Social Integration of Sexual Minorities?

Dear Supporter of the Family,

Last week Family Watch UN Director Annie Franklin braved the record breaking East Coast storms to advocate for the family at the United Nations.  She was there to monitor the negotiations on the priority theme for this year’s UN Commission on Social Development—social integration.

The European Union, under the leadership of Spain, attempted to introduce veiled language that could later be used to advance the agenda of “sexual minorities.”  For example, when the EU proposed language about the need for societies to integrate the “most excluded and the most vulnerable” it was clear that it was intended for this to later be interpreted to include “sexual minorities,” a common euphemism used to promote special rights for homosexual and transgender groups.

To our delight, a number of countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Zambia and Croatia made positive references to the family in their speeches on the UN floor.  (Click here to view Statements made by Governments.)

And while no references to the family ended up in the final version of the negotiated text, Family Watch was thrilled to note that a paragraph we had suggested that family-friendly delegations propose was adopted in the final outcome document:

Recognizing that the promotion of social and economic development remains the sovereign right and responsibility of each Member State, consistent with national laws and development priorities, with full respect for the various religious and ethnic values and cultural backgrounds of its people, and in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

This was a major victory. If sexual rights activists or UN committees later try to twist the meaning of some of the negotiated paragraphs (which is a common tactic we have to constantly guard against) to include special protections for sexual minorities, they will be foiled in the majority of countries which have cultural or religious values that run counter to the sexual rights agenda.

Family Watch is now gearing up for the Commission on the Status of Women on March 1-12 where the 15-year review of the UN’s premiere women’s rights document, the Beijing Platform for Action, will take place.  Radical feminists and activists from around the world will be there by the thousands to try to insert their abortion and sexual rights agenda in the final negotiated document. 

We will be there with our largest team of staff and volunteers ever to counteract these attempts. 

Any help you can give to help defray our costs would be greatly appreciated. This will be our most expensive conference ever as we are bringing in pro-family advocates from a number of different countries.  We will also be sponsoring a panel jointly with a number of governments to promote the critical role of mothers in society specifically to counteract the abortion agenda. 

And while we greatly appreciate all of you who contributed at the beginning of the year, we only met half of our fundraising goal for the year, and now we have this major expensive conference coming up.

As you can see from our track record, we are increasingly effective at the UN in defending the family.  When we set out to impact a key document or policy in defense of the family, we almost always win.  A good example is the language I mentioned above protecting the family from an attack by those advocating the sexual rights agenda that we succeeded in including in a UN document. 

We are good at what we do largely thanks to the generous support of people like you.  But we cannot continue without your continued help.

Please consider making the most generous donation you can to help us in our efforts to defend the family in the international arena.

Sincerely,

Sharon Slater
President

News Items of Interest

Abortion

Chilean Study Undercuts Maternal Mortality/Abortion Claims.  The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute reports that according to Dr. Elard Koch, a member of the faculty of medicine at the University of Chile, the dramatic decrease in maternal mortality during the past fifty years in that country is not due to liberal abortion laws.  Pro-abortion advocates claim that liberal abortion laws are essential in order to reduce maternal mortality rates.  But because Chile’s abortion laws are very strict, it is clear that the reduction in maternal mortality rates is not due to legal abortion.  Read more here.

Indian Court Rules Born and Unborn Are Equal.  The Delhi High Court ruled that an unborn child aged five months and older is legally equal to a child.  The court further ruled that “the fetus is another life in a woman and loss of the fetus is actually loss of a child in the offing.”  The case involved a woman who was seven months pregnant who was killed in a car accident.  Read more here.

United Nations Urges Nicaragua to Legalize Abortion.  Nicaragua was told by the High Commission of Human rights and other countries to relax its protections for unborn children and to “study the possibility of foreseeing exceptions to the general prohibition of abortion in therapeutic cases and in pregnancies brought about by rape and incest.”  Nicaragua responded strongly and stated that their laws were the result of national sovereignty.  Read more here.

Russia Links Abortion and Population Decline.  The Russian Minister of Health said that reducing abortions will contribute to solving the low birthrate problem and population decline in that country.  The government pays women to have children and awards medals of “parental glory” to parents who have many children as a way to encourage couples to bear children.  Read more here.

Homosexuality Related

Ontario Students Can’t Opt Out of Pro-homosexual Classes.  The school board has stipulated that students will not be permitted to be excused from classes when information on homosexuality is discussed.  A leaked document obtained by a local journalist shows how teachers are being instructed to deal with parents who object to the “anti-homophobia” curriculum.  Read more here.

Marriage Related

Iowa Lawmakers Shoot Down Marriage Amendment.  House Joint Resolution 6 would have started the process to amend the Iowa Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, but the procedural motion to move the bill out of committee failed 54-45.  The legislation was launched in an effort to reverse an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.  Read more here.

Appeal Filed to Give D.C. Voters Right to Vote on Same-sex Marriage.  The Alliance Defense Fund and Stand4MarriageDC are appealing the decision of the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics that denied voters the opportunity to vote on a law that legalized same-sex marriage in Washington D.C.  Another motion was filed to prevent the law from going into effect on March 2.  Read more here.

Mexican Attorney General Files Suit Against Same-sex Marriage in Mexico City.  Mexican President Felipe Calderon believes that government officials in Mexico City are in violation of the Constitution of Mexico by legalizing same-sex marriage. The law is being challenged in the Supreme Court.  Read more here.

New Mexico Domestic Partnership Bill is Dead.  As expected, the bill will not be brought to a vote this year.  Supporters vow that they will bring it back in 2011, however.  Read more here.

News Items of General Interest

American Psychiatric Association Considers Renaming Sexual Disorder.  The newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which is revised and republished every ten years, may rename “Gender Identity Disorder” found in the current DSM to “Gender Incongruity.”  The stated reason for the change is that “the latter is a descriptive term that better reflects the core of the problem: an incongruence between, on the one hand, what identity one experiences and/or expresses and, on the other hand, how one is expected to live based on one’s assigned gender (usually at birth).”  Read more here.

Survey Finds Young Men Feel Pressured to Have Sex.  The online survey of 1200 young men ages 15 to 22 was commissioned by Seventeen magazine.  The survey found that 78 percent believed there was “way too much pressure” from society to engage in sex.  In addition, 45 percent of respondents said they were virgins, and 60 percent said they had lied about something related to sex.  Read more here.

Study Finds More than Half of Young Adults Infected with HPV.  The study, published in the journal Epidemiology and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, found that 56 percent of young adults in a new sexual relationship (together six months or less) were infected with human papillomavirus (HPV).  Of those, 44 percent were infected with a strain of HPV that causes cancer.  The study also found that there is a high probability of partner-to-partner transmission of HPV.  Read more here.

Study Finds Boys Who View Pornography More Likely to Harass Girls.  The study, done by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, found that boys who view pornography are more likely to engage in casual sex and are less likely to form healthy relationships when they are older.  The study also found that these boys are more likely to believe that there is nothing wrong with restraining or sexually harassing a girl.  The average age that boys first saw pornographic images has dropped from 15 to 11 in less than a decade.  The research was performed in 12 countries.  Read more here.

Maine Considers Banning Biology-based Restrooms in Schools.  A public hearing has been scheduled by the Maine Human rights Commission to consider establishing a right for transgender boys to use girls’ restrooms.  If approved by the Commission, the plan will establish mandatory transgender restroom access rules for all schools in Maine.  Read more here.

 

Have We Gone MAD?

Bizarre, real-life examples that make us wonder. . . Have We Gone MAD?

Much Ado About NOW-thing

The pigskin is packed up, the pom poms are in the closet, and the Super Bowl is over for another year.

You would either have to have been living in a cave or on another planet to have missed the uproar surrounding the Super Bowl ad featuring pro-life college football star Tim Tebow and his mother.  Here’s the instant replay.

The CBS network agreed to air an ad sponsored by the pro-family organization Focus on the Family featuring Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother.  She spoke in just a few sentences of Tim’s difficult birth and about almost losing him numerous times.  The tagline that appeared on the screen at the end of the ad was “Celebrate Family.  Celebrate Life.”  And oh, between Tim’s mom’s monolugue and the tagline, Tim playfully tackles his mom.  (This is important.)

Before the ad was even aired, feminists were ranting about the “controversial,” “anti-abortion,” “irresponsible” ad that CBS had chosen to air.  (Remember. . . they hadn’t even SEEN IT!)

As it turns out (but not mentioned in the ad) when Mrs. Tebow was expecting Tim, she was told that for various reasons, she should consider aborting her child.  She refused.

When the playful, charming, warm and fuzzy ad ran, showcasing a loving mother-son relationship, it turned out that there wasn’t a single word about abortion in it.

But the feminists were still livid.  The president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Terry O’Neill, said that even stronger than the “anti-abortion message” was the “celebration of violence against women.”  (Referring, of course, to the playful tackle.)

Really.

It is clear that the pro-choice women at NOW are fine with women actually making a choice, as long as it is the one THEY say you should make.  Oh, and the women at NOW (and radical feminists in general, I suspect) have no sense of humor whatsoever.

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