Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Protecting the Family

If you haven't heard of United Families International, you may not know of the wonderful work that they are doing in behalf of all families and the world, but I have been quite touched by the compassion and courage that the president of UFI, Sharon Slater, has shown in her work and in her writings at Meridian Magazine (here's a sample). I received an email today from UFI, asking for help in "spreading the word" and since I believe very much in the importance of the work they do, I felt impressed to post a link to them in hopes that others might become aware and maybe also lend their support.


From the UFI website(emphasis mine!):

United Families International is fighting to protect the family and family values on many fronts. One of those is in the international arena, where much of our effort is trying to prevent harmful actions by various United Nations agencies and activities.

In some cases, these are major, high profile confrontations. In others, however, our work is largely behind the scenes. I am contacting you about one of these less publicized but still significant efforts, trying to stop the US government from funding the harmful activities of a small UN agency, the United Nation's Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA).

Among other things, UNFPA has been implicated in supporting forced abortions and forced sterilizations in China, a country notorious for inflicting these atrocities on huge numbers of women and unborn children each year. In fact just last week Time magazine reported that in the city of Shangdong 7,000 people had been sterilized against their will.

A few years ago UFI uncovered sexually-explicit UNFPA "sex education manuals" targeting children in developing countries around the world. These manuals are designed to sexualize young children.

And if this is not bad enough UFI has also documented UNFPA materials intended to undermine the religious and socio-cultural values of families in third world countries by teaching children that homosexuality and bisexuality are normal and widespread, that viewing pornography is acceptable, that children have "sexual rights" and that "gender" is merely a social construct, not what someone is born as.

If you are interested in more details, we have posted on our Web site the memo United Families has used to stop this funding in previous years, but I think this brief summary gives you the idea of how bad this material and UNFPA's programs are.

UFI uncovered UNFPA's harmful sex education activities around the world several years ago and we have taken the lead in actively opposing U.S. support for this agency. This year Congress once again appropriated $34 million for UNFPA, but gave President Bush the option of not spending the money. He has again used this authority and withheld funding for UNFPA.

The Bush Administration's announcement that they would not be funding UNFPA once again has set off a flood of criticism of the President here in the U.S. and around the world. Liberal nations and special interest groups bent on promoting abortion and sexualizing children to advance their broader anti-family agenda are angry.

Pro-family Americans are contacting the President and expressing their appreciation and support for his courageous leadership.

****

President George Bush is being harshly criticized by anti-family forces in the U.S. and around the world because he has withheld U.S. funding for a UN agency, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), which is causing great harm to women, children and families around the world. This is just the latest instance where the President has shown courageous leadership in the international arena on family issues.

However, too frequently pro-family activists do not thank policy makers like the President when they take responsible stands like this. We encourage you to show your appreciation and support of the President and his administration for their leadership. You can easily do this by sending President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns an e-mail by filling in the information
HERE.
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