Please join us to stand up and be counted in the great causes of our time.  We’ve formed a new organization — Family Leader Network — so that you can stand fast for principles of family, faith and freedom.  Go to www.familyleader.net to learn more.

Come and visit our new website.

Subscribe to a free weekly update on the current news about the issues you care about.

For years, our first job every morning has been to post the news on Meridian — and it has come to feel like documenting the steady, relentless moral decline of our world.  Because our audience is Latter-day Saints, we have looked particularly for those stories around issues carved out by The Family:  A Proclamation to the World.

Day after day, the news in these areas is grim.  One political leader says that every child deserves a mother and a father, and, in return, a columnist blasts that his comments are “mean-spirited” and “really disturbing.”

The Supreme Court issues a ruling that denies that morality can be a “rational basis for legislation,” which in one stroke denies our nation’s moral foundation. Pornography is protected, while God is banned in the public square.

Admonitions

From our leaders we hear these admonitions:

Boyd K. Packer said, Nothing happened in Sodom and Gomorrah which exceeds the wickedness and depravity which surrounds us now …These are days of great spiritual danger for this people.  The world is spiraling downward at an ever-quickening pace.”   

President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “The building of public sentiment begins with a few earnest voices.  I am not one to advocate shouting defiantly or shaking fists and issuing threats in the faces of legislators. But I am one who believes that we should earnestly and sincerely and positively express our convictions to those given the heavy responsibility of making and enforcing our laws.

“The sad fact is that the minority who call for greater liberalization, who peddle and devour pornography, who encourage and feed on licentious display make their voices heard until those in our legislatures may come to believe that what they say represents the will of the majority. We are not likely to get that which we do not speak up for.”

A Warning

In The Family:  A Proclamation to the World we are told, ”We warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”  

What are we to do in light of the turmoil of our times and such clear warnings?  Are we just to stand silent and helpless as a cultural war is waged against everything we hold dear?  Shall we settle back and watch others with more organized and well-funded voices undo our society?  Are we too busy or too tired or too preoccupied to take up the banner of our day?

When other issues which stride across the front pages of newspapers with such urgency have faded and been forgotten, what happens to family and religious freedom will continue to affect all nations for generations to come.  

We have unspeakable gratitude to those who have come before us in history and stood boldly when the world was in crisis.  Now, these are our times that call for own courage and commitment in the face of a rising darkness.  Will the next generation look back and know that we protected and defended cherished values when they were in dire jeopardy — or will they see us as a generation who let them down?

We are trusted with our children’s future.

Making a Difference

Over the years as we have posted stories about the all-out assault upon family, Meridian readers kept asking, “What can we do to make a difference?”  One reader wrote, “If these are the critical issues of our day, who is sounding the clarion call for us to arise and let our voices be heard?”

The Gathering at Alexandria

In the end of January of this past year, 75 LDS community leaders from around the nation gathered in George Washington’s home town, Alexandria, Virginia to discuss what family-centered citizens could do to stop the moral decline.

Co-hosted by Scot and Maurine Proctor, Ardeth Kapp, Joe J. Christensen, Richard Wirthlin, Lew Cramer, Mark Cannon and Brad Pelo, The Gathering at Alexandria was a time to roll up our sleeves and get to work to create an organization that would educate and empower people who care about family to have their voices heard.  From that meeting these leaders issued A Call in Defense of Family, Faith and Freedom.

The months since that meeting a stellar board of directors has been meeting to formulate  the Family Leader Network — and now we invite you to step up and join us.

This is an independent organization motivated by citizens, and though Latter-day Saints originally spear-headed it, all are invited to join.

Communications Central

At the heart of the organization is an Internet site. Called FamilyLeader.net, this online news and features journal will keep you up to date on issues affecting the family, values, culture and society as they happen and when they happen.  From this site you will know when issues are before Congress, how legislators voted on key issues and track voting scorecards.  You’ll be able to write email letters, contact your local media, find out how to contact your local officials. 

You’ll be alerted as to when it is important to Take Action on a legislative policy or cultural concern.

The role of FamilyLeader.net is to connect.  With its extensive issues library, you’ll know how to connect with information on issues that concern you so you can talk with confidence.  You’ll know when and how to connect with elected officials when a bill is pending before them.  You’ll be connected to the family news of the day with lively, vivid writing.

Come and subscribe to the email at www.familyleader.net.  Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll receive an email once a week that will give you news and analysis not easily found in your local media.

Grassroots

Harnessing the power of the Internet and the strength of Meridian’s half million readers, we will grow a grassroots organization in every state and Canada to deal with local issues.  We start not from scratch, but from a momentum that has already grown through Meridian.

You’ll be connected to others in your area who want to support family.

For instance, right now petition efforts are under way in California, Massachusetts, Illinois, Florida and Arizona to get a state constitutional amendment on their ballots to protect marriage.  We’ll grow grassroots groups to support those efforts.

When you subscribe for free to FamilyLeader.net’s weekly email update, as the organization grows, you’ll also receive regular updates on issues in your own state and know how you can support family, faith and freedom locally.

Come to Our New Website

Click here to learn about our mission statement and our principles and learn how you can be involved.  Come and visit our new website.

Day by day our culture is eroding.  We see it in the media; we feel it in the lives of our children, we see the latest assault upon religion and for too long we have stayed silent.  

It reminds me of a dinner conversation we had some years ago.  We were talking about an earthquake that had left thousands of people homeless.  Our daughter, with a horrified tone in her voice, said, “That is just terrible.  That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” and then, with the dismay instantly vanished commanded, “Pass the rolls.”

Pass the rolls.  Life is demanding, urgent.  We have stuff to do, places to put our attention.  We are torn and absorbed by exigencies.  Did something happen last week?

With Family Leader Network, now you’ll know if something happened and when and where you can intelligently respond and support the bedrock values of our society.  Come to the website and learn more.