GENEVA -- Determined to make clear that they are serious about defending the natural family, organizers of the World Congress of Families II opened their first full day of meetings Monday at the U.N. complex here.
They chose the site to emphasize the results of a recent Wirthlin Worldwide poll, commissioned by the World Congress, that shows some 80 percent of families polled worldwide still believe the definition of marriage is "one man and one woman" and that "a family created through marriage is the fundamental unit of society."Such results represent "the majority of people in the world" as opposed to more liberal voices "who would have us believe otherwise," said Christine de Vollmer, a member of the World Congress Planning Committee, who conducted the session.
Speakers used the U.N. pulpit -- from which they noted some "anti-family" proposals have been delivered -- to tout society's reliance on the natural family as society's "most basic social unit."
Several hundred pro-family delegates attending the session were asked to draft legislation during the conference to combat proposals now pending before the United Nations that would "not only disregard, but undermine" family life, according to Richard Wilkins, director of the World Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University.
BYU and the LDS Church's Relief Society are among the conference's sponsoring organizations.
Margaret Ogola, director of the Family Life Counseling Association of Kenya, blasted the "massive collapse of (the) almost universal ideal" of traditional family life. She said contraceptives, demystification of sex, free sex education focusing on pregnancy avoidance rather than sexual abstinence and the media's proliferation of "the culture of pleasure" have all overstepped the traditional view of family life.
She also decried "the loss of the sense of a deity to whom all are ultimately answerable for their actions. Since (some believe) 'God is dead' (in modern society), people can therefore excuse the most irresponsible actions and the pursuit of the most fantastic fantasies."
As a pediatrician who deals with HIV-positive babies, she said women in her country are victims of a free-love philosophy that has been promulgated by the proliferation of contraceptives -- and those who promote them -- rather than sexual abstinence as the key to happiness. Now AIDS has devastated the population, and the birth rate has fallen dramatically in Africa, enslaving people in unprecedented ways with policies and practices that liberal proponents said would "free" them.
Wilkins urged delegates to form coalitions and to act with a unified voice in fighting for the natural family. "This is not just a pep rally we're involved in." He noted that several international policy documents already contain family-friendly language and that those policies need to be understood and applied in a wider context.
Still, "not enough private, academic or government energy has gone into the creation of a family-friendly world." He said delegates must lobby their own governments and other influential policymakers to recognize and respect historical protections granted to the family that have long been taken for granted "and are now being threatened."
The conference, which includes delegates from most of the world's major religions, was designed in part to allow delegates to draft their own proposal -- to be known as the "Geneva Declaration" -- that will call on U.N. policymakers to consider the consequences of specific legislation, particularly with regard to population control issues, the rights of children and same-sex marriage.
Bishop John Njue of the Catholic diocese of Embu in Kenya, told delegates at opening ceremonies Sunday night that "the power of evil" is advocating alternative forms of the family by devaluing motherhood, urging abortion for poor women and scoffing at sexual abstinence. Population control policies are particularly devastating in developing nations where "family members are the only Social Security most people will ever have."
The Catholic leader laid much of the blame for family disintegration on international legislation that "in one way or another is destructive to this sacred entity."