Culture Of Life 101 . . . “How To Organize A Pro-Family Group”

By BRIAN CLOWES

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For the complete guide to organizing an effective pro-family group, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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Part 3

So far, so good. Your pro-family group has found a spiritual director, started meeting, has begun to gather information on the opposition, has elected your leaders, and has begun training your people. It is time to complete the process before stepping onto the field of battle over homosexual “special rights.”
Task 6: Establish Your Vision, Values, Mission, and Tactics. Now it is time to define the organization’s parameters — its vision, values, mission, and tactics.
Your vision is a summary of the way you would like things to be in the future. If you are fortunate enough to live in a state that still fights for religious freedom, your vision might be to keep things the way they are and to strengthen local governments against continuing homophile legal assaults.
However, if you live in a state that is being strangled by oppressive anti-free speech and “hate crimes” legislation, your vision might be radically different from the way things currently are. Your vision might not come to pass for decades, but it is what you put all your efforts toward achieving.
Your values are the principles you work by. For all authentically pro-family people, faith, family, and democracy are the paramount goods, because without them, a nation will perish. Pro-family activists also cherish purity, compassion, truth, and the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance). Your organization can draw up a short list of the values you wish to emphasize during your activities.
Your group’s mission depends upon several factors, including the needs of your state, city, or community, the skills, experiences, strengths, and weaknesses of the people in your group, the relative power of the homophile organizations you are likely to confront, and your areas of concern.
Your tactics are methods or techniques used to accomplish short-term goals in support of the long-term plan, and can be a combination of direct action, support activities, or foundational activities (training, recruiting, information, and prayer).
Task 7: Establish Relationships With the Power Structures. The reason that homosexual radicals and their supporters are so intent on sidelining the Church is that they are a ready-made army, already organized in a very efficient manner.
Your job is to activate that army to battle the special-rights agenda.
Homophiles support the “strict separation of church and state” so vocally not because they believe in the slogan, but because a powerful and organized Church is the greatest threat to their plans. If they can convince Church leaders to sit on the sidelines by telling them that they have “no right to foist their morality” off on society, the homophiles are free to foist their immorality off on everyone else.
You can “inventory” the churches in your area and find out where they stand on homosexuality. Don’t waste time on the ones that refuse to take a stand, or on the ones that support “diversity.”
Your spiritual director can tell you where to begin.
Once you have acquired basic knowledge of the issues and of the threats special rights pose to the family and the rights of the Church, you can make a credible presentation to the bishop or to some of his highly placed diocesan officials.
Emphasize that you don’t need the bishop and his staff to do a lot of work. What you need is access to church facilities and the people in the pew, and you can’t really do this without the permission of the bishop.
The other decision makers you will approach include personalities in the print and local television and radio media, officers of the legal and medical associations, local and regional politicians, and principals or leading teachers in your area schools.
Task 8: Start a Newsletter. There are several groups of people you should keep informed about your activities. These include your “core group” (those people who actually attend your meetings and help at your events); your donors and supporters (those who contribute funds and other resources to your organization); potential recruits (people who are not yet familiar with your group, but who you reasonably expect to be receptive toward your message); and the decision makers who are members of the power structures.
At first, you will need only a method of communicating your accomplishments and coming events with the core members of the group. You can do this most efficiently with an electronic newsletter.
See if you can find a supporter who will help your newsletter look professional. The articles you have in the newsletter should be a balance of reporting on relevant events across the country and in your area, and on the activities your group is involved in.
You could begin by looking at the many pro-family newsletters on the Internet for ideas on style. Part of your newsletter could be articles written by members of established pro-family groups on general topics. All you have to do is ask for permission to reproduce a relevant article in your newsletter, and the group will almost always give you permission. Of course you can also use the material in this “Culture of Life 101” series.
Task 9: Start Recruiting. You will need to recruit several types of people after you have elected a leader and officers. These include specialists who have critical skills that you will need for the vision, goals, mission, and tactics you have already defined for your group. Depending upon your chosen mission, these might include private investigators, attorneys, medical professionals, graphics and layout artists, or video experts, and “rank and file” members who are the backbone of your group.
There are two types of recruiting: random and focused. Random recruiting involves transmitting the pro-family message to everyone in sight and hoping that some people will be curious enough to approach you. Focused recruiting means to select a potential recruit and approach him. Focused recruiting is always more fruitful than random recruiting, although the latter is often productive and should not be neglected.
Recruiting does not have to be a highly organized enterprise, with mission statements and involving many people. More activists have been brought into the pro-family movement on a one on one basis than by any other means.
Your job is certainly not finished when a new activist joins your group. It is much easier and more rewarding to keep a new activist than it is to recruit another one, so it is in the best interests of your organization to do everything you can to make sure your recruits stay on board.
Task 10: Really Learn the Topic! Since the field of life and family issues is vast and is evolving constantly, you need to consider yourself a student for the rest of your life.
In general, there are two kinds of information: What you know and what you can find out.
You must absorb and remember a fairly large amount of vital information in order to answer the many questions you will inevitably receive from uninformed or curious people. Some examples of the kind of questions you must be able to answer “on the spot” include allegations that HIV/AIDS research is underfunded, that homosexuals are an oppressed and persecuted minority, the myth that homosexuals are “born that way,” and the error that the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality are harmful and hypocritical.
You will need to combine accurate information with sympathy and compassion in many cases, because some of these questions represent great turmoil in the lives of the people who ask them. It is necessary for every pro-family activist to be able to answer such basic questions on the spot if he is to be effective in converting people. Sometimes a calm and reasoned answer can be a turning point in someone’s life.
Task 11: Maintain Professionalism and High Morale. Luke 6:22 tells us: “Blessed are you when men hate you….”
As a pro-family activist, you will certainly be “blessed,” and often in very colorful language! This is not necessarily a bad thing. It means that you are being effective. Nobody condemns pro-family groups that do nothing but meet and talk. It is only when you snatch lives and souls away from the Culture of Death that it reacts.
If you want to be popular, join Greenpeace.
Guilty people hate to have their sins and crimes exposed. Pro-family “voices in the wilderness” cry out for justice in a world that has forsaken justice for convenience and individual rights. Anyone who opposes this mindset is up against self-indulgence, which is a very powerful motivator.
A group is proficient if it is experienced, aggressive, and imaginative, and if it possesses the initiative it requires to formulate a good plan and put it into action.
Every leader can improve his group’s morale and proficiency by caring for its members, by training them properly, and by giving them tasks proportionate to their talents.
Get Moving! Once your group has accomplished these 11 tasks, it is ready to go into action.
Although the situation may seem hopeless at times, just remember that you are part of a vast international network dedicated to re-establishing the truth about life and the family in the world.
The truth cannot be suppressed forever. As history has shown us, it always breaks free of the shackles of ignorance and hatred with enough assistance – from us!