Cause for Concern
Posted by: faithwalk <faithwalk@...>
domething we should consider and respond to. I would suggest contacting
your Senator and Representative as well as the White House.
Mike
U.S. to help U.N. redefine 'families'
Apr 25, 2002
By George Archibald
WASHINGTON (BP)--The Bush administration has
joined European
delegates to an upcoming U.N. summit on children
in moving to
recognize families "in various forms," including
unmarried cohabiting
couples and homosexual partners.
A coalition of Catholic and Muslim countries has
formed to block
the change to the traditional U.N. definition of
the family -- married
heterosexual parents and children -- at the
General Assembly's
Special Session on Children from May 8-10.
A senior official at the U.S. Mission to the
United Nations in New
York said the U.S. Mission and the State
Department are backing the
delegates from Switzerland and the European Union
in their efforts
because so many children today are brought up by
single parents.
The U.S. official spoke anonymously, saying he did
not want to be
"hung out to dry" for explaining the
administration's position. He said
the United States supports the proposal to
recognize families "in
various forms" because "obviously we feel this
more reflects the
families of today, which are headed by single
parents and extended
families."
Customarily, U.N. members are obliged to conform
their national
laws to the body's declarations, and critics have
said that the
European-backed changes would make such proposals
as
homosexual "marriage" and domestic-partner
benefits an
internationally recognized right.
A U.N. publication following up the 1994 U.N.
population
conference in Copenhagen indicated that many
radical participants
believed altering U.N. language in this way would
grant international
legitimacy to such arrangements.
The U.S.-backed European moves will produce "a
donnybrook," said
Austin Ruse, who heads the Catholic Family and
Human Rights
Institute, located in an office building next to
U.N. headquarters in
New York.
In the event of an impasse, Ruse said, U.N.
members would
probably go to a "default position" proposed by
South Korean
delegates, which states that "in different social
and political systems,
various forms of the family exist."
Ruse said the South Korean position would not
impose an obligation
on U.N. members to change their laws.
"I don't know what the United States is doing,"
said Monsignor
James Reinert, negotiator for the Vatican's
delegation at the United
Nations.
The world community's traditional definition of
family has remained
unchanged since the 1994 Copenhagen conference,
Reinert said,
despite efforts of feminist and pro-homosexual
forces to achieve a
permissive definition to give global legitimacy to
nonmarital
lifestyles.
"There won't be a compromise on this paragraph.
There just won't
be," the Holy See's negotiator said in an
interview. "Too many people
feel too strongly about this."
The U.S. official with the U.N. Mission said the
change is not likely
to help legitimize homosexual unions, despite the
Copenhagen
writings.
"I would reject that definition that some
individual person writing for
the U.N. would include in a publication that was
not embraced by all
member states," the official said.
However, Maria Sophia Aguirre, a population and
development
expert at Catholic University of America who
follows U.N.
programs and issues, disagreed.
She said the United Nations' compilation of
Copenhagen papers,
published in 1996 and titled "Family Challenges
for the Future," listed
three groups of families: "nuclear," "extended"
and "reorganized."
"'Nuclear' includes biological, social,
one-parent, adoptive or in vitro
families," she said. "'Extended' includes
three-generation, kinship,
tribal and polygamous. 'Reorganized' includes
remarried, community
living, same-gender," terms that she said would
collectively
encompass cohabitation and homosexual couples.
African countries promoted language for the child
summit document
to further the concept of extended families, the
Catholic University
researcher said.
"Extended families, cousins and tribes, is an
important concept in
Africa. But what [the U.N. bureaucracy] really
means by 'various
forms of families' is something else. Some African
countries are
now uneasy," she said.
The White House has refused to comment in response
to questions
from The Washington Times.
Congressional reaction also was cautious, with
about a dozen
Republican House and Senate leaders and senior
aides saying they
wanted to see complete details of the Bush
administration position
before commenting publicly.
"I'd like to take a look at it," said Rep. J.C.
Watts Jr. of Oklahoma,
chairman of the House Republican Conference.
"We need to speak very clearly when it comes to
the family," Watts
said. "I would love to have a mom and a dad in
every household. But
if you don't have a dad, it doesn't mean mom loves
the child any
less."
But Watts bristled at suggestions of a U.N.
position that might
legitimize single-parent, unmarried or homosexual
households in the
context of children.
Despite difficulties with much of the Arab world
over the war on
Muslim-backed terrorism, the administration's
staunchest allies in the
U.N. negotiations have been Muslim nations
affiliated with the
17-nation Some Developing Countries Group, sources
said.
The U.S. delegation supports a proposal by Sudan
for moral sex
education that promotes abstinence, the sources
said. Muslim
countries circulated their own position paper
stating that "sex
education should emphasize hygiene and chastity."
The European delegates are acting contrary to the
will of the
democratically elected European Parliament, which
on April 11
debated and resoundingly defeated a resolution on
the redefinition of
family being pushed by their representatives at
U.N. conferences.
In another contentious matter, the Bush
administration has a
tentative agreement to remove language from the
child summit
document that would support abortion counseling
and abortions for
teens under guarantees of so-called "reproductive
health services," a
State Department source said during the week of
April 15.
Last June, a senior Canadian negotiator told
delegates at a U.N.
preparatory meeting for the child summit that
abortion services were
included in the draft document's three references
to "reproductive
health services."
The State Department responded with cables to all
U.S.
ambassadors instructing them to lobby for removal
of the
pro-abortion language.
In prior U.N. documents after population and
women's conferences,
abortion has been listed and promoted as an option
among
"reproductive health services," Aguirre of
Catholic University said.
--30--
Reprinted with special permission from The
Washington Times.