Thank You for Doxxing Me.

The Them Before Us origin story

In every first time interview or speaking event, I (Katy) am asked how became a children’s rights activist. The truth? A divine set-up. My childhood, personality, ministry life, and personal experiences all led me toward defending children’s right to be known and loved by their mother and father.

I didn’t study child psychology or family law. I was an Asian studies and political science major who spent ten years speaking Chinese in school and at work. I wasn’t a skilled writer either, which is why I begged Stacy Manning to co-author our first two books. And I’m more naturally a grace-giver than a culture-war foot soldier. Yet here I am.

Obama Flips on Marriage

It started in 2012, when President Barack Obama announced he had “evolved” on marriage, switching from traditional to same-sex marriage support.

The media pumped two messages into the public square:

1. If you don’t support gay marriage, you hate gay people.

2. Kids don’t care if they have two moms or two dads, sometimes they do even better.

Both grated on me. After my parents divorced, I split time between my mom’s home and my dad’s. My dad remarried and my mom partnered with a woman and has been with her for fourty years. I love my mom’s partner as a friend, but she’s not my mom. Growing up between these worlds taught me two things: you can and should love the gay people in your life, and you still need your mom and dad. They each give their children different things.

So the “you must hate gay people” accusation? Manipulative nonsense, especially for the many of us who deeply love our gay family and friends. And “kids don’t care”? That’s just a sanitized way of saying, “kids don’t care if they’ve lost a parent.” Every child with two moms has lost a dad. Every child with two dads has lost a mom. That’s not “progress.” It’s pain.

At that time, my husband and I had been working with children and teens for nearly twenty years. We’d seen intact families, single parents, adoption, and children who lost parents to divorce or death. I’d never met a child missing a parent who wasn’t at least curious about them. But more often, they were deeply wounded. It could keep them up at night, make them cry, and their chins would tremble when they tried to talk. They wanted that specific man or woman to love them, and it hurt when they didn’t.

Doxxed

The fact that activists were promoting mother- and father-loss to advance their politics enraged me. That’s when I started my anonymous blog. The marriage debate was all about adult desires—fulfillment, longings, self-expression. No one was asking what children needed. And as I studied, I realized that’s true for nearly every family issue: divorce, IVF, cohabitation, polyamory, surrogacy, adoption. It all boiled down to one question: who does the hard thing, the adults or the kids?

My anonymity didn’t last. A formerly prominent gay blogger traced my IP address, found my husband’s church, doxxed our congregation, and vowed to destroy us online. I was crushed. People I loved, who didn’t even know I was running a secret blog, were paying the price for my convictions. I went to the elders and asked if I was the Jonah they needed to throw overboard to still the storm.

“You could stop,” they said. “Or you could go big.” So I went big.

A Global Movement

In one of those “what the enemy meant for evil” moments, the outing multiplied my platform a hundredfold. Suddenly, I could submit amicus briefs to the Supreme Court, lead workshops at the UN, publish books in multiple languages, and found a children’s rights organization dedicated to aligning hearts and laws with children’s natural rights.

Amazingly, I found that my life intersected directly with so many of the issues we confront and champion:

• The complementary ways mothers and fathers benefit children, something we’ve seen in our own family and hundreds of others during decades of ministry.

• The mother-child bond, which I personally experienced with three of my kids.

• The loss and redemption of child-centric adoption, the path that led us to our fourth child.

• The chasm between “big fertility” and adoption, which I know well from my time as assistant director of the world’s largest Chinese adoption agency.

• Years spent walking alongside adults’ struggles of infertility, same-sex attraction, unwanted singleness, and rocky marriages, burdens I will never minimize when calling adults to put kids first.

What You Can Do

But those kids needed a voice, not just in living rooms, but in legislatures and courtrooms. We had to oppose laws treating them as commodities, highlight research showing the harm of intentionally separating them from parents, and speak for their rights on every platform possible, especially when they’re too small to speak for themselves.

We didn’t launch with a war chest or a team of experts. It was just me, a few faithful friends, one laptop, and enough coffee to make a coffee shop blush. But God. What started as a handful of Davids facing down a whole army of Goliaths has, because of people like you, become a global movement. We have learned that when you are slinging the truth for the sake of children, even the biggest cultural giants can fall. You don’t need a PhD. or a huge audience. It wasn’t brilliance. It was His calling and equipping. What is He calling you to? I hope this gives you the courage to step out in faith, because what the doxx meant for evil, you and the Lord can turn for good. - Katy

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About Them Before Us:
Them Before Us is a global movement committed to defending children’s right to their mother and father. We believe that adult desires should never come at the expense of a child’s fundamental needs.

We are not professional lobbyists or political insiders. We are ordinary people with an extraordinary conviction: children must come first in every conversation about marriage, family, and fertility.

We exist to make one thing clear: when adults sacrifice for children, society thrives. When children are forced to sacrifice for adults, everyone pays the price.

Learn more or support our mission: www.thembeforeus.com