Contact: Don Feder, 508-405-1337, dfeder@rcn.com
MEDIA ADVISORY, July 7 /Christian Newswire/ -- The anti-family left in the Netherlands is mobilizing against World Congress of Families V (Amsterdam, August 10-12) in ways intended to intimidate participants.
On July 1, groups organizing against the Congress held a meeting in Amsterdam. This is just one of such meetings taking place.
The Autonomous Feminist Action calls World Congress of Families a group of "fundamentalistic (sic.) Christians" who "will plead for going back to the Christian traditions of traditional relationship between man and woman." WCF is also characterized as anti-feminist, anti-abortion, homophobic and opposed to divorce.
To illustrate its anti-family message, Feminist Action has posted a menacing drawing of a man and a woman, with a child and a cross between them. There's a dotted line going through the necks of the couple and a pair of scissors ready to cut off their heads! Click here to view the illustration.
Larry Jacobs, Managing Director of the World Congress of Families, responded, "Clearly, the social left is terrified of the Congress bringing a pro-family message to what it considers its turf."
As for the Congress being composed of "Christian fundamentalistics," Jacobs noted: "Allan Carlson, our international secretary, belongs to a mainline Protestant church. WCF Communications Director Don Feder is Jewish. Speakers at World Congress of Families V will include the Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands, the President of the Pontifical Council on the Family, a former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, a leader of the LDS church, and the President of the Pakistan Family Forum."
At the time of World Congress of Families IV in Warsaw (2007), more than 100 members of the European Union Parliament signed a letter of support for the Congress, initiated by Anna Zaborska, Chairwoman of the EU Committee for Women's Rights and held a joint press conference held at the European Parliament in support of the World Congress of Families. Click here for more information.
"All these protest groups know about us is that we believe in the natural family (as defined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. We do, and we're proud of it," Jacobs said.
"But there's more to the Congress. At World Congress of Families V, we'll be talking about parental rights, home-schooling, preserving marriage, declining birth rates, Internet pornography, combating trafficking in women and children, and supporting families in the developing world, among other issues confronting the family."
Click here for more information on World Congress of Families V. To schedule an interview with Larry Jacobs, contact Carol Griesbach at 815-964-5819 or media@profam.org .
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society (as found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948). The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families -- Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007). A fifth World Congress of Families will be held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009 (www.worldcongress.nl).
