On November 15th, while hundreds of
pro-family activists were gathered in Geneva, Switzerland as part of a hopelessly
misguided effort to wrestle the United Nations into a more family-friendly posture, a new
"compromise" was reported regarding payment of U.S. "back dues" to the
world body. Previous compromise measures offering to pay off the nearly $1 billion in
"back dues" -- a figure produced by outcome-based arithmetic -- have been vetoed
by Bill Clinton, as they contained restrictions on the use of taxpayer dollars to fund
UN-aligned abortion groups overseas. To the observant, this illustrates that for Bill
Clinton, as well as most of the UN-aligned nomenklatura, the provision of subsidized
abortions abroad is the world body's one indispensable function.
According to the November 15thWashington Post, the most recent compromise would
write into law the 1984 "Mexico City Policy," an executive order by Ronald
Reagan that denies taxpayer subsidies to organizations (Planned Parenthood being the most
notorious) that promote abortion abroad. "But in return for accepting the abortion
language," observes the Post, "Clinton would have the option of waiving the law
if he saw fit." Each waiver would result in a three percent cut in the $385 million
allotted for "intentional family assistance funding" -- which would shave a mere
$12.5 million, leaving the rest at the disposal of the UN's international anti-natal
lobby.
Given Bill Clinton's abundant and well-documented contempt for laws that do not allow
for "waivers," the "compromise" can only be regarded as an abject
surrender by the Republican congressional leadership. In a front-page "news
analysis" that suppurated smirking triumphalism, the Post commented that the
budget negotiations that produced the UN "compromise" were "the last
sputtering battle in a five-year war between the GOP majority in Congress and Clinton over
federal spending and the role of government in American life. It is a war that Clinton has
won so decisively, at least in the realm of public opinion, that Republicans no longer
have a stomach for fighting."
Regarding the UN funding "compromise," the critical missing anatomy on the
part of GOP negotiators -- leaving aside the obvious shortcomings one always associates
with eunuchs -- was backbone, not belly. Were pro-family activists sufficiently
well-informed and mobilized, they could have provided a "backbone transplant,"
or at least made it clear to their representatives that their job security depends upon
preventing the expenditure of another penny of taxpayer wealth on the UN, including its
abortion agenda.
It is in Congress, not at the headquarters of Babylon-on-the-East River or at any other
UN facility, that these battles must be fought and won. So why were hundreds of decent,
well-intentioned, intelligent pro-family activists focusing upon Geneva, while a critical
battle over their agenda was being lost in Washington?
UN NGO-led effort
The "World Congress of Families II" (WCF II), an inter-faith meeting
co-sponsored by the Howard Institute and Family Voice -- a UN-accredited non-governmental
organization (NGO) headed by BYU law professor Richard Wilkins -- was convened in Geneva
for the purpose of uniting people of faith world-wide behind a call to protect the
"natural family" from the depredations of anti-family "forces" within
the UN. In his keynote address to the meeting's opening session, Bishop John Njue of the
Catholic Diocese of Embu, Kenya, observed that participants had "come together to
tell the world the importance of the family when there are forces that are celebrating the
destruction of the family." Such forces "militate against the family by
advocating alternative forms of the family.… Motherhood is seen as second rate while
careers are exalted. The alienation of the fathers is another deliberate attack."
Bishop Njue pointedly referred to the UN-led anti-natalist crusade: "The fabric of
poor countries cannot withstand the pressure for more birth control by the West. The giant
continent of Africa is being slowly but surely emptied. We may never recover."
The chief purpose of the WCF II was to generate support for "A Call from the
Families of the World," a document created at an international planning committee for
the congress, which met in Rome on May 17-20, 1998. That document observes that
"certain social, political and economic forces threaten the natural family, tearing
the social fabric at local, national and international levels. Under slogans such as
`modernity,' `globalization' and `progress,' and in the name of `Civil Society,' these
forces have weakened the bonds between husband and wife, parent and child, and the
generations. These ideologies deny the natural origin and status of the family, the equal
but complementary roles of men and women, the miracle of human fertility and procreation,
the dignity and worth of every human person, and the autonomy of the family itself."
It is important to note that the central assumption of the "Call" document is
that the developments it describes are the product of "ideologies." Dr. Allan
Carlson, head of the Howard Institute (and one of the most perceptive analysts of the
assault upon the family), comments that "The products of the 1994 [UN] International
Year of the Family, the proceedings of the United Nations conferences in Cairo, Beijing,
and Istanbul, showed the influence of the so-called post-family thinkers and activists.
These people are firm in their beliefs that the family is antiquated, that marriage is
prison-like, that children are liabilities, that religion is an obstacle to reform, and
that sciences should be under their intellectual control. It became clear that these views
now dominated the debate in institutions as important as the United Nations. Clearly, it
was time for the families of the globe to come together for a common advocacy and a common
defense."
Sound diagnosis, bad prescription
While Carlson's diagnosis of the problem is correct, the WCF II's prescription is
flawed, perhaps fatally so. The Family Voice NGO explains that through the WCF II and
global dissemination of the "Call" document, it seeks to create "a
coalition to counter the growing threats to religion, culture and international family
stability" created by "the one-sided influence" exerted by anti-family
lobbies within the UN system. "During the past decade, the United Nations has assumed
a major new role: that of international lawmaker," maintains Family Voice. Thus the
coalition assembled with Family Voice's help seeks to become "an active participant
in the debate, adoption and implementation of UN norms."
In short, the WCF II coalition is intended to help facilitate the creation of UN family
policies to be binding global legislation. The NGO's "Mission" statement claims
that the group "seeks to strengthen family policies at every level of government,
because the family unit is entitled to the widest possible protection and support."
But in the American constitutional tradition, protection for the family, as well as other
private associations and individual rights, is accomplished not by legislation, but rather
by strict limitation of government powers. Empowering the United Nations to act as a world
legislature is tantamount to revoking the Declaration of Independence; collaborating in
the creation of UN-created global family "law" would dispense entirely with the
constitutional framework and set the stage for a global leviathan state.
Throughout history, the chief impediment to the growth of the total state has been the
family. Now, in a torturous twist of irony, the Family Voice-organized coalition proposes
to facilitate the growth of a global state in the name of protecting the family.
Family Voice insists that its purpose if "to further United Nations goals of
strengthening and protecting the family as the basic unit of society." As Dr. Carlson
eloquently noted, the established goals of the UN are exactly the opposite: The world body
seeks to undermine, subvert, and reconstruct the family. The UN's official program for the
1994 "International Year of the Family" (IYF) asserts, "In the context of
social change, families must … become the medium for promoting new values and
behavior consistent with the rights of individual family members, as established by
various United Nations instruments." The UN also describes the traditional family as
a hotbed of "negative behavior or exploitation," insists that "efforts to
preserve the best of the past may be seen also as perpetrating attitudes that have, at
times, worked to the detriment of society and some family members, notably women,"
and maintains that "government policy intervention may be needed to counter …
negative behavior or exploitation in the family." Governments were instructed by the
IYF document to design "more effective policy interventions" within families to
carry out UN-approved family policies.
Family Voice maintains that it seeks to open up an "international democratic
debate" over UN policies. The WCF II is expected to create a document entitled the
"Geneva Declaration," intended to "call on UN policymakers to consider the
consequences of specific legislation, particularly with regard to population control
issues, the rights of children and same-sex marriage."
What if they lose the "debate"?
All of this begs the following question: What if the pro-family side, having fortified
the UN's spurious claim to act as a "world legislature," loses the
"international democratic debate"?
Were this to happen, would Family Voice and its allies simply submit to the
"democratic" will of the world anti-family movement? After such a
catastrophic defeat, would Family Voice et. al acknowledge the need for U.S. withdrawal
from the United Nations, or would it instead urge us to continue working within an
incurably corrupt system? If Family Voice supports the first option, it should candidly
say so; if it supports the second (which I believe is likely), it has no reason not
to be lending its support to an existing, organized movement underway to bring about U.S.
withdrawal from the UN.
Furthermore, Family Voice and its allies have not explained why they believe that the
UN's world "legislators" would be any more receptive to pro-family lobbying than
the GOP's congressional leadership has proven to be. In light of the atrocious UN
"compromise" recently brokered by the GOP, it would seem obvious that the most
pressing priority for U.S. pro-family activists would be to focus their efforts on
Congress, which -- unlike the UN -- is subject to constitutional accountability at the
local level. But it seems clear that one of Family Voice's objectives is to strengthen the
UN's "democratic" pretensions -- which inevitably means a corresponding
diminution in both our national sovereignty and the constitutional protections upon which
the family depends.
The fraud of global "civil society"
Family Voice states that it "works closely with others within Civil Society, the
United Nations, and the international community to provide resources for interested
individuals and organizations" and points out that it maintains representatives
"in Geneva, New York, and other UN headquarters throughout the world." In this
context, "Civil Society" refers to the dense network of NGOs, many if not most
of which are funded by foundations or through laundered government subsidies, that provide
a semblance of democratic support for UN initiatives in "global governance."
Our Global Neighborhood, the 1995 report of the UN-funded Commission on Global
Governance (CGG), refers to NGOs (which are accredited, as was Family Voice, through the
UN's Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC), as "Agents of change" in the
"global civil society." According to the CGG, "The proliferation of these
groups broadens effective representation, and can enhance pluralism and the functioning of
democracy" in the UN system. The report notes that the work of NGOs "can benefit
global governance…. [I]n their wide variety they bring expertise, commitment, and
grassroots perceptions that should be mobilized in the interests of better
governance…. A major challenge for the international community is to create the
public-private partnerships that enable and encourage non-state actors [such as NGOs] to
offer their contributions to effective global governance."
One undeniable effect of the WCF II has been to mobilize -- which is to say, to co-opt
-- the work of pro-family activists on behalf UN-dominated "global governance."
This has been done by persuading such people that their commendable desires to protect the
family are best expressed in lobbying efforts directed at the UN for the purpose of
creating family-friendly "global law." But, once again, it must be understood
that the phrase "family-friendly global law" is a hideous oxymoron.
But an even more important point must be made about the wrongheaded strategy behind the
WCF II. The organizers and sponsors of that event are acting upon the premise that the
UN-directed assault upon the family is part of a great ideological debate that can be won
at the global level through a world-wide petition drive and lobbying effort. In fact, as
the comments of Dr. Carlson quoted above can attest, and as this correspondent can confirm
from personal observations at numerous UN conferences and summits, that anti-family
campaign is fundamentally conspiratorial: It is a concerted, largely covert effort
undertaken by people committed to the destruction of the family.
Each UN conference or summit involves a charade of deliberation, counterpoised with a
charade of "democratic" input from the "NGO Community." Each
conference or summit ends up with the adoption, by "consensus," of a plan of
action or platform which was created at preparatory committee (PrepCom) meetings well in
advance, and each final document corresponds to a long-range agenda created by UN
apparatchiks who are utterly insulated from accountability.
Which brings us, once again, to the cruel convergence of events on November 15th: While
pro-family activists were assembled in Geneva to advance the cause of "global
governance" in the name of family protection, the GOP's congressional leadership
consummated a sell-out that will once again fill the coffers of the UN's anti-family
apparatus with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
In order to protect the family from the "forces" correctly described by Dr.
Carlson and Bishop Njue, America must withdraw from the UN and cut off all funding for its
despicable work. This cannot be accomplished by lobbying the UN. By the time an issue has
reached the level of a UN summit, that battle is effectively lost, and the loss can only
be reversed through action in the U.S. House of Representatives. By mis-directing the
efforts of pro-family activists away from the one strategy with any hope of success --
namely, U.S. withdrawal from the UN -- Family Voice and the other organizers of the WCF II
have done substantial and perhaps lasting injury to the cause of the natural family.
