Just on the heels of the World Congress of Families global summit in Verona, Italy, like-minded legislators from around the globe will be gathering April 4 and 5 in Bogotá, Colombia for this year’s Transatlantic Summit organized by the Political Network for Values.
The conference theme is a mouthful: “Facing the Upsurge of the Global Crisis: Solid Principles for a Better Future.” But the event’s graphics include a simpler question that has been used to promote previous events: “How Far Can We Get?”
Opposition to abortion, “defense of the family” and the importance of marriage as “an institution between a man and a woman” are elements of PNV’s statement of values. PNV says this year’s summit is aimed at “providing an answer” to the “gradual establishment of relativism in all areas of life” that it says has brought about “a crisis of civilization.” Here’s more from PNV’s website:
Affirming solid principles on which building the future is urgent in the face of an escalating global offensive – gender ideology, anti-natalism, euthanasia, corruption, etc. – and the growing political polarization between the New Global Order and populism. The Summit will provide a forum to share strategies, best practices and lines of action for strengthening the family, marriage, the defense of life and human dignity, freedom of conscience and religion, always with profound integrity in the management of public resources.
WCF and PNV have a close working relationship. WCF’s parent organization, the International Organization for the Family, is a sponsor of the PNV summit. Among the speakers at the Colombia gathering will be anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ Spanish politician Jaime Mayor Oreja, PNV’s president and board chair. In 2014, WCF co-founder Allan Carlson presented Mayor Oreja with WCF’s Family and Truth Award at a reception held at the United Nations during the PNV summit. That event was sponsored by Hungary’s UN delegation. In 2016, Mayor Oreja was among the sponsors of a manifesto denouncing “gender ideology” and “totalitarian” laws that bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Other speakers scheduled to address this week’s gathering include politicians and activists from North America, Latin America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, among them:
- former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe;
- Hungary’s Minister of State for Family and Youth and PNV Vice Chair Katalin Novák; and
- Poland’s Deputy Minister of Family, Labor and Social Policy Kazimierz Kuberski.
Representing the U.S. Religious Right will be:
- Brian Brown, who heads the International Organization for the Family and National Organization for Marriage;
- Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International; and
- Thomas Jacobson, a former Focus on the Family representative to the United Nations who now heads the anti-abortion group, Global Life Campaign.
Not named as a speaker for the summit, but listed on the website as a member of PNV’s board of directors, is Benjamin Bull of First Liberty.
In addition to IOF and Family Watch International, sponsors of the Bogotá summit include the European Christian Political Movement, the Foundation for a Civic Hungary, Red de Acción Ética Política from Mexico, and the conservative activism mobilization site CitizenGo.
PNV’s “Values’ Observatory” publishes a map of the Americas and Europe displaying the status of legislation on abortion, in vitro fertilization, surrogate maternity, euthanasia, marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, gender ideology, and freedom of conscience and religion.
In 2017, Mexican politician Rodrigo Iván Cortés Jiménez, identified as vice president of PNV, talked about “gender ideology” in Latin America in an interview with the Spanish-language arm of the conservative Catholic network EWTN.
The Political Network for Values is among conservative sites that reportedly use a crowd-funding site, Fundingmorality.com, which was designed for social conservative groups that ran afoul of other crowdfunding sites’ prohibitions on promoting hatred, intolerance, or discrimination.
