GENEVA, Switzerland -- The Second World Congress of Families opened this week here with prominent Church members among nearly a thousand delegates and dignitaries gathered to protect and defend the natural family as the fundamental unit of society.
Opening for the first full day of meetings Nov. 15 at the U.N. complex, the interfaith World Congress of Families II began by urging delegates to draft legislation to combat anti-family proposals now pending before the United Nations. Anti-family policymaking -- national and international -- was also criticized and family advocates were called upon to defend the traditional family.The congress, which runs through Nov. 17, includes BYU and the Church's Relief Society among its sponsoring organizations and is a follow-up to the first such congress held in Prague, the Czech Republic, in 1997. In the past and today, Church leaders have endorsed LDS and BYU support of the World Congress of Families.
"I think Brigham Young would be pleased . . . to have his name teamed up and the university that bears his name taking an active role in the protection and preservation of the family. If society is saved, it will be in the family," President Boyd K. Packer, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, said a year ago at a dinner program in Salt Lake City during which Church and BYU officials discussed the congress. (Please see Nov. 29, 1998, Church News.)
At the same event, Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve added: "Latter-day Saints cannot afford to ignore a worldwide climate that threatens the family. Our perspective in this day and time must be worldwide. . . . It's apparent that the concern is urgent and that leadership is needed to confront these problems in terms understandable to many different faiths and cultures."
Taking part in this year's World Congress of Families in Geneva as speakers, presenters and as chairs of panels are Elder Bruce C. Hafen of the Seventy; Sister Mary Ellen W. Smoot, general Relief Society president; Sister Margaret D. Nadauld, general Young Women president; Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon); Richard G. Wilkins and Kathryn Balmforth of the World Family Policy Center at BYU; Nafez Nazzal of the BYU Jerusalem Center; and several BYU professors in marriage and family. Brother Wilkins is also a General Secretariat for the World Congress of Families II.
These Latter-day Saints are among dozens of other noted speakers and organizations sponsoring and attending the event, including Jehan Sadat, widow of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The selection of the U.N. site for the congress was to emphasize the results of a recent Wirthlin Worldwide poll, commissioned by the World Congress, that shows that some 80 percent of people throughout the world believe the definition of marriage is "one man and one woman" and that "a family created through marriage is the fundamental unit of society." (Please see Church News, Nov. 13, 1999.)
In his remarks Nov. 16, Elder Hafen told delegates that "for too many years, family policymaking, both in the U.N. and worldwide, has emphasized dysfunctional and alternative family types, leaving the typical natural family to wither as an endangered species."
Continuing, Elder Hafen used the example of the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which advocated "a new concept of separate rights for children with the government accepting the responsibility for protecting the child from the power of parents."
Elder Hafen asked if anyone noticed that this "new concept" uproots one of the most fundamental natural rights about family life -- that parents may rear their children as the parents see fit -- as long as the parents are fit. "If activists can clothe their extremist visions of personal relationships -- note how that word differs from the word 'family' -- in the vague but lofty language of an international human rights treaty, they've built a Trojan horse that lets them slip like an undetected virus into a country's legal system and, eventually, into its culture," Elder Hafen said.
Another item being discussed during the congress is the gathering of signatures on the Call for the Families of the World, which the World Congress plans to present to the United Nations Commission on Social Development in February 2000. World Congress of Families II officials plan to continue gathering signatures through January 2000. The call can be found in any of the 45 languages into which it has been translated at the Internet Web site: www.ngofamilyvoice.org.
The Church News plans further coverage of the World Congress of Families II in the issue of Nov. 27, 1999.