The international pro-family Moscow Demographic Summit was held in June of 2011. The purpose of the Summit was to discuss the immanent problems of population decline. The following statement is is consensus solutions.
We, participants of the Moscow Demographic Summit, representing families from various social, ethnic and religious communities, leading experts in the field of the family and demography, public activists, NGOs, leaders of parents associations, representatives of the leading business, educational and diplomatic institutions, members of national Governments and Parliaments and other responsible forces of the civil society, representing 65 countries of the world, hereby declare that the Natural Family is the basic unit of society and the fundamental social value, that is a necessary prerequisite for the very existence of world civilizations and the whole humankind. The Natural Family is a necessary condition with no alternatives for survival and stable/sustainable development of all nations and states, basic and integral condition for the demographic well-being.
With reference to the objective and widely accepted scientific data and forecasts of the leading demographers, we express our deep concern about the dangers of the approaching worldwide depopulation. Despite wrong and biased information about “overpopulation” threat promoted by some mass media and international institutions, in reality already for several decades in a row we have been witnessing a global process of demographic degradation. In recent years this dynamic has assumed a threatening scale and magnitude. As a consequence of the global decrease in fertility below the replacement level (2.1 – 2.2), 42% of all humankind live in the countries where even simple replacement of old generations is not taking place. This destructive process of swift drop of fertility and birth rates has swept all the continents on our planet. In the nearest historical period, the negative demographic trends can bring about extinction of whole peoples, destruction of States, and disappearance of unique cultures and civilizations. Even according to conservative estimates by the UN, within next three decades, the total fertility rate will go down below the population replacement level all over the world. In reality, it can happen much earlier, thus making the whole world community face the unprecedented social and historical problem of humankind survival.
We are alarmed by the fact that the family institution is in a state of grave social crisis which consists in the destruction of universal family, conjugal and parental roles based on traditional family values; in the disruption of the reproductive function of the family; in an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, caused by the imposition of contraceptive thinking (in terms of safe sex) and destructive premarital and extramarital sex patterns; in widespread divorce; in the spreading of cohabitation without marriage; in increasing numbers of single-parent families; a wave of social deviations (abortions, homosexuality, paedophilia, drug addiction, refusal of marriage and childbearing (the child-free phenomenon), prostitution, pornography, etc.); disruption of the process of socialization of young generations; cutting of ties among relatives and alienation of different generations within one family, etc.
We call on the governments of all nations and on international institutions to develop immediately a pro-family demographic policy and to adopt a special international pro-family strategy and action plan aimed at consolidating family and marriage, protecting human life from conception to natural death, increasing birth rate, and averting the menace of depopulation. Nowadays, in most countries of the world, against the backdrop of devaluation of family values, the rights of the family are prejudiced in the information space, in the legal and socioeconomic spheres.
We also insist on putting an end to interference with private life of the family under the pretexts of so-called “family planning”; “protection of the rights of the child”, and “gender equality”. We consider it inadmissible to continue the policy of birth control, regarding this policy as one of the greatest threats to the survival of humankind and as a means of incursive discrimination against the family. Every family has the right of reproductive choice, inviolability of family life and bringing up their children in harmony with the culture and traditions of a specific country. Parents have absolute primary and priority right to support, bring up and educate their children.
We call on public associations, religious communities, entrepreneurs, media workers, and all people of good will to get involved in combating the above-mentioned threats that destroy family and marriage.
We support people and government of Hungary in its desire to protect natural family values and inviolability of human life since conception, that are declared in the new Constitution of Hungary. We support with one voice the definition of the family given below and codified in the final document of the Dialogue of Civilizations World Public Forum that took place on 7–11 October 2010 on the Greek island of Rhodes, and we urge that this definition be given an official international status.
Family is the basic unit (first element) of society with the following inherent characteristics:
1. Union of man and woman (according to Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948);
2. Voluntary nature of entry into marriage;
3. Co-residence of the spouses;
4. Joint household management;
5. Entry into marriage through a procedure of social recognition in the form of State registration of marriage and/or the relevant religious rite;
6. Wish to give birth to, socialize, and bring up children. Family is also a sine qua non demographic condition for the existence, reproduction and sustainable development of civilizations. The mother and the father have, inalienably and in conformity with human nature, the fundamental, priority and primary rights and duties to directly educate, bring up, protect and provide comprehensive spiritual, moral and psychological support to their children.
7. Indissolubility of marriage – initial mutual intention of the spouses to be together for life despite any difficulties of life.
Issue 15 will continue needed funding for both Greene County Hospital(GMH) and its sattelite care facilities across the county. As the annoying signs claim, the 1/2 mill renewal levy will not increase taxes but it will underwrite part of the GMH’s operational costs.