‘Natural family’: Roots in racist, anti-immigrant conspiracy theories

“Natural family” rhetoric is motivated by fears of a demographic “crisis” and the crumbling of Western Christian culture, which, proponents claim, is supported by evidence of declining global birth rates. In 2013, Allan Carlson, founder of World Congress of Families and a progenitor of the “natural family” frame, gave a speech in Moscow titled “The Natural Family in an Unnatural World.” In the speech, Carlson argued this new frame was needed to combat “socialists” and “neo-Marxists” and to protect the “natural order” of creation.

The crux of this argument was highlighted in a 2008 documentary, partially filmed at a WCF conference, called Demographic Winter. The film contends that only cisgender heterosexual couples are capable of perpetuating Western and Christian values through sexual procreation, and that these values represent a “natural order.” Carlson has claimed that low birth rates, “the rapid spread of cohabitation,” the legalization of LGBTQ+ marriage equality, the “early sexualization of children” and divorce are “signs of a fundamental challenge to the life of the home.” To Carlson, the “family system of the whole of what we once called Christian civilization is in crisis.”

Carlson’s and WCF’s “natural family” framing helped repackage rhetoric that originated in far-right political movements’ racist reactions to immigrants to both the United States and European countries from their former colonies during the mid-20th century. Variously characterized as the “birth dearth,” “great replacement,” “demographic crisis,” and, at its most extreme, “white genocide,” myths that white Christian society is under attack or being replaced by uncivilized, non-Christian Black and Brown people are represented across almost all hard-right factions.

In his 2013 speech in Moscow, Carlson said the “natural family” is a common denominator that bridges the gap between “savages” and “civilized men.” To Carlson and the purveyors of natural family rhetoric, indigenous family structures across Africa, Asia and South America that do not follow the “nuclear” model as well as the use of sexual education and family planning services that include legal and safe abortions are inconsistent with Christian culture. This ethnocentric and colonial model, however, is predicated on the belief that white Christian norms about family and society can and should be imposed in other cultural contexts and that adherence to conservative Christian policy preferences provides an accurate measure of a society’s progress toward civilization.

In the United States, many of the same groups point to multiculturalism and procreation by Black and Brown immigrants, Muslims and non-Christians as threats to the nation’s (white-dominant) culture. This Christian supremacist logic melds well with eugenicist beliefs that sex and reproductive technologies that do not produce children naturally threaten the survival of Christian society.

Restoring the ‘natural order’

In 2020, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) published the strategic planning document Restoring the Natural Order: An Agenda for Europe. The document revealed that a founding meeting was held in 2013 for what became “Agenda Europe,” and this material was prepared for it. The plan was shared across 20 international anti-abortion groups and included in a framework laced with such policy priorities like overturning existing laws related to gender, sexuality and reproductive rights, including access to contraception and in vitro fertilization (IVF). This document served as a foundation for Agenda Europe, which has grown to include more than 100 hard-right and extremist groups.

Agenda Europe proposed multiple strategies to erode LGBTQ+ and women’s rights by eradicating legal reproductive health care and eliminating comprehensive sexual education (CSE). Among the strategies recommended to Agenda Europe advocates is to use “the weapons of our opponents and turn them against them.”

The weapon they refer to is the international human rights framework, a system of international legal norms that demand governments protect individual human rights to life and liberty. By “debunk(ing) the opponent’s claim to victim status,” Agenda Europe substitutes homophobia and transphobia with “Christianophobia” and claims to be the true victims of the liberal social order. According to Agenda Europe, “The kinds of laws that end up violating the rights of religious people are often pushed for by one of the three following groups: radical feminists, radical homosexual groups, and radical secularists.”  

The Agenda Europe document ends with an action list divided into three categories: laws to repeal/issues to prohibit, laws to adopt and nonlegislative actions. At the top of the list of policies to adopt are anti-sodomy laws, including prohibitions on “gay propaganda.” Other priorities include prohibition of all abortion, all pharmaceutical contraceptives and IVF. The nonlegislative actions include defunding LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights organizations, revising sex-ed materials to reflect the natural law and, according to the document, emphasizing “the ‘choice’ aspect of sodomy.”  

The Agenda Europe report lists Sharon Slater and Brian Brown as prominent “luminaries” — the transnational actors who generate core ideas and strategies for those on a national level to adopt and promote the agenda. Agenda Europe began to set its sights on Africa in 2016, according to an email chain published by Open Democracy that included Slater, Austin Ruse of C-Fam and Brown. At the time, Ruse asked the email chain for contacts in Africa who were “friendly” to their agenda, but it is unclear if Ruse was given any names. In March 2016, Slater bragged to the email chain about her documentary The War on Children. She boasted it was “making a stir” and “generating protests at the Minster [sic] of Education” in Uganda. The U.S.-based, anti-LGBTQ+ movement frequently produces propaganda films, which give the groups free rein to express extremist ideas without challenge or context.

FWI’s videos often claim the group is protecting children from the indoctrinating and sexualizing advances of LGBTQ+ advocates and comprehensive sex education (CSE). Those indoctrination claims contrast with Slater’s documented history as a proponent of conversion therapy, a discredited practice that advocates wrongly claim can change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In May 2018, Slater gave a presentation to Kenya Christian Professionals Forum (KCPF) on the topic of the “porn pandemic.” Slater’s presentation to KCPF was on a topic used by Slater to disguise anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience as a component of anti-CSE discourse. At the end of the presentation, Slater expressed her hope that the audience would connect her and the KCPF with others in Kenya “so we can mobilize and maybe together we can pass … some important legislation here in Kenya to protect families.”