Contact: Don Feder, Director, WCF Communications, 508-405-1337, dfeder@rcn.com; Judy Hodge, 815-964-5819, media@worldcongress.org
LONDON, May 14, 2012 /
Christian Newswire/ --
World Congress of Families Managing Director, Larry Jacobs, reacted with derision to the decision by the Law Society to ban a marriage conference co-sponsored by the Congress and
Christian Concern, a WCF Partner in the United Kingdom.
WCF and Christian Concern’s "One Man, One Woman: Making The Case for Marriage" Conference is scheduled for May 23 at the Law Society in London.
Jacobs charged: “
The Law Society – which represents solicitors in England and Wales -- has taken the extraordinary step of banning the conference, supposedly because, by questioning the social utility of same-sex marriage, it violates the Society’s diversity policy. Apparently, the diversity the Society approves of least is the one that matters the most – diversity of opinion.”
Jacobs continued: “A group which represents legal professionals, and – by extension – the rule of law, has decided that discussing the current law in England and Wales and debating a fundamental change in that law, is somehow discriminatory.”
Allan Carlson, World Congress of Families Founder and International Secretary added, “The most bizarre aspect of this action is that Law Society is punishing us for, in effect, defending the British marriage law that now exists.”
Prime Minister David Cameron wants to change British law to allow gay marriage. As the petition referred to above demonstrates, there is considerable opposition to the move, including among members of Cameron’s cabinet.
Speakers at the scheduled conference will include: Sir Paul Coleridge (High Court Justice, Family Division), senior Family Law Practitioner Peter Duckworth, Phillip Blond (director of
ResPublica think tank), commentator Cristina Odone, Ben Harris-Quinney (chairman of the centre-right think tank,
The Bow Group), Dr. Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D. (Founder and International Secretary of the World Congress of Families) and Don Feder (WCF Communications Director).
The Law Society’s London headquarters was also the site of Christian Concern’s June 29, 2011 “The Future of The Family in Coalition Britain Conference.”
Jacobs asked: “At the 2011 conference, Member of Parliament Stewart Jackson observed that ‘marriage should be preserved as being solely between a man and a woman.’ Why was this not a violation of the Society’s diversity policy then, but it is now?”
Jacobs concluded: “World Congress of Families stands fully behind Christian Concern and its CEO, Andrea Minichiello Williams. If the Law Society is really interested in diversity, it should consider including advocates for the
natural family – who happen to constitute most of the world’s families. The international rights of the
natural family are outlined by the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), article 16(3), which states, ‘The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by Society and the State.’”
World Congress of Families VI will be held May 25-27, 2012, in Madrid, Spain, at the Palacio de Congresos, and is the world’s largest gathering of pro-family leaders, scholars and activists.
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and inter-faith people of goodwill from more than 80 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. To date, there have been five World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw, Poland (2007) and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2009). World Congress of Families VI will be held in Madrid, Spain in May 25-27, 2012.
