Balkan Conservatives Unite at Family Congress in Moldova

Conservative Serbs and Croats - normally at odds - came together in Moldova at the weekend to denounce gay rights, abortion and the decline of family values at the socially conservative World Family Congress in Chisinau.

Croatian activist Zeljka Markic, head of "In the Name of the Family", an NGO that promotes traditional marriage, on Saturday told the congress of her NGO's success in forcing Croatia to hold a referendum in 2013 on constitutionally defining marriage as the exclusive union of a man and woman.

She said they had won the referendum despite overwhelming media hostility, which relied on "fake news" when reporting on this topic.

"We had had 90 per cent of the media reporting against the referendum and we had 70 per cent of voters voting 'for' the referendum [topic]. We showed long before [Donald] Trump that the media is fake, and that most of them produce fake news," said Markic who added that she had created her own news website to counter this. 

She said Croatia's then government had wanted to push sexual education in schools as a form of "ideological programming", which had elements of pornography.

Attacking the modern scientific consensus of homosexuality as innate and not a "choice", she said: "Homosexuality is ultimately a lifestyle".

She also pledged another referendum in Croatia on reducing the number of MPs from 150 to 120, and said her NGO would try to stop implementation of the so-called Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, which Croatia adopted in April 2018.

Serbian activist Marija Stajic, representing another socially conservative association, "Orthodox Parents", praised Russia for preserving traditional family values. "Russia has taught us how to fight for family...

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