They spread hate everywhere they go. And their next destination is here.

Pregnant women in Texas are dying. They are dying at quadruple the rate that they were fifteen years ago. They are dying at the same rate as women in Somalia.

They are dying because a US-based coalition called the World Congress of ‘Families’ (WCF) successfully campaigned, along with far right-wing politicians, for policies that blocked women’s access to everything from basic check-ups, to contraception, to breast cancer screenings to safe abortion.

In Kenya, where pregnancy kills more women and girls than cancer, conflict, hunger and malaria combined, the World Congress of Families has funded and organised opposition to a law permitting abortion when the mother’s life is threatened. It has aggressively fought local women who are campaigning for their rights. It has done the same in Ecuador, Mexico, Spain, and, this month, Ireland – where WCF director Larry Jacobs campaigned for abortion to be denied to a suicidal teenage rape victim.

Women aren’t the only targets of WCF hate. From Russia, to Nigeria, to Uganda, to Eastern Europe, LGBTQ people have been criminalised, beaten, murdered. All with funding and backing from the WCF – they have held hundreds of conferences worldwide, drafted laws, and funded and promoted the pastors and politicians who agree to push their anti-gay, anti-choice laws.

In a report released just this week, the Human Rights Campaign wrote that, “the WCF’s role in the export of hate cannot be overstated.”

The WCF sounds too extreme for Australians to be worried about. But they’re being officially welcomed by Federal and State Ministers. Minister for Social Services Kevin Andrews, who the WCF have officially recognised as their “Natural Family Man of the Year”, plans to open the conference. Parliamentarians Bernie Finn, Fred Nile, Jan Kronberg and Cory Bernardi, along with Victoria’s Attorney-General Robert Clark, are also slated to attend. Minister for Employment Eric Abetz was originally speaking but has just pulled out.

This week, on Wednesday 27^th and Thursday 28^th of August, the WCF are coming to Parliament House in Canberra – holding a meeting about fighting marriage equality, and catching up with Ministers like Abetz and Andrews.

This will be followed by a nationwide tour of WCF-supported speakers, with a focus on goals such as dismantling Victoria’s Abortion Law Reform Act, and on spreading misinformation claiming that breast cancer is caused by abortion, and that the pill makes women engage in incest. Speakers such as Molly White – a Tea Party endorsed Republican – are being brought to Australia. White heads an anti-choice NGO that works with the WCF to push extreme anti-choice laws globally.

But on Thursday, a group of us – members of “Vocal Majority”, a grassroots women and LGBT rights group – will stand against hate. While they hold their secret anti-gay, anti-women briefing, we will be outside Parliament house with a big and beautiful family album, showing just how diverse Australian families are.

Local families of all shapes and sizes have come together to make this album. It is a celebration of Australia’s real family values– love, equality and diversity.

We have invited Minister Kevin Andrews to accept our album. We are urging him not to attend the WCF’s hate conference.

The WCF are a very powerful, very wealthy group of Americans who have wreaked havoc on the lives of women, especially poor women, and LGBTQ people all over the world. They do not stand for families. They do not stand for values. They stand for violence.

And if Kevin Andrews believes, as the WCF does, that only some Australian families count –  if he supports an organisation that has brought unimaginable suffering to thousands, then we must demand his resignation as Minister for Social Services.

There is still time to sign the family album, and even add your photo. Help us show the WCF – and the government Ministers supporting them – that their hate is not welcome here. Help us show them that all Australians, and all families, count.

Are you in Canberra? Join the event on Thursday. All the details are here on Facebook.

Help us show the world that Australia does not welcome hate. Please be part of this.

Melanie Poole is the Co-founder and Director of Vocal Majority. She is currently the 2013-15 Anne Wexler- Fulbright Public Policy scholar, and is completing her Masters degree at New York University. She has previously worked for allout.org, CARE Australia, the UNHCR and the Aga Khan Development Network.

Mamamia powerfully objects to the Wolrd Congress of Families conference taking place this Saturday, 30th August.

Here’s why:

Here are just of the World Congress of Families’ ideas:

1. Women who take the pill lose interest in sex and are more likely to be the victim of violent assault and murder.

2. Women who take the pill are more likely to engage in incest.

3. Social policies should not promote single-parenting which contributes to the decay of society’s moral values.

4. Abortion, divorce, single parents and LGBT people are responsible for promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, poverty, human trafficking, violence against women and child abuse.

5. The pill and other contraception can and has killed women all over the world. The pill also kills babies.

6. There’s a link between abortion and breast cancer.

7. The sole purpose of sex is for procreation and an expression of love between husband and wife in the covenant of marriage. All other sexual activity cannot satisfy the human spirit and leads to remorse, alienation and disease.

8. Vladimir Putin’s draconian homosexual vilification laws that send LGBT Russians to prison are a ‘great idea’ that the rest of the world should follow. Russia is the Christian saviour to the world and Putin is heroically preventing Russian LGBT people from corrupting children.

9. All forms of non-heterosexual sex is a sin and gay people should be converted to heterosexuality via Christian therapy.

They defy science as well as basic human decency. In particular, the claims about abortion and the pill being linked to such things as incest, murder and breast cancer are complete fabrications. Outrageously invented. Complete bullshit. All of these statements are abhorrent.

At Parliament House on Thursday, Senator Larissa Waters, the Australian Greens spokesperson for women, will put a motion to the Senate calling on all politicians to boycott the WCF’s conference in Melbourne on Saturday.

Senator Waters said: “The World Congress of Families is full of homophobic, sexist and anti-choice prejudices and it’s unacceptable for members of parliament to be attending the conference.

“Homophobia, sexism and anti-choice ideology needs to be stamped out, not legitimised at a conference that ignores science, women’s rights and LGBTIQ rights.

“How can Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews, whose own department produced the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, support this organisation that inflicts so much cruelty on women and children across the world?,” Senator Waters said.

You can read Mamamia’s original post on the World Congress of Families here.

You can watch Mia Freedman’s interview with Eric Abetz about the science being presented at the World Congress of Families here.

You can sign Mamamia’s petition calling for Australian politicians not to attend the conference here.