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The Heroic Hungarians are Doing Everything Right

Now if the rest of dying Europe would just follow in their footsteps

Katalin Novák: Leading Pro-Family Policies
Photo: jfairone/Getty Images


You may have heard about Hungary’s outspoken president, Victor Orban, who is probably the leading anti-Globalist in Europe.  He is doing everything in his power to encourage Hungarians to have more children.

But you probably haven’t heard about Katalin Novak, the Hungarian Minister of Family Affairs, who is actually implementing his policies.

Novak is very important inside and outside Hungary. According to the Hungarian edition of Forbes magazine, Novák is the most well-known woman in the country right now, ahead of the wife and daughter of Viktor Orban himself, the country’s popular prime minister. Orban himself has delegated to Novák the creation of a large European group of conservative and patriotic parties in the face of globalism, defending values such as life, family, religious freedom and the Christian roots of Europe.

Novak is the brain behind the pro-birth policies, the defence of the family and the containment of uncontrolled immigration in her country. She was one of the driving forces behind the constitutional reform that ensures that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man”. If you think that goes without saying you haven’t been paying attention to the demands of the gender benders, who say that either sex can be a father or a mother.  The new definition ensures that homosexual and transsexual couples in Hungary cannot become adoptive parents.

PRI just participated in a Congress entitled Demography and The Culture of Relationship between Couples that was held in—you guessed it—Budapest, the capital of Hungary. While the Congress was organized by the Family Science Alliance, the Hungarian Batthyány Society of Professors and the European Family Science Alliance, it was strongly supported by the Hungarian government.  Speaking were Katalin Novák, Hungarian Minister of Family Affairs; Attila Beneda, Deputy State Secretary for Family Affairs, and Orsolya Szeiler from the Ministry of Justice.

The framework for the congress: the demographic crisis that is invading Europe is motivated by the cultural attack on families. The Left knows that if you destroy the natural family, consisting of a father and a mother and their natural or adopted children, you also devastate the birth rate.  This is one of the reasons that the number of births in Europe continues to fall, deepening what has long been a “demographic winter” on this continent.

The young were the focus of the conference, because they are the ones who in large numbers have stopped marrying, starting families and having children. But for this very reason, they can also be the solution: if they can be convinced in time to the value of families.

The speakers pointed out that there was only so much in terms of tax and fiscal policy that the government can do.  The task mainly falls to families themselves, who must not only be the target of this change, but also the driving force behind it.

The brilliant Pat Fagan, who spoke on all three days, emphasized the importance of the married father with his talk, The Married Father: The New Patriarch Serving His Wife and Children.  He highlighted the importance of the father figure in transmitting values to children and recovering the path of not only creating families… but of creating large families with many children.

One of the biggest sources of self-destructive social ideas in Europe is the implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education.  These are radical sex education programs that actually alienate children and adolescents from their faith and families, and even from their own bodies. The “education” encourages high-risk sexual behavior and ideas such as gender ideology or radical feminism. The goal is to normalize sexual relationships outside the context of love and commitment, emphasizing to young people only the pleasure aspect.

In addition, under the guise of seeking to prevent underage pregnancies or the transmission of diseases, these programs also continue to promote contraception. However, as Edit Frivaldszky, director of the Human Dignity Center, pointed out in her lecture Where Does Comprehensive Sexuality Education Take Us?, there has been no decrease in unwanted pregnancies or STD transmission in countries that have implemented such programs. In fact, paradoxically, this false sexuality education has done nothing but contribute to the decline in sexual intercourse, but not for the right reasons. Wendy Wixon, president of United Families International, pointed to this loss of value in the idea of sex as one of the reasons why young people do not seek to have children. Another reason pointed out by the American speaker is the financial cost of supporting a family, which puts many people off before they even try. Gábor Nemeth, director of the Office of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference, also pointed to the lack of government support for families, indicating that an “anti-life” mentality has spread.

Throughout the congress, special focus was placed on Hungary’s pro-family policies. While the solution to the demographic problem in most of Europe has been to leave the doors wide open to immigration (in many cases of Muslim origin and often very difficult to manage), Hungary encourages the increase of its own population. Imre Balásházy, vice-president of the Family Science Alliance, explained in his speech that Hungarian family policy is three-dimensional, based on financial support, resistance to anti-familyism and the strengthening of families.

We at PRI were delighted to have joined the conference.  The future of our country—and every country—passes by way of the family.  America can learn a lot of lessons from the good example Hungary sets for Europe and the world.

PRI President Steven Mosher will be going to Hungary this fall to speak at another pro-life, pro-family conference and meet with the Minister of Family Affairs.

 

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