John Stonestreet – Family Council

Children Are Greater Than Our Desires: Guest Column

Feb 6, 2026John StonestreetMarriageChild Welfare, Children, Commercial Surrogacy, Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Surrogacy

“Babies aren’t a tool for adult validation,” and other messages society seems primed to hear.

Recently, singer Meghan Trainor posted a picture of herself in a hospital bed, teary-eyed, and holding a newborn for skin-to-skin contact. The woman who carried and birthed the child, however, was nowhere in sight. Trainor and her husband used a surrogate.

Of course, as images go these days, this one is preferable to men pretending to be postpartum, having just bought a child via the surrogacy market. But that just shows how disordered our society is about marriage, sex, and babies.

Many people, including many Christians, consider surrogacy a harmless and helpful technological advancement. People want babies, and more babies are good, the thinking goes. All the while, a blind eye is turned to the severe moral problems inherent in the mechanics of surrogacy, including the commodification of children and the desecration of the maternal bond. Not to mention, the system is so underregulated, pedophiles and child abusers have been able to acquire victims.

Thankfully, more are learning the truth about this practice and this industry. As Katy Faust of Them Before Us put it in response to Trainor’s post:

Thousands are finally speaking up against surrogacy. The tide is turning. We’re grateful your baby is here, alive, and loved. But we won’t pretend the method was harmless. No child should be created through a system that turns women into means and babies into products.

That system is enabled and protected by the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision. Severing marriage in law from the intrinsically biological realities of male and female also severed the connection between children and those whose union creates them. Marriage is presumed now, both in culture and in law, to be an institution of adult feelings. Kids are accessories.

As Faust told The Colson Center:

Across the globe 38 countries have legalized gay marriage. Exactly 0 of them have simultaneously strengthened children’s claim to their own mother and father. All of them have either abolished or significantly weakened the idea that children belong to the two people responsible for their existence.

This week, Faust announced the formation of a coalition of leaders and organizations called Greater Than. Advocates of same-sex “marriage” campaigned on the promise of marriage equality, posting memes of equal signs across social media. Greater Than proclaims the hard truth that children are treated as less than when they are deprived of mom and dad. As Faust described,

Greater Than is a coalition of pastors, parents, influencers, policy makers, theologians, lawyers, students, and normie Americans who are all speaking with one voice. What are we saying? “Don’t touch the kids.” Marriage does not exist as a tool for adult validation. It is God’s Plan A for child protection, and we intend to retake it on their behalf.

Rather than seeing kids as truly equal and deserving adult protection, the dangerous combination of abortion, surrogacy, and redefining marriage reduces them to one option among many, as a means to fulfill adult desires. Legally, just as Roe v. Wade deprived preborn children of their right to life, Obergefell is depriving children of their right to their mom and dad. Just as a culture of death enables the holocaust of abortion, a culture of sexual autonomy enables the commodification of children. As pro-lifers have done for decades now on the issue of abortion, so the Greater Than coalition is committed to the legal and cultural work necessary to protect children.

The Colson Center is proud to join this list of 43 (and growing!) organizations and leaders. The Greater Than website features answers to difficult questions, opportunities to get involved, and the latest news and information about this pressing problem.

Join the movement. As the Greater Than website puts it:

The line has been crossed. The cost is our kids. It’s time to fight back—with truth, courage, and conviction. It is our responsibility to give kids their identity, security, and childhood back.

A $2 Million Verdict for Victim of “Gender Affirming Care”

Feb 4, 2026John StonestreetLGBTLGBT, SAFE Act, Transgender

Lawsuits ruling in favor of “detransitioners” is a good sign, but there’s work to be done.

When she was only 16 years old, a surgeon removed the healthy breast of Fox Varian with the support and recommendation of a psychologist. On Friday, a jury found these medical professionals guilty of malpractice and awarded Varian a settlement of $2 million ($1.6 million for past and future suffering and an additional $400k for future medical expenses). Like the majority of young people who are confused in their bodies during adolescence, Varian has embraced her female body and identity as she has matured. At age 22, she is one of a growing number of “detransitioners,” a group of people who we were assured of just a few years ago did not exist.

To be clear, the jury did not rule against the therapies, medications, and surgeries that are used in transgender “medicine.” Rather, they ruled that the doctors failed Varian in this particular case. Even so, this verdict will encourage and enable other cases like it to proceed. According to the New York Post, 28 “detransitioner lawsuits” are already in process across the United States. Also, the size of the financial penalty in Varian’s case should push even more medical professionals and institutions away from experimenting on the bodies of children.

In fact, three features of Varian’s case make it typical of so many others. First, she had serious and obvious mental health comorbidities as a teenager that were ignored and left untreated. As Benjamin Ryan described in The Free Press:

Fox Varian had a turbulent childhood. Her parents split when she was 7, triggering a three-year custody battle that ultimately saw her estranged from her father. She suffered from a constellation of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and social phobia. She was diagnosed with autism and bounced around various schools. Her first period sent her into a meltdown, and she battled disordered eating and body-image issues. By mid-adolescence, she was completely lost.

And yet, her doctors allowed Varian to self-diagnose, encouraged her to question her “gender,” and to change her name and appearance.

The second aspect of Varian’s situation that is common to so many other stories, such as that of Chloe Cole, is how quickly she was “fast-tracked” into therapies and surgery that left her with permanent physical harm. According to Varian’s lawyers, it was Kenneth Einhorn, the psychologist, who “drove the train” and “put the idea in Fox’s head” that she needed to change her gender with surgery. What has become clear in the last several years, especially from leaked emails from WPATH doctors, the self-appointed “experts” in what was wrongly called “gender affirming care,” is how unproven these “treatments” were known to be. Essentially, doctors and medical personnel who wanted to experiment on children convinced many others that the science behind the innovative treatments was “settled.”

Even worse is that they convinced parents. More accurately, and this is the third aspect of this trial that seems to be quite common to almost every other case involving a minor, is that parents were emotionally blackmailed and frightened into giving consent. During the trial, as the New York Post reported, “Varian’s mother, Claire Deacon, testified that she was against the surgery, but consented to it out of fear her daughter would commit suicide . . .” Horrifically, thousands of parents have been asked manipulatively, “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter,” either implying or outright stating that parents who did not affirm their child’s new identity would be responsible for their suicide.

It would be premature to think that the days of being force-fed gender ideology from every area of culture are over. After all, 19 states and the District of Columbia have sued the Department of Health and Human Services over its policies to restrict harmful and experimental gender “treatments” on minors. However, verdicts like this one, in New York of all places, should embolden healthcare professionals and parents alike to reject gender ideology, especially when it comes to children.

Every single doctor, hospital, psychologist, and therapist who rushed a child to permanent damage, ignored obvious and important comorbidities, and threatened parents with the “suicide myth” should be found, charged, fined, and jailed. Teachers, administrators, school boards, and school counselors must also be scrutinized and exposed for leading children down this destructive and harmful path.

Thankfully, there is a law firm committed to taking on such cases. If you are someone who has detransitioned, or if your child was manipulated and harmed in the name of “gender affirming care,” contact Campbell, Miller, Payne to learn about your legal options. The rest of us, especially pastors and ministry leaders, should provide as much support, love, and encouragement as we possibly can to these children and their families.

Where Has All the Creativity Gone?

Jan 29, 2026John StonestreetEducationEducation

Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture? That was the question asked by a recent Atlantic article about the sheer number of prequels, sequels, remakes, and expanding “cinematic universes.” Among the most notable recent examples in the world of film is Wicked, which reimagined the world of Oz.

The same creative stagnation can be seen in music. While earlier generations could produce distinct kinds of music, it’s increasingly difficult to find meaningful stylistic differences today. Some of the most popular songs aren’t even composed by humans but generated by AI. Where has all the creativity gone?

Many explanations could be offered, but one deserves particular attention. There’s been a precipitous decline of the kind of education in America that awakens the moral imagination, enabling students to think creatively and innovatively within a framework of what is enduring and true. In its place is an education oriented around expressive individualism, where children are encouraged to “follow their hearts” and “look inside,” rather than first know the true, good, and beautiful.

Classical Christian education is uniquely positioned to fill this void. At its best, the modern classical education movement seeks to recover what Dorothy Sayers described as “the lost tools of learning.” Such an education—centered on great books, great ideas, and classical languages—aims not merely at information transfer but at the formation of a virtuous life. Students are trained in virtue, encouraged to emulate heroes, and invited to explore and embrace visions of greatness. In the process, many develop a lifelong love of learning.

Vigen Guroian offers a compelling account of this formative process in his book Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classical Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination. He explains how classic children’s stories like Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe can shape a child’s moral imagination. Young readers are transported into worlds filled with wonder, surprise, and danger. As they imagine themselves alongside heroes and heroines, the images and metaphors of the stories linger and shape how they experience the real world. Children internalize concrete pictures of good, evil, love, and sacrifice by which they can interpret their own lives. When the moral imagination is awakened, Guroian concludes, the virtues come alive with personal, existential, and social significance.

C.S. Lewis made a similar point in The Abolition of Man. After criticizing the dominant educational models that fail to form human beings, he described how education should cultivate students “with chests.” The “chest” mediates between reason and appetite, enabling students to not only recognize what is noble and what is base, and discern between that which deserves love and that which does not, but to also choose rightly between them. This moral formation reflects what makes us truly human.

If popular culture is to experience a renewal of genuine creativity and innovation, classical Christian education may well be the taproot. Ironically, the renewal of innovation doesn’t begin by encouraging innovation for it’s own sake, or from an obsession with what is trendy or new. Rather, it will begin with an immersion in what is permanent and true. It will begin with curious hearts and minds that are trained to think imaginatively within a meaningful moral framework. As Russell Kirk once observed, the works that endure are not those rooted in nihilism, but those that appeal to enduring truths and therefore to posterity.

If classical education is to be Christian, it must be tied to the grand biblical story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Learning that is interpreted through a Christian worldview will affirm the dignity of human nature and will also acknowledge its limits, clearly distinguishing between Creator and creation. Within this rich moral universe, students are inspired to imagine and create in ways that honor what is true, just, pure, lovely, virtuous, and praiseworthy.

Classical Christian education offers a compelling model for education in an age of cultural decadence. It is anchored in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” By forming the moral imagination, Christians are equipped to not only resist cultural stagnation but to create culture anew, as co-laborers with the One who even now is “making all things new.”

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico.