By Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse at LifeSiteNews.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The team at the Daily Declaration are strong supporters of the Natural Family and the need to make the Family Great Again on a worldwide basis. One of the signatories listed below representing Australia is a founder of the Canberra Declaration. We commend the petition to you for your consideration.

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PETITION: Ask President Trump to Make the Family Great Again! Sign the petition here.

September 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently formed a Commission on Unalienable Rights to advise his department in its dealings with foreign governments and international organizations.

Advocates of “unalienable rights,” or “inalienable rights” of the kind found in the US Declaration of Independence, ground their understanding of rights in undeniable and universal truths about the human condition. This is a basic starting point of natural law thinking.

Sexual revolutionaries sneer at natural rights and natural law, treating these as self-evidently terms of derision. They seem to think that anything using the word “natural” is a strictly theological concept.

But, advocates of the Sexual Revolution often use an expansive understanding of “human rights” to promote their values and visions. Describing “marriage equality” as a “human right” allows them to sidestep the many troubling consequences of redefining marriage. Labeling abortion as a “human right” puts defenders of the unborn on the defensive.

And, the language of “human rights” is very common in the United Nations and other international organizations.

The newly formed Commission on Unalienable Rights, on the other hand, has the potential to create a focal point for an alternative understanding of rights.

The Commission is chaired by pro-life Harvard Law Professor and former Ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon. Ambassador Glendon has been thinking deeply about the proper understanding of “rights” for a long time.

Serving alongside Glendon on the commission will be law professors and philosophy professors from distinguished institutions such as Stanford and Notre Dame, a rabbi, and American Muslim scholar and several African Americans. (The complete list of the Commissioners can be found here.)

Predictably the Commission has drawn fire before they have even opened their mouths. Sexual Revolutionaries, in particular, would prefer to never discuss some human rights emanating from natural law.

As an example, here are two self-evident truths and two conclusions which reasonably follow therefrom:

Self-evident Truth #1: Every person comes into the world as a helpless baby.

Self-evident Truth #2: Every person has a mother and a father.

From these two facts, two conclusions may be drawn:

Reasonable Conclusion #1: Every society needs some plan for helping its members move from helpless infancy to adulthood.

Without such a plan, there will not be a “society” in any meaningful sense of that term. A perfect plan is not required. But society does require some social structures that address the fundamental issues of infant helplessness and the basic human need for attachment, connection, and identity.

Reasonable Conclusion #2: Mothers and fathers cooperating with each other in a lifelong loving union for their mutual benefit and the benefit of their children (including possibly, adopted children) is such a plan. This union is what societies have called “marriage.”

Marriage is the best plan. Of course, it is not foolproof in every case. Unexpected things happen. People sometimes fail or are mean or stupid. All true.

But marriage is superior to all the competing alternatives.

We have tried just about every alternative to marriage, along with a few that no normal person would have ever considered until very recently. We now have enough evidence: marriage serves the legitimate interests and needs of children better than the alternative structural systems.

That is why the natural family needs to be defended. Kids need their parents.

And, that is why the Ruth Institute and LifeSiteNews have created a petition to encourage the Trump Administration to “Make the Family Great Again.”

This petition is directed to President Trump.

We are asking the President to direct the Commission on Unalienable Rights and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to consider the rights of children and families in their deliberations. This line of thought produces a different set of rights than those we are used to hearing about:

• the right of every child to a relationship with his or her natural mother and father, except for an unavoidable tragedy.
• the right of every person to know the identity of his or her biological parents.
• the right to life from conception to natural death.
• the right of families to educate their own children in their faith tradition and values, without being undermined by the state.

Pro-family leaders from around the world and across the religious spectrum have enthusiastically signed this petition. The signers include, among many others:

• Mike Huckabee (former Governor of Arkansas)
• Fr. Shenan Boquet (President, Human Life International),
• C. Preston Noell (President, American Society for Tradition, Family and Property)
• Sharon Slater (President, Family Watch International)

Signers from outside the United States include leaders from Africa, Europe and South America:

• Bishop Emmanuel Badejo (Oyo, Nigeria),
• Moira Chimombo (former Executive Director, Sub-Sahara Family Enrichment, Malawi),
• Ann Kioko (President, African Organization for Families, Kenya),
• Lech Kowalewski (board member, Polish Federation of Pro-life Movements)
• Christa Leonhard (Foundation for Family Values, Germany and the Swiss Foundation for the Family),
• Warwick and Allison Marsh (Founders, Dads4Kids, Australia),
• Christine Vollmer (Founder and President, Latin American Alliance for the Family, Venezuela),
• Andrea Williams (Chief Executive, Christian Concern, United Kingdom),
• Levan Vasadez (pro-life activist, Republic of Georgia).

Additional leaders are adding their names to the list every day.

Many people across the world are deeply troubled that US foreign policy has so often amounted to cultural colonialism by rich white western sexual revolutionaries. These people are deeply and understandably concerned about US foreign policy toward the family.

The president campaigned on the promise to Make America Great Again. Only the family can help him fulfill that promise.

We want the Commissioners to know: the ordinary folk of the United States, and beyond, want protections for the rights of children, parents and the family.

Let’s Make the Family Great Again, both at home and abroad.

Dr. Morse is the Founder and President of The Ruth Institute, which is a global interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

[Photo by Natalya Zaritskaya on Unsplash]