| FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2017 |
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IOF Weekly — Family Structure Matters
President’s Message
Dear Friend of the Family:
For many years, secularists have argued that family structure doesn’t really matter, and that the important thing is that adults feel free to pursue relationships and sexual entanglements that give them pleasure. Indeed, the US Supreme Court has taken the bait from the left when they redefined marriage in the Obergefell decision, changing it in the law from primarily a child-focused institution to one that exists to validate the romantic desires of adults. This issue of WCF Weekly highlights two news items, among many others that are out there, that put the lie to the idea that family structure doesn’t matter for kids and families. One reports on the correlation of chastity and monogamy in the duration of first marriages, and another shows the link between absent fathers and childhood obesity.
We ask you to consider making a financial contribution to support IOF. Our work depends on the support of individuals and groups who understand the importance of affirming and defending the natural family as the fundamental unit of society.
God bless,
International Family News
An Appeal to President Trump: Lincoln, Scalia, and a New Birth of Freedom
| “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,” stated a solemn President Lincoln on a cold fall day in 1863 as he dedicated the blood-soaked battlefield at Gettysburg for the resting place of the fallen. But as we celebrated the great man’s birthday on February 12, his resolve at Gettysburg still rings in our ears: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, whose passing in 2016 fell one day after Lincoln’s birthday, participated in the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and administered the oath of citizenship to 16 people. “Strange and unique in human history,” he remarked on that occasion, is the fact that Americans are bound together “not by blood… or race… but rather by our fidelity to certain political principles.” Years earlier, Justice Scalia had reminded Americans of the principle upon which their freedom is founded:
“Those who wrote the Constitution believed that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to foster morality. The ‘fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself.’ School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963). President Washington opened his Presidency with a prayer, and reminded his fellow citizens at the conclusion of it that ‘reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.’ President John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia, ‘we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.'” (McCreary County v. ACLU (2005), dissenting.)
Today we call upon President Donald J. Trump to protect our increasingly imperiled religious liberty, which Justice Scalia so clearly reminded us is the very foundation of our republic. So that it will “not perish from the earth,” we must highly resolve, as Lincoln did at Gettysburg, that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” |
The Most Important Correlation in all of Social Science
Pat Fagan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Marriage and Religious Institute (MARRI) has correlated the percent of intact first marriages at five years of marriage by the number of sexual partners of the spouses. He finds that 95% of couples whose only sexual partner is their spouse are still married after five years. However, when the wife has had one extra sexual partner other than her husband, the percent of intact marriages after five years drops to 62% and with two extra partners it drops to almost 50%. Fagan writes that, “A culture of monogamy is critical to a thriving nation or a thriving culture. A culture of chastity is foundational to a culture of monogamy. Thus the cultivation of chastity is central to a robust nation and a robust culture.”
Read more →
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WCF Africa Regional Congress Set in Nigeria
Theresa Okafor, PhD, WCF’s Africa Coordinator, writes to invite all IOF supporters to Lagos, Nigeria for the Regional World Congress for Families meeting from March 27-29, 2017. “Come to Nigeria and help us. Come and speak to our people and our government. The misconceived ideas about ‘sexual rights’ and ‘sexual health’ are fast selling because the liberals are pushing money into it and sending their personnels to sway our government. If the Early Christian missionaries were dissuaded by the dangerous 3 months journey by sea to the then jungles of Nigeria and fear of death from Mosquitoes etc, there would hardly be any Christians in Nigeria, today. Please come to this landmark conference – come and learn, come and share, come and influence, come and build relationships.” Visas are required.
For more information →
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Natural Family News and Research
Childhood Obesity: Missing Fathers, Swelling Waistlines
“The family environment is not able to overcome childhood obesity without governmental support,” a newly released EU-funded study has found. News source EurActiv.com reports on the key findings, which include the fact that childhood obesity is much more prevalent in families of low-middle socioeconomic status. “Our findings clearly show that children from disadvantaged families are more often overweight and obese than those from more advantaged groups, so it’s vital that extra efforts are made to target those worst off with bold policies designed to offer them the support they need,” study coordinator Dr. Wolfgang Ahrens says. But in spite of this story’s opening claim, research reveals that “family environment” has much to do with the likelihood of child obesity, but in a way that the story fails to recognize.
Read more → at The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy
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Upcoming Events
- African Regional Conference on the Family (Lagos, Nigeria) — March 27-29
- Second Transatlantic Summit of the Political Network for Values (to be held at the European Parliament) — April 27 and 28
- World Congress of Families IX: Budapest — May 24-28
- Black Conservative Summit/WCF Regional Conference (Washington, DC) — June 15-17
- End Sexual Exploitation Summit (Cape Town, South Africa) — August
- African Regional Conference on the Family (in Lilongwe, Malawi) at the Capitol Sunshine Hotel — October
- Fourth Caribbean Conference on the Family (Georgetown, Guyana) — October
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