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Transcalar Activism Contesting the
Liberal International Order: The Case
of the World Congress of Families
Sara Kalm
1
and Anna Meeuwisse
2,
*
This article explores transnational anti-gender networking promoting “the natural
family.” We focus on the World Congress of Families (WCF) and investigate how it is
organized transnationally. We draw on international relations theory on challenges to
the liberal international order as well as on theories on transcalar activism. The empiri-
cal material includes observations from two conferences and material produced by
the WCF itself. We discuss the WCF’s role in relation to political polarization, and we
also analyze it as a social structure: its actor constellations and new forms of activism.
The analysis shows that strategic networking with elites as well as grassroots has
rendered the WCF a significant player in global politics.
I thank you for being that vanguard, that nucleus, that hardcore, which
keeps alive the flame of that which represents 99% of what the good
Lord, both for believers and for non-believers, has sent to this earth. ...
Long live freedom and let us change a Europe that wants to take free-
dom away from us, to tear it away from us in the name of finance, busi-
ness, and bureaucracy. I’m counting on you. Long live the family, long
live the mothers, the fathers and the children! (Matteo Salvini at the
13th World Congress of Families, Verona, March 2019)
Introduction
This article explores conservative Christian transnational advocacy, which
defends what its leaders and supporters understand as the “natural family”
against the perceived dangers of “gender ideology,” with a view to save
Western civilization from imminent demise. This kind of mobilization has in-
tensified in recent years—especially in Europe, but also in Africa, Australia,
1
Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden
2
School of Social Work, Lund University, Sweden
*anna.meeuwisse@soch.lu.se
socpol: Social Politics, Summer 2023 pp. 556–579
https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxad001
#The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press.
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and the Americas. Networked actors from religious, political, as well as civil
society spheres, strategically challenge legislation on human rights in the areas
of sexual orientation, reproduction, and gender identity, and they have gained
several victories in halting progressive legislation and proposing new laws
(Datta 2018;Kova´ts and P~
oim 2015;Kuhar and Paternotte 2017). The ambi-
tion of this text is to find out how this conservative countermovement is orga-
nized transnationally, and why this is so.
There is a growing body of research on this conservative mobilization
against progressive norms and politics—including against the women’s and
LGTBþmovements. Scholars speak of this mobilization and its victories as a
backlash (Cupac and Ebetu¨rk 2020;Goetz 2020;Montgomery 2016). Backlash
politics in the gender field is now a broad political program, fought for by
activists in many different countries. On the anti-gender (or “pro-family”; we
use the terms interchangeably) agenda are issues such as banning abortion
and surrogacy, prohibiting sexual education in schools, stopping legislation
on domestic violence, complicating divorce procedures, and disallowing sex
change as well as same-sex marriage (Bob 2012;Buss and Herman 2003;
Butler 2006;Correˆa, Paternotte, and Kuhar 2018;Kemper 2016;Korolczuk
and Graff 2018;Kuhar and Paternotte 2017;Observatory on the Universality
of Rights 2017;Reuterswa¨rd 2021).
An important finding from research on this topic is that the anti-gender
agenda overlaps with that of right-wing populists. Both share the view that
Western civilization is being threatened by politically correct intellectuals—
“gender ideologues” and “cultural Marxists”—who indoctrinate the young
with harmful ideas about, for instance, gender fluidity, family planning, and
alternative family constellations. And the anti-gender positions have been in-
corporated into the right-wing populist political agendas in large parts of
Europe (Graff and Korolczuk 2022;Hennig 2018;Kuhar and Paternotte 2017;
Mancini and Stoeckl 2018; Moran 2018). Conservative positions on family
matters seem to function as a “symbolic glue” that unite diverse actors within
the broader populist movement (cf. Kova´ts and P~
oim 2015).
We make two main contributions to existing research. First, while most
scholarship focuses on individual country cases, we instead zoom in on a less
studied case of transnational organizing: the World Congress of Families
(WCF) (see also Bob 2012;Buss and Herman 2003;Butler 2006;Mancini and
Stoeckl 2018;Stoeckl 2020;Trimble 2014). The WCF was founded in 1997 as
a project of the International Organization for the Family (IOF), an American
civil society organization (CSO), and it is now at the center of global network-
ing, uniting different kinds of actors across most regions of the globe. Among
these actors are Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox CSOs, the Holy See, reli-
gious leaders, scholars, and aristocrats—and also politicians. These politicians
are often high-level, include ministers, and come from a range of different
countries, such as Hungary, Italy, and Brazil.
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Second, we approach transnational backlash politics from the perspective
of international relations (IR) theory. Recent IR literature on the ongoing
contestation of norms and institutions of the liberal international order gives
a wider framework for understanding backlash politics (e.g. Adler-Nissen and
Zarakol 2021;Drolet and Williams 2018;Lake, Martin, and Risse 2021).
Together with new research on “transcalar activism”—which questions the
simplified distinction between domestic and international spheres (Pallas and
Bloodgood 2022)—this literature helps us understand the rationale as well as
the practical aspects of WCF networking: why, at the present moment, very
different types of actors (public, private, civil society, religious, cultural, busi-
ness) operating in many corners of the world are joining forces to fight for the
“natural family.”
Empirically, the article draws on a combination of materials. Our analysis
is based in part on observations of two conferences organized by the WCF
and its close allies: “The Wind of Change: Europe and the Global Pro-Family
Movement” in Verona 2019 which we attended in person, and the CitizenGo
conference “Gender, Sex and Education” in Madrid 2018 which we have stud-
ied online. All speeches at the conferences were published online and could be
downloaded and transcribed. We also rely on material produced by the net-
work itself, such as statements on websites, articles, promotional material, as
well as on previous research and investigative journalism published in
openDemocracy and elsewhere (e.g. Nandini and Provost 2019;Parke 2015,
2018;Human Rights Campaign Foundation 2015).
The next section elaborates the theoretical framework. It introduces theo-
ries on the contestation of the liberal international order and on transcalar ac-
tivism, by way of contrast with the highly influential theory of Keck and
Sikkink (1998). It then moves on to the empirical case and discusses the
WCF’s role in relation to polarization, its actor constellation, and its particular
forms of activism. A concluding section ends the article.
Transcalar Activism against the Liberal
International Order
In IR scholarship, the transnational mobilization of advocacy groups was
long overlooked, since states have traditionally been the dominant object of
study. This changed with Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s seminal
Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (1998)
and all the research that has since followed. In this book, the authors argued
that transnational advocacy networks (TANs) were influential actors in world
politics. TANs were distinct in that ideas, principles, and norms (rather than
interest) were central motives for action, and that they engaged in advocacy
across borders. Particularly in fields such as human rights, environmental pro-
tection, and women’s rights, advocacy groups were able to gain international
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influence. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had a certain agenda-
setting and norm-setting power, which often brought the concerns of periph-
eral groups to international attention and action. A key contribution was the
“boomerang model,” which described this process of influence. First, NGOs
in the global South that wanted to bring about political change but were
barred from domestic influence would enlist the assistance of the major
international NGOs, which were typically headquartered in the global
North. These international NGOs could then act as norm entrepreneurs
and use their various tactics to persuade intergovernmental organizations,
such as the UN agencies, to adopt their new norms or principles. In a
final step, these intergovernmental organizations could then pressure the
domestic authorities to comply. The southern NGOs could thus exert au-
thority over their home government beyond their level of resources, by
enlisting support of foreign-based actors in a boomerang-shaped pattern
of influence (Keck and Sikkink 1998).
Keck and Sikkink’s work at the time initiated a new research agenda on
TANs and boomerang model forms of activism. But while it has been ex-
tremely influential in the way that civil society activism has been approached
in IRs, it has also been criticized on various accounts: The perspective tends to
focus on actors (e.g. “norm entrepreneurs”) and downplay structures
(Adamson 2005), it concentrates too much on progressive movements and
ignores conservative countermovements, and it neglects internal conflicts and
competition within movements (Bob 2012,2013). Besides, the world has
changed over past decades and the empirical premises of some of the original
arguments no longer hold true. Power relations have transformed so that the
dominance of northern-based INGOs cannot be taken for granted, and the
separation between the domestic and the international has been blurred since
actors strategize and network and in new ways (Pallas and Bloodgood 2022).
There seems to be many reasons for IR scholars to rethink the role civil so-
ciety actors play in world affairs, and to reexamine their strategies and pat-
terns of transnational cooperation. Below, we present scholarship on the
contestation of the liberal international order, on the new forms of actor con-
stellations that emerge with it, and also on the at least partly new forms of
“transcalar” activism.
Struggles around the Liberal International Order
Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) book is a child of its time. International politics
by the end of the Cold War was marked by optimism regarding globalization
and free trade, and also by liberal beliefs in the potential of international insti-
tutions to solve global problems. This has certainly changed today. The
European Union as well as the United Nations are coming under harsh cri-
tique from right-wing populists and others. Such actors delegitimize not only
the institutions but also the norms underlying the post-World War II liberal
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international order, including a commitment to liberal democracy and a uni-
versal conception of human rights. The same actors also tend to be suspicious
of NGOs, which are often seen as bearers of the liberal norms, and civil society
influence has been curtailed in various ways (Chaudhry 2022;Glasius, Schalk,
and De Lange 2020).
IR scholarship has only recently come to realize the magnitude of the pre-
sent threats to the liberal order, and slowly begun to conceptualize it. After
World War II, the liberal international order was organized around the
United Nations, the human rights regime, and the multilateral financial insti-
tutions (the World Bank and the IMF) promoting free trade. Bo¨rzel and Zu¨rn
(2021) argue that a significant shift occurred at the end of the Cold War,
when there was a move toward a much more intrusive “post-national liber-
alism.” The international institutions that used to be quite weak now gained
much more authority, and they began to use this authority to pursue neolib-
eral economic principles as well as liberal individualism with great decisive-
ness. This greater leverage eventually raised problems of legitimacy, and this is
a major reason for the increased contestations of the liberal international or-
der that we see today (Bo¨ rzel and Zu¨rn 2021). In contrast to, for instance, the
1970s, the contestations of this order now come predominantly from the
“right”—from actors who feel that post-national liberal values threaten na-
tional identity and sovereignty and promote “unhealthy lifestyles.” Curiously,
to some critics, such dangers are linked to fears of the demise of the West,
while for others, the same dangers are related to fears of continued Western
domination (Lake, Martin, and Risse 2021).
Putin’s Russia plays a special role in the current challenges to the liberal
international order. It serves as an inspiration for right-wing populists,
who, like Italy’s Lega Nord, want to restore the “natural family,” as well as
for those who want to return to a less intrusive liberal international order,
like the “restorative nostalgic” Brexiteers (Applebaum 2021, 74–5). The rea-
son that Russia has this role is partly economic: reports have shown that
the Kremlin has financed far-right actors in Europe, such as the Front
National in France and Jobbik in Hungary, and as we will see below,
Russian actors are of financial importance for the WCF too. But there is
another reason, argue Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Ays¸e Zarakol, that has to
do with identity, and that helps explain the ambiguous role of the West
among critics of the liberal international order. In the Western imagination,
Russia straddles the ground between Self and Other, being both West and
non-West. Therefore, “Russia performs as the country that can stand up to
the [liberal international order], either to save the West from it or to save
others from the West. ... No other country could pursue such a strategy,
claiming simultaneously to be both anti-West and the salvation of the
West, and nevertheless resonating with target audiences” (Adler-Nissen and
Zarakol 2021, 626).
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New Actor Constellations
In the boomerang model, the relationship between NGOs took center
stage. The focus was in particular on the relationship between Southern
NGOs and major Northern international NGOs, where the latter was the
dominant partner (Keck and Sikkink 1998). In contrast, we now see actor
constellations that are more fluid and adaptable, that include many different
types of actors, and in which the relations of power cannot be assumed at the
outset (Pallas and Bloodgood 2022).
When it comes to challenges to the liberal international order, there are
two main strands of contestation. One is driven by authoritarian leaders in
the semi-periphery, such as Putin in Russia, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and
Duharte in the Philippines. The second is comprised of populist politicians
and their voters in the West. Both are mainly driven by considerations of
recognition (rather than interests or values), but are involved in recognition
struggles of very different kinds (Adler-Nissen and Zarakol 2021;seealso
Kalm and Meeuwisse 2023). For the first group, the liberal international or-
der has failed to deliver on its promises. When it was set up after World
War II, it promised to break with the hierarchical—imperial—international
order that preceded it. Not only were all sovereign states to be considered
formally equal, but liberal principles (free trade and human rights) would
also over time bring about greater equality in substantial terms. However,
this has not materialized: there is still a recognition order where the West is
at the top, while the periphery and semi-periphery feel stigmatized in inter-
national affairs, often despite considerable resources (Adler-Nissen and
Zarakol 2021, 615–16). To many, globalization in fact seems to have
strengthened the relative power of the West rather than decentralized it
(Drolet and Williams 2018,298).
In contrast, the latter group (the populist nationalists in the global North)
feel aggrieved by the liberal international order for very different reasons.
Often belonging to the majority ethnicity in their country, this group experi-
ences misrecognition from mainstream political parties and welfare institu-
tions, and feels threatened by multiculturalism, immigration, the growing
recognition of (sexual, ethnic, etc.) minorities, as well as the anticipated loss
of international and “civilizational” standing for the West (Adler-Nissen and
Zarakol 2021, 626). Hence, the first group is upset by Western superiority,
while the second wants it to prevail—but they still have managed to unite
against a common enemy.
We thus see new alliance building in the current polarized era: “the opposi-
tion to the [liberal international order] has started to structure new types of
transnational networks among the discontented, who may be opposition
groups in some places but state actors in others” (Adler-Nissen and Zarakol
2021, 262). Such actors have sometimes realized that they share common per-
spectives and reached successful frame alignment (Snow and Benford 1988).
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New Forms of Advocacy
Some scholars argue that the reality of advocacy today has changed so
much since the turn of the millennium that it makes more sense to talk of
“transcalar” (rather than transnational) activism. It means a form of activism
“that works across multiple political levels, each of which reflects a different
scale or scope of activity” (Pallas and Bloodgood 2022, 5). The transcalar no-
tion breaks with the old perception that the international and the domestic
levels are easily separated. It denotes a transformation of activism in general,
which includes, but is not restricted to, right-wing populism.
We saw above that the political polarization has given rise to new, unex-
pected forms of activist constellations. Transcalar activism denotes a much
wider set of strategies, targets, goals, and actors than used to be the case
(Pallas and Bloodgood 2022, 11). It is characterized by strategic adaptations
on the part of activists, as they follow closely the shifting political opportunity
structures at different levels (e.g. local, national, regional, and global). They
choose target scale accordingly, and adjust target when conditions change—
for instance, when there is a sudden clamp-down on civil society in one place,
they may focus on another (Chaudhry 2022;Glasius, Schalk, and De Lange
2020). They also cooperate with a wider set of actors—including governments,
business, and southern NGOs besides the large international NGOs—and ad-
just their choice of partners to suit the scale of advocacy and then change it
again when conditions change (Pallas and Bloodgood 2022,19).
Concerning agency, transnational advocacy theory emphasized the role of
norm entrepreneurs, who worked to introduce new norms or widen existing
ones, not least in the field of human rights (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998).
But in the current polarized era of transcalar activism, some actors are likely
to act as norm “antipreneurs”—who actively resist new norms in precisely
these fields (Bloomfield 2016). This is often the case with right-wing populists,
who tend to oppose, for instance, sexual and reproductive rights, as well as
norm and lifestyle changes related to climate change.
Moreover, leading actors now often have a more complex belonging than
the NGOs that have typically been in focus. Through their positions in several
different organizations and contexts, these leading actors may take on
“flexian” features. Janine Wedel coined the term flexians to describe top-level
individuals who constitute an “influence elite” through shifting between dif-
ferent roles in a fluid manner: sometimes acting as a government consultant,
sometimes as a head of a think tank, sometimes as the head of a corporation,
sometimes as an academic (Wedel 2009,2017).
The WCF
We will now discuss our case in relation to the theoretical framework. We
will first explore how the WCF fits in with the struggles around the liberal
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international order. We then examine the network’s social structure and its
constellation of actors, and finally discuss its strategies, funding sources, and
political advocacy.
Struggles around the Liberal International Order
History and key norm antipreneurs. The WCF originated from meetings
and intellectual exchanges in the mid-1990s between Allan Carlson, at the
time president of the socially conservative pro-family think tank Howard
Center for Family, Religion, and Society in Illinois, and a Russian professor of
family sociology and demography at Moscow State University, called Anatoly
Antonov (Levintova 2014a,2014b;Moss 2017;Stoeckl 2020). Antonov was
worried about the falling marriage and birth rates in Russia and turned to
Carlson who was known as a family policy expert and a Ronald Reagan ap-
pointee to the National Commission on Children. Carlson had published
books with titles such as Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social
Crisis (Carlson 1988), where feminism and sexual liberation were argued to
cause “demographic decline” and a crisis of the American family. On his visits
to Russia, Carlson became acquainted with more Russian academics, but also
with religious and political leaders. These experiences raised the idea of con-
tinued transnational exchange and cooperation in the form of a World
Congress on Families. Adler-Nissen and Zarakol have noted that Russia has a
particular role in the current pattern of polarization, being at once West and
non-West (Adler-Nissen and Zarakol 2021). As we see here, Russian actors
were important partners right from the start.
Carlson’s ideological contribution to the global pro-family movement is
considerable and his influence is strengthened through his “flexian” features.
(Cupac and Ebetu¨rk 2020;Trimble 2014). He is co-author of the book that—
besides the Bible—serves as the WCF’s ideological principles and program for
action: The Natural Family: A Manifesto (Carlson and Mero 2007). He is also
the editor of The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy and a senior ed-
itor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. His legitimizing role is not
least noticeable at the WCF conferences where he is one of the most promi-
nent speakers (Kalm and Meeuwisse 2020). Carlson can be seen as one of the
WCF’s key norm antipreneurs, working actively to limit progressive norms in
the fields of sexual and reproductive rights (Bloomfield 2016).
Another important person is Brian Brown, who holds an influential posi-
tion within the WCF network as president of the IOF and the president of the
National Organization for Marriage, which he co-founded in 2007. Brown is
regularly invited as a speaker at various gatherings concerning family values
and often makes statements in the media. He recently launched International
Family News (IFN), with the goal to “build the first truly global pro-family
and pro-life news outlet” (IFN 2021). IFN is translated into several languages.
Brown is also the founder and chairman of ActRight, a clearing-house for
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supporting conservative candidates and conservative action, with reportedly
nearly one million members.
Sharon Slater is another central norm antipreneur in the WCF network.
She is president of Family Watch International (FWI), chair of the UN Family
Rights Caucus, and long-time partner of the WCF. FWI’s conservative posi-
tions on family policies are presented as “based on scientific research, social
science data, lessons from history, and what has been proven across cultures
to produce the best outcomes for men, women, children and, thus, for soci-
ety” (FWI 2013). Among other things, FWI produces documentary films with
titles such as Porn Pandemic (2014) and The War on Children (2016). Their
most promoted film is entitled Understanding Same-Sex Attraction (2013) and
features an interview with Joseph Nicolosi, the father of gay “conversion
therapy.”
The “natural family” as the ideological core. The ultra-conservative
actors that concern us here use “natural” as a claim to legitimation. Restoring
the Natural Order: An Agenda for Europe is the title of a manifesto produced
by the network Agenda Europe, which is closely aligned with the WCF (Brian
Brown and Sharon Slater are key persons in both [Datta 2018]). The mani-
festo attempts to be inclusive by avoiding religious terms, and instead speaks
of “Natural Law” which “It is the task and purpose of all positive legislation to
transpose and enforce” (quoted in Datta 2018, 11). The manifesto explains
that natural law has been challenged by the postwar cultural revolution, spe-
cifically the sexual revolution, and that we are now running out of time.
Strengthening the “natural family” is seen as a way of defending Western
civilization. Carlson describes the preferred family constellation in his
thoughts on social conservatism in IFN:
... social conservatism is the idea—and political—system that affirms
and defends the natural family, understood as the one-flesh marital
union of a man and a woman for the purposes of bearing and rearing
children, building strong homes, and binding the generations.
Grounded in Holy Scripture, social conservatism favors sexual disci-
pline (chastity before wedlock; fidelity after), relatively early marriage,
complementary sexual roles (men as fathers, providers, and protectors;
women as mothers and nurturers), and large families. It frowns on con-
traception, condemns abortion, abhors pornography, and laments for-
nication. (Carlson 2020)
When attending the WCF in Verona 2019, we listened to how speakers framed
the problems and possibilities of the natural family. It was presented as a solu-
tion to all the fatal crises that the Western world was said to face; by protect-
ing the natural family it would be possible to prevent the decline of European
populations (“demographic winter”), emotional misery, criminality, suicide,
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moral decay, poverty, and so on. The optimistic framings obscure the repres-
sive elements of the ideology. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) desig-
nates the WCF and several of its partner organizations as anti-LGBT “hate
groups” (Balleck 2019, 385–7).
The populist orientation. The discourse on the natural family fits very well
with the nationalist and ethnocentrist worldview of the right-wing populists
who currently enjoy great success in many corners of the globe. The most ob-
vious reason for this is the notion of a global left-liberal elite that tries to im-
plement a radical agenda that is alien to the interests of the “common man/
woman” (cf. Mudde and Kaltwasser 2103;Wodak and Krzy_
zanowski 2017). A
distinction between the corrupt elite and the betrayed people was made in
many of the speeches that we listened to at the WCF in Verona. A recurring
theme was that there are evil forces that threaten the lives of ordinary families.
In particular, “gender ideologues” and “secular liberals” were identified as
powerful elite groups that persecute ordinary families in the name of “political
correctness.” These terms include all that fight for sexual and reproductive
rights, LGBT and trans activists, and all who sympathize with their cause. Not
least through such redefinitions, the pro-family network acts as a moral norm
antipreneur creating cognitive frames that can be exploited by (other) reac-
tionaries (cf. Finnemore and Sikkink 1998;Goetz 2020;Stoeckl 2016). The
view of the enemies of the natural family was made clear in the speeches of
Ignacio Arsuaga of the partner organization CitizenGo:
The enemies of natural family, in all countries, infiltrated in almost all
institutions, all structures of power. ... They are the gender ideologues
and also the LGBT totalitarians that control the minds of our sons and
daughters. ... They are also the secular liberals; they want to prohibit
our faith to play any role in the public life of our societies. Sometimes
they fight each other but most of the times, they work together in a co-
ordinated way to impose their radical worldview. (Ignacio Arsuaga at
the 13th WCF in Verona, March 2019)
Although European right-wing populists claim to speak for the people, in prac-
tice it only applies to an ethnicized “own” people and their traditions and values,
while “alien” people are excluded (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2103). In some of the
speeches at the WCF conference, for example, policies such as subsidies for large
families (as in Hungary) and abortion bans were defended with Christian tradi-
tional values as well as with the argument that such legislation can secure the
country’s birth deficit without having to rely on immigration. Even more out-
spoken on the connection between gender policy and race was German Catholic
sociologist Gabriele Kuby at the Madrid conference. She talked about the dan-
gers of sex education and compared the current curriculum to the Muslim op-
pression of Christians by the Ottomans from the mid-fourteenth century when
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Christian children were kidnapped and converted to Islam by force. In a compa-
rable way, today’s politically correct teachers supposedly kidnap innocent
Christian children and brainwash them into gender ideology.
Critique of international institutions. In a polarized era, many activists
have turned against liberal international institutions and their underlying
norms. For “our” activists, it is the promotion of liberal values that is the
main center of attention, and not, for instance, economic globalization (al-
though there are occasional outlashes against its coldness and homogenizing
consequences). The main individual enemy, George Soros, is not hated so
much for his business ventures and financial speculations, but instead for his
philanthropic support for liberal values across the globe.
The backlash that the WCF participates in can be traced back to the
Vatican and Catholic opposition to two UN Conferences in the mid-1990s
(the Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, 1994, and the
World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995), where demands for rights re-
lating to reproduction and sexuality were raised and partly acknowledged.
According to the pro-family network, international bodies such as the
European Union and the United Nations do not represent the best interests of
the family but are ruled by a cosmopolitan radical left-wing elite—which
agrees well with how European right-wing populists tend to view the elites in
Brussels as their enemies (Verbeek and Zaslove 2017). Sharon Slater herself
has published a book titled Stand for the Family: Alarming Evidence and
Firsthand Account from the Front Lines of Battle: A Call to Responsible Citizens
Everywhere. It describes how gay activists at the United Nations promote ho-
mosexuality and abortion by pursuing policies aimed at destroying the family,
and also conveys scientifically questionable facts about LGBT people, homo-
sexuality, and how it can be treated (Slater 2009).
At the conferences that we studied, this antipathy to international bodies
was a recurring theme. When one person in the audience at the CitizenGo
conference “Gender, Sex and Education” in Madrid asked why international
bodies like the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the
European Union promote gender ideology, Gabriele Kuby answered in a way
that ties in with conspiratorial populist rhetoric. One stated reason was that
the elites want fewer people since the masses of people are a threat to the
mighty and powerful. Furthermore, they want to destroy people’s identity
built on religion, nation, and family, to manipulate them, as part of a top-
down revolution. As Doris Buss and Didi Herman (2003) have pointed out,
the WCF and their allies paradoxically oppose globalism while vigorously ad-
vancing it through transnational mobilization for conservative social change.
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New Actor Constellations
Networking. As previously mentioned, scholars have drawn attention to
how contestations of the liberal international order unite advocates in the
West and the periphery and semi-periphery, and oppositional movements in
some countries, with ruling leaders in others. And in line with theories of
transcalar activism, networking across national and sector boundaries is im-
portant for the pro-family and anti-gender movement. In the above-men-
tioned Agenda Europe manifesto, it is stated that: “our adversaries act
globally, having set up closely knit networks of non-governmental organiza-
tions, politicians, and similar public servants. To be successful in our fight, we
need to set up a similar network” (quoted in Datta 2018, 18). The anti-gender
movement in many ways acts as a countermovement, in mirroring the organi-
zation and the language of its opponents (Kalm and Meeuwisse 2023).
The combination of population anxiety with a growing anti-Muslim and
anti-immigrant sentiment, and a populist, nationalist turn in Russia and
Eastern Europe, has provided the WCF with a beneficial political context in
which to push forward its Christian anti-gender agenda. According to the
SPLC, one reason for this is that: “WCF enables politicians to connect the
dots between narratives of demographic and civilizational decline, creating a
more palatable narrative for anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant policies and
views” (SPLC undated). WCF’s success in policy influence has been particu-
larly apparent in Russia and Eastern European countries, but its influence also
reaches countries in other parts of the world and international institutions
(e.g. Cullinan, Geloo, and Haidula 2020;Kaoma 2014). According to the
SPLC (undated), for example, Theresa Okafor, the African Regional Director
for the WCF, has stated that it was the WCF meeting in Nigeria in 2009 that
helped pave the way for Nigeria’s anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws in
Nigeria 2012, including a bill criminalizing same-sex marriage. As stated by
the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (2015), no other organization has
had such a noticeable and negative impact on LGBT rights internationally as
the WCF: “Despite its small staff and budget, the influence of WCF can be felt
nearly everywhere hate is being exported” (Human Rights Campaign
Foundation 2015, 8).
The WCF consciously builds regionally based networks where allied front
figures who act as spokespeople for the “natural family” campaign form an
important link. Examples of such WCF spokesmen include Russian Alexey
Komov, director of external affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the
aforementioned Theresa Okafor who is director of the Foundation for African
Cultural Heritage. These allies are important since they can tailor the WCF’s
messages to resonate with local communities.
The locations of the world congresses are chosen based on the perceived
political opportunities to create alliances and influence policies, and the events
are preceded by study visits and meetings with influential actors. The first
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WCF was held in Prague, then followed Geneva, Mexico City, Warsaw,
Amsterdam, Madrid, Sidney, Salt Lake City, Tbilisi, Budapest, Chisinau, and
Verona. A planned congress in Moscow 2014 was canceled because of political
reasons (the Russian invasion of Crimea), but then rescheduled to a later date
the same year. In 2017, the Hungarian government co-hosted the WCF in
Budapest with the participation and leadership of Prime Minister Viktor
Orba´n and Katalin Nova´k. In 2018, the WCF in Moldova was hosted by
Moldovan President Igor Dodon. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s then-deputy prime
minister, participated in the WCF in Verona in 2019, as did Katalin Novak
from the Hungarian government, along with other representatives from,
among others, the Brazilian, Malawi, and Italian governments. Archer and
Provost of openDemocracy (2019) analyzed the programs and the speakers of
the WCF gatherings from 2004 to 2019 and concluded that almost half of the
speakers came from far-right parties (in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Serbia, and
Spain). The fact that these politicians were invited as speakers—and accepted
the invitation—reflects mutual interests. This in turn seems to confirm the
theoretical explanations that contestations of the liberal international order
unite Western populists with (semi)-authoritarian leaders elsewhere.
The congresses are not only about networking with politicians. Various
world religious leaders have participated in the WCF, including the Secretary
of State for the Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Georgian Orthodox Church
Patriarch Ilya II, and Elder Russell Nelson of the Church of the Latter-Day
Saints.
There are several closely allied and partly overlapping networks to the
WCF. One is the European Agenda Europe, which was set up in 2013. It is a
professional advocacy network whose members meet in secret, and which is
said to be responsible for implementing a detailed strategy to roll back human
rights and “save Western civilization from self-destruction” (Datta 2018).
Another related network is the Political Network for Values. It was launched
in 2014 as a forum for “transatlantic” dialogue between legislators and politi-
cal representatives from over thirty countries. Their summits have been lo-
cated in different countries in the transatlantic region (the United States,
Colombia, Spain, Belgium). The former chair, Katalin Nova´k, has also
attended several WCF and she has recently (2022) been elected President of
Hungary. Representatives of the WCF (Brian Brown), as well as of its closely
allied partner organizations CitizenGo (Ignacio Arsuaga) and FWI (Sharon
Slater), are on the board of directors of Political Network for Values.
Flexible frame alignments. Transcalar advocacy theory emphasizes that
activists strategically and adaptably build alliances and networks with many
different types of actors. Activists often need to adjust their issue framing in
order to align with that of others. With right-wing populists, the pro-family
activists have accomplished a successful frame alignment (Snow and Benford
1988). The “natural family” discourse contributes to the hard-sounding
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authoritarian populist discourse by providing moral arguments as well as a
tone of love and intimacy (Kalm and Meeuwisse 2020,2023). Gunnarsson
Payne (2019) formulates the role of this type of pro-family network as follows:
“Anti-gender discourse offers the authoritarian-minded right crucial elements
for constructing a powerful collective identity of a people-as-one; one which
requires a fantasy of the ‘genderist, globalist, and politically correct’ oligarchy
versus ‘the underdog’ of common and ‘normal people’.”
The WCF flexibly adapts their messages depending on the context and the
people that it wants to attract, and this can lead to certain inconsistencies. A
main worry is that Western civilization is in decline. At the same time, WCF
discourse can be aligned with an anti-colonial and anti-Western agenda which
can attract members of the Global South. Institutions such as the United
Nations and the European Union are accused, for example, of imposing lib-
eral ideas about sexual freedom and abortion rights on other countries, as a
new form of cultural imperialism. Cole Parke, of the think tank Political
Research Associates, describes the flexible adaptation work in the following
way:
In Russia, for example, WCF manipulates deep-seated racial prejudices
to mobilize demographic winter anxieties. In Africa, WCF exploits
neo-colonial concerns, arguing that racist Westerners are trying to
abort Africa’s Black babies. All around the world, the “natural family”
is a solution in search of a problem. (Parke 2015)
A different example of an attempt at frame alignment with other civil society
actors is “Hands Across the Aisle,” which consists of women of all political
colors: “We are radical feminists, lesbians, Christians, and conservatives that
... stand in solidarity against gender identity legislation, which we have come
to recognize as the erasure of our own hard-won civil rights” (Hands Across
the Aisle 2022). At the Madrid conference, its founder Miriam Ben-Shalom
made a speech under the heading “bending and twisting of sex and gender.”
She presented herself as an anti-trans lesbian activist and emphasized that gen-
der theories, particularly transgenderism, are urgent threats that need to be
met by joint action: “Don’t be afraid to extend your hand across the aisle.
Look here, I may be the only progressive, Jewish lesbian in this place right
now. Do you see my hand? I offer my hand to you. We can work together on
this issue.” There are other examples of attempts to refute charges of being a
discriminatory, misogynist movement. Several of the female speakers at the
WCF in Verona emphasized, for example, that they were both mothers and
professionals (although the family always came first) and that they advocated
the true interests of women.
Transcalar Activism Contesting the Liberal International Order 569
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New Forms of Advocacy
Transnational grassroots mobilization through digital technologies. Activism
today operates at many different scales. One of these scales, which Keck and
Sikkink (1998) were not so concerned with, is the level of grassroots mobiliza-
tion, which can be important for mobilizing support of one’s cause. While
many of the participants in the global WCF congresses and other networking
forums belong to some part of the elite (political, cultural, religious, etc.), the
WCF and its partners also consciously mobilize grassroots and help them or-
ganize at different levels.
An important role for the dissemination of anti-gender ideas and transna-
tional grassroots mobilization is played by CitizenGo, which has developed in-
novative methods for these tasks through social media campaigns. CitizenGo
was founded in 2013 by the Spanish lawyer Ignacio Arsuaga, who about a de-
cade earlier had founded the Spanish-language online petition platform
HazteOir. HazteOir’s full name translates into “Make yourself heard, victims
of the gender ideology.” From originally focusing on petitions addressed to
the Spanish government mostly around the topics of family and education,
the organization over the years extended its role to organizing mass rallies
against, for example, abortion. Today it serves as a powerful Christian conser-
vative lobby group that is said to have about 550,000 members (Rivera 2019).
CitizenGo was founded to expand its scope of action internationally and
its board of trustees includes Brian Brown and Luca Volonte, former Italian
parliamentarian and EPP President at the Council of Europe and CEO of the
Novae Terrae Foundation (Zacharenko 2020). According to CitizenGo’s web-
site, available in twelve languages, it “influences institutions, governments and
organizations in 50 different countries” and has team members located in fif-
teen cities all over the world. It claims to have more than nine million mem-
bers (CitzenGo 2018). CitizenGo’s activities are not limited to online
petitions; some of its offline actions have attracted much attention (and pro-
tests). It has, for example, gained notoriety for its anti-trans “Free Speech
Buses,” which have toured in several countries (in Europe, but also in the
United States and South America) decorated with slogans such as “Boys have
penises, girls have vaginas. Do not let them fool you” (Parke 2018).
CitizenGo can be seen as an ultra-conservative version of the progressive
campaign platforms Avaaz.org. and MoveOn.org, targeting not least the EU
and UN levels. In their study of the discursive practices employed by
CitizenGo in their online petitions Katsiveli and Coimbra-Gomes (2020)
demonstrate how it strategically shapes public opinion about progressive sex-
ual and reproductive rights by advancing an affective “us vs. them” dichot-
omy. By portraying a homogenized “Other” as the enemy, the mobilization of
conservative groups to take action is facilitated. One of the successful petitions
listed on the homepage concerns support for a Polish doctor working in
Norway who refused to prescribe or insert intrauterine devices into women
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(“freedom of conscience”). Another petition to the European Commission
called for an end to EU funding of International Planned Parenthood
Federation, yet another, which collected nearly 50,000 signatures, called for
the rejection of the Estrela Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and
Rights, which urged member states to provide comprehensive sex education
in schools and ensure access to safe abortions (Zacharenko 2020).
The leaders of the WCF and its partner organizations also advise on strate-
gies for advocacy. For instance, at the Verona meeting in 2019, there were pre-
sentations on how to organize petitions and handle social media. The Agenda
Europe texts found by Neil Datta, of the European Parliamentary Forum on
Sexual and Reproductive Rights, also specify many instructions for activists.
Activists are advised to use the opponents’ weapons against them, by using
rights language (e.g. “the right of fathers against abortion of their children”),
and by taking on the position of the victim (e.g. “our opponents are aggres-
sors, not victims, and they discriminate us”) (Datta 2018).
Pooling of resources from like-minded allies. As a project of the IOF,
the WCF itself seems to have far too limited resources for all its commitments
(in terms of stated budget and staff). But on the WCF’s website about forty
organizations from different countries are listed as partner organizations (IOF
2017). Some of these organizations cooperate very intimately and there are
several personal overlaps. Two such allies are the aforementioned partner
organizations FWI and CitizenGo. Another one is the Alliance Defending
Freedom (ADF), the most powerful Christian right legal group in the United
States, which has more than 3,000 affiliated ADF-trained attorneys (Posner
2017;Suen 2017). It has helped organize several WCF congresses and sent nu-
merous people to these events.
Many of the WCF partner organizations receive donations from foundations
in the United States that share their ideological commitment. openDemocracy has
investigated the flows of money crossing the Atlantic to push ultra-conservative
agendas based on examinations of the organizations’ publicly available annual fi-
nancial records (Fitzgerald and Porovost 2019;Provost and Archer 2020;Provost
and Ramsay 2019). Unlike many liberal feminist organizations that struggle for
their survival, the pro-family network seems well-funded. Provost and Archer
(2020) revealed that twenty-eight American Christian right organizations since
2007 had spent at least US$280 million in “dark money” promoting campaigns
against the rights of women and LGBTQ people across five continents. Of this
money, almost US$90 million was spent in Europe, more than in any other re-
gion outside the United States, followed by Africa and Asia. Ten of the twenty-
eight organizations were listed as WCF partners. The largest spender in Europe
appeared to be the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (US$23.3 million), but
major donations from WCF partners were also reported, for example, from ADF
(US$15.3 million). The money had been spent on different things, for instance,
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EU lobbying, supporting anti-abortion “grassroots” networks, challenging laws
against hate speech, and supporting anti-LGBT campaigns.
None of the organizations revealed who their own donors were, but some
information is available. For instance, ADF is supported by the Koch brothers
(Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandes 2016) and a foundation controlled by Betsy
DeVos, previously President Trump’s Secretary of Education (Zgaga and
Michael 2019). The ADF has offices in several European countries and spends
large sums lobbying at the EU level for the protection of “human dignity” and
on litigating religious-freedom cases.
According to investigative journalist Bruce Wilson (2014),manyofWCF’s
partner organizations are funded by the National Christian Foundation. Some
sources also suggest that WCF representatives and events are sponsored by
Russian oligarchs with links to the European far right. Kristina Stoeckl (2018,
2020), who draws on original, archival material in her study of the Russian in-
volvement in the WCF, claims that since around 2010 the main Russian WCF
sponsors are two wealthy and well-connected businessmen; Vladimir Yakunin
and Konstantin Malofeev. Yakunin is the former head of Russian Railways and
the head of St Andrew the First Called Endowment Fund, which finances several
programs, among them the Sanctity of Motherhood pro-life network which
sponsored a WCF summit in Moscow in 2014. Malofeev, the founder of the in-
vestment company Marshall Capital Partners, owns the St Basil the Great
Charitable Foundation, which among other things sponsors an Orthodox private
school and the television station tsargrad.tv, which is an attempt to build a
Russian Fox News and which promotes Russian Orthodox statehood. Both
Yakunin and Malofeev have good connections with the Kremlin and the
Moscow Patriarchate, and both are on the international sanctions list imposed
on Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Political campaigning and channels of influence at different
scales. Through their large international congresses, smaller regional events,
and closed-door meetings with government officials and religious leaders, the
WCF has, to quote Parke (2015): “woven a tight, powerful web of right-wing
ideologues and activists and has provided them with the tools to grow their
numbers and expand their influence.” Studies suggest that there are close ties
and personal overlaps between the Christian right of the United States and
several European ultra-conservative networks that have emerged in recent
years (Bob 2012;Datta 2018;Paternotte and Kuhar 2018;Zacharenko 2020).
The WCF has organized parliamentary forums to help parliamentary mem-
bers in various countries pass “pro-family legislation.” It has, for instance,
worked closely with members of the Russian Duma and the Putin regime and
has encouraged the passage of anti-LGBT laws in Russia, most notably the 2013
federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information
Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values” (Edenborg 2022). The
WCF has also been linked to Hungary’s “family-friendly” policies. Partly
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through Komov, the WCF has moreover established contacts with Italian far-
right politicians (FOIA Research 2019). In 2013, Komov participated as a speaker
at the Lega Nord congress in Turin that elected Matteo Salvini as the leader of
the party. As can be seen from the filmed speech,
1
he received warm applause
when he paid tribute to Putin’s banning of homosexual propaganda to minors,
and when he, through a symbolic mascot, welcomed the delegates to the planned
WCF congress in Kremlin the following year. The WCF mascot was a Russian
doll, whose outer shell was not a woman but a man, since “God created woman
from a man.” Relations with Italy were strengthened when Komov in 2014 con-
tributed to the establishment of a Russian-Italian business platform, the
Lombardy-Russia Cultural Association, and became its honorary president.
As revealed by openDemocracy (Ramsay 2019;Ramsay and Provost 2019),
there are conservative activists linked to Trump who have tried to import the
model of political campaigning known as “Super PAC” to Europe. A political
action committee (PAC) pools financial contributions for or against a particu-
lar political candidate. Super PACs are known for spreading disinformation
and orchestrating smear campaigns, and their main function is to stay at arm’s
length from parties so that the parties and candidates themselves appear clean.
In Europe, it is especially CitizenGO that, according to openDemocracy,
seems to operate like a Super PAC. The organization is stated to have tried to
influence Spanish elections by enlisting the support of Trump campaign con-
sultant Darien Rafie, who also partners with Brian Brown in ActRight.
CitizenGO supports the ultra-right Spanish party Vox and has helped to fi-
nance its campaigns. openDemocracy’s reporter approached Arsuaga under-
cover as a potential financier. Arsuaga then said that he could arrange to get
around campaign financing laws by channeling the money through
CitizenGO where Vox would appear independent but “we are actually cur-
rently totally aligned.” He also told the reporter about planned smear cam-
paigns against political opponents (Ramsay and Provost 2019). A recent case
study of Vox in Andalusia shows how the party has succeeded in dismantling
and reshaping previously well-established gender-equality policies, such as
gender-based violence policies (Alonso and Espinosa-Fajardo 2021).
Besides seeking cooperation with organizations and governments around
the world, the WCF furthermore targets the UN level (cf. Cupac and Ebetu¨rk
2020). “The resource guide to UN consensus language on family Issues” pro-
duced by FWI suggests concrete recommendations for conservative positions
in family-related matters in UN negotiations (FWI 2013). It covers a wide
range of topics (abortion, child’s right to parental care, fidelity, pornography,
sex education, etc.). In collaboration with United Families International
(UFI), the WCF has also compiled (a third edition of) an online “UN
Negotiating Guide” (IOF 2022). This is a comprehensive text that advises pro-
family actors on negotiating tactics, key talking points, and “consensus
language” to further their advocacy at the United Nations. Actors linked to
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the WCF are said to constitute a particularly influential bloc at the United
Nations (Montgomery 2016;Vik, Sternsvold, and Moe 2012).
Conclusion
The aim of this article was to examine and explain the transnational organiza-
tion of present-day anti-gender networking promoting “the natural family,” fo-
cusing on the WCF, which is at the center of transnational networking. To this
end, traditional theories of TANs have limitations in that they assume that net-
works have a progressive orientation. Furthermore, they tend to downplay the
importance of macro-level structures, and overstate the importance of individu-
als. The same power structures that underlay the “boomerang” model of advo-
cacy can no longer be assumed, and the division between domestic and
transnational levels is also not as clear-cut as it once was. We argue that in order
to understand how illiberal transnational networks operate, we must approach
them as part of the changed global arena and the prevailing macro-structures
that define the international system within which they operate.
In order to analyze the anti-gender networking and alliances that join poli-
ticians, religious leaders, right-wing populists, and others in different regions
of the world, we therefore turned to more recent IR theories on the contesta-
tion of the liberal international order and on transcalar activism. Using these
theoretical perspectives, we show that the WCF is an important cog in the
struggles around the liberal international order. It spends a lot of effort on
fighting international norms and institutions, and it strategically works at dif-
ferent arenas and political levels—from grassroots level to the United
Nations—in order to maximize support and political influence.
The WCF network includes a wide range of actors (civil society, political, reli-
gious, etc.) at both local and national levels from many regions of the globe.
They have various types of assets that can be pooled for common interests, not
least for political networking activities targeting influential actors at high levels in
different parts of the world. We have demonstrated the key roles of norm
“antipreneurs” whose power and influence are strengthened through interlocking
positions on boards of several different organizations within and outside the net-
work. WCF advocates are successful in adjusting their message and create frame
alignments with different types of partners. An important key to the network’s
ability to create fruitful alliances with right-wing populist politicians is that it
shares their perception of elites as “enemies of the people,” but expands it to in-
clude all those perceived to pose a threat to the “natural family.” It also adds a
tone of morality, love, and intimacy to the anti-immigrant populist rhetoric.
It is obvious that the WCF through its transnational network construction is
a significant player in global politics and that it receives considerable funding
from wealthy actors who want to influence European politics. This worrying fact
574 S. Kalm and A. Meeuwisse
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underlines the need for further research and theory development for complex
analyses of contemporary contestations of liberal values and institutions.
Note
1. Congresso Federale Lega Nord 2013—Ambasciatore Russo Nazioni
Unite Alexey Komov, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
DsgJtcNZZwQ, accessed November 25, 2022.
Acknowledgments
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier ver-
sion of this text. We also want to thank the participants of the workshop
“Intermediary Resources. The Brokering of Values, Ideas and Resources in Political
Contexts,” WZB, Berlin, February 13–14, 2020, and the participants of the panel on
Anti-gender campaigns in Europe at the 27th International Conference of
Europeanists (CES) in June 2021.
Funding
This work was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) [M17–
0188:1] and is based on research conducted within the research project “Civil
Society Elites. Comparing elite composition, reproduction, integration, and
contestation in European civil societies.”
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