Representatives of the International Organization for the Family and iFamNews, Brian Brown, President of IOF and the founder of our portal, Marco Respinti, iFamNews editor-in-chief, and Marija Stajić, iFamNews co-editor and author, as well as Angela Gandra Martins, Brazil’s Secretary of State for Family, participated in the panel Challenges of the family in the modern world. The panel was moderated by Radoš Pejović, President of the National Foundation for Family Issues and Demography.
At the end of this first panel, Dr. Danica Grujičić, President of the “Together for the Young Foundation”, the host and organizer of the “Open World” International Youth Summit, signed an agreement on cooperation with Radoš Pejović, President of the National Foundation for Family Issues and Demography.
Social networks are unforgiving
In her address, Marija Stajić pointed out that at any point in time, at any moment in history, in any part of the planet, a young person who reaches sexual maturity goes through similar trials. And as if that wasn’t difficult in itself, for today’s young people these temptations are made even more difficult by digital technologies, new types of addictions and the exposure of intimacy on social networks where everything remains permanently recorded. Earlier generations could afford some mistakes of the youth and adolescent flops–you have been deprived of that by social media. Previously, someone could embarrass themselves in front of their friends, but today such events have become “cringe” moments that are seen not only by those from our circle of friends or school, but potentially accessible to people of all ages and from all parts of the world. And forever. Which means, to your future employer, to your future husband or wife, and to your future mother-in-law. Social networks do not forgive anything.
The ubiquitous culture of casual dating (the so-called hook-up culture) tells you to enjoy yourself as much as you can, to take what you want from others, and you will not suffer any consequences–as long as you “protect yourself”. It is very naive to believe that we can do whatever we want without any consequences. A hypersexualized society offers you the illusion of protection, and when that protection fails, and sooner or later it must fail, various industries in that same society sell you solutions to those “problems”.
Currently, the most burning issue is the gender ideology, which denies the biological fact of man’s binary sexuality and tries to convince us that someone can be born “in the wrong body”, and that such persons need a sex change surgery–i.e. gender reassignment–as well as a lifelong therapy of hormones, said Stajić.
Brazil safeguards the natural family
Angela Gandra Martins, Brazil’s Secretary of State for Family, emphasized that in the Constitution of Brazil, the family is defined as the basic unit of society, which requires special care of the state. Also, in the preamble of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is stated that a child, for the sake of full and harmonious personality development, should grow up in a harmonious, family atmosphere, filled with love, happiness and understanding. The success of the policy is that we implement what is defined as an umbrella law in real life, and that is neither simple nor easy.
Let the family be your impregnable fortress that you constantly guard
Marco Respinti, iFamNews editor-in-chief, pointed out that the media are crucial in the fight for the natural family and that the International Family News portal stands on the front line against the well-financed media giants, but that regardless of all that, it stands firmly on the side of the truth, because truth is worth fighting for.
We do it every day in nine languages. We report on the dignity and beauty of the family and family values, personal and social. If there were no family, the society we live in would fall apart: who would work in enterprises, who would fill pension funds, what would society be built on?
The family is beautiful, the family deserves to be protected, the family is worth building, because the family is the future!
Remember that family is your resource for better or for worse. As a journalist, it is my duty to defend the family and the truth about the importance of the family every day. We can’t do that without you. We need you young people to get involved, to send us good news to show together why it is worth fighting for the family, but also bad news, to expose the phenomena that families must beware of. Let’s discuss family! Let’s not be afraid to talk!
Talk about the families you came from and the families you will certainly create–let the family be your impregnable fortress worth defending! That’s how we can change things. It’s not a utopia, it’s possible, believe me! , concluded Respinti.
You are changing the course of history–that is essential
Brian Brown, President of the IOF and founder of iFamNews, looked at the structural challenges in preserving the natural family in the world.
If we look around, if we turn to any part of the world, we see the dramatic disintegration of the family. The divorce rate skyrocketed from the 1960s. . Something has changed. Certainly, there are things within the family that do not change regardless of the place on the globe, and family life comes with problems. The struggle to be good to ourselves and others is universal. Marriage is a state in which we learn to overcome differences and learn to be better people. In the modern world, it is increasingly difficult to overcome these differences, and these are the structural challenges I am talking about. Why is it difficult today to overcome a conflict without it necessarily leading to a divorce? Why are families separated? Our ancestors did not face the challenges we have: readily available pornography, the dizzying rise and availability of high technology in the hands of each of us. These are not problems that originate in the family, but are structural challenges in the way the family functions that every modern family faces today.
The International Organization for the Family is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that the family is good, that it should be protected, that it should be based on the mutual complementarity of men and women, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, that it raises all the children that the couple brings into the world in love.
Another thing that is emerging today is the pattern that the family is a problem for modern society: that it creates difficulties, that it is outdated, that it is traditional and that we should break our relationship with tradition, which hinders human progress. It has become a constant in the West: in politics, in education, in business, in everything that surrounds us, and that is why we are constantly attacked for our Christian and traditional values. Freedom is gone. Instead of debating about it, the so-called liberals silence us everywhere and in every place. The bad news is that it’s about to get worse. If you stand for the natural family, you are placed outside of the acceptable discourse. We see that on Facebook, on Twitter… Those who consider themselves liberals are absolutely intolerant of those they disagree with!
Some countries, like your neighbor Hungary, managed to resist it. This is why Hungary is demonized in the media around the world. However, the results which Hugary’s family policy has given since 2015 opened our eyes to the fact that it is possible to improve the position of the family in other countries as well. They didn’t worry about what their opponents would say about it.
This led me to the conclusion that no matter how bad the current situation is, with a little effort and a little courage, the world can change!
The third thing is that today it is necessary to get out of the comfort zone. We know that there were problems in the relations between the US and Serbia. This should not prevent us from being united around family and family values. Let’s build our societies by learning from each other. No one guarantees us that we will succeed, but we are called to bear witness to the truth, even if we lose battles every day.
Do not believe that the progress of humanity is related with resistance to the natural family, to freedom, to religion, to tradition. That is simply not true. History moves up and down and depends solely on you.
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