The International Organization for the Family (IOF) has urged religious, political, social, and civic leaders across the world not to yield to external pressures on same-sex marriage.
This appeal is contained in a statement issued by participants at the just concluded meeting of the organization held in Cape Town, South Africa, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Monday.
The statement tagged “Cape Town Declaration” reaffirmed the critical role of traditional man-woman marriage as the bedrock of civilization.
According to the statement, ‘the family is the “first and primordial community” and that marriage is “the conjugal bond of man and woman.
“This definition is not a matter of preference or temperament or taste,” the signers declared, but “the heart of any just social order.”
“Throwing down the gauntlet to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trangender (LGBT) lobby, a thriving culture will firmly resist every push to redefine marriage to include: same-sex or group bonds, or sexually open or temporary ones.’’
The document also declared that the nature of marriage as between one man and one woman is “a truth that no government can change,”
It said that the declaration was a historic step in the global fight to preserve the truth about marriage.
It said that forcing the agenda of same-sex marriage on nations by manipulation of foreign aid or the likes was a deplorable practice.
Those that signed the declaration had pledged to work toward recovering the true understanding of marriage in places where governments had imposed an unwanted and unwarranted distortion of marriage upon society, it said.
“Beyond affixing their names to the document, signers also pledged to resist the rising cultural imperialism of western powers whose governments seek nothing less than the ideological colonization of the family.
“Bowing to no earthly power, using every just measure, we shall not falter or flag until the truth about marriage is embraced in our laws and honoured in our lands,’’ the document stated.
“The new text is reminiscent of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, which garnered some 440,000 signatures in its first year.
“While the Manhattan Declaration targeted three points: the sanctity of life, the dignity of marriage and freedom of religion, the Cape-Town Declaration chose to focus specifically on marriage and the family.
“Our goal is to gain 2 million signatures on the Cape-Town Declaration within a year from today: December 11, the Universal Day of Human Rights,” the statement said.
NAN reports that this statement was released on Dec.10, the International Human Rights Day to mark the anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly held in Paris on December 10, 1948.
Mr Brian Brown, President of (IOF), Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of the Catholic Diocese of Oyo, Nigeria, as well as undreds of other religious, political, social and civic leaders from other continents appended their signatures to the document .(NAN)