Family Friday: Stand for the Family, Chapter 2, Part 2

Another little story about where our country stands on these issues.... again, the HIV/AIDS guidelines call for same-sex marriage to be legalized.... President Obama actually said during his candidacy that he was against legalization of same sex marriage, and yet, the US delegate told Sharon to her face that the official stance of the United States was in support of this document. Did you know that? Thankfully Sharon has a son (a few children actually), from Africa who was orphaned due to AIDS and was able to hold a caucus and tell the delegates of his experiences. In the end his lobbying paid off, but I especially love her statement at the end of this story as she is looking back at this issue that looked like it would be lost... "All that it takes is someone who is willing to take a stand for the family, and miracles can happen."

The UN influences governments and has a lot of money, including our tax dollars, to be able to push forward it's agendas. They get to decide what is normal and those opinions are based upon who's speaking the loudest! If we stay at home moms are content to think that our right to stay home and care for our children is supported in big government settings, we're wrong. Unopposed, our husbands wouldn't even be able to go and play golf after a hard week at work! There's a very aggressive minority of people out there trying to secure rights for us that directly oppose everything that we stand for, but because they are so aggressive and loud, they're winning! This is one of those times when I started to feel despair, but the scripture came to mind, "Fear not: for they that are with us are more than they that be with them." 2 kings 6:16. We have to speak up and be heard! We are the majority and we need to be involved in securing the right to bear children, to raise them, and to have husbands that don't have to be oppressed by women who think that men are controlling. Really? We need to regulate this stuff with laws?? I fell oppressed so I’m going to respond by oppressing the things (or gender) that I fell oppressed by? How does that make any sense?

So, why do you care what happens at the UN?

I get to cheat this time as the reasons why are written out quite nicely bullet by bullet in the book.

"1. International policies often trickle down to the national, state and local level."

Thanks to other countries policies on homosexuality, the US Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that "the U.S Constitution was out of step with international developments concerning homosexual rights." Take that ruling a step further and you have the basis for the passing of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. So, out the door with the Constitution and in with popular ideas, are you scared yet? Don't get me wrong, I don't claim that the Constitution is infallible (if you look to the upper right you'll notice that I'm dark skinned and a woman... so, there are definitely some amendments that I'm glad made it to ratification!) But now we're moving from rights for people that should be "natural" (in Thomas Jefferson's sense of the word), as in the fact that my skin isn't white and I'm not a man is not something I woke up one day and chose.... to, I want to do something that is against the law, so I'm going to push until I get it. I realize that I just opened pandora's box about homosexuality being a choice, and I know that there are many who feel like they are born that way... just stick with me, we'll get to why I said that, promise!

"2. UN agencies create and fund programs that sexualize children."

This one made me sick actually, so I'll touch on it briefly and you can look into it more if you'd like. A UNICEF funded website is targeted at your teenager in order to encourage them into "abortion, masturbation, homosexuality and other sexual activities." Their real mission is to support the rights of children, as in helping them stay safe against violence, disease, bringing education and trying to raise them out of poverty by doing so. Again, the real shocker here is that in the face of all the terrible things in the world (hunger, violence, etc), we're pushing a sexual agenda, putting money into it, and receiving funding from places like the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, even the South African Government. You'd think that promoting sexual health and healthy lifestyles would take other forms than telling a child that at any age they have the right to a "free and safe abortion." CHILD. A child should be encouraged to go kick a ball, read a book, play a game, not being instructed in sexual things that their not developmentally and/or emotionally ready for. We don't need these radicals bringing up and forcing these "rights" on such tender souls.

"3. UN policies create international norms that can affect your family."

A treaty that has been up for discussion in the Senate for 30 years but hasn't been ratified has been adopted in the city of San Francisco. Any guesses as to what it is? :-). The CEDAW Treaty stands for Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination again Women. Mothers, wives, daughters, I plead with you to look further than the name. Sure, ending discrimination is a good thing, BUT who is setting the guidelines for what things are discrimination. This treaty is anti-family and anti-motherhood and our Senate is, after all this time, starting to try and push to ratify this treaty. If you hear ANYTHING about this, please, please, please put a call into your representatives and make your voice heard. I've put calls into my Senators office at 1am their time after receiving an email from Family Watch about what was being discussed in a lame duck session in November. My husband looked at me like I was a crazy person as I read an email, quickly got up and got the phone and made my calls. We talked about it later, and I saw a very proud man looking at me who understood how important it was that we make our voices heard (even if my representatives were backers of what I was against, at least they heard from me!)

"4. UN commities, in concert with NGOs, manipulate member states to change their laws in ways that harm the family."

So, remember that CEDAW Treaty you read about 2 seconds ago? It's reared it's ugly head in countries like Peru and Columbia in order to legalize abortions in these countries. While there is no "right to abortion or unrestricted sexual activity" in any UN treaty, the UN CEDAW Committee has pressured these countries into legalizing something they were against. How is this possible? Well, if we say something enough times it becomes true. And if we make connections between existing documents and interpret them for a specific cause, then they're free game to use in any situation. Case in point, if we take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and look at a provision that "prevents torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and apply that to a situation where a woman can't get an abortion of a malformed fetus and suffers depression after the birth.... viola! Seems strange that we can stretch things that far, but it really happened in Peru. Thus, they changed their laws to comply with the UN and then this was applied to Columbia. Then you have an African country that signed a treaty in 1976 and a group called Human Rights Watch, wanting to make homosexuality recognized internationally as a human right, trying to get a passage interpreted as protecting "sexual orientation." Yah, I've heard of living documents, as mentioned about, but this evolution of documents based on our "progressive" understanding of human rights issues is really an insult.

BE IN THE KNOW

The people who know how these things work, are the ones with all the power. If a group like the Sexual Rights Initiative is (and are) offering $500 to people to "create reports on sexual rights abuses regarding reproductive rights, sexual diversity, sexuality education, HIV/AIDS, etc." that has to be a flag in your mind that this is a real battlefield. There are those who in a UN forum have stated that "the family is the most violent institution in the world" and that those who support sexual abstinence for children are the cause of all the deaths in the world from AIDS.

"If a few stay at home moms with no previous experience can make such a huge difference, others who simply have a desire to preserve and protect the family can do the same."

"...even ordinary citizens with little or no experience can learn, become involved, and make a difference."

www.familywatchinternational.org

Family Friday: Stand for the Family, Chapter 2, Part 1

Stand for the Family Review, Chapter 2: Deceptive Tactics

I really don't think that this chapter could have been titled any better than this. I think what was most surprising to me, and thus caught my attention the most, were the issues that were being discussed at the United Nations in the first place. As far as I knew, the documents that came out of the UN were really important... like things that help poor nations get food, antibiotics, and keep genocide from happening. Boy was I wrong! Are you ready for this??

We're now 8 years after the instances I last wrote about, and Sharon Slater is now Family Watch International President. The document being discussed is on HIV/AIDS and refers to a document called the "International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights." Sounds innocent enough right? I would agree with you and so would (and did) most of the delegates at this negotiation because they were not aware that the HIV/AIDS guideline that was being referred to "called for members states to:

-Legalize abortion;

-Legalize same-sex marriage;

-Punish people who criticize same-sex relations;

-Repeal laws against adultery, fornication, oral sex and sodomy;

-Enact laws to protect homosexual behavior; and

-Provide children with explicit sex education."

Did you catch those? Studies have proved over and over again that it's risky sexual behavior that spreads HIV/AIDS, and now we're going to pass laws that not only make these behaviors acceptable but actually encourage them?? This is all a mistake right? Sadly, no. There's something that you have to take note of, any language that can be approved in the UN can be used ANYWHERE. Thus, if I can slide words into a document that may not even have anything to do with what is written there but no one objects for whatever reason, I have now set a precedent for legislators, judges, and NGO's all over the world.

Is this a big deal? Yah, I'd say so!! It's such a big deal that people will use pressure, as we talked about before, and even bold face lies. Case in point, pro-family groups were trying hard to combat the inclusion of the references to the HIV/AIDS guidelines in this document and were searching for more support. After a call to affiliates in Uganda, who contacted their Minister of Ethics and Integrity, who then contact their UN delegate, who then talked to the woman chairing the negotiations of this document and was told that the offending reference was to be removed. Too easy? Yes, that was too easy. The chairwoman was later approached by Sharon, who asked about the phrases removal, only to be met with a smile and the words "Maybe next year." I don't know what the chairwoman told the delegate from Uganda, but apparently it wasn't the truth.

Are you ready to learn a few more things that a few passionate people are trying to push through in order to "help" you? The theme of "The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care giving in the context of HIV/AIDS." Your husbands will especially love this one.... I can't help but use Sharon's words here from page 16, "The negotiations, as ludicrous as it sounds, included a long discussion on how to ensure that fathers who take family leave do not use it to, for example, "play golf." So, your hubby wants to go play golf (or insert another favorite past time of his here), and because he's leaving the family to go and enjoy a hobby on his own... he can't... it's not legal. Are you flip-flopping through laughing out loud and being utterly frightened at the same time??

Moving on, I learned that the phrase "sexual and reproductive rights" is actually a nice, all encompassing way of saying "abortion, promiscuity, homosexuality and transgenderism." Oh, and by the way, did you know that all of these things are a solution to the AIDS pandemic and maternal mortality? True story, Norway's State Secretary to the Minister of International Development went as far as to say that having an abortion is safer than giving birth to a child (which isn't true and the proof for that is coming, be patient).

The most frustrating part of this chapter was in the US under the Obama administration to fund an office to promote women's rights with an initial amount of $500,000,000... I'm sorry, the last I looked our country was in MAJOR debt so creating this office and funding it in that way is just ridiculous, and also, I happen to be a woman, and the "rights" that will be fought for by such an office do anything but help women!

A Little Sweetness and Perspective for your Day

Beautiful video for mom's. Thank you to Ann Voskamp.

Family Friday: Chapter 1, part 2

I always wonder about how much voicing my opinion, or just lending a smile to someone standing up against opposition helps. Despite the fact that I describe myself as fairly anti-social, I can't help but create a little experiment when I'm in public. My favorite experiment happens every week at church. My family sits on the very front row... it's always open... and generally there are very few distractions for our children... From the front row I stare at the speakers and music leaders (that is, when I'm not trying to detangle my baby's hand from my super curly hair... read Japanese finger torture..., helping my 2 year old understand that he can't sit on daddy's lap right now due to a hernia he got last week that needs surgery, and helping the visibly tired 4 and 5 year old try to come away with something from the meeting besides pouty faces) and I smile. Yep, that's all, my experiment.... as I'm a political science nerd and not a real science nerd... consists of a simple smile that reaches up into my eyes and says "good job! keep it up!" And you know what happens every time? THEY SMILE BACK! I've made you suffer through my order of operations here because I have a hypothesis that has stood the test of time for me. I have been around tons of strangers, and no matter our backgrounds, a simple encouraging smile can give someone the added courage necessary to complete a difficult task. I dare you to try it! They may not smile back at you, probably because you haven't learned the art of smiling with your eyes too, but your encouragement, even when silent, can go very far.

We have to yell like all the Who's down in Whoville "We are here!! We are here!!" If Horton can hear us and we're bolstering his courage, eventually everyone will hear our cries. On the opposite side of this unexpected analogy, if no one is talking but an angry kangaroo, we're all going to get boiled in beezlenut stew.

Case in point of one way to stay out of the boiler: Sharon was at another conference which was negotiating a document that was being disputed because large groups that wanted to push a sexual rights agenda. Nations like Canada, the European Union, and the United states were pushing for these amendments, while those from Muslim countries, Sudan, Iraq, Poland, Syria, Nicaragua and others were against these provisions. My favorite line comes from a Nigerian delegate who asked Sharon, "So why is the West so obsessed with sex?" Seriously, come on people! A delegate from Pakistan said it best when he pleaded with the Western countries "to stop wasting the delegates' time with sexual rights provisions and, instead, to start working on the issues that matter most to women in poverty-i.e, basic health care, clean water, food and shelter."

Seriously, you may think I'm a complete nut, and that I'm making a big deal over something so small, but when there are people out there who are in dire need of basic necessity, "why is the West so obsessed with sex??"

Concerning the negotiations of this document Sharon writes, "social liberals and conservatives locked horns on issues related to sexual orientation, reproductive rights (abortion), sexual rights, and family-supportive language." With both sides frustrated and not going anywhere, the pro-family group distributed flyers that said.

"If the West was not so preoccupied with sex, the document would be done." As you can imagine, such a message received varied responses, but in the end the pro-family delegates were given an extra boost to stand against their opposition and were no longer afraid of being accused of holding up the proceedings (does the word BULLY not apply here?), and things were able to move along with "all references promoting abortion and broad sexual rights were eliminated."

What you need to know:

*There are very large, outspoken individuals and groups who "seek to create a right to sex outside of marriage without having to take responsibility for the consequences. When sex occurs outside of marriage, it doesn't matter if it is heterosexual, homosexual, premarital or extramarital; the evidence shows that any sexual activity outside of a traditional marriage, sooner or later, is damaging to the individual and to society, and especially to the institution of the family

*A UN official who represents the United Nations Population Fund, which gets millions of dollars every year to promote "family planning," recently spoke of divorce and out-of-wedlock births as a "triumph" for "human rights."

*You are one person, and you can and will make a difference if you are willing to do the hard work and prepare yourself in the event that a moment comes which requires the help you have to give.

So, I ask you, is your family important to you??

You may yet wonder why all these obscure thoughts should be important to you and your family, I promise that you'll understand where the UN fits in to all of this, and why you need to be observant and aware for the sake of your family. In the meantime, just think about this: If there are UN officials out there openly rejoicing in the breakdown of the traditional family, you can be sure that laws will be ratified in your area that will directly oppose everything you stand for.

Next week: Chapter 2, Deceptive Tactics.

-This chapter really is a must read. I'm not entirely sure how to impart all the information that I need to from this, but I will do my best. Be forewarned, this chapter removed rose colored glasses where I thought there was none, and helped me reestablish a footing I hadn't realized that I'd lost.

-If you want to get to reading on your own you're welcome to pick up there book here. All proceeds help to support Family Watch International. Feel free to grab a few extra for family/friends, you'll get a bargain for buying in bulk and you'll help embolden others to share the message that "We are here!"