Larry Jacobs on the WCF: “We’ve Never Said we’re Against Anything”

The Deseret News reports on a planning meeting for next year’s World Congress of Families event in Utah:

The managing director of the World Congress of Families said the group has no animosity toward anyone but simply wants to affirm and defend the natural family.

“We’ve always focused on the positive,” Larry Jacobs told the Deseret News. “We’ve never said we’re against anything. Our focus is about why the natural family is better for society.

“We never go in with an agenda of, ‘We’re against this.’ It’s always about what we’re for, which is beauty, goodness and truth, and the natural family is where those start.”

That would be same Larry Jacobs who is infamous for his support for authoritarian anti-gay measures in Russia. Here he is in 2013, expounding on his theme with “End Times” conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles:

Jacobs: The Russians might be the Christian saviors to the world; at the UN they really are the ones standing up for these traditional values of family and faith.

Wiles: Well look the city government of Moscow passed a 100 year ban on gay parades.

Jacobs: And the homosexual propaganda—the law in the Russian Duma it passed on first reading, it would ban propaganda to minors, preventing them from corrupting children. What a great idea and the rest of Europe is going the other way, legalizing LGBT propaganda.

How could anyone have formed the impression that Jacobs not in fact “always focused on the positive”?

The Deseret News also has a quote from the CEO of the Utah-based Sutherland Institute, which will be hosting next year’s meeting:

Acting Sutherland CEO Stanford Swim said the planning and the efforts of the World Congress of Families is “about as important a work as is being done anywhere.”

Swim took charge of the Sutherland Institute after “different visions” led to the departure of Paul Mero in August; Mero previously co-wrote The Natural Family: A Manifesto, with the WCF’s founder, Allan C. Carlson. Stanford is the son of the late Gaylord Swim, who founded the Institute, and he is the President of the GFC Foundation (“serving God, Family, and Country”), which provides grants to the Sutherland Institute. SourceWatch has some further background here, noting links to the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity; there’s also a rather more positive profile at Philanthropy Roundtable.

The WCF’s plan to meet in Utah has generated some controversy.

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