Leading and influential conservative legal scholars have filed papers officially challenging the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) claiming that when then the original treaty was signed in 1948, it was never intended to be "universal" and it was never intended to apply to all "humans."
Really.
Not kidding.
With genocide, racism, sexism, religious persecution, child abuse and slavery flourishing around the world, some prominent Americans would go to war with the UDHR.
I suspect that this would come as quite a shock to Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the authors and champions of this document. I also suspect that if Mrs. Roosevelt were alive today, she would be out and proud and beating down doors in Washington demanding that the United States Constitution apply to all people living in this nation, not just members of an elite club of Christian conservative morons.
Nonetheless, American conservative legal experts have condemned the United Nations (UN) human rights committee's recent inclusion of "sexual orientation and gender identity" as a protected category under the 1948 cornerstone human rights treaty.
Conservatives have condemned what they are calling "A bureaucratic body of mostly left-wing advocates [who] added "gender identity and sexual orientation" as a new category "among the prohibited grounds of discrimination."
Conservative think tanks are taking a "Prop 8" approach, claiming that if a majority of nation's share a common belief that is contrary to the UDHR than that belief takes precendence over any other definition of human rights and "universal".
In fact, 60 nations who are parties to the treaty dispute the inclusion of sexual orientation as a human right claiming that homosexuality is an abomination and an offense to "God". You remember "God", don't you? That imaginary super hero who watches out for all the little children--except the gay ones?
Steven Groves, a human rights expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington DC-based think tank says: "Writing a general comment when there is consensus on an issue is one thing. But writing one in the complete absence of consensus is really disturbing."
Other critics see the move as a violation of sovereignty by attempting to impose "transnational" cultural norms upon countries around the world. They claim that the UDHR contains no reference to "gender identity and sexual orientation," and when nations negotiated the document, it was not intended to cover such "novel" categories.
So American Conservatives would replace the concept of "universal" with "transnational cultural norms."
George Mason University law professor Jeremy Rabkin, who has written extensively on the transnationalist threat to state sovereignty, said that the comment "seems to reflect European fashion rather than any serious consideration of what most countries have actually understood as 'discrimination.'"
Rabkin seems to believe that "universal" means "European".
Rabkin insists that the addition of sexual orientation to the UDHR may actually be "a set back for the effort to build respect for basic human rights in countries with poor records in this area," as it undermines the claim that rights are universal and should be accepted by all.
Rabkin asked, "How compelling can such claims be in countries where traditional religious standards are still respected? What's the likely effect of this sort of ruling on people in Muslim countries, who hear from many that human rights advocacy is simply a seductive program for undermining Islam?"
Another criticism is that the committee, over objections from Member States, is advancing the highly controversial Yogyakarta Principles, an advocacy document prepared in 2007 by "homosexual activists" and some UN personnel but never negotiated by or otherwise agreed to by Member States of the UN.
One European critic of the Yogyakarta Principles, Jakob Cornides, faults the "distorted anthropology" inherent in the general comment. "In this new anthropology," he explained, "nobody is a man or a woman, but everybody arbitrarily defines his own gender identity: male or female, homo- or heterosexual, trans- or bisexual."
"In the normal order of things," he added, "the natural purpose of sexuality is procreation, and 'sexual orientations' that are not oriented towards adult persons of the opposite sex are thus misguided. But if we accept that man is the product of his arbitrary self-definition, it is a logical consequence that everything can be re-defined – including sexuality, which according to the ICESCR bureaucrats does not seem to have anything to do with procreation, its primary purpose."
It is expected that the Committee will now begin telling treaty members that they must change their laws based on the new reinterpretation and that lawsuits will result.
United Nations member in good-standing Jamaica is one of many non-Islamic Christian nations outraged by the new UDHR "sexual orientation" clause, claiming that it ultimately interfere with that nation's cultural and religious norms as well as pose a threat to the billions of dollars of foreign aid that flow into the island nation's treasury from the United States, Canada, Britain and other wealthier nations.
British honorary consul John Terry, a gay man living in Montego Bay, was found strangled to death on September 9 of this year. A note reading, “This is what will happen to all gays,” was found at the scene.
Brian Williamson, the founder of a Jamaican gay rights organization Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), was hacked to death with a machete in 2004. That same year Mark Anthony Myrie, better known by his stage name Buju Banton, was charged after six gay men were taken from their home and severely beaten. The charges against Banton were subsequently dismissed.
In 2005, Steve Harvey, a leading HIV/AIDS worker activist who worked closely with gay Jamaicans, was shot dead on the eve of World AIDS day.
In 2006 Kingston man Nokia Cowan drowned to death after being chased off a pier by a homophobic mob. It was another homophobic mob that chased Gareth Henry into the clutches of police who beat him severely. Henry lost 13 friends to homophobic violence in Jamaica before fleeing to Toronto last year.
Between 2005 and 2007, a total of 14 gay men were killed in Jamaica. There were also more than 140 attacks on gays and lesbians.
American Conservatives, many of whom likely vacation on sun-drenched Jamaican beaches (along with thousands of American liberals), find it disturbing that the new sexual orientation amendment to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights would interfere with Jamaica's cultural norm and religious values.
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