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My friend John Howard prefers writing with a pencil he sharpens before starting a good day's work. Even sharper than his pencil is the policy developed by the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, the think tank that John founded in Rockford, Illinois. John thought about and worked on pro-family issues before the movement started in the late 1970s. The Center has a small staff but its impact on pro-family strategy is formidable. Its latest initiative is "The Natural Family: A Manifesto," which affirms what the pro-family movement believes.

The co-authors of the Manifesto are Dr. Allan C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero. Carlson, President of the Howard Center, founded the Center's World Congress of Families, which hosts an annual international meeting for pro-family leaders. Mero is President of the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank in Utah.

Carlson and Mero maintain that a young man and woman considering marriage must have "clear principles, open goals, and a firm course of action" that sustain a relationship. Their manifesto encourages [traditional] family life, in which generation after generation honors the values of their ancestors. They wrote that husband and wife enter into a marriage "built on fidelity, mutual duty, and respect" and "become as their Creator intended, a being complete."

A nation of strong families is one whose citizens possess virtue and have ordered liberty. In decades past [traditional] families dealt with job losses, the painful loss of a child at birth, disagreements about child-rearing or household management. They believed marriage was expected to last into their senior years and that a strong marriage sustained the couple in bad times and in good times. Changing economy, technology and powerful state (government) have altered the conditions under which [traditional] families flourished.

Many couples whose marriages were damaged by infidelity before the 1970s and before no-fault divorce remained married knowing that infidelity could bring societal repercussions. They knew infidelity was a mistake not to be repeated. Carlson and Mero noted the French Revolution could not seriously damage the concept of the [traditional] family. Over time "new ideas" in a changing society, including the anti-family ideologies of Communism and Fascism, caused the [traditional] family, particularly marriage and fidelity, to suffer. Family values diminished more in the United States with the rise of radical feminism and the sexual revolution of the 1970s that balked at enduring commitment.

Carlson and Mero write that by 1980 the [traditional] family was endangered and that "Almost everywhere, abortion on demand reinforced state campaigns to discourage marriage and reduce family size. . . [W]elfare laws weakened the very foundation of social order. The number of divorces soared. . . '[G]ender equality' destroyed family-wage systems; the real wages of fathers fell sharply; young mothers returned to [work] with their diminishing number of children turned over to . . . day care. . . Homosexuality gained status as a legitimate 'sexual preference.' Social Security systems came to favor childlessness and to penalize larger families. Tax systems now punished childbearing within marriage, while welfare states rewarded unwed motherhood. . . "

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