SANTIAGO, August 11, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Despite an attack on its Facebook page and a cold rain, an estimated 15,000 people showed up for Chile’s first “March for Values” on July 30 in the capital of Santiago, expressing their support for the institution of the family in the face of a homosexualist campaign to create civil unions and homosexual “marriage” in the country. See video of march here.

Marchers included a mix of Catholics and Protestants, cooperating in an “exemplary” way according to organizer Salvador Salazar. They carried signs that read “men and women need each other to complement themselves and complete themselves” and “the human gene is divided into male and female.”

A contingent of homosexuals also attended to protest the march, holding a banner that read “The heterosexual family is violent” as well as signs saying “heterosexuality is unnatural” and “The family: official prostitution of bourgeois society.”

Marchers shouted back “Jesus loves you!” and “Christ lives!”

The march included flatbed trucks carrying musical bands, and ended at a large stage where speakers and singers extolled the virtues of family and praised Jesus Christ.

Salazar remarked that he was surprised at the large showing, which exceeded recent homosexual demonstrations by thousands of people, despite adverse weather and a lack of big-name celebrities and politicians that have attended the the opposition’s events.

“It began to rain with increasing strength, but the people, including the children, didn’t leave. They stayed,” he noted on the website of his pro-family activist organization Muevete Chile (Go Chile).

“I don’t recall in Chile any march regarding values such as life, family, with that number of people,” he added. “The march that was carried out weeks ago in favor of homosexual ‘marriage’ had 12,000 people and there hadn’t been any rain.”

The march was successful despite a cyberattack (http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/facebook-page-for-chilean-pro-family-march-shut-down-by-repeated-cyberattac/) on the Facebook page of Transform Chile, the umbrella group that organized the march. Although the page had to be shut down, organizers were able to spread the word through other channels, including an important television interview.

Despite the efforts of pro-family activists, Chilean president Sebastián Piñera capitulated to pressure by the country’s homosexual lobby, and introduced a legislative proposal to create homosexual civil unions on August 9. The leadership of two out the the three parties of his ruling coalition did not attend the event.