Editorial: The Left Seeks to Silence Pro-Life/Pro-Family Voices

By | April 7, 2017

WASHINGTON DC, April 7 (C-Fam) Silencing your opponent. That is now the main response of the political left in America.

You have seen the footage of speakers on college campuses being shouted down. You have heard about the liberal professor attacked by students for defending a conservative professor. You have watched black-masked rioters smashing the windows of stores and burning cars.

We are told that views that may conflict with the liberal world-view are no more than violence and hate and therefore may be silenced.

In recent days, C-Fam has come under that kind of attack and I am deeply worried.

C-Fam’s Lisa Correnti was chosen as a public-sector delegate for the Trump Administration to the just-concluded UN Commission on the Status of Women. Almost immediately the left attacked us. They harassed the US State Department for choosing us. The campaign to silence our voice went global. It was covered by the New York Times and Reuters, along with various LGBT blogs and news-sites.

A few days ago, a group of leftwing Democrat Congressmen sent a letter to US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley demanding that C-Fam never be chosen for another delegation and, ominously, that no other pro-life/pro-family group ever be chosen either.

The letter was circulated by Barbara Lee of Oakland, perhaps the hardest leftwing most ardently pro-abortion member of the US Congress. It was signed by, among others, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign as head of the Democrat Party over the Wikileaks scandal.

The letter drags up various charges against C-Fam and against me personally and demonstrates a profound lack of due diligence and quite frankly, dishonesty. Let me give you a few examples.

They say C-Fam has “lauded Scott Lively, whose homophobic lobbying of the Ugandan parliament is largely seen as the genesis of the infamous ‘kill the gays’ bill…” This is simply a lie.  As journalists, we have covered the lawsuit against Lively that was brought in federal court. That is all. I have also written a column critical of Lively.

They say that I support the freedom of individuals to seek treatment for unwanted same-sex attractions. This is true and I stand by that, but this has nothing to do with C-Fam. C-Fam has never taken a position on such therapy.

For the most part what the Congressmen and their allies on the radical left are doing is no more than name-calling and trying to silence their opponents for holding politically incorrect views.

In fact, C-Fam is a valued research institute that has advised dozens of nations over our twenty-year history. We have served on many delegations including long periods on the Holy See delegation to the UN. C-Fam personnel are among the most knowledgeable and respected experts on UN documents, international law, and human rights among those in the UN system who still hold traditional views on these matters.

We have come under attack from the left for two reasons. First, we take positions in defense of life, faith and family. Second, we have been highly effective in our twenty years in blocking an international right to abortion and a redefinition of abortion and the inclusion of “sexual orientation and gender identity” as a new category of nondiscrimination in international law. We take this position for a whole host of reason including the fact that even experts cannot agree exactly who would qualify for this category.

In the end, we realize, when the left cannot convince their fellow citizens they seek to silence instead. Our hope is the Trump administration will not cave into them.

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