Volume 7, Number 16

April 9, 2004

Massive Conference in Mexico City Advances Pro-Family Cause

By Douglas A. Sylva, Ph.D.

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM)  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."

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