By Tamas ORBAN

Last week, on June 26th, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) launched The Next Wave, a “report” that purports to expose the rise of so-called “anti-gender” and “anti-feminist” religious actors in Europe, whose goal is to “dismantle decades of hard-won sexual and reproductive rights across Europe.”

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Cloaked in the language of human rights, the document is, in truth, a politically charged dossier; reading more like a counter-terrorist threat assessment, and explicitly paints religious advocacy groups as part of an organized extremist threat that needs to be stopped at all costs.

“A new alliance of religious extremists, far-right populists, and oligarchic funders” is trying to “launder religious extremism into mainstream governance through media, NGOs, political parties, and public institutions,” the authors claim, blind to the irony that EPF itself is bankrolled by powerful lobby groups and is embedded in EU institutions that turn its activism into legislation.

Despite presenting itself as a neutral parliamentary forum, the EPF is a well-funded advocacy network closely aligned with the European Commission, receiving just under €3 million in public funding annually, ironically from sources outside the Continent.

Its financial backing includes powerful donors like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, IPPF, organizations which, in many instances, are non-European and have vested interests in shaping social policy across Europe.

The EPF operates using soft power to access the EU Parliament and exert influence over major EU funding instruments such as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the infamous censorship tool, the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Contrary to the pretenses of its authors, this is not research; it is an ideological campaign aimed at delegitimizing dissent and laying the groundwork for EU-sanctioned censorship to crush political dissent.

The fact that the report was championed at its EU Parliament launch by German and Polish MEPs at the same time the rule of law and democratic norms are trampled upon in their own countries is a clear sign of the endemic hypocrisy that its authors willfully ignore.

As shown by mass raids against political dissidents in Germany and the persecution of the opposition in Poland, freedom is under threat in Europe—but not from the religious Right. Where is the EU outcry against Berlin’s attempts to ban the country’s leading opposition party or Paris’s lawfare to keep Le Pen off the ballot paper?

So, who are these “religious extremists”?

We all know the script by now: protect life, promote traditional families, or speak up for parental rights, the freedom of speech, or the freedom of conscience, and you’re branded a threat to democracy by the very groups who rely on undisclosed foreign funding to push their own agenda.

For example, the report dedicates multiple chapters to the alleged anti-gender and pro-natalist “extremism” of the Catholic Church, mentioning organizations such as Catholic pro-family advocacies Ordo Iuris in Poland, Civitas Christiana in the Netherlands, or CitizenGo, FAFCE, and Human Life International, which are present in multiple countries.

On the political side, it’s even more obvious who they refer to as “religious extremist” organizations. According to the report, one of the biggest power centers of this “far-right” empire is the conservative think tank MCC Brussels, which is mentioned two dozen times and portrayed as the ideological bulwark of Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s malign influence in Brussels.

No surprises there; in fact, anything Hungary touches is declared the enemy of “sexual rights” by the authors—even Hungary Helps, a charity organization dedicated to helping persecuted Christians in the Middle East and Africa.

Similarly, any social conservative organizations linked to members of the European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group or the Patriots for Europe are also listed, including ECR’s New Direction, which was founded by Margaret Thatcher, or the Fundación Disenso, affiliated with Spain’s VOX party.

The “media capture” of European far-right parties plays a big role in legitimizing this network, the report claims. It specifically mentions, among others, the europeanconservative.com, which “routinely promotes anti-gender narratives framed as efforts to safeguard national heritage and Christian values.” Well, all we can say is that we’re happy to be recognized.

‘Hypocrisy off the Richter scale’

At the report launch last week, EPF directors and allies sounded the alarm about USAID funding cuts while simultaneously accusing their critics of being influenced by “foreign actors.”

A representative of the global human rights advocacy group ADF International—another ‘target’ of the report—told europeanconservative.com:

The hypocrisy is off the Richter scale: these organizations depend on American taxpayers and global billionaires, yet call for defunding small conservative groups receiving far less. What the EPF calls a report on extremism looks more like a wish list for censorship, dressed up in academic jargon and donor logos.

By framing traditional, faith-based, and conservative views as inherently ‘anti-democratic,’ the EPF risks transforming EU institutions into ideological enforcers rather than democratic mediators.

A few weeks ago, ADF held an event in the European Parliament, hosted by conservative MEPs from the ECR and Patriots for Europe, during which Paul Coleman, the organization’s executive director, warned that free speech was under threat in on the continent in a way it hasn’t been in decades and that the EU’s growing censorship regime is increasingly designed to suppress conservative and religious dissent under the guise of fighting “hate speech.”

Based in Vienna, ADF is mostly made up of lawyers specializing in human rights, including freedom of thought and expression. Its most well-known client is Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen, who’s been charged with the “hate crime” of tweeting Bible verses to explain her views on LGBT issues and is still facing a criminal sentence despite already having been acquitted twice.

The organization also works with ‘Billboard Chris,’ the famous child-protection activist who was arrested in Brussels last month for simply standing on the street with a sign that said “Children cannot consent to hormone therapy;” and represents multiple people who were charged for praying silently outside abortion clinics in the UK.

These examples show exactly what EPF and other similar organizations refer to when talking about “religious right-wing extremism” being a threat to “hard-earned” progressive rights, while their only goal is to weaponize the institutional power of Brussels to crush any opposition to their liberal agenda.

“When mainstream positions on family, gender, or parental rights are treated as threats to EU values, we move dangerously close to Soviet-era ideological policing, something that becomes more real with every free speech debacle in Europe,” ADF added.

Original article:  europeanconservative.com