United States Stands Mute on UN Gay Declaration
Over 60 countries, from all geographic regions, have now endorsed the United Nations joint statement addressing human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The joint statement focuses on the universality of human rights, the core human rights principle of non-discrimination and the egregious human rights violations that individuals suffer because they are – or are thought to be – lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The joint statement does not call for any “new” rights, simply that states affirm the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – whose 60th anniversary we have just celebrated. This historic statement, which builds upon years of advocacy by activists from around the world, will most likely be delivered on Thursday, 18 December.”
Eighty-six countries still have a total ban on homosexuality. The penalties in these countries range from a few years jail to life imprisonment. In at least seven countries, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan the sentence is death.
Although this declaration is binding not on any member state, the declaration is seen by all sides on this issue to have enormous symbolic value.
The Vatican has criticized this initiative openly, while no country in the Middle East, apart from Israel, has endorsed the declaration. The United States and Australian governments have simply taken a rain check when it comes to supporting the declaration one way or the other and are the only western democratic nations that have done so.
The Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, Monsignor Celestino Migliore, argued earlier this month that the UN declaration would unfairly “pillory” countries where homosexuality is illegal; forcing them to establish “new categories (gays) protected from discrimination.” Such laws would “create new and implacable acts of discrimination….
Presently, there is not a single international human rights convention that explicitly acknowledges the human rights of LGBT’s.
Paula Brooks lives in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. You can visit her Blogger profile here.
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The Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, Monsignor Celestino Migliore, argued earlier this month that the UN declaration would unfairly “pillory” countries where homosexuality is illegal; forcing them to establish “new categories (gays) protected from discrimination. and the Vatican should know as it has been at the forefront of hatred and murder of gays and lesbians for more than 1000 years, achieving much of its noteriety during the infamous Inquisition and its blessing upon Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum (Pt 2 Q1 Ch 7), as was and is the case in Hinduism past and present (http://www.galva108.org/hinduism.html). It is religion that is the thief stealing human rights from people who refuse to think for themselves. The Vatican is just the best known (next to the Mormons) that is an institution that celebrates hatred, bigotry and encourages carnage of those who disagree.