Traditional marriage must return to the heart of humanity‚ says Cape Town Declaration

Compiled from reports in Times Live and Breitbart

Cape Town’s name is attached to a worldwide campaign to re-establish the traditional man-woman marriage as the bedrock of civilisation.

Saturday’s (December 17 2016) launch of the International Organisation for the Family’s Cape Town Declaration marks the beginning of a year-long campaign to obtain two million signatures.

The declaration‚ already signed by hundreds of religious‚ political‚ social and civic leaders from around the world‚ says the family is the “first and primordial community” and that marriage is “the conjugal bond of man and woman”.

This definition is not “a matter of preference or temperament or taste” but “the heart of any just social order”.

Resist redefining marriage
The text states that a thriving culture will firmly resist “every push to redefine marriage: to include same-sex or group bonds‚ or sexually open or temporary ones”.

- Advertisement -

The document also declares that the nature of marriage as between one man and one woman is “a truth that no government can change”.

According to Breitbart the roll out for the statement took place on International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10 1948.

IOF president Brian Brown‚ who was introduced at the launch by Family Policy Institute‚ director Pastor Errol Naidoo told Breitbart News the declaration was a “historic step in the global fight to preserve the truth about marriage”.

Manipulation of foreign aid
“Forcing the agenda of same-sex ‘marriage’ on nations by manipulation of foreign aid or the like is a deplorable practice,” Brown said, adding that signatories pledge to work toward recovering the true understanding of marriage in places where governments have “imposed an unwanted and unwarranted distortion of marriage upon society”.

“Bowing to no earthly power, using every just measure, we shall not falter or flag until the truth about marriage is embraced in our laws and honoured in our lands,” the declaration states.

Click to join movement

The new text is reminiscent of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, which garnered some 440 000 signatures in its first year. While the Manhattan Declaration targeted three points: the sanctity of life, the dignity of marriage and freedom of religion, the Cape Town Declaration chose to focus specifically on marriage and the family.