Why C-FAM, the Catholic Fundamentalists You’ve Never Heard Of, Just Cozied Up to Iran

Citing an international plot to defeat "truth and goodness," a far-right consortium together with Muslim theocracies, Russia, and China is urging the United Nations not to investigate anti-LGBT violence.


You’d think, in the wake of the Orlando massacre, anti-gay gang violence in Russia, and the gruesome murder of (alleged) gays by ISIS, that having a UN “special rapporteur” investigate discrimination against LGBT people would be a pretty reasonable thing to do. But last week’s contentious vote to create such a position, which narrowly passed the UN Human Rights Council, led to fierce opposition, explosive rhetoric, and plenty of opportunism.

One of the ultraconservative organizations trafficking in all three is known as C-FAM, the far-right-wing Center for Family & Human Rights—formerly known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute—which focuses on international anti-LGBT advocacy. In a fundraising pitch (natch) that went viral last week, C-FAM called the possibility of investigating discrimination a “major catastrophe” because “sexual revolutionaries are about to defeat the forces of truth and goodness.”

Defeat the forces of truth and goodness! Let me add that to my gay agenda. But C-FAM isn’t (just) a joke. It is part of a group of international far-right religious organizations that are mostly unknown in the United States but active overseas, and especially at the United Nations. That group includes the World Congress of Families, the World Family Policy Council (funded by Brigham Young University), Family Watch International (headed by the ultraconservative Mormon Sharon Slater), Concerned Women for America (still crazy after all these years), the National Organization for Marriage (yes, they are still a thing), and now-discredited “ex-gay” organizations like the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).

This consortium, in turn, works closely with antiabortion groups, including the Couple to Couple League, World Life League (to expand its reach), International Right to Life Federation, Campaign Life Coalition, and the World Movement of Mothers. Never heard of these groups? That’s part of the point; they’re interested in policy, not publicity.

At the UN, these groups have formed an unholy alliance with the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and several African nations to advance a radical “family” agenda that favors what they call the “natural family” and denies any recognition to everyone else: single-parent families, LGBT people, and, most of all, women. Last year, these 25 countries formed an umbrella, the Group of Friends of the Family (GoFF)

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/03/why-c-fam-the-catholic-fundamentalists-you-ve-never-heard-of-just-cozied-up-to-iran.html