Jordan B Peterson's Gay Marriage, Surrogacy, Divorce & Hookup Culture | Katy Faust | EP 527: skim's analysis identifies 12 key moments, with 3 potential conflicts of interest flagged. Katy Faust, founder of Them Before Us, joins Jordan Peterson to argue that marriage and reproductive policies must prioritize children's natural right to their biological mother and father over adult desires.
Category: Opinion. Format: Interview. YouTube video analyzed by skim.
skim AI Analysis
Credibility assessment: Advocacy and Academic Mix. Both speakers cite real sociological and biological literature, including work by Martin Daly, Margo Wilson, Mark Regnerus, and Jaak Panksepp, alongside fetal microchimerism research. However, they also rely heavily on anecdotal story banks, unverified demographic claims, and theological assertion.
Bias assessment: Natural-Law Traditionalist. Katy Faust and Jordan Peterson share a social conservative, natural-law, and Christian worldview. While Peterson plays devil's advocate regarding surrogacy and gay parenting, both speakers frame progressive family policies, same-sex marriage, and the sexual revolution as harmful to children.
Originality: 72% — Child-Rights Reframing. Rather than arguing about marriage from adult morality or religious prohibition alone, Katy Faust reframes debates over surrogacy, gamete donation, and same-sex parenting around pre-political natural rights of the child and divides motherhood into three distinct biological and social roles.
Depth: 76% — Philosophical and Empirical. The conversation explores first-principle definitions of natural rights, biological mechanisms of maternal-infant bonding, methodological critiques of sociological family studies, and evolutionary psychology regarding mating strategies, though some complex counterarguments receive brief treatment.
Key Points (12)
1. Prioritizing Children's Rights Over Adult Desires
Timestamp: 00:05:13 to 00:09:13
Katy Faust argues that children possess fundamental natural rights to life and to their biological mother and father that must supersede adult desires across all marriage and family policies. Jordan Peterson adds that adult and child interests actually align in the long run when adults reject short-term hedonistic gratification. Both conclude that because children cannot lobby or hire lawyers, society must explicitly defend their interests.
Significance (High): Reframes marriage and reproductive debates away from adult liberty toward child welfare, challenging single, gay, and infertile adults alike to subordinate personal desires.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author), Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
2. How the 2012 Gay Marriage Debate Sparked Faust
Timestamp: 00:09:14 to 00:16:14
Responding to skepticism about whether she masks a conservative religious agenda as child protection, Katy Faust explains she entered public advocacy in 2012 during Washington State's gay marriage debate. She argues that saying children do not care if they have two moms or two dads functionally normalizes intentional mother or father loss. Drawing on decades of youth ministry, she concludes that missing a biological parent is a deep primal wound for children.
Significance (Medium): Illustrates how the redefinition of marriage catalyzed a new wave of child-centered conservative activism focused on biological parent loss rather than traditional religious arguments alone.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
Neutral sources: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
3. Surrogacy Splits Motherhood Into Three Roles, Says Faust
Timestamp: 00:17:30 to 00:25:56
After Jordan Peterson recounts how his friend Dave Rubin and his husband used surrogacy and extended female family members to raise two boys, Katy Faust argues that what Dave Rubin did to those children is unjust. She contends that commercial surrogacy splits motherhood into three separate, purchasable roles: the genetic egg provider, the gestational birth mother, and the daily social mother.
Significance (High): Directly challenges conservative tolerance of commercial surrogacy by applying the exact same natural-rights standard to prominent right-leaning figures like Dave Rubin.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
Neutral sources: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
4. Peterson Tests the Existence Argument for Surrogacy
Timestamp: 00:25:57 to 00:30:00
Jordan Peterson pushes back on Katy Faust's critique by noting that Dave Rubin's children are well-loved and would not exist at all without surrogacy. Faust counters that telling donor-conceived or surrogate-born children they should be grateful simply to exist is a manipulative tactic that silences their grief over missing biological parents. She concludes that society can affirm the full dignity and worth of a child's life while condemning the unjust circumstances of their conception.
Significance (High): Addresses the most common philosophical defense of reproductive technology by separating a child's intrinsic value from the morality of how they were conceived.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
Neutral sources: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
5. Why Children Have a Pre-Political Right to Parents
Timestamp: 00:30:57 to 00:37:37
Evaluating whether infertile heterosexual couples should use surrogacy, Katy Faust states that no adult has a right to acquire a child, whereas every child has a natural right to their biological mother and father. Outlining three criteria with co-author Stacy Manning, she argues that genuine natural rights exist pre-government, require no third party to manufacture them, and are distributed equally to everyone.
Significance (High): Establishes a strict three-part natural-law test that rules out third-party reproduction even for married heterosexual couples facing infertility.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
Neutral sources: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
6. Biological Complexity of Maternal-Infant Bonding
Timestamp: 00:37:38 to 00:47:37
Jordan Peterson examines the biological irreplaceability of mothers, noting that fetuses and mothers exchange DNA and stem cells through microchimerism and that a mother's body extracts bone calcium when nursing a calcium-deficient infant. Katy Faust points out that even adopted children raised in wealthy, stable homes exhibit more externalizing disorders than average due to primal bond disruption.
Significance (High): Grounds the moral objection to maternal separation in physiological mechanisms and developmental psychology rather than abstract tradition.
Sources in support: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC), Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
7. Mother and Father Roles Are Not Interchangeable
Timestamp: 00:47:38 to 00:51:28
Jordan Peterson proposes that the archetypal woman, exemplified by Mary and the infant, has a nervous system adapted to the mother-infant dyad with heightened sensitivity to negative emotion to protect the child. Katy Faust agrees and shares testimonies from her organization's anonymous chat group for children of same-sex parents, who she says feel forced into the closet about missing their absent biological parent.
Significance (Medium): Challenges the view that parenting roles are gender-neutral social constructs by combining evolutionary psychology with testimonies from children of same-sex couples.
Sources in support: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC), Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
8. Methodological Flaws in Parenting Studies and Stepfather Risk
Timestamp: 00:52:42 to 00:58:59
When Jordan Peterson asks for unbiased data on same-sex parenting beyond self-selected chat groups, Katy Faust argues that the 79 studies cited before Obergefell relied on small, non-random convenience samples and adult self-reports, whereas larger studies by Mark Regnerus and Paul Sullins found higher distress and abuse rates. Both speakers highlight the Cinderella effect documented by Canadian sociologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson.
Significance (High): Uses sociological critiques and criminological data on unrelated household adults to argue that biological relatedness is a primary safeguard against child abuse.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author), Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
9. Faust's Strategy to Change Culture and Family Law
Timestamp: 00:59:00 to 01:04:48
Detailing the practical work of Them Before Us, Katy Faust says her organization pursues a global campaign to change both cultural hearts and state-level legislation. Jordan Peterson observes that opposing the corporate commodification of children and demanding that the strong sacrifice for the weak should appeal to traditional leftist principles.
Significance (Medium): Outlines how child-rights advocacy is transitioning from cultural commentary into state-level legislative proposals targeting reproductive technology and family law.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author), Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
10. Western Fertility Crisis and Delayed Marriage
Timestamp: 01:06:12 to 01:15:14
Jordan Peterson cites data from an upcoming Alliance for Responsible Citizenship documentary indicating that over half of 30-year-old Western women are childless, half of those will remain permanently childless, and 90% of involuntarily childless women regret it. Katy Faust attributes rising infertility largely to a marriage formation crisis where young women are told to prioritize degrees and careers during their peak fertile years in their twenties.
Significance (High): Highlights the demographic and personal cost of delaying family formation past peak fertility windows, framing involuntary childlessness as a looming social crisis.
Sources in support: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC), Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
11. Advising Young Women on Dating and College
Timestamp: 01:15:15 to 01:22:56
Jordan Peterson calculates that because a woman's optimal fertility window is roughly 10 years, she realistically has time to deeply evaluate at most five long-term partners. Katy Faust explains how she guides her teenage and college-age daughters: building strong same-sex friendships in their teens, practicing healthy dating to civilize young men, and choosing colleges with balanced male-to-female ratios.
Significance (Medium): Offers concrete parenting and life-planning advice for teenagers and young adults seeking early marriage instead of delayed capstone relationships.
Sources in support: Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author), Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC)
12. Hookup Culture Rewards Dark-Triad Men, Says Peterson
Timestamp: 01:22:57 to 01:31:25
Jordan Peterson cites personality research showing that men who prefer low-investment hookup culture exhibit Machiavellian, psychopathic, narcissistic, and sadistic traits, arguing that women claim status and civilize men by saying no. Katy Faust adds that fatherlessness induces 'father hunger' in girls, causing them to start menstruation a year earlier on average and seek validation through teen pregnancy and casual sex.
Significance (High): Connects evolutionary psychology on short-term mating strategies with the physiological effects of father absence on adolescent girls.
Sources in support: Jordan Peterson (Host, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast; Co-founder, ARC), Katy Faust (Founder and President, Them Before Us; Author)
This analysis was generated by skim (skim.plus), an AI-powered content analysis platform by Credible AI. Scores and classifications represent the platform's AI-generated assessment and should be considered alongside other sources.
