NEWS & EVENTS

In early October, World Congress of Families Managing Director, Larry Jacobs, traveled to Amsterdam for an on-site inspection of the venue for World Congress of Families V (August 10-12, 2009) and a series of important meetings.

Jacobs met with Gert-Jan Segers, the executive director of the Christian Union Party’s think tank. The party, which is part of the coalition government, is resolutely pro-life and pro-family.

He also conferred with the professional conference organizer for WCF V (Mariette Helmann of EuroCongress) and Simon Polinder, head of the local organizing committee. The discussion included budget, venue, registration fees and fundraising for the Congress.

Jacobs and Polinder met with members of the local Program/Speaker Committee, chaired by Frederike Lemmens, and was impressed by the diversity and credentials of committee members. A number are actively involved in family organizations and Catholic community service groups.

Jacobs traveled to The Hague to meet with the newly created Dutch Ministry of Youth and Family. Deputy Director, Mrs. Marga Drewes and Policy Advisor, Ansgar Willenborg represented the Ministry at this meeting. Willenborg is drafting a new family policy for the Dutch government. We plan to invite André Rouvoet, the Minister of Youth and Family, to address an opening session of WCF V. (He is also the political leader of the Christian Union). Members of the LOC, Evert-Jan Brouwer, Nell Coumans, and Marloes Coumans, Nell’s daughter/assistant, attended these meetings.

We also met with the Dutch Foreign Ministry including Mrs. Ella de Voogd (Senior Policy Officer Gender Division, Health, Gender and Civil Society Department) and Mrs. Elly Leemhuis (Senior Policy Officer, Health Division, same department). We promised both Ministries to keep them informed about the program and will send them invitations in time.

Larry briefed officials on the history and philosophy of World Congress of Families and showed the WCF IV video and the trailer for “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family.”

Along with members of the LOC, Jacobs took an inspection tour of Amsterdam’s RAI Centre, venue for World Congress of Families V. WCF Communications Director Don Feder visited Amsterdam in May. The International Planning Committee will convene there early next year.

Click here for electronic version of World Congress of Families V brochure.

In December, the United Nations will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A petition, initiated by the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM, a World Congress of Families Partner), urges U.N. member states to interpret the Declaration as protecting the unborn child from abortion.

In league with the U.N. bureaucracy, groups like International Planned Parenthood are pushing an international “right” to abortion, based on a deliberate misinterpretation of several U.N. Conventions.

Among other provisions, the Petition demands that “proper consideration be given to ‘the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death,’ each child having the right to be conceived, born and educated within the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, the family being the natural and fundamental group unit of society.” C-FAM’s goal is to collect 50,000 signatures by December. It collected 22,000 in the first 8 days alone.

A coalition of U.S., European and Latin American NGOs will present the petition at a news conference at the United Nations headquarters on December 10th, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Right (UDHR).

In September, Allan Carlson also co-signed a letter to Ms. Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF. The letter challenged UNICEF to remember the 60th Anniversary of UDHR and to not forget the family as a partner in achieving the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.

Click here to sign the “International Call for the Rights and Dignity of the Human Person and the Family.”

REAL Women of Canada (a World Congress of Families Partner) held its 25th anniversary conference at the historic Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa – near Canada’s Parliament Buildings – on September 20th.

Among the speakers were WCF Communications Director Don Feder -- speaking on “Demographic Winter and The Anti-Procreation Ethic” -- and Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse (a Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute and a member of the World Congress of Families Management Committee) who spoke on “A Child’s Best Hope for Life, Health and Family.”

Feder informed the audience that, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50% since 1979. He noted that there are now 59 nations – with 44% of the world’s population – that currently have below replacement fertility. According to the United Nations Population Division, by 2050, there will be 248 million fewer children under 5 in the world than there are today.

Feder discussed the impact of abortion, contraception, delayed marriage, divorce, cohabitation and an anti-procreation culture in driving Demographic Winter.

Dr. Crouse observed that all children deserve: 1. Life, a family and a home 2. “A mother and father who love each other faithfully and wholeheartedly – enough to commit to each other in marriage and love every child wholeheartedly and unconditionally” and 3. “A home where values and ideals are lived out, nurtured and honored.”

Crouse’s remarks focused on the centrality of faith, the necessity of marriage and the sanctity of life as essential to the well-being of children.

Other speakers included popular conservative columnist Barbara Kay (who examined the feminist assault on men), Dr. Michael Wagner (whose book, “Standing on Guard for Thee,” chronicles the history of the profamily movement in Canada), Dr. Colin Mangham (who has worked in the area of drug prevention for 30 years) and C. Gwendolyn Landolt, an attorney, National Vice President of REAL Women of Canada and a member of the International Planning Committee for World Congress of Families V.

Under the able leadership of Peter Costea, the Alliance of Romania’s Families continues its vital work. In June, it collected signatures on a petition, submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, protesting the Council’s attempt to impose same-sex marriage on member states.

In September, at the Alliance’s urging, a resolution was introduced in Romania’s Chamber of Deputies designating May 15th as the National Day of The Family. The proposal is expected to be easily approved.

Legislation championed by the Alliance, defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, is moving through Romania’s legislature. The bill was approved by the Senate in February. When the legislation appeared to be stalled in the Chamber of Deputies, the Alliance collected over 12,000 signatures demanding a vote.

As a result, the bill was approved unanimously by the Chamber’s Commission on Human Rights. Approval was assisted by a brief filed by the Alliance Defense Fund (a WCF Partner) demonstrating that there are no international impediments to the legislation’s definition of marriage.

There is one more committee hurdle to be overcome. The Deputies are expected to approve the bill before the November 30th parliamentary elections, at which point it will become law. For more information on the Alliance of Romania’s Families, contact Peter Costea at costealaw@yahoo.com.

The American Family Association (AFA), a World Congress of Families Partner, ended its boycott of McDonald’s after the company agreed to stop promoting the homosexual agenda.

AFA launched its boycott on July 3. McDonald’s had contributed $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). Richard Ellis, McDonald’s National Vice President for Communications, took a seat on the Chamber’s board of directors.

AFA informed its 2.8 million e-mail alert subscribers that NGLCC’s website “also makes clear that the Chamber lobbies Congress on a wide range of issues related to the homosexual agenda.”

It took little more than three months for the largest fastfood chain in the world to capitulate. Ellis resigned his position on the NGLCC board. In an e-mail to McDonald’s franchise owners, the company stated: “It is our policy to not be involved in political and social issues. McDonald’s remains neutral on same-sex marriage or any ‘homosexual agenda’ as defined by the American Family Association.”

Congratulations to AFA for helping McDonald’s to see the light.

For more information on the American Family Association, click here.

Family Watch International has just published a policy brief titled “Eight Reasons to Defend Man/Woman Marriage.” They include: More children will be taught against their parents’ wishes that homosexuality is healthy and normal; When rights for same-sex couples are expanded, freedom of speech and religion are threatened as citizens are coerced to act against conscience and belief; and Whenever same-sex marriage is legalized, promoting motherhood and fatherhood could legally be considered discriminatory.

To download the 6-page Family Policy Brief, click here.

More than 600 delegates from 82 countries on five continents came together in Stockholm (September 8-10) for the First World Forum Against Drugs.

Wide-ranging presentations included the extent of the international epidemic of addictive substances and how best to address the contagion from law enforcement, prevention and treatment perspectives.

The Forum adopted a Declaration which noted that drug abuse is a global problem and that millions are directly harmed by addiction -- including drug users and addicts, the parents, relatives, friends or employers of users, and the victims of drug related crime.

The Declaration opposes “medical marijuana,” drug legalization and decriminalization, so-called “harm reduction” (which it termed “backdoor legalization”), municipal zones where drug laws aren’t enforced and “injection rooms,” where drug abusers can administer drugs without legal consequences. It stated that the goal of all treatment programs should be to make users drug-free.

To read the Declaration, click here.

On September 12th, World Congress of Families Communications Director Don Feder addressed more than 2,000 who attended the 3rd annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. His topic was Demographic Winter.

The Summit -- which has become the most important annual forum for the pro-family movement in the United States -- is cosponsored by Family Research Council, Focus on The Family and American Values – all WCF Partners.

Besides speaking in D.C. and Ottawa, in September and early October, Feder addressed a convocation of the Liberty University Law School in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the annual dinner of the Maine Family Policy Council.

Click here to view the trailer for “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family.”

In the August World Congress of Families News, we noted that the Heritage Foundation held a reception for members of the WCF Selection Committee during its July meeting. Unfortunately, we neglected to mention that Family Research Council had a luncheon for Committee members at its Washington, DC headquarters. The luncheon was hosted by Bill Saunders, FRC Senior Fellow and Director of its Center for Human Life and Bioethics and FRC Vice President Chuck Donovan. Bill Saunders is also a member of the WCF Management Committee.

TABLE of CONTENTS

Jacobs Visits Amsterdam

Petition Calls on UN to Respect Right to Life

REAL Women of Canada Has
Successful 25th Anniversary Conference

Alliance of Romania's Families
Works for Preservation of Marriage

American Family Association
Takes Bite Out of Big Mac

Family Watch International
policy Brief Defends Marriage

World Forum Against Drugs
Held in Stockholm Sweden

Feder Addresses Value Voters Summit

Addendum to August WCF News

World Congress of Families
Partners Provide Input on WCF 5

Family News from Around the Globe

WCF: Profiles in Leadership

  Join Us In AMSTERDAM:
 10-12 AUGUST 2009

 Thank you to all WCF Co-Sponsors
for your continuing support.

PARTNERS PROVIDE INPUT ON WORLD CONGRESS OF FAMILIES V

Over the past few months, we’ve sought input from World Congress of Families Partners (in the form of a questionnaire) on issues and speakers for WCF V, Amsterdam, August 10-11, 2009.

Among our Partners, the most popular issues for discussion in Amsterdam are:

1. Abortion And Other Life Issues (including euthanasia)

2. Same-Sex Marriage

3. Parental Rights (including education)

4. Pornography (including the dangers of the Internet)

5. The Culture’s Impact on the Family

6. Declining Birth Rates (Demographic Winter)

7. Religion and the Family

8. Prostitution (including legalization and trafficking in women and children)

Other suggested topics are: Defending religious liberties (especially against hate-crimes laws); How UN human rights bodies undermine national sovereignty; Tax policy that supports and strengthens the family; How to battle “reproductive health” issues in developing countries (abstinence vs. birth control); The war against boys; Non-fault divorce and the dissolution of marriage; Hollywood vs. the family; The future of medicine and medical ethics; The differences between mothers and fathers; Same-sex attraction – causes and cures; Effects of the cellphone / facebook world young people inhabit; and Strengthening the family-oriented economy.

While we received excellent input on speakers, suggestions were too varied to list them all here. It would be unfair to mention some, but not all of them.

All of the questionnaires which were returned will be presented to the International Planning Committee, when it meets in Amsterdam early next year. The Local Organizing Committee has its own list of proposed topics and speakers from the Netherlands and Western Europe.

In a world of plummeting birth rates, Thoraya Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), called for more funding for UN programs aimed at reducing fertility, especially in developing nations. Obaid noted that this is the 40th anniversary of the publication of Paul Erlich’s “The Population Bomb,” which predicted worldwide starvation in the 1970s, due to “overpopulation.” The U.N.’s top population official suggested there’s a direct relationship between declining birth rates and prosperity, but failed to offer evidence to back up that claim. She insisted on more funding for “education and reproductive health” (code words for promoting abortion). The UNFPA’s funding increased by $40 million this year to over $470 million. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has extended Odaid’s term in office another two years.

Baroness Mary Warnock is one of the most influential experts on medical ethics in the United Kingdom. Her 1984 report led to the legalization of test-tube babies and experimentation on human embryos. In a recent interview in “Life & Work” (a publication of the Church of Scotland), Warnock came out strongly for euthanasia. “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service,” Warnock told the publication. Even if a patient isn’t incurably ill, or in pain, they should have a right to die if they feel “they’re a burden to their family, or the state,” the Baroness declared. She also advocated designating a medical surrogate to authorize life-termination in cases of dementia. The Baroness called this “licensing people to put others down.” Neil Hunt of the British Alzheimer’s Society said he was “shocked and amazed that Baroness Warnock could disregard the value of the lives of people with dementia so callously.” Hunt added, “With the right care, a person can have good quality of life very late into dementia.” Hunt called Warnock’s proposals “nothing short of barbaric.”

In a September 17th interview on Brazilian television, President Luiz Lula returned to two of his favorite causes – promoting abortion and civil unions for gays. Like some politicians in the United States, Lula claims he is personally opposed to abortion, but believes that ending the lives of unborn children should be treated as a “public health issue.” Brazil’s president observed that no woman has an abortion “for pleasure,” but out of necessity. Lula’s Health Minister, Jose Gomes Temporao, has fought to expand surgical abortion and the use of abortion-inducing drugs. In the same interview, Lula said that he has defended civil unions his whole life, and called for an end to “hypocrisy,” because we all know that “there are men living together, women living together, and often they live extraordinarily well.” This summer, speaking at Brazil’s National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals, Lula said “homophobia” is “the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head.” Presumably, the president of Brazil considers opposition to abortion another “perverse disease.”

Writing on the website Salon.com, Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1969 bestseller “The Population Bomb,” suggested that every couple “should have slightly fewer than two children.” Ehrlich declared, “I believe it is immoral and should be illegal for people to have very large numbers of children because they are co-opting for themselves and their children resources that should be spread elsewhere in the world. You only get a chance to get your fair share.” Ehrlich – who is almost as famous for the inaccuracy of his predictions as Karl Marx – spoke favorably of China’s coercive one-child-per-family policy and suggested using tax policy as a club. “You could simply raise taxes very high on people who have beyond two children.” In the late 1960s, Ehrlich predicted that “over-population” would lead to worldwide famine within the decade. In the 1970s, he forecast the eminent extinction of all major species in the oceans.

Send us news of pro-family developments in your country and around the world. We’re particularly interested in the activities of pro-life and pro-family groups outside the U.S.

To reach the editor of the World Congress of Families News email dfeder@rcn.com.

This continues our regular feature celebrating the women and men who have contributed to the growing success of the international pro-family movement.

Steven W. Mosher, President of the non-profit Population Research Institute (PRI), is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on the population question. His writings demonstrate that overpopulation is a myth, and that the efforts of population controllers to reduce human numbers have led to massive human rights abuses and undermined the health of women and children.

Steve came face-to-face with the nightmare of population control when he was the first American social scientist to live in rural China, in 1979-80. What Steve Mosher witnessed in China shocked him deeply, including: pregnant women hunted down by population-control police and subjected to forced abortion for violating China’s one-child per- family law; women mutilated through forced sterilization; and women forced to endure life-threatening forms of birth control.

Steve returned to his studies at Stanford University and wrote about the population control horrors he witnessed in China. Bowing to demands of the Chinese government, Stanford expelled Mosher rather than grant him the PhD he had earned.

Mosher was named President of the Population Research Institute in 1996. Under his leadership, PRI has ...

● Documented illegal use of U.S. tax dollars by the U.N. Population Fund to help bankroll China’s one-child-per-family law – documentation that helped give President Bush and pro-life legislators the facts they needed to strip the U.N. Population Fund of $34 million of annual U.S. funding

● Proved that the International Planned Parenthood Federation was illegally using U.S. funds for abortion, an investigation that helped deny $192 million in U.S. funds to that pro-abortion organization

● And now, under Mosher’s direction, PRI is investigating the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), seeking to prove that AID is illegally using U.S. funds to coerce women into "accepting" sterilization.

Mosher is the author of the newly published “Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits” (Transaction, 2008). His other books include: “A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy,” “Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia and the World,” “China Attacks,” “China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality,” “Journey to the Forbidden China,” and “Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese.”

His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, and numerous other publications.

Steve Mosher and his wife, Vera, are the parents of nine children. They reside in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

Click here for the Population Research Institute website.

Click here to order one or more of Mosher’s books.

Alan Sears is the President, CEO, and General Counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the largest religious liberty legal alliance in America, and a World Congress of Families Partner.

Since its founding in 1994, Alan has led the strategy, training, funding, and subsequent litigation efforts that have resulted in ADF’s critical role in 33 victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and wins in nearly 3 out of 4 of cases litigated to conclusion.

Under his leadership, ADF has funded more than 2,000 grants and legal projects for allied lawyers and organizations and ADF attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 30 cases nationwide in the U.S.

Alan has provided strategic leadership in the training of nearly 1,200 allied lawyers through the ADF’s one-of-a-kind National Litigation Academy, designed to equip attorneys to more effectively defend religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. Since 1997, these attorneys have reported more than $80 million in pro-bono/ dedicated time. Alan’s visionary efforts have also resulted in the graduation of more than 700 outstanding law students, representing more than 130 universities, from the ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. This in-depth summer leadership program helps equip students to assume leadership positions to shape the future of American law.

Alan has helped fashion the language for numerous state and federal laws and has testified before committees of the U.S. House and Senate, state legislatures, and many local governments and commissions. He has also spoken before committees of the British Parliament and at the Vatican. He has trained hundreds of law enforcement officials from Australia to Scotland Yard, and has lectured internationally on religious freedom. As a result of his impressive record, the American Bar Association’s magazine, Barrister, recognized him as one of the outstanding young lawyers in America.

Alan also served in numerous positions within the United States Government, including the Department of Justice, under Attorneys General William French Smith and Edwin Meese III as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Section, and was appointed as the Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. He also was an Associate Solicitor in the Department of the Interior under Secretary Donald Hodel.

Alan has co-authored several books, including: “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today” (2003) and “The ACLU vs. America” (2005) both with Craig Osten.

A graduate of the University of Kentucky, with a Juris Doctor from Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, Alan completed his postgraduate / continuing education at Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and Pepperdine University. He is a member in good standing with the American, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, and Kentucky Bar Associations.

Click here for the Alliance Defense Fund website.

Click here to order Alan’s books.