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. 

Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Releases Marriage Equality Video

Whether or not Hillary Clinton's new embrace of marriage equality reflects a true change of heart or a desire to merely appeal to LGBT voters, her campaign's new marriage equality video certainly sets her apart from her would be GOP opponents.  Hillary equates gay rights with human rights even as the GOP nomination contenders seemingly see who can most denigrate gays and our relationships as the seek to win the votes of religious extremists and bigots.  The Advocate looks at Hillary's new video.  Here are highlights:

Mirroring the optimistic attitude many in the country have regarding the Supreme Court’s pending decision on nationwide marriage equality, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released an emotional video on YouTube yesterday in support of same-sex couples.

The over two-minute clip showcases a plethora of couples, of all shapes, shades, sizes, and genders, looking as happy as ever as they marry the loves of their lives — a privilege that could soon be afforded to same-sex couples all over the country before the end of the month.

“Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct,” Clinton said in the video. “But in fact, they are one in the same.”

“Being LGBT does not make you less human,” the presidential hopeful continued. “That is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

Mexican Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Marriage Ban

While the United States Supreme Court apparently remains busy contemplating its collective navel on how to deal with the appeals before it involving California's Proposition 8 which has been struck down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the cases wherein DOMA has been struck down by among others the First and Second Courts of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Mexico in an unanimous ruling struck down a law of the southern state of Oaxaca which had banned same sex marriages.  Adding to the appearance that the United States is increasingly out of step with educated, non-Muslim portions of the world, both Uruguay and Colombia are both considering same sex marriage legislation as is France.  If nations formerly dominated by the Roman Catholic Church in South America can end the special rights given to far right Christianists, why can't the U. S. Supreme Court have the spine to do likewise?  Here are highlights on the ruling in Mexico:

The Supreme Court of Mexico issued a unanimous ruling Wednesday afternoon that paves the way to universal marriage rights in the country.

The actual ruling won’t be published for a little while, but the gay rights advocates who brought the case are proclaiming that today’s ruling “opens the door to equal marriage in the whole country.”

The court ruled on behalf of three same-sex couple seeking to marry in the southern state of Oaxaca. The court had already ruled in 2010 that gay marriages performed under a Mexico City ordinance had to be recognized nationwide. With this precedent, the remaining bans on gay marriage in most Mexican states could quickly fall.

This ruling does not immediately eliminate marriage statutes limiting unions to a man and a woman—the Mexican Supreme Court doesn’t have the power to strike down state laws like that en mass as the United States Supreme Court does. But the lawyer who brought the case, Alex Alí Méndez Díaz, said before the ruling that victory would mean the beginning of the end for bans on same-sex marriage.

The court’s ruling that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutionally discriminatory is partly based on a February ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that governments can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, Karen Atala Riffo y Niñas v. Chile.

This case could have repercussions outside of Mexico—by expanding this precedent to include the right to marry, courts in other Latin American countries that recognize the Inter-American Accord on Human Rights could follow this precedent and determine that marriage rights are also protected in their countries. And the Inter-American Court itself could be more likely to recognize a right to marry—a case brought by three couples trying to strike down Chile’s ban on gay marriage has already begun making its way through the international judicial system. 

As I noted before, it is pretty sad when the nation that likes to promote itself as "the land of liberty" now lags behind nations that it once viewed as  two bit third world countries when it comes to affording full rights to LGBT Citizens.

Troubling Anti-Gay Signs in Hungry

My father's parents were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before they left for America just prior to World War I and I have often wanted to visit the region.  Now, signs in Hungry suggest I might want to delete that country from any such trip.  With the economy lagging, once again gays - and Jews - are becoming the whipping boys and scapegoats for the political far right.  I certainly have no desire to visit any place that I'm viewed as vermin or my rights are restricted.  I can experience that right here in Virginia.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the disturbing signs taking place in Hungry.  Here are some excerpts:

How do you know if a real storm is brewing — or if you’re just reacting to a few passing clouds?  That’s a question that many Hungarians and people keeping an eye on the country are asking these days.

[T]to Kollanyi’s ears and those of many other Hungarians, there’s an authoritarian, nationalistic tenor to things, along with strains of anti-Semitism and antipathy to other minorities.  “It’s not good,” said Kollanyi, who is Jewish, when I spoke with her last weekend. “It’s not even a little good.” Pay attention to Hungary. It may not have any great economic heft, and it’s home to only about 10 million people with a tropism toward beer and a talent for brooding. But it could turn out to be a test case of the E.U.’s imperiled sway in these days of debt and austerity.

 

Hungary could also be a window into just how potently economic anxiety fans the flames of bigotry. E.U. membership hasn’t brought Hungarians the broad prosperity they had hoped for; the country has had severe budgetary woes of late. And the far-right party I mentioned, Jobbik, has converted these disappointments into questions about the country’s orientation to the West and, for good measure, about its supposed coddling of Jews, gays and Roma: Hungary’s trusty trinity of scapegoats.   This month Jobbik introduced a bill that refers to homosexuality as a perversion and bans its promotion in language so vague, opponents say, that two men or two women holding hands in public could theoretically be imprisoned. 

[T]he Jobbik magazine, a recent issue of which had an article extolling the party’s effort to stop Budapest’s gay pride parade, the kind of degenerate event that’s too blithely tolerated in other E.U. countries, the article maintained.  “Deviant West, Normal East,” was the headline. The cover story mentioned historical accounts of Jews using Christian blood in rites. “Whether this is true or not,” the story said, is unknown.

U.S. Gay Group Gains United Nations Accreditation

Despite the efforts of Republicans like Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Islamic countries including anti-gay strongholds like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) has been granted consultative status by the UN Economic and Social Council. Since the IGLHRC advocates against anti-gay laws and state-sanctioned violence against LGBT individuals, it's no surprise that theocrats in both the USA and abroad did not want a pro-gay voice in the UN's debates. Here are highlights from Pink News:
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The US-based gay rights body has been lobbying for accreditation since 2007 and becomes the tenth LGBT rights organisation to be recognised by the council. The 54-member council approved the group's application for consultative status by a vote of 23-13 with 13 abstentions.
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The decision means that the IGLHRC can participate in a more formal way with the UN through attending meetings, submitting statements and collaborating with the UN and world governments.
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"The clear message here is that these voices should not be silenced and that human rights cannot be denied on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."

*The group has been struggling to gain accreditation for the last three years and believes it was subjected to homophobic questioning and procedural roadblocks because it is a gay organisation.

IRAN: STATE MURDER FOR SEX AT 13 -- The Tragic Case of Makwan Moloudzadeh

I know I have posted previously about this travesty of justice and flagrant violation of international law. Despite the violation of two international treaties to which it is a signatory, Iran suffers no consequence whatever for such actions. It all sickens me and it is important that we in countries with at least a somewhat free press make sure that this conduct my religious extremist does not go unnoticed and unreported. A photo of the victim is at left. May these monsters in Iran's judicial system burn in Hell where hopefully they will be sodomized and tortured for eternity. Here are highlights form a story by Doug Ireland (http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2007/12/iran-state-murd.html):

The Islamic Republic of Iran murdered Makwan Moloudzadeh (left), a lad of 21, on the cold morning of December 5. Makwan was dragged at dawn from his jail cell in the Kermanshah Central Prison and hanged in secret within the prison, without the required presence of his lawyer and family, for the so-called "crime" of having had anal sexual relations, which the authorities claimed was rape, with boys of his own age eight years ago, when he was 13.Given witness recantings during his trial, it is impossible to know what, if in fact anything, actually transpired.

Amnesty International released a statement denouncing the execution as a "mockery of justice." The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's executive director, Paula Ettelbrick, said in a statement, "This is a shameful and outrageous travesty of justice and international human rights law. How many more young Iranians have to die before the international community takes action?"

And the trial of Makwan, held in June, was indeed a farce"The only witnesses who had given statements to the intelligence police saying they had been raped by Makwan came into court and repudiated those statements, saying that they had been extracted under torture," the only Iranian journalist to have covered Makwan's case extensively, Mitra Khalatbari of the newspaper Etemade Melli, told this reporter by telephone from Tehran. Khalatbari, who covered the story for months and courageously agreed to speak on the record to Gay City News, added, "Makwan himself told the judge that his admission to the Intelligence Police that he had had anal sex with one boy in 1999 was also obtained by torture, and that he now denied it and proclaimed his innocence."

The state murder of young Makwan - who was only 20 if one uses an American calendar, but 21 if one uses an Iranian calendar - was triply illegal, in violation of international law and Iranian law. Two international treaties to which Iran is a signatory - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child - both forbid the imposition of the death penalty bar for crimes committed before the age of 18. As Human Rights Watch pointed out, "These provisions reflect the reality that children are different from adults. They lack the experience, judgment, maturity, and restraint of an adult." Iran has ratified both those treaties, and has taken no steps to abrogate or nullify them. And, although the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of only nine countries in which homosexuality is still punishable by death, the Iranian penal code forbids execution for sodomy of anyone who is not at least 15 years old - and Makwan was just 13 at the time of the alleged crime.

Update on Iran's Abuse of Gays

Things are bad for gays in many countries, but the Islamic countries definitely stand out as the worse. In Iran, The maximum punishment for adultery and gay sex is death, and teenage boys as young as 15 are eligible for the death penalty. Unfortunately, I doubt that the following report from Pink News.Co.UK (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-4580.html) will launch a new trend:

Nearly all of the young men arrested at a party in Iran earlier this month under suspicion of being gay have now been released.Eighty-seven young men were originally arrested, and seventeen were held for "homosexual conduct" and drinking alcohol in a crackdown by Iranian police.Amnesty International have said that they are not aware of any evidence that the men attending the party identify themselves as gay or were engaging in same-sex sexual activities. Sixty of the men were released unconditionally, while 26 were released on bail.

Last month PinkNews.co.uk reported how a witness as the time of the arrests, who would only describe herself as Peyman, described how "all my friends were arrested while seven or eight policeman beat them with batons." Arsham Parsi, the executive director of the Iranian Queer Organisation said: "Obviously this crackdown is yet another systematic violation of human rights, along with brutal suppression of womens' movements in Iran and must be strongly protested by all human rights organisations as yet another violation of people's private rights and liberties.

Sadly, human rights are not a priority for Chimperator Bush's administration, which doesn't even want to be bound by the Geneva Conventions rules on treatment of prisoners.