From Deseret News archives:
Warsaw forum promotes 'natural family'
LDS official says nontraditional unions are harmful to children
That platform has no legal binding but is designed to give family advocacy groups from around the world the backing of a larger coalition as the groups lobby their local and national lawmakers.
Social statistics used frequently at the fourth World Congress of Families note divorce rates in the United States of more than 50 percent and the likelihood across Europe that 80 percent of couples live together with no intent to marry. A frequent theme at the Warsaw conference is the impact that the progression of the individual-rights movement has had on traditional families and their role in society.
"Feminists of Europe take note: The safest place for children is in the natural family. The most dangerous is cohabiting couples," said Patrick Fagan, a clinical psychologist and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of Health and Human Services.
The conference's more than 130 speakers included several from Utah who represented the moral positions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"Legalizing same-sex marriage will drain marriage of its social meaning," said Lynn Wardle , a law professor at Brigham Young University.
That view was reinforced by Elder Bruce Hafen of the Quorums of the Seventy and a former dean of the BYU law school.
"The children of unmarried live-in parents have more behavioral problems than the children of single parents, who already have more problems than children with married parents," Elder Hafen said.
No-fault divorce is a product of the individual-rights movement that began in the 1960s, Elder Hafen said. Rationale used in the argument for no-fault divorce is the same legal principle used to argue for same-gender marriage, which is now legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Canada and in Massachusetts.
"No judge who has seriously engaged in the historic concept that marriage is a social institution has been able to conclude that same-gender marriage should be legal," Elder Hafen said. "The gay-marriage debate thus asks a stark question: Should marriage simply endorse a private adult choice, or is it an institution with the public purpose of advancing the interests of children and society as well as the couple's interests?"
Elder Hafen said the French National Assembly rejected same-gender marriage last year because it concluded, based on secular and not religion-based research, that marriage is a vital social institution and that children's rights to be raised in a family with a married mother and father outweigh the right of adults to engage in alternate relationship structures that affect their children.
That conclusion extends into the arena of adoption, an issue that follows the acceptance of same-gender unions, Elder Hafen said.
"Adoption should be about a child's right to a family, not about an adult's right to a child," he said.
E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com
