Standing-up In Defense of Family and Marriage

Friends to Liberty Statement on Family and Marriage

7/10/2026

Over recent years, a number of recurring themes have emerged across the global community. Based on that experience, and dialogue among likeminded leaders who share principles and a passion for enabling change that leads to more free, secure, and prosperous sovereign nations, we have identified common challenges and responses
with the intent to help inspire, encourage collaboration, further networking, and promoting initiatives.

We as the Friends To Liberty work to empower and enable those committed to change. No issue demands more attention, commitment, and fearless action than the defense of family and marriage. The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage—the committed union of one man and one woman—is its cornerstone. We commend the following acts as essential to accelerating the rising global consensus that nurturing strong families is fundamental to the future of human flourishing—and ought to be top priority for all of us.

The defense of family and marriage demands policies and norms that encourage marriage, work, and large and growing families. This demands:
Insisting governments stop punishing and hindering couples who seek to marry and have children. Authorities must also be more than “neutral.” Family formation performs crucial role in developing communities with strong culture, faith, demographic health, and national purpose and ought to be protected, preserved, empowered in policy and law.
Reject gender identity and other radical theories that harm children, undermine biological truth, and threaten the natural family.

Support the Geneva Consensus Declaration (https://c-fam.org/wp-
content/uploads/geneva-consensus-declaration-english.pdf) and the right of every sovereign nation to decide for itself how to achieve “the highest attainable standards of health for women; to promote women’s essential contribution to health, and strength of the family and of a successful and flourishing society; and to express the essential
priority of protecting the right to life.”

Promote work. Work ennobles humans, helps give their lives meaning, and allows parents to provide for their children. We should strive for a society that grows prosperity, embracing a culture of marriage and work, with policies that should help parents struggling to provide for their children without the government usurping their role as providers.

Respect and empower parental rights from issues concerning health and education to matters of faith, values, and belief. Honor motherhood as work and stop penalizing mothers who choose it. Where a mother steps back from the workforce to raise her children, both governments and civil society have a responsibilty to support rather than criticize or punish that choice — treating time devoted to raising the next generation as socially valuable labor in its own right. Support motherhood as an appreciated development path for women — one held in no less esteem than a professional career.

Promote popular culture that embraces, ennobles, and empowers a culture of family, marriage, and work including an appreciation of motherhood, and eliminate stigmatizing mothers who choose to leave the workforce to raise their children. The social prestige of motherhood must be restored. At the same time, we should acknowledge the importance of fathers not just as providers but their role in childrearing and instilling values and virtue such as moral guidance, integrity, and patriotism.