and born into the home of their own married mother and father. If we did that, there would be virtually no foster children in this country left, because those adults are the most connected to, invested in, and protective of children. And very, very seldom are kids taken from their married biological mother and father and placed up for adoption.
The Trump administration is looking into ways to incentivize having children
Walker Wildmon Let's talk about government intervention here, because my instinct is, no, I don't want the government getting involved. And probably 80% of the time, that's probably a good answer, a good instinct. But a recent headline is that the Trump administration is looking into how to basically incentivize, having children. And it didn't. The article didn't really go into the policy wonkishness of like, how are we going to do this? It was just an overarching. This is a goal that Trump is looking into. but. And it talked about like a $5,000, basically, baby bonus. But what would you say to that, number one? Do you think that the government really needs to get into this business of incentivizing having, children, or maybe it does with guardrails. What's your reaction to that?
Katy Faust So I know that Trump, even though he, let's be honest, Trump does not have a stellar personal record in this regard when it comes to staying faithfully married to one woman. and he is not a social conservative. I think that he has very good instincts. I think that he understands, what the people at the grassroots want. And that's all really, really important. But I don't think that he's operating at a convictional level here. But I will say that probably the people in his orbit are, and many of them also recognize that we are just on the precipice and sliding very quickly into a population winter. I mean, if you still believe that we are dealing with an overpopulation problem in this country or across the world, the 1990s called and they want their talking point back. That is absolutely not where we are today. Right now, we are in a place where our total fertility rate is below replacement rate. We're at, 2.1 is what you need to have on average if you're going to simply sustain your population. We're at 1.7. About 70% of the world today lives in countries below total fertility replacement rate. It is actually the biggest catastrophic situation that nobody is talking about. So the instincts of Trump and his administration is correct. We need to incentive. And the way that. Let's be clear, the left knows this, but the way that they've been wanting to deal with it is to import people. They have, flooded the border. Because part of that is because they understand that we're in a demographic crisis. That's not the solution. The solution is encourage people to have more children. The main way that you do that is by encouraging more people to marry sooner. A lot of the reason why we're seeing this population decline is because people are delaying marriage. And then Delaying childbearing. And then many women are missing out on their peak fertility years and then turning to things like IVF or surrogates or sperm or egg donors because they're trying to become a mother at 41. When they were, their bodies were ready to do it at 21. So these movements by the government, it's very important in terms of encouraging people to form families to do it sooner and to see children as something that should be welcomed, not a burden or something that is going to stifle your freedom or whatever. But I will offer this caveat. There are a lot of countries around the world, Scandinavia, South Korea, Japan, China, who are facing devastating birth deaths. All of them have tried to give people money to try to get them to have more children, and it has largely been ineffective.
Walker Wildmon Yeah.
Katy Faust Does it take a bit of the sting off of staying home with your third child? Yes, it can. But it does not tend to change things at a population level. The only thing that does that is religion. You have to tell a better story about men, women, marriage and children and the materialist world and the secular humanist world and the utopia Marxist world. Nobody has the story that leads people to embrace the short term sacrifice of marriage and children for the sake of the long term personal gain and social gain. Only religion does that. So that is why we're seeing higher rates of fertility in Catholic populations, evangelicals, Mormons and Muslims.
I could see this baby bonus going south very quickly if it's not structured properly
Walker Wildmon To your point about the, you know, whether your kind of comments about how much the government should get involved here made me think of how actually this could go south very quickly. And here's what I mean by that. Now that I'm, I'm basically thinking through this as we're talking, which is kind of dangerous on live radio. But, but the welfare programs, the welfare system, it operates somewhat similar where it incentivizes behavior, but it's not described that way. It's viewed as aid. It's viewed as being charitable and compassionate. Right. Where you incentivize out of wedlock births because you tell the mom they can't have the money unless they're not married. And if you get married and have a husband and increase your income, well, you're not eligible anymore. And you can go back to the original writings of these policies and go, well, that makes sense. You know, we're trying to help only those who need it. Well, okay, but now the end result is that people are intentionally not getting married because it's disincentivized according to the programs. I could see something happening very quickly with this where you say, all right moms, you know, you're, you get 5,000 bucks for having a child. Well, okay, so there's no stipulation on marriage. And they might even have a qualifier where it says, well, you can't be married because then your income levels up or something. I could just see this going south very quickly where it's just an expansion of the welfare state because to your point, if it's just about having children, but then we're having the children out of wedlock and then the crime rates are up, the dropout rates are up and the poverty rates are up, that's only going to be more of a drain on our systems. As opposed to being a blessing, which is where you have citizens, that are contributing to society. They're paying into the programs, they're paying taxes, et cetera, they're contributing in the workforce. I could see this, this $5,000 baby bonus going south really quickly if it's not structured properly.
Katy Faust I think that you're exactly right and you hit on a critical principle that government should know by now, but that every parent knows 100%. And that is what you incentivize, you get more of.
Walker Wildmon Yeah.
Katy Faust And so like if you incentivize, if you say if your homework is done, then you get an extra, extra scoop of ice cream, you're gonna get more homework done. Right. You are going to incentivize what you're incentivizing, you get more. Everybody in Seattle knows this. We have incentivized people to live on the street in the name of like caring for the homeless. And you know what, our homeless population has exploded. We've incentivized people living on the street. We're getting more homelessness. So that's what happened in welfare. We thought in the name of helping poor single mothers, that we were going to help them alleviate, you know, concerns about poverty or get their child into a Head Start program. What we did is we incentivized single motherhood. And so you're exactly right that you need to structure these kinds of financial rewards carefully. I don't, I now at that. Before us, we actually have a pretty breakthrough policy recommendations that we've been talking through with different state level lawmakers on how to incentivize not just, just more children, but more children born to their own married mother and father. And we've been able to work with several lawmakers around the country to look at possibly presenting this.
Walker Wildmon Let's talk about that when we get back. Sorry, we got A hard break. Katy. We'll be back in two.
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Walker Wildmon Will you take a moment and celebrate life with me? Last year preborn helped rescue over 67,000 babies from abortion. Hi, this is Walker Wildmon and I want to thank you for your partnership. Think about what you did. 67,000 babies are taking their first breath now because of you. Your $28 sponsored one ultrasound that was given to a woman as she was deciding about the future of her child. Once she saw her precious baby for the first time and heard their sweet heartbeat m her baby's chance at life doubled. But Preborn's mission is not only to rescue babies lives, but also lead women to Christ. Last year preborn network Clinic saw over 8,900 women receive salvation. Your help is crucial to continue their life saving work.
Jeff Chamblee Your caring tax deductible donation saves lives. So please be generous. To donate go to preborn.com afr that's preborn.com afr or dial 250 and say the keyword baby. That's 250B A by you'll love can save a life. This is at the core on American Family Radio with your host Walker Wildmon.
Walker Wildmon Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. We're talking to Katy Faust with them before us organization and I had to be rude like a radio host and cut her off towards the end of the last segment. But Katy, that's probably not the first time you've been cut off. Right?
Katy Faust Well, and now that I'm hosting a show on American Family Radio, I also am rude to the people that are on with me. and a lot of that is not over video. So I've like started to have these like wild gestures being like, cut it off, wrap it off. and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, yeah, you just, when, when, when a guest is talking, there's just something, especially when you're from the south, you just don't want to start talking over him. But you got to do what you got to do. You were talking about how there are some ways to, to properly structure the incentivizing of married mom and dad having children in wedlock. Talk about that, that finish that Subject up.
There is a role that only a revival can fill when it comes to population challenges
Katy Faust Well then before us has some policy recommendations that we have, you know, coached some state level lawmakers on. And government cannot do everything. Like I said in the previous segment, there are some things that only God can do. And telling us what marriage and family is and the value of having children, that is something that religious Americans tend to take more seriously. And so we are outbreeding our secular counterparts in a lot of ways. And there is a role that really only a revival is going to be able to fill when it comes to the population challenges that we have. But that's not to say that government has nothing to offer right now. There's actually some financial barriers to having children or having large children. I mean, they certainly could do things in the big cities like make there be housing more available. there are some ways that they can incentivize through taxes or credits or things like that. People to feel like it's not as much of an economic barrier. they can't do everything, but they can do something. And I appreciate Trump administration trying to do something.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, absolutely. let's pivot to. We've talked about a lot of different things. We've talked about adoption, ivf, we talked about what the Trump administration is doing.
Children raised by same sex couples face increased risks of abuse and neglect
Let's pivot to these children that are being fostered or adopted or you know, through surrogacy into homes where there's two dudes is how I like to describe it. two women. there's definitely not biological mom and dad, that's for sure. And there's so much wrong about it. But just talk about the fundamentals before we get into some of these horror stories. The fundamentals of what children miss out on when mommy and daddy are not there, there.
Katy Faust Yep. So we talk about this in terms of like, there's three critical areas that those children raised by same sex couples are going to be missing. Number one, they're always missing a biological parent and subsequently they're always raised by a non biological parent. And while we know wonderful heroic step parents out there, on the whole, an unrelated adult is less invested, less connected to and less protective of children. So those are the scenarios where an unrelated adult in the home, especially an unrelated man, that is where you see drastic increased risks of abuse and neglect. So number one, the home is not as safe. Number two, the child is not going to benefit from the gender complementarity of having a male and female parent. Men and women are drastically different. But especially that is demonstrated in the home that mothers, women tend to simplify their language when you know, oh, little baby, did you get an owie? And the dads, they use the same size of words and amount of words with their kids that they use with everybody else, which is like, you wouldn't believe the workday that I had today, but I nailed that spreadsheet. I'll tell you, Daddy is up for promotion, you know, so like, they've always got, yeah, kids always have an adult, a parent, who is. They understand 100% of what they're saying. And then dad walks in the door and he's constantly expanding their cognitive development because he's not dumbing down his language, you know, Mom. Through their natural interactions, their caregiving with children are honing kids fine motor skills. Like they're, they're cutting bananas with the butter and knife and they're tying their shoes and they're taping in there, they're coloring, they're using their little fingers. Dads, through their natural interactive play, are developing children's gross motor skills. They're wrestling, they're climbing, they're swinging a hammer. Sometimes they're setting things on fire. Like, women don't light things on fire with their children. Men do. And so when kids are being raised by two men or two women, they are always missing out on this critical developmental aspect of either mothering or fathering. And then finally, when children are raised by two men or two women, they guaranteed are missing out on 50% of their biological identity. And it is very, very hard for kids to answer the question, who am I? If they can't answer the question, whose am I? And so a lot of these kids are more likely to struggle with identity issues because they've been cut off from at least 50% of the transcendent information that has historically allowed adults or even adolescents to answer that question accurately.
Walker Wildmon M. I've read horror stories, and your organization has reported on them and highlighted them. And your website actually has testimonies of people who've been victimized, children who've been victimized, through this, you know, wild, wild west of so called parenting and acquiring children is how you guys describe it, which is very accurate.
Georgia case raises concerns about homosexuals adopting children and then committing child abuse
And let me ask you this. And a lot of hosts wouldn't touch on this because they don't want to get canceled, but I don't really care, because we own the microphone. But I do want to get your honest opinion on this. So when I read stories, horror stories like the one out of Georgia of two guys that adopt little kids and then they molest them, I think, wow, I mean, who Could. Did somebody not see that coming? is there any truth to my inclination or assumption that this type of abuse between two homosexual men that are already publicly engaging in deviant behavior, self professed deviant behavior, by going outside of the one man, one woman relationship. is. Is there. Is the data. Is that true that. That these relationships of homosexuals and transgenders and lesbians is more prone to children being victimized, or is that just kind of, an inkling that isn't proven by the data? What's your. What's your organization's thoughts on that?
Katy Faust So if you want to just talk data, the data that we have speaks to the danger and increased risk of having an unrelated adult in the home. That is exactly why adoptive parents, like me and like a lot of your listeners, had to go through months of screening and vetting and background checks and home studies and references. And even then, adoptees are at increased risk of abuse. because it seems that we have not yet found a formula that is able to replicate the protective standards that God automatically built into the married biological mother and father household, even with the screening and vetting, which is the closest that we can get. The situation you're talking about the two guys that I, actually think that their adoption was fast tracked in some ways, because why? Because, oh, my gosh, we're so tolerant and, you know, we are here to serve the LGBT community. So I bet that there's a possibility that they overlook some serious red flags in that case. But if you just look at, you know, I often, as sort of a thought experiment when I'm speaking or interviewing, I tell people, like, if you just intend to parent, or if love makes a family, or if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy, or all the different things that we say in every essence to say that mothers and fathers are optional in a child's life. If all of that is true, then children living with her, their mother and her cohabiting live in boyfriend would be doing great. But if you Google the words mother's boyfriend, you're going to see tens of thousands of pages of the most horrific child abuse and filicide that you're going to find anywhere on the World Wide Web. That's because the most dangerous place a child can find themselves in America today is in the home of an unrelated man left to care for the child himself. So what do you have, in a situation where it's two men raising a child, well, now you have not one, but two of the statistically most dangerous people that a child can find themselves with. We pray that things like adoption screening would mitigate some of that. But obviously in this case, the predatory inclinations of these men, were somehow able to, skirt around those protections. Yeah, then it's a major concern because we have things like surrogacy now that will allow anybody that is willing to cut a check to walk home with an unrelated adult. And we have scenarios of single, double, triple men acquiring children through these technologies. And unlike adoption, there's no screening or vetting or background checks for these guys. So then before us has already documented, several cases of verified predators or child abusers who acquired children through surrogacy.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, these stories are horrific and some people can't even read them. Like, and I just read the, news articles about, and half the stuff was blanked out about what happened in that Georgia situation. And, those stories are all over the place. That's not a one off, you know, oddity. That stuff happens pretty often. and anybody who works in law enforcement, especially in the child pornography arena, a lot of these detectives, they have to go through counseling. They have a really hard time doing their job effectively because of the sheer number and horror level of some of these stories of child abuse that have to do with sexual crimes.
Putting children first solves all of these problems, Katy says
Let me ask you one more question, Katy, on, how do we, where do we go from here? Because this is a daunting task that your organization's working on, but it's a noble one and it has to be done for the well being of children and families. But we've got, I mean, we've got transgenderism, we've got homosexuality, and all of these are kind of in their own category to a degree with their own effects. We have, ah, unrestricted IVF largely. we've got the foster system, we've got out of wedlock births between a man and a woman. where do you go first? If you have to do triage, which basically we're doing triage here, where do you go first?
Katy Faust What you need to do is recognize that children come from a man and woman. They distinctly benefit from that man and woman. They get their identity from that man and woman. They are statistically the most likely to be safe and loved when they are raised by that man and woman. And they have a fundamental natural right to that man and woman, if you understood that and believed it, which you should, because it's not just validated by the Bible and scripture, but it is, substantiated by the best social science that we have and the Testimonies of children throughout the world. What you get then is the answer to everything. If children have a right to their mother and father, you get the right answer to marriage. Marriage is no longer a vehicle of adult fulfillment. It is a matter of justice for children because it is the only relationship that unites the two people to whom children have a natural right. What about divorce? Well, then you greenlight divorce only in cases where children's right to safety or one parent's right to safety is being threatened. Otherwise, the parents need to work it out. What do you do in a situation of an unplanned pregnancy? Well, the child has a right to life. And to their mother and father? The answer is for both the dad and the mom to reorient their lives around each other and the child. So both the right to life and right to the mother and father are protected. What do you do in matters of ivf? Well, you only conduct that in ways where no child loses their right to life, which is pretty much zero cases of ivf. What do you do in cases where you're dealing with infertility and you want to get a sperm or egg donor or a surrogate? The answer is no. The answer is you do the hard things because the alternative is forcing children to lose their fundamental rights. Or if you are in a stable, loving marriage and you're burdened by the plight of children, then you do the hard thing by bringing in a forsaken, abandoned or orphaned child into your home so that you're bearing the brunt of their loss and they don't have to shoulder it alone. Looking at everything through the lens of what if we put children first solves all of these problems?
Walker Wildmon Yeah, if we do that, and I think that sums it up, Katie. I mean, if we look at this, and I will say, I'll admit our movement, the evangelical Christian movement and the conservative movement, has really done a poor job articulating this. And during the whole Obergefell battle And in the late 90s, early 2000s, a lot of it was focused on religious freedom. A lot of it was focused on conscience protections, and some of it was focused on what God's definition is, which is important. But that's not the whole picture. And to me, the most compelling case is when we look at taking care of the most vulnerable amongst our society, which is the children and the elderly. that, to me, morally, that's the most compelling argument for the public. And I think that's what gets people to the table. And then while we're at the table we can talk about. Well, number one, this is how God designed it. This is why it works, is because this is how he designed it. And the children matter. They ought to be protected. They ought to be taken care of. Their rights ought to be at the forefront of our policy. And this is more than just about two consenting adults and whatever they want to do on their own personal time. This is way broader, than just that dumbed down version that we were told that this was all, all about.
Katy, tell our, audience, ah, before we let you go where they can read more about your work.
Katy Faust Well, first of all, you should listen to the American Family Radio show every Saturday and Sunday. We cover your questions and we hit some trending news. But come to them before us.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Let us equip you to be warriors on behalf of children.
Walker Wildmon Amen. Hey, thanks so much, Katie. Appreciate the work!
Katy Faust Great to be with you.
American Family Radio welcomes Katy Faust to its podcast lineup
Walker Wildmon All right, glad to have you on. That's Katy Faust. Her show does air on Saturday and Sunday, as she mentioned, 3 to 4 Central, 3pm to 4pm Central on American Family Radio. Each Saturday and Sunday, the podcast is queued up every week right there on afr.net on the AFR app. And wherever you listen to podcasts, I'll tell you what, those who have just heard Katie for the first time, that are impressed, this is why I wanted to bring her and her organization on board on the podcast lineup, on the weekend lineup, because the focus that they have on protecting the rights of children is, is an angle and a focus and a vigor that I haven't heard from any other organization or any other thought leader of our time. And so platforming them before us, getting this message out there is a big, big deal. And they're doing excellent work. And, we appreciate Katy and her whole team, Josh and, others there at them before us. Well, excellent interview. Powerful content folks. We got a lot of, lot of room to go, a lot of way to go when it comes to protecting the rights of children, restoring marriage and family as God designed it, as he intended it it. We'll see you next time.
Jeff Chamblee The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
This episode is a call to action for listeners to engage with their faith, protect their families, and advocate for the rights of children in a rapidly changing world.
Join us as we reflect on these important themes and strive to create a society that values and uplifts the most vulnerable among us.
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