By Gudrun Schultz
WASHINGTON, D.C., United States, December 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A proposal that would make sexual orientation an “inalienable right” with full human-rights protection is under consideration by the Organization of American States, Focus on the Family’s Citizen Link reported yesterday.
The document would specifically identify sexual orientation and “gender identity,” including bisexual and transgender identity choices, as human rights.
“The document before the OAS this week mentions sexual orientation 15 times,” said Thomas Jacobson, Focus on the Family Action’s representative to the United Nations. “In addition, it contains terms like ‘hate crimes’ and veiled pro-abortion language.”
“What they are saying with this proposed treaty is that a person may practice any form of sexual behavior that is consensual with any other person,” Jacobson said, “with no reference to marriage, no reference to responsibility to any children which come forth from that union, and no limitation on the types of behavior.”
Brazil introduced the treaty to the OAS after the United Nations refused to accept a similar resolution put forward by Brazil in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The OAS includes 34 nations from North, Central and South America, including Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
“When Brazil’s ambassadors proposed this, they said they wanted to protect human rights that were not protected in other documents—they wanted to protect new rights—and they specifically mentioned sexual orientation,” Jacobson said. “It’s a codeword for protecting homosexual rights, but it’s not limited to homosexual rights.”
“Just in the last three years, the U.N. has come to regard sexual orientation as meaning gays and lesbians—but also bisexual and transgender people. They also came up with the term ‘gender identity.’
The Brazilian government has been heavily influenced by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in the effort to push for international recognition of homosexual “rights.”
Yuri Mantilla, director of international government affairs at Focus on the Family, told CitizenLink the homosexuality campaign runs deeper than it may appear, saying, “At the end of the day we have a clash of worldviews, a clash of ideas and a clash of ideologies here.”
Mantilla said the debate on homosexuality illustrates the growing conflict between moral-relativist, secularist nations, where sexual orientation and abortion are included under human rights, and nations holding to a “very clear, sound natural-law perspective of human rights.”
“We expect that this draft will not prevail,” Mantilla said. “We expect that Latin American nations and the United States will understand that this is an extremist view of reality and that this type of language should not be in an international treaty—and that it will not be approved, as it stands now.”
See full coverage by Citizen Link:
https://www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000003380.cfm
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Brazil to Decide on Pushing Gay Rights Again at United Nations
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/nov/04112203.html
Canada and 32 Other Countries Frustrated at Block of Homosexual Agenda at United Nations
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05041505.html