Pro-family Organizations in Calgary, 1998: Beliefs, Interconnections and Allies

ID:	HARP-530
Title:	Pro-family Organizations in Calgary, 1998: Beliefs, Interconnections and Allies
Source:	Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology, Feb2001, Vol. 38 Issue 1, p37, 20p, 2 charts
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	2001
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, economic, social, and cultural rights, human rights, feminist, Alberta, civil and political rights, heterosexuality/heterosexualism, family
Abstract:	This paper presents a comparative study of the beliefs of pro-family organizations in Calgary and a structural mapping of organizational ties. Data were gathered in 1998 from documents and semi-structured interviews with group leaders, Three research problems are addressed. The first concerns the closeness of the relationship between pro-family and pro-life groups. We find that all pro-family groups, even those with strong anti-abortion convictions, were organizationally and politically distinctive from pro-life groups. The second problem considers the role of Christian beliefs in the movement. We ascertain that although Christian groups were dominant in 1998, promotion of the heterosexual nuclear family, not doctrinal issues, was fundamental to the movement. The third problem concerns whether the movement was bifurcated between social conservative and centrist segments. The centrist segment was quite weak in 1998. Furthermore, one of the groups with a centrist persona, the National Foundation for Family Research and Education, strove to supply scientific legitimation for social conservatives’ moral claims about the family. In conclusion, the article argues that the pro-family movement in Calgary has broken free of its initial phase as an anti-feminist countermovement and suggests that the future popularity of pro-family advocacy in Canada will be proportional to the degree that it is couched in a post-feminist framework.
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