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Possibly
the largest pro-family conference ever held concluded
last week with the passage of a declaration seeking to
reestablish international recognition of the family
as
the “fundamental” unit of society, and to seek
protection for the traditional family from persistent
cultural and governmental attacks. Over 3,200 government
leaders, political activists and scholars in attendance
at the World Congress of Families III in Mexico City endorsed
the “Mexico City Declaration,” which seeks “to
defend the family and to guide public policy and cultural
norms” by identifying the major ideological threats
to the family, including “statism, individualism
and sexual revolution,” which now “challenge
the family’s very legitimacy as an institution.”
The
first lady of Mexico, Martha Fox told the gathered delegates
that, “No matter what country we come from today
we have a common vision, the value of the family.”
Fox called the family “the hope of the world”
and “the school of life.”
Ellen
Sauerbrey, US Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status
of Women, read a letter from President George W. Bush
that praised the efforts of the World Congress to “recognize
the importance of families in our society. Around the
world, families are the source of help, hope, and stability
for individuals and nations. As one of the pillars of
civilization, families must remain strong and we must
defend them during this time of great change. Your work
improves many lives and makes the world better.”
The
delegates discussed a host of problems now facing the
traditional family, such as divorce, abortion, child abuse,
human trafficking, and the increasingly insistent calls
for homosexual “marriage.”
Many
of the speeches highlighted how governments and the international
community undermine the very institution, the family,
necessary for authentic human development. In the conference’s
opening address, Dr. Alan Carlson, president of the Howard
Center for Family, Religion and Society, told delegates
that “each marriage represents the renewal of a community
through the promise of responsible new citizens to come,”
since “children reared within natural marriage will
be healthier, brighter, harder working, and more honest,
dutiful, and cooperative than those raised in other ways.”
However,
Carlson also warned of the “wayward state,”
which increasingly seeks to “set wife against husband,
husband against wife, children against parents, and household
against household. Aggrandizing its own power, this state
will weaken the legal protections of marriage; create
incentives to out-of-wedlock births and divorce;…redefine
marriage to encompass non-procreative bonds; and invert
the meaning of liberty, casting it as the gift of the
state.”
In
response, the Declaration exhorts “governments and
international organizations throughout the world to adopt
a family perspective, to respect and uphold the institution
of the natural human family for the good of present and
future generations.”
Copyright
– C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute).
Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.
[The
Friday Fax is reported and written by C-FAM Vice President
Douglas A.
Sylva.]
Catholic
Family & Human Rights Institute
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 427
New York, New York 10017
Phone: (212) 754-5948 Fax: (212) 754-9291
E-mail: c-fam@c-fam.org
Website: www.c-fam.org
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