Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. A recent video exposed the injustice that is at the heart of both same-sex marriage and also commercial surrogacy. In it, a man is bouncing a baby on his lap and asked, Who do you want, dada or pop? The baby answered, Mama, to which both the man and his unseen partner behind the camera laugh and say, There's no mama.
They continue to badger the child who then begins to cry.
Now, the most obvious evil that's portrayed in the video is the relentless teasing of a baby. The deeper evil, however, is not that these men were mean, though they were. In fact, being mean was only the insult that was added to the injury of forcing their farcical arrangement on a baby and then calling it a family. Because, and everyone knows this, including these two men suppressing the truth by their wickedness, there is a mama. She's not included in this video, nor is she in the life of this baby that she carried and who now needs her, but she does exist.
She's been cut out of her child's life, presumably by her own choice, although that's not clear. But either way, the baby did not make that choice. And now two men who have appropriated the title of this baby's parents are badgering the baby into affirming their lifestyle choice.
Now, perhaps what this infant is doing is what infants often do, babble out those syllables that are often among the first learned by young ones across all times and places. and cultures. But of course, they learn these syllables because they always refer to the same person. They are, in the end, a primal cry of children for a particular someone. Who should always be there for them?
Anyone who has spent time around babies understands what's playing out in this scene. For little ones, mama is the whole world. In fact, according to childhood policy expert Dr. Dan Worry, kids often learn to say dada before mama, not because the mom doesn't matter as much as the dad, but because she matters that much more. You see, in their tiny growing minds, they recognize dad as a distinct person before they realize that mom is not a distinct person, not a part of themselves.
It's an innate and beautiful bond that is intentionally broken whenever we pretend that a man can replace a mom or whenever a child is acquired through surrogacy. And just as tragic is the embrace of so-called same-sex marriage or such reproductive technologies by individuals, governments, medical authorities, and Christians. While failing to even take a cursory glance to consider what's best for the child, any ethical concerns around in vitro fertilization and surrogacy have long been deferred by our society in order to protect the feelings and the desires of adults. In fact, both in our policy and in our public discourse, we fully lost the ability to discern the difference. Between couples who suffer with infertility, tragically, and same-sex couples who have chosen inherently sterile relationships.
but then demand children. As a result, what children need is tossed aside in the name of adult desires, and children then become the commodities in a marketplace of consumer-driven reproductive technologies. As Katie Fowles, founder of the children's rights groups then before us and the Greater Than campaign, said to the Coulson Center recently, quote, We've been sounding the alarm about zero years. The mother loss, the commodification, the fact that children often go home with unrelated adults, increasing risk of abuse and neglect. But videos like this Do something that arguments and studies never can.
They spark righteous rage that leads people to come out of their closet as defenders of the natural family. It's more and more clear that gay marriage did not just have to do with what takes place in the privacy of the bedroom. It impacts children. And when we see those children cry on camera, It should motivate us to action. Yes, it should.
And the word natural in this framing is accurate as well. Having chosen unnatural relationships, to quote St. Paul, these two dads now demand that even a baby has to affirm what is unnatural. Even if they had not made that demand in such a cruel way in a video that was shared on social media for clicks. great harm would still have been done to this child.
And a culture that affirms their choice is complicit in that harm. And that's because of something that should be obvious to us, like it's been obvious to every generation before us. Babies need their mammas. There are few things more obvious than this. Denying this reality is a tragedy.
and harming children in the process should be a crime. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast and for more resources to live like a Christian today or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.
Christian Educators, this is Billy Hutchinson with Colson Educators. And as a former teacher myself, I know you're busy, and I know you want to teach like a Christian, not just be a Christian who teaches.
Well that's why we created the Colson Educators app. You can get practical worldview training wherever you are, complete courses on your schedule, earn CEUs and connect with a community of like-minded educators. Download the Colson Educators app on the Apple App Store or Google Play.
