Friday August 27, 2010
UN Campaigns for Homosexual Adoption in Mexico
By Amanda Pawloski, co-authored by Dianelle Martinez
NEW YORK, August 26, 2010 (C-FAM) – In the midst of a controversial judicial consideration of homosexual adoption earlier this month, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights ran an ad campaign that appeared to support the effort to overturn Mexico City’s law against homosexual adoption. According the website of the Office of High Commission, an estimated 5 million people a day carried subway tickets with the message, “Embrace diversity; End discrimination.” The purpose of the campaign was to remind citizens of Mexico City that they “are entitled to the full range of human rights.”
In addition to this campaign, the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-wha Kang told a Mexico City women’s conference, “Marriage between same-sex individuals is a right which includes the possibility of adopting children.” Kang also said the “UN has always been in favor of the full enjoyment of the rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation.”
Present at the same conference was Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, a member of Mexico City’s Supreme Court of the Nation (SCJN), which was then considering whether to uphold legislation passed last December recognizing same-sex marriages and allowing homosexual adoption. Shortly thereafter the Supreme Court voted 9-2 to uphold the laws allowing homosexual adoption.
Legal experts point out that the United Nations has never decided that sexual orientation is a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or any other UN treaty on human rights. In fact, the issue has never been brought before the General Assembly for consideration. Some treaty monitoring bodies have flirted with the idea but they do not have the authority to change treaties.
In Mexico City, the Federal Legislative District Assembly passed legislation earlier this year to recognize same-sex marriages in the municipal district of Mexico City. Shortly after, Arturo Chavez Chavez, of the Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit before the SCJN, declaring that the reform “violates constitutional provisions which protect the family and the rights of children.” Led by the National Action Party, Mexican states including Baja California and Jalisco, also filed suits against the same-sex legislation.
The SCJN has now upheld the rights of same-sex couples to marry and adopt in Mexico City, and ruled that those marriages should be recognized in all of Mexico’s 31 states. So far, none of the other states have passed similar legislation, and a few states have even vowed not to recognize homosexual marriages performed in Mexico City. The entire debate has been embroiled in controversy and some have publicly claimed that officials may have been bribed to vote in favor of homosexual rights.
Though the UN has never declared what Deputy Kang asserted in Mexico about homosexual rights, homosexual marriage or homosexual adoption, it is highly unlikely Kang will be reprimanded or even criticized. As one UN expert pointed out, “No UN member state is as powerful as even a single UN bureaucrat. The UN bureaucracy ignores the Member States and the General Assembly with impunity. The bureaucracy and the agencies do as they want, when they want, and how they want. Those paying the bills, the Member States, can just go jump in a lake.”