This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
[Video: Monty Python's 'Most Awful Family in Britain, 1974']
"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a disgrace, that two become a law firm, and that three or more become a congress."
Just in time for Halloween, the World Congress of Families is coming to Salt Lake City to put the fear of God into us.
Described by its own leaders as a gathering of scholars and activists who support "the natural family," and by its many detractors as no less than a hate group, the WCF will bring folks of all colors and nationalities to downtown Salt Lake for four days starting Tuesday.
Be nice. Explain to them what the free fair zone is before they get ripped off by buying TRAX tickets they don't need.
Saying that families are, or should be, cozy places for adults to support one another and raise healthy children is like saying water is wet. On the surface, it doesn't sound like the WCF agenda, basically the conservative religious view that "traditional" families are best, is either profound or dangerous.
Even though the convention will include speeches by, and awards to, people who have spread homophobic propaganda around the world, promoting horrid anti-gay legislation and violence in Russia, Africa and elsewhere, the WCF itself claims to be only a clearing house for information, not a promoter of hate or violence.
To people in Uganda and Ukraine, the threat of anti-gay government action and mob terror are real, and the ties to the WCF are credible. But what is undeniable, based on the convention's own published agenda, is how little the group has to say about the real issues facing real families in Utah.
I've got a family. It's natural. No genetically modified organisms or androids. A husband and wife who met in high school and have two strapping sons who think their parents are idiots. What's more natural than that? And, like a lot of folks, we've got concerns about the future of that family. So let's check the WCF agenda for:
• Economy. Mine is not the only household in the country being squeezed by the deliberate transfer of wealth from the bottom of the economy to the top, sucking out the middle class as it whizzes by. People who have jobs, two or three per household, can't keep up.
Wall Street bankers crater the economy and walk away. Rich folks call it socialism when we call on them to pay their fair share of taxes for schools and highways. The next generation is split between college-educated people who can't find real careers and folks knee-capped by living in ZIP codes where public education has collapsed.
And if the ideal is the traditional marriage where the female parental unit is a full-time mom, financial security is even further out of reach.
Are there WCF break-out sessions on any of that? No.
• Health care. Sure, my family has health insurance now. But it keeps getting more and more expensive and covers less and less of the actual cost of staying alive. The professional star I've hitched my family's wagon to is a dying industry and the threat that all of us may suddenly be without affordable access to the health care system looms very real. Our legislators won't do bupkus. And we've got alleged think-tankers out there saying that poverty causes people to be without health care, when the clear fact that is that being without health care causes poverty.
Anything on the WCF agenda about that? Nope.
• Violence. My family lives in a culture where any demented yahoo with a sexual inferiority complex can buy a platoon's worth of semi-automatic weapons and go out in blaze of deluded glory. And take my children with him.
Anything on the WCF program about that? No.
• Environment. In Salt Lake City, the greatest threat to the health of children, born and unborn, is the foul air.
What you got for me there, WCF? Yeah, yeah. Zilch
The focus of the WCF is that people are threatened by gay marriage, by contraception and abortion and by women who grasp the fact that the information economy negates the need for them to attach themselves to some big, smelly man and have lots of babies just to make their way in the world.
Those assumptions are morally, legally and, most important, demographically wrong. And destined, eventually, to fall.
But, as they go down for the third time, some WCF folks continue to promote their hatred of gays, threatening people in other countries, distracting us from real concerns here.
So, for most Utahns, is the World Congress of Families evil? No. It's much worse than that. It's useless.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, may be useless. But at least he's not a lawyer or a member of Congress.