To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 2021, the best that Byline Times could come up with was to attack the World Congress of Families (a project of IOF) and its allies as haters and purveyors of that dangerous doctrine of complementarity— “a concept on the religious-right that essentialises men and women into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’” How dare we!
How does Byline know that WCF is a hate group? Because the Southern Poverty Law Center says so. What Byline somehow forgot to mention was the scandal that recently rocked SPLC, resulting in the firing of its founder and exposing it for the scam that it is. As one of SPLC’s former writers, Tom Moser, admitted just two years ago in The New Yorker, “Dark shadows hung over everything: the racial and gender disparities, the whispers about sexual harassment, the abuses that stemmed from the top-down management, and the guilt you couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.”
None of this seems to trouble Byline in its rant against WCF and its colleague organizations, one of which (CitizenGO), as Byline points out, includes IOF president Brian Brown as a board member. Byline further acknowledges the empowering role played by WCF, which it calls “an event that brings together anti-abortion, anti-LGBTIQ organisations to swap strategies” and create what has become “a major global force” in the name of “family rights.”
Byline’s claim that “family rights” is actually a cover for “anti-rights” (a term recurring repeatedly throughout the article) is a glaring admission of ignorance that the entire structure of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights rests squarely on the natural family, which exists prior to the state and possesses inherent dignity and rights which states are morally bound to respect and protect: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”
This is the unchangeable truth that no amount of opposition or rhetoric can alter, and this is the truth that IOF and its World Congress of Families, along with partners and friends around the world—truly a “major global force”—will never cease to proclaim and promote. Please join us.