Letter in Opposition to the State Department's "Commission on Unalienable Rights"

A trio of clear and present dangers to human rights.

In a post yesterday I looked at the Trump/Pence regime's dangerous and disingenuous "Commission on Inalienable Rights" which appears designed to roll back LGBT and women's rights.  The Commission's membership is full of far right Christian extremists to the exclusion of legitimate experts on human rights issues.  Now, a letter has been made available to stand in opposition to the Commission and to demand that resources be directed to legitimate and non-sectarian resources to fight human rights abuses both in America and across the globe.  The letter, which I encourage  both individuals and organizations to sign can be found here.  Follow the instructions to join the list of signatories.  Here are excerpts from the letter:

We . . . . write to express our deep concern with the Department of State’s recently announced Commission on Unalienable Rights. We object to the Commission’s stated purpose, which we find harmful to the global effort to protect the rights of all people and a waste of resources; the Commission’s make-up, which lacks ideological diversity and appears to reflect a clear interest in limiting human rights, including the rights of women and LGBTQI individuals; and the process by which the Commission came into being and is being administered, which has sidelined human rights experts in the State Department’s own Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL).

We urge you to immediately disband this body, and to focus your personal attention on the significant challenges currently facing the protection of human rights globally, including those threats to human rights generated by Trump administration policy and rhetoric.

We are likewise dismayed by the well-documented views of a significant majority of the Commission’s 10 members. Taken as a whole, the Commission clearly fails to achieve the legal requirement that a federal advisory committee “be fairly balanced in its membership in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed.” Almost all of the Commission’s members have focused their professional lives and scholarship on questions of religious freedom, and some have sought to elevate it above other fundamental rights. The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is a fundamental right, but one of among 30 such rights enshrined in the [1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights] UDHR.

No Commissioner focuses nearly as exclusively on any other issue of pressing concern contained with the UDHR, including the right to asylum, the right to be free from torture, the right to equal protection against any discrimination, or any of the UDHR’s enumerated economic, social, and cultural rights, among other topics.

Moreover, the Commission’s chair and members are overwhelmingly clergy or scholars known for extreme positions opposing LGBTQI and reproductive rights, and some have taken public stances in support of indefensible human rights violations. The Commission’s chair has stated that marriage equality presents a danger to children. A Commission member has similarly stated that “the unavoidable message” of same-sex marriage “is a profoundly false and damaging one.” A third Commission member has argued publicly against the use of contraception even when that use is meant to limit the spread of deadly disease. A fourth has described questions of gender identity as “a matter of mental illness or some other pathology” and “a mark of a heartless culture.” A fifth has suggested that widespread outrage at the Saudi Arabian government’s premeditated murder and dismemberment of journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi is grounded in U.S. domestic political considerations. A sixth has described the government of the United Arab Emirates as one “committed to tolerance…committed to civil society,” despite that government’s egregious and well-documented human rights record at home and abroad.

Rather than continue with this Commission, we urge you to use the resources of your office to take action on the great many grave human rights issues facing the world today, including those you have the power to improve directly. These include actions that have exposed children and other migrants to acute distress and, in some instances, long-lasting psychological damage. They include extreme selectivity and hypocrisy in raising human rights concerns, and rhetoric from the president and administration supportive of many of the world’s leading human rights violators, from Kim Jong Un to Vladimir Putin to Mohammed bin Salman. They include routine attacks on a free press and independent judiciary, behaviors emulated and applauded by strongmen worldwide. And they include policies that will exacerbate the impacts of climate change, which threatens the rights of every one of us.

Join me in signing this letter.   A piece in Slate further elaborates on the danger this commission poses to human rights.