Who the hell is Katy Faust and why is everyone talking about her?
That’s the question many around Australia today after a fiery episode of Q&A in which Katy Faust sent social media in a spin.
Katy Faust is best known for her work campaigning against same sex marriage – despite being the child of same sex parents.
Faust was raised by lesbian mothers and seems to have a bit of a chip on her shoulder about it, despite describing her mother as a “loving gay parent”. And she recently touched down in Australia to spread her… message.
Faust told Tony Jones on Lateline that her mum was “a fantastic mother and most of what I do well as a parent is because that’s how she parented me.
“But she can’t be a father. Her partner, an incredible woman, both of these women have my heart, cannot be a father either.”
Thing is, Faust has a father. Her father reportedly went off with other women following his divorce from Faust’s mother, and Faust’s mother went on to form a stable and loving relationship with a woman.
It seems Faust doesn’t have much of a relationship with her dad — but surely that has nothing to do with gay marriage and everything to do with his performance as a father? One would think.
Jones asked whether Christianity had coloured her views on the topic and Faust replied that she became a born-again Christian in high school, but she describes her argument as “secular and well-founded.”
Top Comments
oh boy -- the writer also seems to have a built in bias here -- that Katy Faust's activism is not about gay marriage but about a bad relationship with her dad. I can see why she'd think this way and it is interesting to realise how once we've made up our minds about something we can see more reasons to affirm that choice and also more reasons why those who disagree are biased. It does sound like Ms Faust had a less than great relationship with her dad, but she would not have had a dad in her home even if her relationship with him had been super. Of course he's going to find another relationship with another woman. What divorced father remains celibate and single for the rest of his life? And if he does, his relationship with a child by another woman, a woman either he divorced or who divorced him, is at risk. Risk does not mean it will cease to exist - nor that the relationship is bad -- it's just a real possibility that it will get distant. It boils down to this prevalent belief in western society that biology is irrelevant -- that proximity doesn't matter, because we can manipulate biology -- dispense with it whenever we want. We've begun to understand how messing with the planet's biology is disastrous - we have not understood how humans are part of ecology. Whatever -- I clearly have a bias too. As a child of parents who believed a biological mother was a frill -- unnecessary -- and that all kids need is love, I know. Love looks very different to children than it does to adults. My sister and I had to confide in each other and keep it secret that we longed for a family -- longed for people connected to us by blood -- and that one of them be a mother and the other, father. The longing of children for people who are your parents is never really respected by people whose compassion is reserved for unsatisfied adult desires. Once you divorce - the other parent - even if you have a splendid relationship with him/her -- is not in the home. That makes a difference to a kid! I don't know why people do not understand that. The empty space that walks around has a presence for a child. When you call for someone in the night it can't be that missing parent -- and that's the one you want precisely because they aren't there. Seeing them for a 'special' outing on a weekend is not equivalent. Adults do not want to know how children yearn for the missing parent. i don't understand why these feelings are so consistently dismissed, but they are. The line that is thought to end all discussion is, "well i turned out fine". That, like the word love, in these debates needs to be unpacked. It can take a long time to allow yourself to realise just how not fine you are -- even if you pay taxes and aren't in prison. But it needs to be heard that caring about the feelings of kids is not being homophobic.
Whole lot of 'sics' here for someone who can't find the semicolon key.