On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we stand up to defend these truths and their intimate relationship to the natural and civil rights of minor children:
- Marriage is the only institution that unites children with their mothers and fathers. It is the only institution that unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born of their union. Children have a fundamental, natural, human right, as far as possible, to know and to be loved and cared for by their married mother and father.
- God’s people, clergy and laity alike are major stakeholders and leader for natural marriage and family life. They have a primary role to advocate for this fundamental right of children and to offer pastoral care that safeguards marriage and family life.
- The U.S. federal, state, and local governments and their appointed agencies and staff have a Constitutional mandate to safeguard and defend this fundamental right of children to be nurtured, protected, and reared by their mothers and fathers.
- The private sector, including business and non-profit organizations have a moral, ethical, and public obligation to support the natural and civil rights of children to be nurtured, protected, and reared by their mothers and fathers.
Therefore, we will:
- Inaugurate a national civil rights movement that begins in the Washington, D.C. Region to build a coalition of America’s faith traditions that includes clergy and laity of the Abrahamic religions and denominations on behalf of the fundamental human rights of children.
- Advocate for children to be nurtured and parented as much as is possible by their own mothers and fathers, and especially for married mothers and fathers.
- Promote and support marriage and the pastoral needs of couples regarding marriage, including preparation, enrichment, stepfamily support, crisis care, and reconciliation.
- Lead a movement to establish agreements by clergy across faith traditions in defined geographical areas that lead to increased and improved marriage and family life, family and relationship education, marriage-mentor ministries, and other marriage-supportive care in houses of worship, community by community.
- Lead and facilitate training of marriage-mentor couples community by community.
