One week ago, the United State’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said, “Sixty years ago today, the United Nations General Assembly took the extraordinary step of adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was an historic day for all people and all nations — recognizing and enshrining the principle that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’”
Apparently, in the opinion of the government of the United States of America, “all human beings” does not include gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, because today the US sided with the governments of most Islamic countries and the Vatican in refusing to support the historic United Nations declaration for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality.
In all, sixty-six of the UN’s 192 member states did support the document. I’ve listed them at the bottom of this post.
Among the dissenters, seventy nations outlaw homosexuality, and in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sudan and Yemen homosexuality is still punishable, under Islamic Law, with death.
The United States took their side, because, according to an Associated Press report:
U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.
Leave it to the Administration of George W Bush to confuse a matter of international human rights with American states’ rights to discriminate against their own citizens. In 2003, the US Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, essentially decriminalized homosexuality in the United States. However, once again the Bush Administration, to the shame of our country and the further diminishment of its standing among civilized Western nations, has sided with fundamentalist, Qur’an- and Bible-based homophobia.
Following the UN presentation of the document, Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs who aided France’s Secretary of State for International Affairs and Human Rights, Rama Yade, and IDAHO activist Louis-Georges Tin in ushering the declaration toward the United Nations, was asked for his reaction to the United States’ declination of support for the UN statement, Verhagen said, “The US, as such, is a country with a strong human rights record, and I know the United States is a traditional defender of human rights worldwide, so that’s why I’m disappointed that their reading of this text made it impossible for them to sign up for the declaration.” He added, “I hope that the US will be, the next time, one of the countries that will support this statement.”
Verhagen, like most of the world, is well aware of the potential for an across the board shift in US policy when President-Elect Obama takes office in January 2009.
A Bloomberg News report reveals the Islamic states’ preposterous reasoning behind their ongoing institutionalized homophobia and barbaric executions of queer people, women and children:
Syrian envoy Abdullah al-Hallaq, speaking on behalf of 58 nations, read an opposing statement warning that homosexuality could “usher into social normalization and possibly the legitimization, of many deplorable acts, including pedophilia.”
The envoy said espousing the rights of homosexuals infringes on guarantees of sovereignty in the UN Charter, and that the idea of “genetic factors” playing a role in sexual orientation has been “rebuffed repeatedly.”
Curious that the Islamic states and the American Christianists toe the identical party line, complete with precisely the same shameless lies about pedophilia, when it comes to equality for queer human beings.
The Vatican has kept a relatively low profile since the angry reaction to its opposition to the UN statement. However, now the Vatican is saying it doesn’t favor the criminalization and execution of queer people. The Vatican’s chief press officer, Father Federico Lombardi, said, “[The Vatican’s] is a position that respects the rights of the human person, in his dignity.” But according to Lombardi, while the Vatican opposes “legislation that penalizes homosexuality” it disagrees with any initiative intended to place “all forms of sexual orientation on the same level.”
In other words, there is no substantive shift in the Vatican’s position; the Catholic Church remains horrified at the prospect of two men or two women entering into civil marriages and having their committed relationships legally respected.
Today, what should have been exuberantly celebrated as an historic stride forward and away from religious and cultural prejudice toward gay, lesbian and transgender people around the globe has been, unfortunately, tempered, because the United States of America failed, paraphrasing Ambassador Khalilzad, to recognize and enshrine the principle that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
In considering our roadmap going forward, we Americans — queers, people of color, people of faith and non-faith, progressives and conservatives, and all fair- and equality-minded people — working toward full and inclusive human rights for all human beings, could do worse than heed this bit of wisdom from Eleanor Roosevelt who, caught up in the spirit of the original Universal Declaration of Human Rights sixty years ago, posed this question:
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
Clearly, our work begins at home.
The list of countries supporting the universal decriminalization of homosexuality, via UK Gay News: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Note: For more posts on the topic and information about the UN statement on the decriminalization of homosexuality, scroll up and click on the blue UN flag in the upper right-hand column.
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Another bittersweet day, like November 4.