With this new World Congress in Salt Lake City, we have an opportunity to go in a direction where we've never gone before. I'm thankful for these three days to decide how we're going to move forward. How do we paint a positive picture of (traditional) marriage that will appeal to the Millennial generation and will restore the natural family to what it was in cultures around the world? – Janice Shaw Crouse
SALT LAKE CITY — Now that courts have legalized same-sex marriages in more than 30 U.S. states, including Utah, what's next for a traditional marriage group like the World Congress of Families?
That question was the main topic of discussion Tuesday night at the Grand America hotel as 80 delegates from 22 countries began a three-day planning session for the ninth World Congress of Families, scheduled a year from now in Salt Lake City.
The group promotes "the natural human family," which it says consists of a man and woman raising children. That position has drawn intense criticism from gay-rights activists.
Janice Shaw Crouse, author of "Marriage Matters" and a senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank for Concerned Women for America, framed the work of the planning sessions during a kickoff dinner Tuesday night.
"With this new World Congress in Salt Lake City, we have an opportunity to go in a direction where we've never gone before," Crouse said. "I'm thankful for these three days to decide how we're going to move forward. How do we paint a positive picture of (traditional) marriage that will appeal to the Millennial generation and will restore the natural family to what it was in cultures around the world?"
The planning session is being hosted by the Sutherland Institute, a conservative Utah public policy think tank. Sutherland is also the host of next year's World Congress of Families.
This is the first time the congress has been held in the United States. Previous events were held in Prague, Geneva, Mexico City, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Madrid and Sydney.
Next year's congress in Salt Lake City already has been the focus of controversy. The World Congress of Families is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of "hate groups" for what the center says are anti-LGBT views.
The managing director of the World Congress of Families said the group has no animosity toward anyone but simply wants to affirm and defend the natural family.
"We've always focused on the positive," Larry Jacobs told the Deseret News. "We've never said we're against anything. Our focus is about why the natural family is better for society.
"We never go in with an agenda of, 'We're against this.' It's always about what we're for, which is beauty, goodness and truth, and the natural family is where those start."
Jacobs said the planning sessions' participants — academics, religious leaders and natural family advocates who came from as far away as South Africa and the Philippines — are anything but hateful.
"If I were in a ditch somewhere, these would be the people who would stop and help. They're the Good Samaritans of the world."
Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society and a founder of the congress, said this week's planning sessions would be led by two facilitators, including a consultant who will use a new planning meeting method called future search process.
"I hope we can make a little bit of history over the next three days," Carlson said.
Acting Sutherland CEO Stanford Swim said the planning and the efforts of the World Congress of Families is "about as important a work as is being done anywhere."
"Human ecology needs a Sierra Club, and I think this might be it."
Email: twalch@deseretnews.com