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Left-Wing EU Coalition Demands US Government Official Withdraw From Pro-Family Meeting

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK, April 19, 2007 (CFAM) - A group of hard-left Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have sent a letter to a top-ranking member of the US State Department demanding that she not attend the upcoming World Congress of Families IV set for Poland this May.  In the letter recently released to the Baltimore Sun by Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), several MEPs claim that by speaking at the WCF, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey would be providing an “official US government stamp of approval to extremist and intolerant views.”

Signed by 19 MEPs who comprise The European Parliamentary Working Group on Separation of Religion and Politics, the signatories accused WCF organizers of holding “prejudiced attitudes toward foreigners, people from other religions, homosexuals and the inclusive vision of what represents a family unit that has been developed by the United Nations and the European Union.”

The MEPs claim that Sauerbrey would be committing “a diplomatic faux pas” by participating in the upcoming Warsaw event “with individuals whose views oppose what is laid out in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.” Legal experts point out that the Charter has never been ratified and that even if it had the Parliamentary group of MEPs violate it by trying to drive religious voices from the public square.

One of the group’s major complaints is against various individuals involved in organizing the conference. Using quotes likely taken from material published several years ago by the pro-abortion group Catholics for a Free Choice, the letter targets Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, C-FAM president Austin Ruse and Fr. Thomas Eutenauer of Human Life International.  The MEPs accuse Cardinal Trujillo of making “dangerous” statements about the ineffective use of condoms to combat HIV/AIDS while Ruse is singled out for once repeating a joke told to him by a UN diplomat about Hillary Clinton.   

Legal experts note that contrary to the MEP’s assertions, Sauerbrey’s attendance at WCF upholds the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which calls for “Freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” of “expression and information,” and of “assembly and of association.” They argue that the MEP letter is evidence of a selective misinterpretation of the Charter in order to promote a version of “tolerance in Europe” that seeks to tolerate a radical social agenda while marginalizing those who disagree with that agenda.

Commenting on the letter, Member of the European Parliament from Poland, Konrad Szymanski told the Friday Fax, "Contrary to the opinion of the undersigned MEPs, the European Union has no competence to express any binding opinions in the matters of family.  The letter is a good illustration of the leftist version of tolerance – it strictly prohibits criticizing abortion, birth control and homosexual claims in the realm of family law.  What drives the letter is first and foremost a fear of the US-European alliance in the debate about our civilization.  It exhibits a fear of transplanting the experiences of the American moral revolution of the 1980s to the European Union."

The World Congress of Families IV is scheduled to take place in Warsaw, Poland from May 11 – 13, 2007.  

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