Tony Jones speaks with Katy Faust, who was raised by lesbian parents and is in Australia to lobby against same sex marriage.
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Our next guest, Katy Faust, serves on the
academic and testimonial council of the International Children's Rights
Institute. As you heard in Tom Iggulden's story, she's a fierce opponent of
same-sex marriage, despite being raised by same-sex parents and describing her
mother as a loving gay parent. She's in Canberra to lobby against same-sex
marriage. Katy Faust joins us now from Parliament House.
Thanks for being there.
KATY FAUST, TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE ADVOCATE: Thanks so much for having me.
TONY JONES: Have you actually managed to speak to any Australian
politicians yet?
KATY FAUST: We did. My - my partner in crime, Millie Fontana, who is a
resident of Melbourne and also raised by two mothers and I had a chance to
speak with a couple of members of Parliament yesterday.
TONY JONES: Not the Prime Minister so far?
KATY FAUST: No, no. He hasn't called yet.
TONY JONES: Now how is it that the daughter of lesbian mothers has
become a leading opponent of gay marriage? How does that work?
KATY FAUST: Simply because I recognised that while my mother was a
fantastic mother and most of what I do well as a mother myself I do because
that's how she parented me, she can't be a father. Her partner, an incredible
woman - both of these women have my heart - cannot be a father either. Children
have a right to be in relationship with their mother and father whenever
possible, and as a society, we shouldn't normalise a family structure that
requires children to lose one or both parents to be in that household.
TONY JONES: Now trying to sway the US Supreme Court to rule against gay
marriage, you wrote to Justice Anthony Kennedy before that vote and you said
you used to say, "I'm happy my parents got divorced so I could get to know
all you wonderful women." Now you seemed to be saying that was all a lie.
KATY FAUST: Well, there's a lot of pressure on children of gay parents
to please their parents, to sort of carry the banner forward for them and you
can read about this not just in conservative publications, but even books like
Families Like Mine, which was publicised by a pro-gay marriage daughter of gays
and she admitted and several of the kids in that book admitted that it's very
difficult to be honest about this because of the political pressure surrounding
this topic. There's several children that have contacted me even since I
started writing about this saying, "I agree with you, but I'll never come
out and speak about this publicly because my relationship with my parent is too
tenuous."
TONY JONES: Now Katy, did you find God somewhere in this journey towards
anti-gay marriage?
KATY FAUST: Well, I was not raised a Christian, but I did become a
Christian in high school.
TONY JONES: And did that change things? I mean, did you decide that
homosexuality was against the Scriptures, against God's will, something of that
nature?
KATY FAUST: Well, I - it took a long time, honestly, for me to get on
board with what biblical sexuality says, because there's a fierce
protectiveness I think that all children have for their parents, but what I was
delighted to find when I read Scripture is that God has an incredible heart for
the orphan and that he's very concerned with the plight of children. And that
lines up very much with where we need to go in this discussion, which is
focusing on the rights of children primarily as opposed to emphasising the
desires of adults, which tend to take centrestage when we're talking about this
issue.
TONY JONES: Now after your parents divorced, because you originally had
a father and a mother. They divorced. Your father, you say, went off with other
women. Why have you focused your main criticism on the homosexual part of the
equation and not your father?
KATY FAUST: Well, I think that I'm pretty fair in my statements to say
that whether you're heterosexual or homosexual, children have rights. And
adults - the onus needs to be on adults to conform to the rights of children
rather than children fitting into an adult's lifestyle. And certainly, I don't
think that homosexuals are responsible by any means for the crisis that we face
in America when it comes to family structure these days. Absolutely,
heterosexuals have led the way on that charge. I got into this discussion
primarily because what I heard from the gay lobby was that children don't care
who's raising them, right? That children are just fine if it's two men or two
women. And the reality is that anybody that's talked to a child who has lost a
parent, whether through divorce, abandonment, third-party reproduction or
death, kids absolutely care. Family structure matters to children. And so I
heard the LBGT lobby saying it doesn't care - they don't care and I don't think
that that's reality.
TONY JONES: OK. You also were motivated politically once President Obama
announced his support for same-sex marriage and you set up an anonymous blog
called Ask the Bigot. Why did you do that? Why'd you call it that to start with
and what happened when you did it?
KATY FAUST: Yes. Well, you know, strangely, the URL wasn't taken for
that web name. Not sure why. But it was born in an angry moment. I'm not really
a confrontational person. But what happened when Obama evolved is to me it felt
like media was free to play the bigot card. So now everybody that doesn't
support gay marriage is a bigot, right?, because either you're isolated and you
don't know any gay people or you're indoctrinated or you're homophobic or
you're the equivalent of a racist. And they were not giving any attention to
people that had a genuine argument, a well-founded secular, convincing argument
for supportive traditional marriage. And so I started blogging anonymously ...
TONY JONES: I was gonna make that point. You started blogging
anonymously. What happened? Why did you go public, as it were?
KATY FAUST: I didn't. I was outed by a gay blogger who felt like I
needed to be held accountable for my stance and the truth is that I would not
have filed a brief with the Supreme Court, I wouldn't be having this interview
with you today, because I never intended to be involved in the legal fight, but
because I was outed in the name of love and tolerance, I am talking with you
today.
TONY JONES: OK. So, just going to that Supreme Court decision. In June,
Justice Kennedy authored - the same man you wrote to authored the Supreme
Court's decision in favour of same-sex marriage. He began in agreement with
you, saying that no union is more profound than marriage. But he said of the
gay people who had petitioned the court, "It would be to misunderstand
these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is
that they respect it so much, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its
fulfilment for themselves." Now obviously the court agreed that their
dignity was the critical thing here. Why do you disagree with that position?
KATY FAUST: Well because they have dignity, right? Single parents have
dignity. People that have never been married have dignity. You don't gain
dignity by a government bestowing that on you, you just have it. The question
is not whether or not they're - they have dignity and the question is not even
really whether or not they have the capacity to love and commit the way
heterosexuals do. They do. They absolutely do. The question is: what is
government's interest in marriage? It's really not about affirming the connections
that we have with one another. It has to do with the product of those unions
and there's something distinct about the product of a union between
heterosexuals. What's distinct is that they make babies and those babies have
rights and those babies deserve protection.
TONY JONES: Katy Faust, we'll have to leave you there. Thank you very
much for coming in to join us.
KATY FAUST: Well, thank you for having me.
