Back in September, a number of American activists, including the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown , traveled to Moscow to take part in an international conference on “Large Families and the Future of Humanity” hosted at the Kremlin. The event, funded by a handful of close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had originally been planned as the annual convention of the Illinois-based World Congress of Families, but WCF dropped its official sponsorship after Russia’s incursion into Ukraine led the U.S. to place economic sanctions on several of the Russian leaders involved in the conference.
Nonetheless, the conference went right ahead as planned, with two leaders of WCF — communications director Don Feder and managing director Lawrence Jacobs — attending in their personal capacities and speaking at an opening press conference along with two of the event’s top Russian funders, Natalia Yakunina (wife of Putin ally Vladimir Yakunin) and Konstantin Malofeev.
In addition, Feder and Jacobs both had the chance to give speeches at the event. Feder, never one to be shy about his extremism, posted a transcript of his speech decrying the “sexual revolution” on the conservative website BarbWire in October.
Coincidentally, today, just as Glenn Beck was warning his Religious Right allies against siding with Putin in his anti-LGBT crusade and blasting WCF for having “bought Russia's salesmanship that they are the new global champion of Christianity,” we came across the English transcript of Jacobs’ speech, which pretty much reinforces Beck’s point.
After being introduced by Yakunina, who called him “our old friend and ally in pro-family movement,” Jacobs heaped praise upon Russia’s leaders for resisting European trends toward LGBT equality and abortion rights, saying, “I think Russia is the hope for the world right now.”
“Russian Eastern European leadership, I believe, is necessary to counter the secular, post-modern, anti-family agenda and replace want I’m calling the cultural Marxist philosophy that’s destroying human society, in particular destroying the family,” he said.
The “radical population control people” and “the radical LGBT groups” are staging a “Marxist takeover” of the West through developments like legalized abortion, liberalized divorce law, and the abolition of “sodomy” laws, he warned, leaving Russia to lead the “spiritual battle.”
“I believe that now that you’ve emerged from the seventy years of oppression, culturally you are healthier than much of the West,” he said.
In particular, I wanted to just talk about why I think Russia is the hope for the world right now. In particular…really, to the importance of the future of the family and to the future of civilization.
Russian Eastern European leadership, I believe, is necessary to counter the secular, post-modern, anti-family agenda and replace want I’m calling the cultural Marxist philosophy that’s destroying human society, in particular destroying the family. I can’t think of a place that’s experienced the destruction of the Marxism more than Russia after seventy years of destroying the family and the church. So this is something, I think, all of you understand.
What is happening now is a cultural Marxism. You defeated communism here in Russia, but we inherited a cultural communism, a cultural Marxism. Many Western nations may have economic freedom, political freedom or democracy, freedom of speech, but they’ve lost the freedom of education and culture. Our culture has been taken over by the Marxist in America and in the West. Let me explain.
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So where does this leave us, what is causing all of these problems that we discussed so eloquently today and yesterday, why is it that the family is under attack? Well, I believe that really the cultural Marxism and socialism has replaced communism as the new attack on society. Really, the socialist revolution in the West has been greatly influenced by an Italian communist that maybe you don’t know of, Antonio Gramsci. Right in the thirties, he said in particular about the culture of the West, “If we can take over the family and the church, we can remove the barrier what stands as robust obstacles to a communist economical and political takeover.” So what he was saying is, “Look, we don’t need violent revolution, we need a cultural revolution.”
He proposed the takeover of the cultural institutions, the destruction of marriage and family, and the church. This would achieve what I’m calling cultural political correctness, which is what we see, where the minority rules the majority. The majority of people believe that the family is the fundamental unit of society, but we’ve been taken over by a minority of people, sometimes less than one percent of the population, that produces their agenda and their values.
So, this means that socialists have been working tirelessly in the West, and this includes, you know, the radical population control people, the radical LGBT groups. They’ve been working on a takeover of universities and various socialist institutions, and taking over the education, the media, the churches, and destroying any structure that stands in their way, which is the family.
How has this happened? Well, they devalued sex, they devalued life, they devalued marriage. And ultimately, the destruction of the family has become the focus of these socialists and their leftist ideology.
This should demonstrate what they’ve been able to do through the sexual revolution. I call it a timeline of a cultural takeover of the family and the church, a Marxist takeover.
Unfortunately, some of this begins in Russia, in 1920, when the communists legalized abortion at all stages of a woman’s pregnancy. And it wasn’t just that particular moment in time. Of course, it was then the development of the technology of abortion and spreading that across Europe and across the world, to the United States as well.
Then, to go further, prior to 1930, all Christian denominations – Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants – all believed the contraception was wrong, that the pill or any form of contraception was against God’s will. That changed in 1930, with the Anglicans.
And as I go forward to more modern times, we look at the promotion of pornography, the legalization of the birth-control pill, no-fault divorce. You can see the gradual loosening of moral values, Christian values, until, in 1973, the US Supreme Court and their famous Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in the United States.
And then we went beyond abortion to same-sex marriage, legalizing that in the Netherlands in 2001. And in 2003, we struck down the sodomy laws in the United States, which opened up same-sex marriage. And now we have to worry about polygamy and all kinds of other forms of marriage.
So why is it that Russia can combat what has really been largely a revolution in the West? Well, because you understand what the Marxists can do to culture and to society. And I believe that now that you’ve emerged from the seventy years of oppression, culturally you are healthier than much of the West. And what you need to do, I think, is really continue to share the values that make Russia strong, that made it strong historically.
There is also a spiritual element to this. This is a spiritual battle, and, I think, members of the church in Russia, members of civil society should think about a way to reverse what happened in 1920. Clearly, if we can’t respect the dignity of human life, how can we do… We can see what happens. All these other things happen. So we need to make sure that we’ve reversed the legalization of abortion, but not just legally. I think, spiritually, there needs to be a repentance. There need to be an asking of forgiveness, not only in Russia but throughout the world, but I think Russia can lead this. Abortion started here, it can end here.
I believe, if Russia apologizes, takes responsibility and changes its abortion laws, and tells the world why it’s doing it, why the focus on the natural family, and life, and the dignity of human at all stages, it will lead in a counter-revolution to what we’ve seen in the sexual revolution that spread so many horrible values throughout the West. In fact, I think only Russia can do this.
One final thought. It’s obviously a spiritual battle, but there is also a philosophical battle. And so when the church, I believe, takes the lead on this issue of abortion, there is one additional area we can’t forget, and that’s the philosophical ideas of what we are doing. The spiritual part is the most important, and then what follows C. S. Lewis spoke about. You know, people as C. S. Lewis, the great Christian writer, Anglican, he was in England, they said… Once he converted to Christianity, they said, “Well, why don’t spend your time evangelizing people, telling people about the good news of Jesus? Why not spend all of your time…” He was, you know, obviously, very intelligent man and excellent orator – why shouldn’t he go into the ministry, for instance? And he said this. He said, “To be ignorant and simple now – not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground, would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” And I believe, friends, that good philosophy must come from Russia.
Thank you.
